“Are you not going to visit with those strangers today?” Zorion asked.

Itxaro tried to go about her day as if she never met the two. She checked the progress of the nine remaining expecting mothers. She brought Eneko with her as she normally would. The newborn’s strange countenance disturbed her charges.

She met Zorion while she was between houses. They both stood in the open as they talked.

“They wouldn’t want to see me,” she dismissed the idea.

“Oh,” he replied flatly. “Why would that be?”

She wanted to say they had a fight but that did not seem right. “We had a disagreement,” she replied after a short moment of thought.

“That is good,” he stated with a satisfied nod. “I don’t particularly trust them. The female thing is strange but there’s something wrong with the man as well.”

“What was it about him that you noticed to be wrong?”

“He felt false. You would have never met someone like him but there were people like that in the old days, people who hid behind niceties.”

“The more I hear about those days, the more I think I should be glad I never saw them,” Itxaro stated. There were gods and magic but there were also complications. She never would have met the forest they lived in now. “Wars and battles for thrones.”

But Alvah did not seem false. He told her things that could bring harm to him.

“Such people lived in those days because we had less worries,” Zorion reminded her. “I barely remember those peaceful days but I wish you could have seen such times. It was only centuries ago that you would have lived without these troubles.”

Even as he spoke Zorion took glances at Eneko. This would have been the first time he had been so close to the newborn yet he made no comment of his pointed ears or odd silence.

Itxaro looked at child, assessing his inhumanly sharp features and back to the man. “Is it true he is yours?” she asked.

“Yes, what does it matter?” he seemed uncomfortable with the subject as he leaned away.

“So, he is my brother.”

His lips twitched into a smile at the word before he sighed. “So, the outsiders told you the meaning of that word.” He frowned and scratched his head as he looked away. “By the measure of the age before, yes, he is your brother as were many others.”

Itxaro rocked her sibling in her arms. “What are brothers and sisters supposed to do?”

She knew what she was doing was not normal. She was nursing the child in the place of his mother and Zorian yet Eneko a few days before wanted to be held by the one that birthed him enough for Desdomena to take on that guise.

“That is difficult…” He spoke slowly. Every sentence he said was punctuated with a pause to think. “Did your grandmother tell you tales of people fighting for a throne? Those were siblings but my own siblings…”

He went quiet.

“You had siblings as well?” Itxaro asked.

“Just about everyone did. Even your own mother, we just happened to lose them along the way, we got split up or…” He groaned as he tried to think of the words. “Some gave their lives to save everyone else.”

“What happened to yours?” Itxaro asked.

What he said next was perfectly clear as if recited. “There did not need to be two men with the same mother and father.”

He tilted his head to get a better look at Eneko. “Can I hold him?” he asked, holding out his hands. “This might be my last chance to.”

“Do you know how?”

He smiled. “I did it once for you,” he gently recalled.

Itxaro passed Eneko to him. Zorion reached a finger down to touch the baby’s nose. Eneko wiggled his arms out of the blankets wrapped around him and reached out with both hands.

Zorion brought his finger to Eneko’s chest and the boy clasped his tiny hands around it. “He’s surprisingly strong for one so little,” the hunter laughed faintly, his smile growing.

“Do you think you could watch him for a while?” Itxaro asked.

“I would enjoy that,” he nodded, looking only at the baby.

“If he gets hungry give him this,” Itxaro supplied him with the artificial milk and instructed the correct amount. “If he needs to be cleaned-“

“I skin animals,” he reminded her. “I can clean a baby.”

*****

“Here are the birds you wanted to ask for.” Itxaro bowed as she held out a pair of blackbirds to Alvah. Those were the first words she said. No greetings or apology as Desdomena bristled at her presence, simply her resuming contact with them as if nothing happened when she caught sight of them on the western hill.

Blackbirds flocked in great numbers. It was easy to locate such groups, it was more difficult to hunt such flocks. Tens of eyes were ever on the lookout. By the time she loosed her first arrow, they were already in flight. She had to track them again to claim her second prize.

The man’s jaw went slack while the aberration leaned to examine the the offering intensely, “Not bad,” the aberration noted. “Pristine condition, I would think.”

Itxaro kept looking down as Alvah wordlessly accepted the offering, his expression blank. After he did so, she pulled out some clean cloth. "And some fresh bandages as well," she added.

A long silence passed. "Thank you," he said quietly and formally as he took them. He turned and began to walk away. She watched his feet leave her sight.

“About yesterday!” she shouted, not looking up. “I will not say I was wrong but I am sorry for not giving you a chance to speak.”

