Chapter 13: Umami Flavored Durik-S***!

I couldn't help but plunge into an exhaustive slumber as we took flight into the clear Buriti atmosphere. The dark crocodile leather cockpit seat was magnificent compared to all this cessation and adversity I had confronted among the dunes...I felt my eyelids fluttering close as the safety of the plane quelled my warring sentiments.

My eyes cracked apart instantly in some sort of daydream sweet-smelling figs and seasoned hyena flesh oozed into my nostrils, erasing the thoughts of the caravan and its deafening trial. I glimpsed Kash enter from a side gate of our family's summer palace's floating garden. My face was displaying my usual post-pubescent grimace yet I couldn't help but feel intense sorrow welling inside me from the resurgence of this buried memory.

"Duck!" I dived stupidly to the dirt at her spontaneous outburst. I sensed my face smack painfully into the side of a potted planted 'seamlessly' integrated into the phony sky garden. I was able to peek my eyes out slightly over a small Bloomrose bush before seeing my sister laughing smugly at my disarray...She had taken up calling me some creature the Svets called synonymously as a word for safety, yet I was the fool.

"Why must you always do that!?" I stood accidentally brushing squishy pigments the hue of excrement deeper into my crimson-colored pleated pants. " I do not know what a duck is...NOR do I care at this point!" My voice was considerably lighter when I was 17, I scratched itchily at the ludicrous moldavite-green princely turban hair-pinned on my now contaminated noggin.

"You're such a crybaby...do you not even care im home for the summer?" She had an artificial regard of dismay as she made her way to me joyfully. "I have spent all academy year conversing to Svet albinos and vapid clinging cousins..." She glanced up at me with her large red eyes glutted with delight. I allowed myself to hug her awkwardly before pushing her off me.

"Now that you're not compelling pleasantries on me--are you...by yourself?" Endeavoring to keep my tone chilly with my cracky teenage voice proved problematic. My hand located its course to a Bloomrose, the thorns felt like minuscule grabbing anchors as I passed my ashy finger on its base.

"No Dennis' flight got stalled along with Kyler, something about north currents and all." She plucked the Bloomrose I was messing with to my chagrin...Kash loved to aggravate me. "Unless you're talking about anyone else?" Her eyes flickered with sadism only a sibling can invoke.

"Why do you try my tolerance? I will simply tell father of your 'extracurricular' activiti--" Kash shoved the bitter Bloomrose past my foolishly gaping lips mid-sentence. I recoiled, spitting and hacking as pollen ensconced in my nasal cavity wretchedly. Petals spewed in all directions as I doubled over.

"Fuck you, Kash!" I sputtered, snot trickling from my flaring nostrils as she wailed with laughter. I must have resembled some exotic Doigan love-mate as I regurgitated a brightly colored sludge for her amusement.

"Oh come off it! You should see your ugly face!" She managed between guffaws. I wiped strings of mucus from my lips, which only heightened her teary-eyed delight. If public humiliation was her intent, I had enough of this 'bonding' moment...

Kash's sputtering laughs echoed through the cavernous garden. Wiping a final tear, she drew a long breath to calm herself. "Oh Ducky, you make this dreary place bearable." She sighed and brushed pollen dust off her dress before dropping back onto the stone bench. Her impish smile withered as she stared ahead through an archway, torches now flickering alight with the twilight. The sky was a gorgeous purple hue, faltering from its eternal blue day.

I bristled slightly. Just like that, her mood turned—the giddiness of moments before vanishing into clouds of introspection. I sat cautiously beside her again among the soft cascade of roses and foreign trees." You know father only sees us as—" she began anew in solemn tones.

The emotional volte face left me mentally scrambling to catch up. Her light voice rang out changing tone. "Fuck you, do not even bring him up...I fear he only sees me as a royal accessory." Kash found her way to one of the benches littering the palace's towering hanging garden. I turned to look at her fully to see that, this time, I had actually managed to strike a raw nerve.

