Cold water touched Ald’s face, and his eyes shot open. Cold. There was no place for cold inside Leclerglossa, and now his eyes saw something. Not black or red, but grey, green, blue. Black. White. The smell of the river made buried memories resurface even as he laid there, on the bank. The smoke of a close-by fire, too.
Water, once again, got poured on his face, and a sound reached his ears. A voice, probably. He couldn’t interpret it. He was too hungry, too tired, too thirsty, too weak. But he had to try, something inside him was urging him to shake off the stupor that drenched him.
Soon enough the image came into focus. A face he hated. A face framed by a cowl of raven feather’s. “Ald. Ald,” Unkindness poked the nose of the last Felsian, and his attempt to bite off her finger delighted her. “That’s better than a lost stare.” She slid a stone bowl filled with fresh water next to Ald’s face.
“I hate you.” Ald grumbled, and then extended his dry lips trying to get a sip of the divine liquid without moving his head. But that was a kindness he wasn’t owed: he had to lift his head from the dried-off mud and load his thin arms with his weight to hold his mouth over the container. Slurping the liquid felt like refilling his veins with blood, restarting a heart that had halted. Honey, the water had been sweetened with honey.
The desperate victim licked the stone bowl clean, and then struggled to get his back against the ground, closing his eyes hard when the sunlight, untarnished by the broken skies, seared his eyes.
“You were in the dark for a long time. Several months,” Clivanaratea said, taking a roasted and skewered aural lily and offering it Ald.
“Mere… months?” Ald asked, so flabbergasted by her statement that he didn’t take the food in front of his mouth. “It felt like a lustrum.”
She nodded slowly. “Several of those, too.”
The weight of the world seemed to fall upon Ald’s bony shoulders. His eyes went opaque for a moment, and he muttered something unintelligible. Then he met his interlocutors gaze once more, hoping for a good answer. Maybe they were still alive. Several could be three. “Tell me I am not sixty yet.”
“That would be a lie. But you are not sixty… anymore.”
He scrambled to a sitting position and let his tired arms rest on Unkindness delicate shoulders. “Seventy.”
“Well past that.”
Anguish climbed up his spine, and he desperately blurted a slightly higher number up “Eighty!”
“Several more. Some of the turtles that used to belong to Mirn are still alive, though.”
Long and unkempt nails dug into Clivanaratea’s shoulder. The oldest recorded Felsian had lived to be a hundred and seven years old. No match for a Felsian tortoise’s lifespan. Elvisat would be dead by now. So would Gleur and many of Ald friends. But “A hundred?”
“You were inside Leclerglossa for a century, a decade, a lustrum, and a year, added together.”
Ald’s hands met the Masterwork’s neck and she said nothing as he pressed his thin fingers against the tepid skin. He had killed a pig before. No… he had killed a god before! And even if she couldn’t die, she deserved to be strangled. But her expression didn’t change as the veins bulged in his biceps and his wrists began to tremble from the effort. “It’s okay, let it out. You are entitled to despise me for letting Caretaken get away with his request. As much as you, he was my ally in father’s fall, and given he would not harm your body, I accepted his proposal. I have to be fair to my fellow masterworks, too.
“Your fairness took a hundred and sixty years from my life!” he let go, watching his malnourished appendages, the ones unable to crush her trachea. “A hundred and sixty!”
The masterwork remained impassive. It was only after several snarls and grunts and whines of her attacker that she answered. “An infinitesimal fraction of your life. Yes.”
Ald gave up. His arms dropped to his sides like those of a ragdoll do. His focus shifted to the piece of food, the skewered ear. He reached for it, the movement slow and disheartened. With glacial pace he consumed it, little bits, despite his desire to devour the thing. He regarded Unkindness the entire time, her stillness comparable to that of an iced-over lake. Lastly, his index, shaky as it was, pointed at her. “I tried to kill you. You are not real. I am not awake. Felsians are not dead. Caretaken has ensorcelled me once more.”
“That’s sadly a delusion, Ald. Caretaken likes toying with minds, that’s undeniable. But he didn’t need to. You spent a century and more being tasted by Leclerglossa."
Ald’s hand glided through his long and matted hair, gathering some of the slick saliva. HE considered it in front of his gaze for a few seconds, how it glistened on the sunlight, how ti still kept some of the warmth and stench of his torturer.
“No. This is the delusion. If it isn’t, then please kill me.”
“I can kill you,”Unkindness said, turning her hand into the sharpest black talons, and burying them into Ald’s chest, aiming straight for the heart. The claws pierced the organ, and Ald smiled, puking a bit of blood. But his consciousness didn’t fade as the blood shot out the wound, staining Clivanaratea’s form.