She heard whispering as Desdomena said something to him. The shrieking of plants filled Itxaro’s mind as the aberration’s shadow drew near. “You have had your share our secrets,” Desdomena claimed as she stood in front of the girl. The aberration audibly sniffed the air. “Now it is time to see one of yours. Maybe then we can begin to say we are even.” The aberration’s body turned to the stuff of shadows. “Look up.”

Itxaro saw only an inky silhouette at first. The figure shrank until it was of equal height to her. From the darkness came a face very familiar to Itxaro, her own.

“Alvah, get me a mirror, anything,” the one that was not Itxaro but looked and sounded like her said as she took a theatrical pose. “I must see who I’ve become. Hmmm… this voice sounds familiar.”

The transformed Desdomena leaned forward and gazed into Itxaro’s eyes. “Why am I you?” Desdomena exclaimed with the girl’s voice.

“Do not toy with me,” Itxaro demanded.

“I am not.” The everpresent scar remained but otherwise Itxaro recognized the image as herself. Itxaro examined Desdomena’s hair and reached up to feel her own. The way they were parted were opposite. Desdomena was not a perfect copy as she had been of Eneko’s mother, she was a mirror image. Her previous guise was what that person looked like to an observer, if Desdomena had chosen to purposefully mimic Itxaro, the aberration would have correctly taken on those traits rather than the inverse.

If what Alvah said about Desdomena basing this transformation on memory was true then this was what Itxaro wanted to see. Itxaro never saw herself correctly, only through her own reflection. But why was Desdomena Itxaro herself?

“Why are you me?” Itxaro yelled.

“I do not know. Or at least I did not know till now. You are difficult to read. So sure of your ideals but not so sure of yourself,” Desdomena continued to mimic her while resting a hand over her heart and laughing. “While I have this face, I might as well say with your lips the answer to my own question of “If I could save a stranger with my magic but it could cost my own life, would I do it?”

Itxaro moved to cover her ears. “Stop!”

“I would do it!” Desdomena proclaimed.

Itxaro froze, unsure of what was just said.

Desdomena’s normal voice came from her mouth. “Something strange about people is that they value their own lives so much yet when testing their resolve they always say they will die for something or someone. They barely ever say they will kill.” Itxaro’s stolen voice slipped back into the aberration’s speech. “But I, if I spoke true, I think failing to try my best to save someone is the same as accidentally killing someone. So, do I have the will to kill someone?”

Itxaro did not reply.

“I most certainly do, but it is not as if I would let someone simply die. Though, it would not be the same if say a hundred lives were in the balance. Failing to sacrifice myself or someone else would be the same to me as killing those hundred people. For anyone, that should not be a difficult choice, especially if it was for those they know. Who would not die for the sake of their kin? What say you, me, am I right?”

Itxaro gritted her teeth. “You are right.” Itxaro would die for her kin. She would kill for her kin.

“I do not see what is so humiliating about this revelation,” Desdomena clasped her hands to her cheeks to imitate a scene of shame. “It is not as if anything strange had been learned or something embarrassing came to light like your first crush.”

“Do you not think that is enough, Desdomena?” Alvah asked.

“For what she did, no. Not even close to enough.”

“If you require so much to be satisfied, I ask that you stop because you will remain unsatisfied either way.”

Desdomena returned to her normal appearance. “So, you forgave her already? How merciful.”

Itxaro looked to the man. “Thank you-“

He held out a hand. “I have not forgiven you. Not until we try to settle this misunderstanding. So, ask your question and I will answer.”

“When-“ she corrected herself. When did not matter anymore. “How did you give Desdomena her scar?

“I stabbed her,” he answered plainly. He reached into his clothes and pulled out a sheathed knife. “With this.” He unsheathed it, the blade was made of glass rather than any metal. Seven bands of color ran vertically from hilt to tip in a pattern not unlike a rainbow except it had a streak of white at the edge instead of any sign of indigo. “This knife was made to be the bane of any creature with a mortal weakness. It can wound even aberrations such as Desdomena.”

The aberration eyed the knife with familiarity.

“It has to be be more complicated than that,” Itxaro reasoned after his prior insistence things were not so simple.

“You are the one that said something like breaking a leg is simple,” he recalled.

She remembered Desdomena mentioning how she could have ate him when the two first met. “Was Desdomena trying to eat you?”

“No, she was not. She was trying to make a point so she played a trick on me and I stabbed her in the eye.”

“It really hurt,” Desdomena commented, running her hand over her injured eye. “But worth it.”

Itxaro held back her disgust. “You both sound insane.” There had to be a bigger story.

“We know,” Desdomena laughed.

She reached for some reason to tolerate the two. “Did… you mean to hurt her?”

“No…” he replied.

Itxaro let out a sigh of relief.