"...pieces on a chessboard," Kash said, gazing out at the arched underpasses of the hanging gardens. "He's so obsessed with global power plays and alliances. I heard him raging last night about the Svets increasing oil trade with the Doigan Republic and not us." She trailed off, but her hand compressed around the Bloomrose's stem until thorns drew pinpricks of blood on her small palm.

She turned back to me, bitterness in her eyes. "We're just marriage pawns to him. But I swear on grandmother's soul, he tries wedding me off to some northern creep, I'll...I'll..." She appeared to not even know how to conclude the verdict, the breeze silenced our treachery.

"Atleast you get to vacate the capital...I literally am a lap dog for that--ASSHAT, You would think he means to marry me instead this new doigan woman..." I plopped next to her, staring at the calm swayed desert plants before me. The cold cracked cement seat mirrored the foundation we both found ourselves raised from.

"Doutros! Mother will have a stroke if he takes on another wife...why must--" She paused her red dreadlocks hanging in massive rope-like intricate patterns, though we had the same parents it was almost like we barely shared anything in common...But our traumas and family ties.

"Why must our father bride younger and younger foreign women? I believe he plans on having me tried for 'lunacy' and replaced by some half-breed lobotomite..." Kash eyed me harshly, she had some soft spot for foreigners trying to make their living in our arid fatherland.

"He's maligning the Vascan name geo-politically...I've heard word that our lineage, due to recent reshufflings, has lost nearly all seats of power...Father is the last true king left amid the changing world." Kash's dark brown face was sullen as her eyes seemed to be racing through months of stale conversation. "I fear our family will only be known as conquerors and dying gasps of a moribund way of life...Aiko--"

My seventeen-year-old heart began thumping its arrhythmic jig as Kash kept speaking in a somber tone. " and I mulled over silly ideas of me taking over after father steps down." She met my eyes with a look of apprehension mixed with undeterred fervor at the mere thought of her new idea.

" I don't see why not--Dennis is a vapid asshole, Kyler is a religious nuttbag...and im just some dick-head right?" I laughed coyly as the breeze displaced a few of her crimson dreadlocks. At that moment I hadn't fully grasped what my sister had asked of me...She wanted to know if I would back what was tantamount to blasphemy and treason. I wish I spent more time focusing on her pleas for autonomy and not just my own nihilistic self-destruction.

"so...where is Aiko?" My voice cracked with unmasculine fury as I mentioned her name. "I can't imagine she stayed in Svetlan while you and the others took sand baths." Her expression changed as she shifted from the seat, bouncing up and stretching her arms annoyingly.

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"I beilieve she flew with Kyler, her squadron protects him and his alter boys...You know church and state must not be seperated dear huckle." Her light jabs at my summer-chasing fantasy made me want to throw up right there on her stupid ruby shoes.

"I heard Aiko and Kyler have been getting very close, since her first deployment." Kash eyed me sideways, baiting a reaction. My sharp nails carved furrows into Bloomrose's bark at the mention of her and his entangled. Sudden heat flushed my cheeks as I envisioned my damned hypocrite cousin playing 'deacon', cozying up with Aiko all year long.

"Well at least someone appreciates that fucking crusader's presence," I forced out in faux casualness over the pounding of insecure fury in my temples. Even imagining Aiko's aureate brown eyes meeting Kyler's makes me see volcanic red.

"Thou shalt not covet ducky," Kash intoned with a wicked grin, seeing right through me. She shrieked laughter again when I hurled a mangled flower over the garden's edge in embarrassment. Maybe she takes too much delight in watching me make a fucking jester of myself...

I tried to play ice-like as I felt a juicy being pop from my forehead. "So everyone--though doing ever important matters seems to be cliqued up still without me...I hate this stupid nation." My fists clenched futile as I sat like a stupid cuck before my sister, attempting to feign an uncaring veil.

"Doutros, Ducky you'll die like Popa if you stress yourself anymore over her! I had been just teasing you, she is somewhere in the palace--most likely visiting her sisters' mausoleum..." I stood hastily, making my way away from the garden.

