Amiela woke to the sounds of quietly chirping insects.
Pain twinged down her spine. Her arms and neck ached. When she first tried to stretch her limbs beside herself, a sharpened, seizing pang branched through her left shoulder and made her body lock up entirely. She cursed under her breath.
Only once she managed to force back the coil of stiffness and push herself up with both hands, planting them firmly over the earth, when she finally leaned her head aside to peer out at her surroundings, only then did she begin to feel a deeper, much less tangible sort of hurt.
It felt as if her soul was being pulled solidly in one way, dragged someplace off towards the south, while her body remained fixed firmly in the other direction. Amiela squinted and swore again. Where did that demon ever get the nerve to wander off so far without even saying anything?
“Ugh... Kid? Um. Olive.” It still felt strange to call someone by their actual name after so long. Usually in such inhospitable places, it was only ever a brusque ‘hey, you,’ or a flash of her switchblade to communicate with anyone wise enough to heed it. “Olive?”
Silence. Amiela peered around hazily, blearily. Did that child already come to his senses and run off? She blinked a few times at the thicket clearing, before her body lurched up with a sudden jolt. Amiela rushed over in a wild, silent daze to swiftly rummage through her belongings.
How stupid, how very, incredibly stupid, she seethed to herself. How wildly foolish for her to have dozed off there, leaving her packs unattended beside a lost starving child. How could she ever have fallen asleep so deeply as to not even notice the boy leave? Amiela knew she was a light sleeper. If she had simply just laid there, unaware, through a total loss of her supplies-
But nothing stood amiss.
Harsh, half-muffled gasps panted between the clench of her teeth. Amiela’s eyes were still distant from the abrupt bout of panic. She fixed that blank gaze over her untouched satchels and supply packs. “...Huh.”
“Kiddo doesn’t seem like a thief to me.”
“Oh, fuck off.” Amiela quietly hissed. She turned back to face the boulder she’d just been sleeping against. At least the otherworldly throb of pain in her chest finally began to ebb down again. “I am not going to have the same conversation with you for the hundredth time-”
“No, no. I don’t want to have it either. But do you really think I’d just let someone steal your stuff while you were sleeping?” Ranya materialized above Amiela in a strong gust of shadowy wind. Her entire body thrummed with a whirl of otherworldly pulses while she appeared, bit by glittering bit. “And here I thought you’d trust me better.”
Amiela merely leaned away from that oddly floating presence, trying to ignore the clever little look playing fast in Ranya’s eyes, the very same that was always present whenever the demon knew she held the upper hand about something.
Ranya slowly became a sizable cat again, one of her most favored faces. Her hind paws touched over the ashen earth with all too soft of a sound, like she was still weightless. Her front paws lingered a moment longer in the air between them, but those too came to brush down over the ground and rest firmly at either side of Amiela’s body. Her tufted tail flicked behind herself, curling back and forth into reality, swishing sidelong to mark each of the colors that bloomed over the expanse of her shadowy pelt.
“So, yeah.” Ranya smiled to reveal just a hint of teeth. Her golden tongue swiped slowly over the full width of them. “I’ve decided that maybe this actually is good for you, minus the whole ‘wandering around a barren hellscape thing,’ of course, instead of finding a nice tropical island somewhere...” Her gaze had started to wander away while she spoke, until her eyes snapped back into focus all at once. “But! That little kiddo is just like a lost kitten, you know?” She leaned in closer with a deep, throaty purr, perched over the ground to practically loom directly above Amiela. “It’s only healthy for you to actually go on and talk to another human being once in a while, really.”
“You...” Amiela fought the urge to hiss. “You don’t get to ‘decide’ things for me. Especially not what’s healthy.” She glowered up at that keen feline face with as much severity as she could muster. Gods, was she still exhausted. “And you had better not go scaring the kid with your creepy-”
Ranya smirked and let her gaze dart aside with a face that looked just a bit like: ‘oops.’ Amiela’s glare deepened.
“Well, he did have...” Ranya’s voice trailed off a moment too long. She swiftly cleared her throat. “A bit of a mishap. Nothing major!” She grinned with a few too many of those cleverly pointed teeth. “But don’t worry about that kid running off for good. He should be coming back any minute.”
“You are... A walking catastrophe, you know that?” Amiela felt her ire fade even as she said it. She reached up to rub her hands over her forehead instead, nursing the headache that gathered there. “Don’t bother him. I mean it. He looks... I don’t know. Fragile?”
“Ah. He’s a scrawny thing, sure.” Ranya yawned with a warm rumble of breath. She turned her gaze southward instead, past the dense curls of the thicket. “But he scampers around just like a kitten would whenever he’s climbing. Or a squirrel.” Her ears swiveled back towards Amiela, even when her attention remained far away over the thorny distance. “Strange, though. He doesn’t really talk to himself as much as I’d thought he might.” Ranya’s voice hummed with a half-amused chuckle. “But when he does, he sounds a whole lot younger than the way usually tries to act around you.”
