"You are a mere broken shell, a humdrum doll, hollow and lifeless. That Simia male brings me satisfaction more than you."Naya scorned with that womanly, nubile voice of her." What a pity… "

" I felt your presence hours before you decided to approach the ride. I contemplated over why you didn't approach. But now I understand." Naya said while she walked in a circle. Its center was the frozen Rokah.

"What are you?" Her big child-like eyes radiating the severe savor of maturity. "You do not have any sense of worth. Even your nightmares were flavorless vapid."

Naya raised her small hand, gazing at the Crocotta permit of passage, then to Rokah's locked expression in alternation.

"Why do you need this? The Divine beasts are territorial, but only among their own kind. Usually, they don't mind the presence of other creatures unless there are special circumstances."

She grasped a step to get near and Rokah's body defied him, stoned in the same posture. Just his shrugged, iris swimming fearfully in the perimeter of his sclera.

" I will tell you something. This small family of Simia will never get to any city alive. They will endlessly wander this plateau aimlessly till they die. I will make them procreate for me until I get sick of their tragedies and lust."

"A demon…" At last, Rokah managed to free his fastened tongue.

It was the echo of chuckles, sweet and girlish, that shadowed his insight.

The woman in the disguise of an infant's skin hardened her fingers around the permit, clicked her tongue and Rokah poured lethargically into the ground.

Contempt roused her bumpy cheeks, blood oozed from her fingernails, the thick paper was tainted in red. "Those who do fear us always refer to us by ugly names… Demons, Fiends, Devils… I assure you everyone can be a demon of his own kind."

She crossed another step closer, fixed innocent eyes on Rokah's sluggish, worn visage.

On his forehead, curved stylish characters, neither Latin nor Aramaic, ever-morphing in mirage dances.

His eyelids half shut, his vision blurred, then he submerged into forced drowsiness.

What an irony, wasn't this spell the same one he had helped Mr. Hendrickson to use…

A lullaby, then, here another evocation showered his dream. Where everyone was unfamiliar, including himself.

This time, it was winter.

The white snow, like carpet cotton, glossy, and abundant. The little boy with black, opulent hair lay on his back. The weak breath thickened when it touched the air. Chopped black fingers scattered. A palm slung a few inches away from the small wrist. A hot-fired liquid dripped on the boy's rosy cheeks, then to the surface of the snow. It melted with a trace of crimson redness. The first liquid was transparent and on the ground was deep red.

An ax was near his small body, planted in the ice. Red veins spread in a maze on its glowing blade.

Words mixed up, sounds of people reverberated across the plain.

"Curse…"

"A cursed child…"

"He brought us disaster…"

"He brought the wrath of demons upon us…"

Yet, no one has been around.

The small body shivered in the hollowness of cold and pain, swallowed by the dread of winter and solitude of nature.

Rokah rosed. Moisture clouded his view. For an instant, the colors blended together to outline the portrait of a mature woman. Though, when his visibility honed, a child's face hovered above him.

Chest drifted slowly, eyes fixed on the familiar roof. He was in the carriage. Betrayed by his own body, he couldn't budge a finger.

"I failed again." The mature voice echoed. "I don't understand. It's like you are a bag of fragmented memories, incoherently batched together for an indecipherable purpose."

The little girl dipped her brush into the inkwell. Afterward, a ticklish sensation fondled his forehead.

The girl murmured, her childish tone taking over this time. "Let's try again."

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

"What do you want to know?"

Like an electric wave shocked her face and limbs, her motion paused. A serious gaze dominated her face. "What are you?"

"A mongrel."

"No, you have no dreams, no desires. Your existence is fickle, limited to several incoherent pieces of memories." She held her head closer and hissed: "Are you even alive?"

Motionless, apathetic, Rokah's pupil narrowed. The unknown urges that forced him to draw, to practice the art of medicine, were to confirm that he existed, that he was here. They were to refute his doubts about his incomplete being.

"Yes, I do, I have a desire."He focused on the girl: "You don't know how much I yearn for Babel, to get there no matter what."

"Why?"

"There is something there I want to find so my life's purpose will be achieved."

"Just by finding something undefined? How uninteresting… What is it?"

He closed his eyes, recalling Mr. Hendrickson. Rokah strongly felt that the unknown thing that he craved to find, that he didn't know what is it was exactly. Somehow, Mr. Hendrickson, with his insight, uncovered it.

"I do not know."

"Aha…" A dejected look controlled Naya's visage. What a coincidence. She is also searching for something, rather, someone. "Are you kidding me?" Her mature tone flared up: "How can you find something you didn't know?"

Sudden distant drumming pulsated through the dispersed clouds. The sun shone brightly in the middle of the blue sky. A recess, then the drumming, emerged between the warble of hidden insects and the chirping birds. A rhythm, both Rokah, and Naya were accustomed to it. A certain individual obsessed with introducing his arrival. By having a personal ring tone.