"I'll see you later Kash, I love you..." My mind snapped back to the moment as I heard a small alarm coming from the cockpit's vast control system. Aiko was a crack pilot--the humming of the rickety engines made the plane vibrate as she barreled the plane through the clear blue skies.

The deafening hum of the aircraft engines did little to break the tense silence that filled the cockpit. I sank into the worn leather seat, exhausted and still dripping from my near-death ordeal in the desert sands.

Aiko gripped the aircraft's controls, guiding us westward toward the collapsed ash-covered capital. Her light brown knuckles blanched white from the intensity of her hold. While her gaze stayed fixed ahead, I could sense acrimony simmering right underneath the veneer.

"That girl.." Aiko ultimately spoke through gritted teeth. "I heard her speak babble about you being the rationale of the tempest...why?" her voice was tense and caused me to hesitate, the true events still hazy in my mind. All I remembered were blinding flashes of light, ghastly faces in the darkness, and sand threatening to swallow me whole.

"The caravan had a rebel warmonger among their ranks..." I fibbed, wincing as a sharp pang lanced through my shoulder. "He must have convinced her of lies after realizing their new invalid was none other than their new yet hated king." Aiko lashed her head toward me, my eyes concentrated on her many freckles as her brown nostrils flared.

We hit a pouch of turbulence, nearly clipping a squadron of fat Whale-geese migrating through Buriti. "Do not assume me for a harlequin!" she snarled over the engines’ sudden scream. “You evaporate for four damned days, I locate you half-dead in a bloodbath, and now you feed me only--DURIK-SHIT!

“You take me for some backcountry magic-man?.” I grasped for words, pushing my dreadlocks out my face. “I do not have anything to clarify to you...I plunged into a sand pit awoke apperently days thereafter and was nearly bartered to slavery...” My left eye squirmed as Aiko tightened her jaw but said nothing in response to my faltering speech.

I could see the skepticism and fury parboiling behind her deep brown eyes before I continued. “As for the carnage,” my mind carefully dancing on my vernacular past this verbal spike bed, “I in truth have no real explanation for how the freak squall preferred there to strike...” I stared out the window at the expansive desert--The eagle-eye viewpoint allowed me to scrutinize all that lay in my inadequate hands..."I'm glad it took those filthy Sand Hound's to hell!" I said vainly, the sound of her scoffing made my arm crossing much less convincing, even to myself.

Aiko slammed a fist down on the cockpit's edge. "You will not scape your way from the point Huck...I was--” She leaned in close to the steering controls in anger, the glass had shown eyes glistening both with rage and what almost seemed like a relief. “Four days with no water nor food? You'd be carrion! Why must....why must you always fucking lie to me, huck?” Her voice trailed off as it wasn't just the current subject she was shiving into me.

I knew telling the full reality would only deepen our already strained bond, yet I wanted to tell her everything...to lay my spirit raw to her at that instant. My stomach summoned a placebo stone to weigh it down as I understood why she did not trust me...Aiko was always chasing after my lies and games--summer after summer...I unlocked my maw but swallowed before speaking in an even tone.

“There are actualities in this world you do not want to know, Koi,” I said gently. She shuffled at my use of the affectionate term either from past recollections or simple disgust at its use once more. “But I promise on my father’s spirit, no deception will come between us again.” I felt my heart pang at even the promise of truth was another fraud in earnest.

She searched my cold facade in the polished glass, then turned coldly back to guiding our battered aircraft onward through the desert skies. I could sense the storm still raging in her heart, though she kept it locked securely behind an impassive mask once more. Relief and regret vied within my own turbulent mind as we flew west into the blazing sunset.

the aircraft engines droned onward through still skies, I cleared my parched throat. "The desert heat breeds mirages...strange imaginations. I cannot explain--" My ego didn't permit me to ever let her close again.

