The Day star was lowering itself slowly, snuggling against the peaks of the mountains up ahead. It would be dark soon. The three hooded figures moved through the small town streets quietly like ghosts taking care to stick to the ever growing shadows of the buildings around them. Yet the beings themselves were far from hideous ghouls. Actually, if you were to take a closer look under their cloaks in the dimming lights you might find yourself breathless at a sight of beauty the Goddess had reserved for her male children on this glorious planet.
Tall, graceful and lean as willow trees were they. Their faces were pale, with but the slightest hint of gold and sharp, expressive features you could cut yourself on. The elegant shape of their eyes paired with the silky smooth raven hair which fell all the way down their backs, betrayed their East Wind heritage.
The town the strangers currently found themselves in was called Arash’sen - just on the north-western outskirts of the Wind twin continent’s capital - Typhone. They had been walking pretty much all day since they’d descended the rail transport that same morning. Their heads hung low partly due to the fatigue overtaking their bodies, partly so they wouldn’t risk attracting the wrong kind of attention after dark.
The tallest of the three men picked up his pace again, as they heard the clamour of voices and boots patting on the pavement behind them. The small street they were on was full of restaurants and small taverns whose patrons had had their first taste of liquor with supper and were now looking to move to a bar and continue their blissful nine-day(week) end drinking.
A crowd wasn’t necessarily bad, the man thought to himself, they could slip away in one. Their destination lay a couple of blocks away and all they had to do was avoid any sort of interaction with the drunken masses for just half an hour more.
“Hey, you there!” A woman’s voice called behind them with a slight slurr. “What are ye supposed to be hiding under those cloaks, then? Some sort of lightweight assassins?”
Kriya dammit, the man winced under his hood, but kept going, grabbing for the hands of the two boys at his sides, almost dragging them to move faster.
“Hey, I’m talkin’ to ye!” The woman called again, her heavy footsteps sounding closer as she picked up pace as well.
A few more pairs of booted feet accompanied her, stomping all over the man’s shrinking hope of slipping unnoticed into the intersecting cobbled street. He took the turn and suddenly stopped , pulling the two boys to an abrupt halt as well. It was a dead end. Was that always there or did his wired nerves and tired brain mess with his otherwise impeccable sense of direction?
“Oy, yer quite rude, ye know? At least turn around and lemme tell ye off to yer faces, ye goddess-damned…”
The man sighed in defeat, rolling his shoulders and straightening his back, as the woman launched into her drunken tirade. She stopped just as quickly as she’d began and felt her jaw drop when the three figures turned around to face her.
“Well, would’ya look at tha!” She exclaimed when she found her voice again. “What are ye three eastern beauties doing sneaking around under those heavy cloaks?”
“Apologies, my lady”, the man in the middle, she guessed the eldest, responded, nodding slightly. His voice was deep and had a pleasant rumble to it, like thunder brewing in the distance. “With our backs turned, we had no idea you were addressing us.”
“Ha! So yer not entirely without manners!” One of the other women chimed in, her pale blue eyes glued to his face. “Yer Common is quite good too. So why all the cloak and dagger?”
His own sharp brown eyes focused on the second woman and his lips moved to respond, but the first one cut him off. She took a couple of steps towards him to get his attention back on her. From this close, he could practically smell the alcohol on her breath and tried his hardest not to crinkle his nose in disgust.
“Ye, that’s exactly wha’ I wanna know!” She slurred. “Why are ye hiding yer pretty lil’ faces all suspicious like that? Don’t ye know this here is the Free Alliance of AWA? This ain’t no backwards desert where the horse fuckers cover their males from head to toe, no ma’am! We like to see our males’ skin over here!”
This outburst of hers, although unpleasant, was expected and still not entirely unmanageable. He just needed to pick his next words carefully…
“Oh come on, obba!” The boy to his left chose the exact wrong moment to lose his patience. “What’s it to ye anyways, we can dress however we want, this is the Free Alliance, ye?”
The woman turned her glossy eyes towards him. Judging by the scowl on her face, she knew just enough of the East Wind language to recognise the insult to her age and appearance in that single foreign word.
“A feisty one, aren’t ye!” She snapped at him, before turning to the man in the middle again. “He your brother?” Then, squinting her eyes to focus his face, corrected herself. “Son? Perhaps ye should teach him some of yer manners, or should I?”
The women moved further into the small dead end street, trying to corner the men into the wall behind them. The one who’d done most of the talking had her eyes flash white with a hint of blue around the edges of her irises. Now this - encountering a rare Gifted windstorm - was bad. Still not unmanageable, but definitely bad.
Winds howled through the constricted space between the buildings around them like the sounds of a broken flute. It was over pretty much as soon as it began and the women fell unconscious on the pavement, knocked down by a series of swift, precise kicks that seemed to carry the force of a tornado.