“Thank you…” he said, closing his eyes, unaware of the fact that the mortal wound was already on the verge of closing.
Then, Unkindness spoke again. “Consider yourself fortunate. You are the only Felsian that ever heard a lie of mine. You are eternal, Ald.”
Ald’s eyes opened again, and his stare went dead. He thought about letting himself fall on his side, but that was no beneficial behavior for an immortal. The sole idea of having to sit up once more rung aberrant inside his head. “I don’t want this life.”
“Father’s curse cares not. You are stuck here with us Masterworks. You may find it is an existence not so… loathsome as you may consider it now.” She offered him another skewered aural lily, And Ald reluctantly took it. There was no reason to torture himself with hunger.
“And how would that improve my situation?” He asked, elusive.
“You are alive and they are in a broken, but safe, afterlife.”
“I could have enjoyed them while they were alive.” He tossed a lump of dried mud onto her face, to which Unkindness didn’t react.
“I understand your anger. But pray tell me, Ald, could have you enjoyed a life among Felsia’s death throes? When you killed Mother, collapse became imminent. They all felt it. They all saw it. And, most important, their life changed in the material sense, Ald.”
Ald blinked, idly drawing circles in the mud with his hand. “All runes died. Most clocks stopped working. My forge and others ike it, too. But that isn’t enough to collapse a society.”
“Clocks and forges? Kitchens. Lights. Water pumps. Elevators. Cooling systems. The very economy of your people. Many Felsians were unable to even make a little fire without runes. The shattering of Mother also shattered the lives of many of her children. No society of shattered people can survive. Shattered people learn to make fire, and then use it to burn whatever they perceive as representative of what broke them.”
“That makes it even worse! I could have helped them! Leap between weapons and their victims, Face off dangerous misshapen on my own, knowing they cannot kill me. Help soldiers teach civilians how to make fire without runes.” He started counting on bony fingers. “I don’t need food, I don’t need water. I don’t need blood, and I don’t need my organs, clearly.” He gestured at his not-long-ago pierced chest with both hands. “I only needed time, and your ilk took it away from me.”
“An immortal is a valuable resource to have on one’s side. Conflict would have escalated if only to sway you into helping one side. It would have been no life for you, and you would suffer immensely as you befriend more and more people that soon would die.”
Ald showed his teeth, tempted to jump forward and bite off her nose. “I’d have asked scientists to focus on perfecting transplants. Whoever was dying could get a heart, a key gland, a stomach or an intestine from me. I’d live long enough to grow another!” Out of pure rage, he incorporated, and immediately crumbled to the side, collapsing over the mud. He had both legs, yes. Legs that had not walked either in a long time, or ever.
Clivanaratea turned into a single raven in the span of a blink, her from suddenly compressed into the bird. This bird approached Ald’s crying visage. “You could not have extended your immortality to your brothers and sisters, Ald. At best, you would postpone their deaths.” The bird hopped a bit around, almost like a real raven would, tilting tis head to the side and scratching the mood with its claws. “Take your time to learn to walk once more. We are crossing the Worldvein to take you back home. Whenever you are ready, Wintertoll has offered to make a bridge of ice for us to walk over.”
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The last Felsian Scrambled to sit once again and lowered his head. There would be time for lamentations. He could cry next to whatever remained of his beloved city. “I have no home anymore. But I’d prefer to see the fallen Felsia, than to be merely told about it.” He balanced itself on his knees and palms, and began crawling towards the unnaturally still waters.
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The sun kissed the horizon whilst Ald still moved over a thin sheet of ice on all fours. His hands and knees suffered no cold, and he could see the water moving under his fingers, barely separated from him. Wintertoll didn’t need a thick layer of ice nor low temperatures to support Ald’s weight: the width of a few hairs was more than enough. Water and air would obey him before their own nature. A couple times, the cracking voice of the masterwork reached Ald’s ears, and it expressed gratitude. “Hail, Ratchet’s Halter! Blessed be the matter you walk on.” According to Unkindness, he had earned Wintertoll’s favor for eternity. Never would a body of water impede his advance. He could take forever to reach the other bank, and not one of his hairs would be wetted by the river’s water.
But he pushed onwards, against stiff muscles and tired joints. He was no stranger to braving the pain, and Father’s cruse had given him no means to forestall it. He found comfort in the idea that, in a way, he had already died, and this was his ill-deserved afterlife. A world different from the one he had left behind, about which he liked to think as still existing somewhere. The ruins he would find to the east of that forest on the horizon, he was prepared to try to think of them as a mere pantomime, a what-could-have-been.