"Imaginations?" Aiko whipped toward me again with a wild look of displeasure, lips pulled back almost in a hyena snarl. "You spoiled pompous fucking brat...Do not explain to me what delusions are!" Her free hand clenched, leaving a crescent-shaped welt on the cockpit steering stick from her titanium grip. We veered several degrees in her rage before she overcorrected us. "You can play 'king' out there but...I guess you can do as you please actually--your Majesty"

Though her reverse psychology was no issue--the feeling of her conceding our connection caused my heart to pierce, I hesitated. All I glimpsed were blinding flashes...demi-human fangs in darkness...goddess' painful restoration and warned calamity by my hands. "That storm..." the words croaked into existence as I grasped for some satisfying explanation. "I could have sworn it was the end of me..." I lifted my palm now devoid of anything but ashy cracked skin.

"This country has not seen any climate event like that in decades! I may not believe in native spiritual nonsense but...I saw something--MYSELF in the eye of the storm!" The aircraft swayed dangerously as she released the controls to thwack me with a resoundingly strong slap, boring into me more than the words. "Four of our best pilots are dead Huck--Two of our prized bombers, wretched hunks of garbage...And I know I saw what looked to be the watery spirit of Buriti itself!”

I worked to keep my tone measured despite her clear volatility. “Koi, there is no such thing as--" Aiko seized the controls again, veering us into a steep rightward bank. Her breath came out ragged, on the verge of either tears or more screaming rage - I could not tell. The air currents around us seemed to be nearly as wrathful as Aiko as we careened through turbulence

As we approached the capital, my breath caught at the sight of apocalyptic devastation sprawled below. Endless rows of rubble and collapsed buildings marked where Svet bombers had decimated whole city blocks. Entire neighborhoods burned, reduced to cement skeletal ruins and glass.

The sector surrounding the secret underground bunker remained untouched - small oases of buildings utterly unscathed amid the sea of decimation that almost seemed like a marriage among the wasteland. It was as if some divine force had intervened to protect the government's last sanctuary while ravaging commoner homes without thought. The stark contrast turned my stomach.

I felt Aiko's eyes on me again and turned to meet her piercing gaze in the paned glass of the bomber. She hesitated, seeming to be on the verge of speaking her heart. But after a pained moment, she averted her focus.

"You aim to play me for a vapid courtier?...womanly hysteria perhaps? What mighty king vasca praytell is the explanation?" Her false casualness barely concealed the simmer of dread in her voice. "You continue playing durik-brain, yet you clearly endured something out there Huck. What are you hiding...please?"

Aiko's sudden fury caught me off guard. I had expected some relief at my return, not this simmering rage now bringing us to the brink of spewing our past issues for present contrivances. Beneath her vicious words, I glimpsed the anguish my disappearance had seeded in her - the naked vulnerability when she asked why I must always lie mirroring our summers consumed together... In that glimpse, I yearned to comfort her like before, to confess all my soul's contents--fuck the consequences.

My pragmatic mind though would not allow my heart its want of telling her--That the ordeal had left me...changed. And the desert may yet birth more death before this trial ends. So I clung to my brittle deceptions - wearing false calmness as a mask while inwardly quailing at her volatility. I had to be strong for both our sakes now until the storm passed. Even as regret racked me at betraying the trust of the only soul left who yet cares whether I live or die. If deceit is my armor, then so be it...but Doutros save me from again seeing such anguish in Aiko's weary yet supple face.

I opened my mouth, tempted to unburden myself fully - the goddess, my new hand scar, and its strange sigil's glow. And yet - what if none of it had been real? The heat, the blood loss, the trauma...It could all have been a hallucination, a fantasy conjured by my unraveling mind. No - reality or not, honesty was now a threat I could ill afford. Not when Aiko's loyalty hung by a bare thread already.

I forced a fatigued smile. "The desert plays tricks, even on kings. Let us leave it at that, Koi...I'm tired and I don't want to further upset you." I hoped the affectionate term would soften my repeated deceptions - buying more time until I understand just what lurks beneath the sands...and inside my own troubled soul.

I wish to change but comprehend nothing else...