Darkness creeped through the jungle while Ald made the preparations to spend the night on that beach of bones. He had come to terms with the nature of the “sand” there, and with the lilies underneath the river’s surface. He had managed to find some fallen boughs and a few fallen leaves that were on the drier end of the scale and could be used as tinder. Maybe. He wasn’t sure, but it was better than nothing.

With his dagger he carved runes around a branch. He wasn’t Gleur, and had never practiced any non-magical ways to ignite a fire, except for the use of matches at home. He remained alert as he carved the symbols, as he knew both animals and misshapen inhabiting the jungle could consider him easy prey.

Yet he couldn’t help but think about Mother. Hers was the magic the engravings used. Maybe mother didn’t hear pleas, but she answered her correspondence. “Unkindness, are you there?”

A fragment of the coming night turned into a raven in the horizon, and it flew down to Ald. Its feathers were inverted, giving it a thorny aspect due to the calami sticking out instead of being inserted into the bird.

“I am everywhere one may speak a name they think mine, Ald.”

The raven landed next to the pile of firewood and tinder.

“What’s your opinion on magic?” Ald asked, so casually.

“I lack such a thing. Magic is. What is your opinion on the refraction of light when it goes from air to water?” she countered.

And shrugged his shoulders. “It’s neat. But magic comes from Mother, and I take that you hate her.”

“Magic comes from the All-Carver, Mother is just a conduit.” Unkindness corrected Ald’s misconception. “Father lied to your people because, without magic, the only thing Mother has ever given you is life.”

Ald let out a chuckle and shook his head. “You say that as if life weren’t enough of a blessing.”

“It takes courage, madness or legend-worthy stupidity to look at the world around you and say life is a blessing,” The Raven divided in two, and then the two in four, and soon, Unkindness, in her Felsian form, was sitting by Ald’s side. “Do you know why she granted you this life?”

“To mature and one day ascend to her celestial abode,” Ald answered, focused on his task as that was a textbook answer.

“Truth, yet incomplete. That’s what you got. But don’t ask me to complete it: answers will come when the time is right. Remember I don’t lie, for I am your niece, not your mother.”

She drew a few runes in the sand with a mischievous finger and spat on them. Ald watched intently as nothing happened.

“That spell should work and provide light. Saliva should be enough for it to work,” he said, inspecting her expert runework.

Unkindness clawed an eye out of her face without producing a single whine or moan, and then squeezed the eyeball until it exploded, releasing all of its fluids upon the writ. The runes remained dead, inactive. She looked at Ald with her remaining eye and socket full of little ravens flying to and fro instead of the expected dark cavity. “This, Ald, is a Masterwork’s blood. An unheard prayer. What opinion is licit for me to have regarding the magic of runes, when I am so far removed from it? Ask me my opinion of color, while you are at it. Felsian colors? Canid colors? Hummingbird colors? Bee colors? Through which eyes do you want me to address that which doesn’t exist?”

“Colors exist, I can see them, ever brother and sister too. Leaves are green, wood is brown, gold bright yellow…” Ald began, giving the finishing touches to the runework of his soon-to-be torch.

“For Felsian eyes. I saw the world through all the eyes that ever were and I arrived to the conclusion color is a mere trick. The world is… grey, for lack of a better word. Light’s nonsensical without eyes to give it meaning. So is sound. So is every sense. The world is not your organoleptic feedback. Shapes, if anything, remain roughly the same. A blade is a blade and its edge mortal no matter under which light you cast it. All else is some mad mound of meat’s musings. Magic, like color, has no objective meaning for me.”

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Ald spat on the carved runes and they began shining bright red, carbonizing and igniting the wood around them, making the spittle sizzle as it boiled away. He rushed to stick the red-hot extreme in the driest heap of tinder he had gathered. Said tinder, supported by a meager amount of firewood, soon caught fire and Ald watched the ember with the love only a blacksmith was capable of showing to the flames.

Unkindness turned her half-gaze to the jungle and spoke, watching her approach between the foliage. “This is nonsense I am speaking, but how do you feel about the girl sounding green and brown?”