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Soreness hadn’t left Ald after his little nap by the bank. He had slept over the leaves of a toothblade fern, one of the classical inhabitants of the western forest. He wandered among trees known to him, using a fallen bough as a makeshift walking stick, holding it with both hands, running out of breath once and again as he trudged on. The raven kept watch over his head, silent, nesting among his copper hairs. Misshapen stalked him from the treetops, from behind shrubs, and he didn’t care. One had fingers on the nose, but only two tails. A sister of his had long ago been taken by the likes of this wanderer, and he was not risking being seen by this thin one. He had lived so long because he knew better, because he didn’t seek pain. Because his deformity had granted him foul gifts instead of punishments.
But the white-skinned one came to pass, and the misshapen relaxed, pulling his poisonous thorns back into his body.
Ald turned his head to the left, his attention raptured by the fiery blooms of a nearby tree. “It would have been summer,” he stated after a few moments.
Then he noticed the cracking of the branches, the sizzling of forgewood cooling off. In the distance he saw the wide sternum lined with sphincters, excreting coal. The ramified appendages pounding heavily on the ground. The wide mouth opening to let out tongues covered in eardrums., the lava-secreting breasts. He saw her, and he knew her name. “Wildfire. You look lovely.”
The Masterwork got emboldened by the presence of the fires burning inside Ald, and she charged at him. The Felsian just kept on waking. Being tackled wouldn’t be much of a nuisance.
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Deep blue roses dug their thorns deep into the weathered stone that once knew how to be the proud western wall of Felsia. Wall that now had holes, but one of whose still-whole sections cast a long shadow over the group of low hovels. From the top of a nearby conifer a misshapen as flat as a board glided down, describing a spiral around the three before taking a straight line into the tall doorframe of the biggest edification of the little town.
It went up to an old one sitting on a makeshift throne, a male that had been born with a different number of fingers in each hand, and whose skin presented patches of black bone protruding out. It was a big, wide misshapen, son of purebred Felsians, unlike his sentinel, whose appearance reminded more to that of a ray crossed with a monkey.
“Comes an unkillable brand new. Brings the fire-eater on tow.”
The chief of the local misshapen society considered the words of the sentinel, his cheek resting upon his proximal phalanxes. “Why?”
“Keeps on going despite her attempts to eat inner fire of his. A boar ignoring a leech picked up riverwards. Houses raven on head.”
The chief glanced at the sentinel. The last detail had caught his attention beyond what such a menace deserved. “A raven? My late mother told me about an aunt made of ravens. Her caretaker told her that she was not unlike the Fire-eater, but I believe it was another incarnation of our Lady of Doves. And if that’s the case, then they can be reasoned with. Where are they?”
“Soon arriving to Veindiver breeder.”
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Ald didn’t mind the numerous tongues licking fire off his back, not more than he minded other pains. But he froze in place, eyes impossibly wide, when the little creature hopped in front of him and started barking. A Felsian Veindiver, with his spotted coat, his long ears, and stylized body, barked at him, or at what followed him. A purebred dog.
“Is caretaken messing with my mind?”
“I strongly suggested him to bother you at every turn. So, hopefully, he’s going to leave you alone for a while,” Clivaranatea’s voice resonated inside Ald’s head.
“Then how is a purebred dog alive?”
“Because we breed them, of course.” The huge misshapen lumbered from behind the wide trunk of an old tree, his step secure, his back straight despite his apparent age. Ald smiled at seeing him. This one reminded him of Gleur. He immediately noted the pommel of the sword this misshapen was carrying. It had been made by a Felsian. “Why do you bring that here?”
Ald gestured vaguely at Wildfire, and a single movement from the Chief’s head made him understand that, indeed, the talk was about her. “I was minding my business and we crossed paths. She’s eating the little fires inside my body. Her tongues are colder than ice. I kept on walking. She followed.”
The chief thought that she had eaten the life from the man’s voice already, but decided not to comment on it. Instead, he thought the matter of this seeming uncle’s literal life was more important. He shooed the annoying dog away before continuing his interrogation. “You should be dead. Because she’s attacking you, and because you look like my Mother’s people. Yet you cannot be a Felsian. I’d wager the steel in my scabbard wouldn’t harm you. What are you?”
“The steel in your scabbard can harm me, but it would be a shame if it did so. How did you get Kali’s sword?”
The expression of the chief hardened. “Family heirloom. How do you know my mother’s name?”
Ald looked behind himself and thought about poking Wildfire’s head with his walking stick. He had already tried it before. Lost some good ones to her hunger. It would be useless, but he couldn’t deny the cathartic nature of the act.
“Clivanaratea, can you lead Wildfire away?”