“I most certainly meant to hurt him though,” Desdomena unnecessarily added. “At least in regard to the injury you are so worried about but I knew he could heal.”

“Just because you can bandage a wound does not mean it is alright to wound someone,” Itxaro countered.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“People can learn happiness from knowing sadness.” The aberration placed a hand to her chest and stretched out the other to the sky towards some audience in the heavens. “If it meant he would one day earnestly smile, I would joyously cause him ceaseless pain.”

How much of that was the truth? Alvah said that she incited emotions in others because that was her nature. Did she even need a motivation to hurt him?

“What do you plan to do now that he smiles?”

The aberration placed a finger to her lips. “That is my secret.”

“You two are strange,” Itxaro mumbled before speaking clearly. “If you were both humans, I would have no doubt in my mind that you two should have nothing to do with each other. Even if you two are abnormal, an aberration and a human, I can not see what you two are doing as anything other than wrong.”

“I confess that by most standards of reason and sensibilities. We are indeed wrong,” Alvah stated. “For you to say as much to us is not enough to earn a lasting grudge. However just because we are in not in the right does not necessarily mean you are correct.”

“There is nothing wrong with being… well, wrong,” Desdomena declared.

“I have to disagree,” Itxaro said.

“Disagree all you want. Oppose us. Try to change our minds,” Desdomena stated as her face drew close. Her injured eye flashed for a moment. “But do not try to trick us.”

Itxaro massaged her forehead. This was giving her a headache and she was already tired from her time with Eneko. She could not tell if she was too exhausted to process it all or Desdomena was driving her mad.

“I need to return to Eneko,” she stated to them both. “Are we on good terms now?”

“We are,” Alvah replied.

Itxaro was more confused than she had been yesterday. She needed to try to piece things together. “Mind if I return?”

“We do not mind,” Desdomena answered.

“But before I go,” Itxaro began as she pointed towards the aberration. “Let me ask you something Desdomena.” This was the only time she felt she could ask this, while Eneko was away.

Desdomena closed the gap between them and crouched in a strange manner so that she seemed coiled beneath Itxaro like a serpent. “What do you have to ask?”

Itxaro placed a hand to her mouth and the aberration recognized the gesture to offer her ear. “Eneko saw his mother. I saw myself. What does Allah see when he looks at you?” Itxaro whispered.

“Hmmm… It is a secret as to who he used to see… but as of now and forevermore, the one he sees is me,” Desdomena answered.

*****

Itxaro reunited with the two after a while near the southern edge of the village. Eneko smiled at the sight of the two. He was perhaps as familiar with them as he was with Elder Itxaro.

They said they were on good terms again but there was a faint lingering awkwardness. A tension that slowly leaked away as all parties involved remained mutually nonconfrontational while the child was around.

“It was a good thing Eneko was not there earlier,” Desdomena recalled. “You would have held back if he was around but I got a good show. No forethought or plotting, just a pure unrestrained reaction. Just the way I like things.

“I was born of humans so I love everything about humans but so many of you try to act the same when everyone is really different. Everyone has an unique expression when that mask is stripped away.”

Itxaro tried to phrase her words philosophically. “How can you say you love humans when you toy with us?”

“Because I only care about genuine humanity, not the order you placed upon yourselves.”

“Order is what makes us human.”

“No. It is what takes away your humanity. Humans are chaotic when left without structure.”

“If that is what humans are to you, I don’t think you truly love humans. You love what you think is human but there’s more to us than chaos. The gods and civilization were proof of that.”

“The gods and civilization are gone yet you and I remain,” Desdomena pointed out. “I think your kind is more firmly tied to mine than dead gods.”

Desdomena’s eyes drifted to Alvah for a moment and she frowned as if just remembering something. It was not a disappointed pout, it seemed to be something with genuine sadness to it or maybe regret.

“There are exceptions of course,” the aberration partially compromised. “Let us find another topic. Any.”

Was she being mindful of her partner?

Desdomena offered the ideal opportunity to finally resolve a matter. “Any other topic? Would you be able to answer a question about magic if it was not part of a lesson?” Itxaro asked Alvah.

“I would rather know the type of question before I say yes or no,” Alvah replied.

“You said you used the sun, moon, the human body, and something about chains for your engravings. You can still use the sun because you associate it with fire. What did the moon mean to you?”

“Ah, I would think that is more a personal question that an arcane one,” he concluded. “Yes, I can answer that. I used it to control the wind.”

Itxaro could see no connection. “Why the wind?”

“The moon can mean many things. It can mean wisdom or guidance such as when a hunter might rely on it to find one’s quarry in the dark…” He paused. “But it can also represent fertility such as child birthing and crops. I associate the wind with the scattering of seeds for crops.”