The man rushed past their limp forms, dragging his two boys behind him. The one who’d escalated the situation earlier pulled his hand away once they were a relatively safe distance away and stopped, a stubborn pout on his beautiful face.
“What are you doing, papa? Were you just gonna grovel and bow to those disgusting drunkards?”
The man stomped his foot angrily and whipped around to face his son.
“No, what are you doing, boy? It would never have come to this, had you kept your mouth shut!”
The boy took a step back, startled by his father’s outburst. It was so rare to see his parent lose his cool demeanor.
“Ye, it would never have come to this, if you would’ve just smacked them around good from the start! Windstorm or not, if you’d just…” The boy started again, but the man raised a hand.
“Let me stop you right there.” He growled. “No. That’s all I have to say to you. No, no, a million times no! Don’t give me that look, either - you know what I’m talking about.”
He swirled around on his heel again, preparing to start walking, but the other boy grabbed his forearm and looked into his eyes, reflecting his brother’s expression like a perfect mirror. The man felt his anger dissipate into thin air and a painful sting in his chest as he saw the sadness descend like a dark cloud over that identical face. Drawing in a sharp breath, he turned back once more.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
“Hey, I’m sorry I snapped at you, ok, baby boy…” he said, his voice and face softening, when he saw his son’s eyes glisten with unshed tears. “Come here”, he pulled the boy in for a tight hug and kissed the top of his head. “You must’ve been scared… I was scared too. But we can’t afford to let fear make us reckless, ok? Look at me” he placed two fingers below the boy’s pointy chin and lifted his face to his. “What did mama say?”
“Fear can make us smart…” the boy muttered and snuggled up to his father again. “Fine, I’ll be smart, but you gotta stop being so stingy - we could’ve dealt with them in no time, if we just…”
“And then they would’ve known who we are and as I keep telling you…” the man cut him off, barely restraining himself from raising his voice again.
“Never show tails in public… I know!” The boy snapped, pulling himself away from his father’s embrace. “But why? Why do they hate us so much?”
“Because their fear makes them angry, not smart.” his brother interjected.
Their father nodded, wrapped an arm around each of the boys’ shoulders and gently, but firmly pushed them to walk up the street again.
“Exactly right. So let’s hope they’d be too ashamed to mention this little incident to anyone and let’s get ourselves to the inn - that man is expecting us, and we can all use some rest.”
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Magmalia’s seaport was a rather dated commodity. After all - why would someone use sea ships when they could board the first scheduled glider and get to the other side of Alaiah within a daylight cycle? For one, gliders were too modern a mode of transportation - each course recorded on terminal spheres and each passenger - meticulously catalogued and triple-checked by the authorities.
And whenever you felt like crossing the border, unbothered by sudden checks, you would certainly seek out a more old-fashioned means of getting from point A to point B. Who would think that the prince of Magmalia would get on a regular sea ship to AWA, right?
Although, if he had to be perfectly honest with himself, he looked nothing like royalty at the moment. He had taken great care for it to be so. With the simple, large hooded robe he was wearing, he was pretty sure not even his closest handlads from the court would recognise him. So long as he kept his head low and talked to no one, everything would be fine and in less than a couple of weeks, he would be on the other side of the world, free to start his life anew.
He had never travelled much, except within Magmalia itself. His mother, with her rash and notoriously explosive temper had managed to ruin her relations to the previous ruler of AWA, sometime shortly before he came into the world, and ever since, no subject of theirs had gone to the Twin Continents, without breaking the law. Most of them, if not all - fugitives from the stifling ruling style on the Old Continent. Even the prince himself had only ever but heard stories told by the older nobles and servants of the court about the magnificent tall buildings in the current capitol - Syfis. They told him of the incredible beauty of nature and architecture there. Of the calm, cheerful demeanor of the people there. AWA - the alliance of unlimited possibilities. The country where you could come in empty handed and build your life anew, with naught more than force of will, hard work and determination. A country, so progressive in its development, so modern, that rumours spoke of men being able to work alongside women, and even respond to some of the political inquiries the Ruling over sea addressed to her subjects, before making some major decision.
Oh how wonderful it would all be, once he got there! There were so many people there, so much space that surely no one would even think twice about who he was, or where he came from or what he was running from.
Yes, AWA. The name of his salvation. He looked around under the rim of his hood and kept himself close to the railings and the shadows of the ship, on his way to the passenger suites. Soon… very soon...
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The hooded figures huddled closer together, to hide away completely behind the hydrogen containers of the ship. One of them was breathing rather heavily - as if she had been running. The other one said:
“Well, what happened? Did you figure out where he is?”
“Yes”, the first woman puffed out, still trying to get her breathing back to normal. “His cabin is number 15 Zeta.”