Rokah was familiar with these announcing beats. And as the confusion crawled his skin, he observed the girl, heedfully, despoiling her every bit of reaction, peeling her masks through her distracted attention as well as apparent fright.

Rokah broke off the spell as she hurried outside the carriage.

Deciding to subtle newly obtained freedom, he reached to his forehead, scrapping the inked places. This melody, it's enunciating style. He experienced it before.

He didn't meet the owner, but his instinct alerted him to get into this unknown person's range of awareness.

Peeping past the cover of the carriage, carefully finding what was happening.

High in the sky, a big dot hovered over Naya's position. The puzzling hippogriff carriage steadily approached the earth. It was still soaring in the high distance when its door opened.

Enormous bat-wings stretched like parachutes, not bothered by the sunlight, shadowed the Simia little camp.

A free fall…

In a blink of an eye, a horned man, centered by actively up stroking wings, descended soundlessly to the ground.

All the living being in camp and their proximity stopped moving, with some exceptions.

"Shiva?" the girl muttered in extreme fright as she looked back to face the man behind.

"Nayara…" in turbulent motion, his stretched wings cloaked his body: "I don't believe that you have followed me here…"

"Do not flatter yourself." The little girl's frightened visage morphed to an extreme degree of contempt.

"I warned you. If you are hungry, just dwell in brothels, as usually do, and where you belong… Low prestige."

He jerked his head west and east. Securing a firm view of the surrounding area. " Savannah is off your limits. I wouldn't overlook your inadequate behavior again if you made another contact."

A disinterested face eyed the young girl. Between scorn and curiosity, with wavering focus, his wings flapped the air divulging the fake skin.

In the middle of the stirred dust, a mature woman's silhouette cast its shades. Alluring and luscious.

Shiva, ever not enchanted: "Save this lustful glamor to your customers, it won't work on me."

He strode in the direction of the controlled Simia male roaming through his face. "It seems that he is not completely corrupt by your slavish maneuvers," He grinned. " I can sense a trace of pride adhering to his soul."

The beautiful woman enveloped in thin silky fabric halted motionless, doing nothing. Yet her face showed discord of what Shiva was going to do, but clearly unable to stop him.

The fried male Simia, from the influence of Nayara, plunged to his knees in front of Shiva. Expressing his gratitude.

"How about we make a deal?" Shiva said to the Simia male as he gazed at Nayara. "I will free your family from this demon in exchange for your loyal serving of my person."

The male didn't quickly respond.

"Isn't this a fair exchange? " Shiva resumed: "Do you want to spend the last of your days roaming, aimlessly this ground?"

***

The small convoy that consisted of two carriages separated. Towards the sea's edge of the Crocotta's cliff left the first one led by the Simia male and his family. The second one continued south along the rocky road of the high plateau of Babel.

At the same time, Lord Shiva, amused, victorious, returned to the luxury of his own.

The Hippogriff carriage, normal-sized to the onlooker from the outside, it's interior a salon of comfort and tranquillity.

It was bigger, wider, hosted multiple couches around a table, all set low to the ground furnished with sophisticated carpets. In a comfortable style.

The light inside was dim, Hendrickson asked as he sat inspecting a large canvas: "You look satisfied."

The canvas in front of him was supported straight by the small table. An intriguing shade of black and white established an ambiguous, abstract picture. Enough concentration is needed for the viewer to deconstruct its details.

Gravestone, white jasmines, and unrecognizable outline of an unidentified person.

"Nothing important." The said satisfaction was scrubbed. Shiva's boredom upheaved from the monotonous fact of Nicolai observing this painting for, like, the entire trip. He followed, testing: "Why did you kill Seaben?" He didn't foresee the upcoming reply.

"Weren't you deranged by his conduct?"

"Honestly, no." Shiva, being fashionably direct, aspired to taste Nicolai's built dejection, hate toward the butler. Also, he wasn't mendacious about what he felt. "Besides, he never dishonored my contract with him. His only shortcoming, the greed, he used more and more Chimera sacrifices, and I can guess who drove him to exceed the quota "

"You are right, he played well, but I have won in the end."

Upset by this dull reaction, Shiva, tacitly, pampered by the aroma of coffee.

The foundation of displeasure laid clear on his face as he watched over Nicolai's unbreakable fixation on the painting. It stemmed from the feeling of being ignored by a certain someone who clearly indulged himself in Lord Shiva's favor but refused to acknowledge the benefactor.

Facing the gloomy, silent Nicolai, Lord Shiva's chatty nature enforced those feelings of ingratitude. It made him wish that he never had bestowed his generosity on this man.