“Or gardening,” Itxaro added, remembering the first profession he ever said he had experience with before he so matter-of-factly revealed his magic. “You are a gardener, right?”

Alvah smiled awkwardly but his eyes were filled with nostalgia. “Indeed.”

The identity he seemed most proud of to associate himself with was connected to the moon.

She turned her head and locked eyes with him. Her next words were directed like an arrow. “Are you a god?”

The long silence that followed answered her. It was a ridiculous question. A normal person would be surprised or ask her why she ever thought that.

“I’m flesh and blood, the same as you,” he finally replied.

“Yes but are you a god? I never met one so how am I to know they can’t craft themselves bodies of bone or something convincing enough?” She explained. “Desdomena can bleed.”

Even the aberration was rendered silent by all this.

“I am not a god,” he stated adamantly before his words grew softer. “I am indeed human but I was not always entirely so. What made you suspect me to not be the same as you and your kin, those blessed with mortal fathers abd mothers?”

Itxaro bit the inside of her mouth before shamefully confessing. “I overheard the name Girin.”

“So, you were eavesdropping,” Desdomena hissed.

“I hate that name,” Alvah moaned.

“But you were a god then?” Itxaro pressed.

“I was never truly a god. I was a demigod, half real, half fiction.”

“Then where does the name Zibin come from. I thought you might be Prince Zibin but if you are Girin then…”

“I was Prince Zibin as well. Zibin was my name for the relatively short time I was treated as a human before joining my mother in her palace.”

“What is the difference between a demigod and a god?”

“Most noticeable, a true and a untrue existence. I did not need worshippers to remain as I was but I could also die from wounds a god could ignore.”

“But if he happened to die while having enough worshippers, he would become a real deity,” Desdomena added. “Or should I say unreal deity? He would be dependent on real people to survive.”

“I suppose it would be similar to being a ghost, a projection with a soul or maybe not,” Alvah considered.

“You said gods were soulless,” Itxaro recalled.

“Most gods were soulless,” he confirmed. “I’m not even certain if those that were once human were true continuations of the original or just the identity attributed to them carrying on without the humanity.”

“But what are you now to be standing here in front of me?”

“I am the humanity carrying on without the divinity attributed to me.”

In spite of that revelation, their conversations eventually returned to a state similar to how they were days before. Itxaro already knew him to be odd as an outsider abd mysterious as a mage. Him being formerly a god seemed oddly to hold little sway now that the mystery was unveiled.

The subject of the birds were brought up and Alvah explained that he plucked them and left the feathers to soak in a mixture in the chamber. For what purpose, he still did not know. Desdomena mentioned that in Alvah’s homeland, royalty used feathers to line their clothes instead of fur and developed many unique techniques.

After treading so far into his origin. It was only fair he learned similar details and he began to ask questions about her people’s former culture and migration.

“How did your people come to find this place?” he asked. “Surly it is a more eventful story than you simply journeyed west. There had to be a reason you chose it besides it possessing-” He struggled to find a word. “-talkative plantlife. That trait would not have been apparent.”

“There is a story to it full of tribulations my mother or grandmother would be willing to describe. I was not there but know of the final trial that had my people settle.”

“What was it?”

“When my people were crossing the deadlands to the east, they happened upon the path of Cuh’rana. Most of us died then and there. My grandmother wanted to at least make it to the other side after suffering such loss but half of the other survivors were broken by the experience and decided to turn back rather than risk encountering a new unknown terror.”

“I see,” he processed. “Aberrations are drawn to large groups and such a group crossing a barren place would draw Cuh’rana’s attention. You must have met it shortly before or shortly after I claimed a city for myself because I followed that very path here.”

The color drained from his face as he came to some realization. “That would mean you could not have been here for more than… I don’t remember how long, it had to have been less than ninety but more than half a century.”

“Is something the matter?” Itxaro asked.

Alvah stated at her. “You are the oldest youngster here?”

“Yes,” Itxaro answered nervously, not sure what he was thinking.

“And how old are you?”

“Fourteen.”

“And there is no one else here that is under a century old here besides you and the other youngsters?”

Itxaro realized what he figured out. With his reasoning, he would have to assume no one was born for at least thirty years in his lowest estimates. That would not be too difficult to believe if not for the number of children Itxaro was seen ready to deliver. He had to either assume Itxaro was the beginning of a new generation after a gap or everyone before her died.

There was nothing for her to report regarding Alvah once being Girin. He was just a mortal now, one that just happened to be far older than he looked but that was something that could already be guessed. However, she had to tell the elder that he may have begun to reach the truth.