Ald turned and saw the low-pitched, tridentate claws extending for him. Ald could see the sounds she made, and determine her form only by her pitch. He unsheathed his engrabbed dagged as he scrambled to his feet, and punctured the tip of his finger with it , staining the weapon with a droplet blood, before letting it fall point-first in the sand. Readying his other dagger and his non-engraved sword, he began stepping back, always staring/hearing at the pile of synesthesia that had laid herself before him.

Unkindness remained seated by the fire, picking the insides of her eye socket with a finger. She knew Ald was more than capable of sorting it out, and she would intervene if the situation became dire. Unkindness definition of dire, though, included Ald getting a quick refresher of his own internal anatomy.

“Are you bequeathing this bonfire upon me?” Unkindness joked.

Ald didn’t answer: he was too busy measuring the approaching beast and backing towards the Worldvein.

The Misshapen advanced, her head a sphere of bass tune that she dragged through the sand, defining a furrow in it. Her teeth, sharp sopranos, emerged from the mouths on the sides of her head. A single countertenor eye stared at Ald through a nigh-alien lens. How… noisy was Ald. His clothes, his skin, all noise, wails of an old man in pain, chattering of teeth, howls and barks of a small dog in the dead of the night. Ald was so noisy, and his breaths so blue, and his heartbeats so orange. How would his pain taste? she wondered.

Ald Kept backing with calculated steps, the muscles of his arms tensed and ready to perform an explosive parry if the beast decided to claw at him. He wondered how to measure the strength of something your ears saw and your eyes heard.

“Unkindess, tell it to go away,” he pleaded almost in silence, knowing she would hear.

She inserted the whole fist in her distorted socket. “So it fits…”

The beast proffered a white scream, so bright Ald closed his eyes out of reflex. But soon he found out that was a mistake in his part: The shining remained, as it was light he perceived through his ears, and what disappeared was the musical form of his assailant.

Realizing his mistake Ald raised his sword, eyes still closed, and called out a name so purple:

“Faithful!” he yelled, hoping it would arrive in time.

The dagger trembled for a fraction of a second before dislodging itself from the sand and launching straight for alrds hand, spinning in the air as it went. Dagger that was between Ald and the misshapen.

The metal contacted with the high-pitched skin of the creature’s elongated back and both her and Ald tasted citrus pain. The blade spun, dug into the flesh, and dug back out, creating a series of multiple gashes that bled a dissonant screech.

When Ald opened his eyes, he saw the creature contorting, claws drawing away from him. The pommel of the dagger hit his hand, causing him to drop both short blades, and an acrid taste to be felt on both his and her mouths.

Ald considered it had been a close call, and, without thinking twice rushed away from the creature. It could go away, or it could lash out with even more violence.

The taste of both pains mixed inside her mouths, and her own resulted unbearable. Whining a pathetic yellow, she hobbled away, and, as she turned, Ald let himself fall butt-first into the ear bones. His heart thumped unlike it had done in a long time. He stifled a laugh, so not to attract unwanted attention.

After she got lost among rustling leaves and creaking branches, Ald picked up his daggers and made his way back to the bonfire, sitting by the side of Unkindness, who had pulled another eye form her depths a to replace the one she had lost. Her pupils were now sized differently, and her irises of slightly different hues of gold.

“I hope the misshapen lives,” Ald said with a somber tone, his gaze fixed on the crackling flame. “I am hungry, do you reckon the lilies are edible?” he added with the same level of enthusiasm.

“What’s the need for cannibalism when you have rations in that pack of yours?” She asked, putting her hand into the fire and watching her own skin blister needlessly. Ald had to contain himself to not snatch her hand out of the heat.

“Rations today, starvation tomorrow. Disgusting cannibalism today, rations tomorrow, he said, still looking at Unkindness hand as it succumbed to the heat. “It doesn’t hurt, right?”

“Pains, sounds, colors… all the same for me.” She took a carbonized lump connected to her wrist out of the fire. “When the egg I was born from opened, nothing of substance came out. It was physically empty inside. Any body I inhabit is not mine in the sense yours is yours. My flesh is a mere spectacle.” She made a pause, and then spoke again. “Eating the aural lilies is safe, albeit not pleasurable.”

“Understood. Do you want one to eat?”

“If I wish for meat, I shall remember I am made out of it,” was her answer.

Ald didn’t continue the conversation, for there was nothing more to say on the birth of that night.