“But that’s right under the captain’s nose, by the kriyan devils…”, the second figure hissed angrily. “And do you know who captains the “Firestorm”? Pyrom Flaim!!! Dammit - the only woman more willing to fight to protect some boy in distress is I guess the Empress herself! It seems we underestimated our little sunshine, didn’t we?”
“Stop moaning like an old man, D’jem”, the other woman cut her off. “What ever happened to your sense of adventure and your innate earthly courage or whatever it is you like to boast about where you’re from? Just you and me, alone, have kept an entire water village hostage with nothing more than two shooters and one single thunderstick with less than ten shots in her.”
The woman, called D’jem nodded and two rows of sharp white teeth, twisted in a menacing smile appeared underneath her hood. Yes, she and Mar were truly one hell of a team. Ever since they were little they found out they were two peas in a pod - disturbers of the social order, as the Wardens of the correctional facilities they grew up in liked to call them. Although D’jem prefered to think of themselves as unconventional entrepreneurs.
And for all their pretending to be all noble and progressive, the women of Alaiah could not hide the fact that, for as long as the planet was rotating, they had an insatiable hunger which could only be abated by enterprising individuals like the two of them. The undeniable proof for this was the fact that although both AWA and Magmalia were painfully aware of what was going on on the Recreation Isles, neither of them thought it wise to intervene and dismantle the business which was thriving there for thousands of years.
Of course, from time to time the occasional psychologically castrated by her husband moralist came along with the ambition to meddle in the affairs of the Isles and preach to any and all who would listen how wrong it all was. Some of the smarter ones even tried to appeal to the parenting instintinct in their listeners, asking them how they would feel if it were their sons or brothers, selling their bodies for petty cash. But none of it mattered of course and it all went away quickly for no matter what dishonourable (and mostly true) rumours were spread about the Recreation Isles, they were still the most sought after destinations by the stronger half of alaian society.
For no matter what type of censoring civilization tried to apply, women were not and would never be monogamous beings. It just wasn’t in their nature. And no amount of menist jibber-jabber against the sexual objectification of men, could ever change that. This is why there were business-savvy women like D’jem and Mar, who not only understood all too well women’s need for variety in love, but they also happened to offer it at a fairly reasonable price.
Although the gorgeous creature they were planning to “recruit” later tonight, was surely going to be amongst the pricier offerings that their fine establishment had to provide.
D’jem had noticed him shortly before he boarded the ship - on the dockyard where she and her partner were trying to con their way through the coast guard with fake id chips. Today was Mar’s turn to deal with the authorities so D’jem had decided to go and have a smoke somewhere in peace. She turned and barely made a few steps before some hooded figure, clad in a simple beige robe flew into her line of sight from somewhere. Impact was imminent. She was already preparing to get into a very loud and very physical altercation with the insolent creature who had dared cross her path, but instead, the only thing she could do when she met the gaze of the golden-brown eyes, hiding beneath the hood, was to let her jaw drop in surprise.
She had founded her establishment on the Recreation Isles, together with her partner some ten odd years ago and in that time, of course, she had seen her fair share of all kinds of male beauty - tall, short, slender, fluffier, fair, dark… But so far she had not seen such breathtaking beauty in any of the boys in her service. His facial features were so perfectly symmetrical, it was as though he had been cut out of a piece of marble - he had a small, straight nose, ever so slightly snub (perhaps indicating noble descent?), large eyes the colour of sunburst, high cheekbones and lush red lips. Before she could help herself, her gaze drifted down his elegant figure, dressed in a robe too wide for his slender build, but which nevertheless couldn’t hide the irresistible curve of his tight little ass.
When she finally managed to shake out of her reverie, the boy was no longer there. She threw a panicked, frantic look at her surroundings and almost jumped some mat’ri in the air with happiness, as she saw the edge of a beige hood sticking out between the shoulders of two women who here carrying an impressive amount of luggage toward one of the anchored ships. The “Fire storm”, eh? Alright, so be it, sweetie, D’jem thought to herself, a sly smile finding its way to her lips. She turned around quickly and started for Mar’s position to tell her they would have to change ships.
She came back to the present, still smiling. They had managed to sneak up on the ship and now all that was left for them to do was to find some way to get to that gorgeous blond vision’s cabin.
“Great times”, she replied, suddenly reminding herself how this whole daydream had started. Looking at Mar’s grin told her she wasn’t the only one drifting away to better times. “But we’re old for this kind of stuff now, honey, we need to think about getting our pensions in order.”
“Oh speak for yourself, you old bitch”, her friend laughed and patted her shoulder. “If your pretty boy is half as promising as you make him out to be, you’ll be able to get your granddaughters’ pensions in order too.”
“Well let’s go then”, D’jem patted her in return. “Let’s go get ourselves our golden sunshine.”