The raven cawed but once, and then flew over the apathic’s head. Follow the flame, wildfire, Follow the flame. And so the beast turned, as the bird became two and three, fluttering westward, making the heavy beast crawl after them, leaving a snail’s trail of molten rock that quickly cooled down, igniting fallen leaves in some patches of dry ground.
“That is one obedient bird you have, old thing. Would it happen to share your nature?”
Clivanaratea manifested between both of them, coming out of a cloud of black feathers. “No, Ald. Don’t bother your namesake.”
The chief, Ald Kaliborn, bowed in the presence of The Lady of Doves, despite her unusual attire. “Lady of Doves, this cannot be my mother’s original caretaker. The one she loved, then rued, and then loved again as her life dwindled.”
“Ald Elvisatcaught got cursed by a god to live forever,” She informed, calmly, before stepping out of the way, losing herself among the trees, letting Ald and Ald alone with each other.
“What have you come here for, esteemed immortal?” the old man asked.
“Where would a man return but to the place he wanted to save, Kali’s son. Did you gift her ashes to the river?”
“No. Customs of old became untenable as your people divided, raged, and aged. We buried her in the earth. No Felsian walks these lands since decades ago.”
“Yet you breed our dogs.”
“Some of us want to preserve part of our forefather’s heritage, as long as the ratchet allows us. The city’s interior is in ruins: civil wars and apathetic misshapen demolished the buildings, razed the plazas, tore down trees and dug a million trenches in the farmlands. That said, some of my cousins still live beyond the fallen gates. Your city is gone, Felsian. We saved what we could.”
But Kali’s caretaker didn’t react like her son expected, showing grief or defeat. No: he smiled. “I can help restore it. I am quite the handyman. I learn fast if I put my soul into it.”
The old misshapen frowned and crossed his big arm, showing several patches of bone black on their undersides. “What for? All sentient misshapen will disappear one day, except for the few unkillable ones. Many artifacts of your civilization don’t work anymore. You are welcomed to stay with us, the people of the western wall if you’d like. It would be an honor for us.”
“No. I will restore my,” Then Ald Elvisatcaught pressed his fingers against his sternum for emphasis. “city. Brick by brick. Book by book.”
So the last Felsian pushed forward, not impolitely but with determination. And he learned to breed eveyr animal a Felsian had rbed, and to grow every crop his people had designed, and to care for them all. And to bake bricks, to sculpt clay. To depend on an army of ravens to bring him tools and keep him on his feet as he repaved stress that needed more than a little weeding, and tried by all means to avoid misshapen that insisted on loving him. there were no vacant rooms in his heart for them, or at least there were not meant to be any. Yet he attended some funerals, shed some tears at their demise. And then went back to toiling, the untiring heart off a long dead city, doing everything a Felsian did back then, or learning how to do so. From farmer and blacksmith to breeder, rancher, stonemason, curator, restorer, janitor, architect. Every discipline needed to keep the shell off the city in good form, he eagerly studied from whatever sources he could find.
And so years went by, until one day, the first day of a spring so far removed from the one where he crossed the Worldvein, lying atop the walls he had erected with his own hands, watching the lazy clouds gather and thunder roll, he frowned at the sky when the first drops of water met his forehead.
“And it had to cloudcry,” he complained to Clivanaratea, who was sitting on the nearest merlon. “I should have checked the instruments from the meteorological lab before coming here.” He propped himself upwards onto his shoulders. The eerie silence of a world with only a very few voices —his, and some of the masterworks— didn’t bother him anymore.
“You know, today marks the passage of half a millennium since the last time Mother gave birth. Since the last time the word rain had a meaning for your people.”
“Indeed, and it’s just a tiny fraction of the eternity that awaits me.” Ald said, stretching his arms as he transitioned to a sitting position, relishing the feel of the cold water drops kissing his skin as the clouds birthed more and more of them. “Your point, Cli?”
“The word originally meant the falling of water from the clouds too, before the first generations of Felsians decided this phenomenon was not meritorious of sharing a name with the arrival of new Felsians to the world. Thus, they baptized these cloudcries. And now, water gives life to your city, Ald. It feeds the engines, it fills the troughs of the animals, it nourishes the fields. It’s the blood that allows you to be the untiring heart.” She extended an arm covered in parrot feathers towards the skies.
Ald’s forehead sprouted a family of wrinkles. “If that’s the case, I guess it is raining.” He incorporated, and peered over the battlements, at the engraved rock enshrouded by blue roses down below, and then at the grey sky that sent cold winds forth. “It’s raining.”” He stretched his hands high, like when he had done centuries ago to catch a cocoon, even if only water would meet his grasp now. And then he shouted loud and clear, so the ones beyond the veil could hear him. “Elvisat! Kali! It’s raining!”
If Our Rains Never Return
END