“If... If he’s been alone out here, all this time-” Amiela paused for a brief second or two to calculate the math. “He said he was twelve, maybe thirteen? The cities here collapsed over three and a half years ago. Then back there, he would have been-”
“Around eight or nine?” Ranya nodded. As her tail swished further, rich leopard spots blossomed all across her starry pelt, leaking away from each tufted touch, painting her rich fur with swirling rosettes. “Sounds about right. Can’t imagine he’d be getting much in the way of conversation with anyone but himself around here.”
“He does look more around that age, too.” Amiela’s words hushed even quieter. “I would have guessed younger, at first. The malnutrition alone...” A shiver prickled down her spine. “Who knows what kind of hell a kid like that has to have gone through.”
Ranya leaned forward to speak in a halfway sing-song tone. “Well, I could help you guys out, if you’d just let me feed you once in a while. I’m sure kiddo here hasn’t had a decently fresh meal anytime recent, either.”
“You are not exactly the most inconspicuous hunter.” Amiela grimaced and glanced at the backpack filled nearly to the brim with canned food. “We have enough for another week or so, at least-”
“To survive, maybe.” Ranya’s expression dropped to something far more terribly solemn, starlight fading in a sharp billow of dusk. “But that kid is almost skin and bones, you can see that. And the amount of weight you’ve lost-”
“Don’t keep track of me.” The sudden venom in Amiela’s tone surprised even herself. “You... I won’t keep tabs on you, if you don’t-!”
But Ranya reappeared in a swirl of smoke directly in front of her instead, almost nose to nose. “It’s not so easy, you know..?” Her words rasped like fire licking over dry grass. “When I can feel your body getting weaker and weaker, every day. Your heartbeat gets so fast, lately.” The tone of Ranya’s voice shook Amiela’s demeanor down to her bones with something deep and dark and undeniable, approaching a gentle snarl. “What happens when the only thing left holding you together is what you call magic?”
Amiela grappled back a defensive hiss.
“If you’re still so hellbent on this-” Ranya’s shoulders bristled with a glimmer of rippling muscle and fur. “This whole, gods, stupid death-wish campaign thing, and don’t even tell me it’s for the right reasons.” Her gaze wandered across the bramble clearing in a much different way than before, as if sparing her companion the full brunt of her ire, until her attention flickered right back to lock directly upon Amiela’s eyes again. “Don’t you want to at least have enough strength to see this thing through ‘til the end? Or are you hoping to just drop dead of hunger one of these days?” Ranya let each word linger over the curves of her long, pointed teeth. “Waste away in your sleep?”
A cold fury bubbled into Amiela’s chest and stomach. She fought to keep her gaze fixed on Ranya.
“Or maybe, you’re... You’re doing it without even really realizing it.” Ranya’s ears drooped just a bit. “Well. For that little boy’s sake, then, maybe you’ll let me bring some food to you? So we don’t have to confront the real reasons?”
Silence stretched far between them, as rigid as a rope pulled taut.
“If you keep insisting on keeping the kid fed, then like it or not, you’re going to need help.” Something about Ranya’s voice husked deeper then, infinitely more tender and raw. “Let me, Ami. Let me help.”
Amiela tightened the set of her jaw and finally broke her gaze. “You could hunt at night.”
Ranya’s smile beamed just as bright as the sun. “I saw some critters up there, where the earth gets softer! Looked like rabbits, maybe marmots! Their tracks smelled fresh, too.” She lifted one of her paws to gesture at the south with a single hooked claw. “But we’ll need to make a fire tonight to make the meat safe enough on your fragile tummies-”
“No. Not in the dark.” Amiela dismissed the idea with a slight flick of her hand. “You’ll hunt at night, then we’ll consider cooking whatever you catch in the daytime. Or under a storm, if we can find enough shelter.” She moved to massage the panging ache in her shoulder. “A campfire would only be a huge glaring beacon in the dark.”
Ranya sighed. “You could just let me protect you.”
“You are already pushing your luck.” Amiela fully leaned away from her then, clambering out from beneath Ranya’s feline form. She reached over to begin organizing her supplies instead. “And you really shouldn’t go wandering off when I’m sleeping, anyway. It’s dangerous for you to be moving around like that. Especially in daylight. We can’t risk anyone else seeing you.” Amiela felt a fierce twinge of irritation clutch at her heart when Ranya seemed to amble off and completely ignore her. “You aren’t so invulnerable either, you know. Particularly at a distance.”
“Okay. Fine, fine.” Ranya dematerialized with a low pulse of thrumming sound, where she became only a glimmer of shadowed material again. “I’ll take the win this time.”
Amiela bit back a retort. She knew Ranya could all too easily sink her teeth into a topic and run right off with it on a tangent that spun all day and night.
There were much better things to get done, Amiela reasoned, like organizing her newly acquired food stocks by expiration date (at least if the tins were still labeled) or cleaning her knife and umbrella. The fabric was already starting to look even more threadbare from the wild force of the sandstorm winds.
Amiela rummaged down through the various things in her satchels, all separated between layers of scrap cloth, just enough to keep them from clanking too noisily against each other. But she paused and winced when her shoulder twinged yet again, flaring with unignorable ache.
Ranya’s shadow flickered and rippled close. “It’s still bothering you?”
“Sort of.” Amiela grimaced and refused to let her eyes so much as water. She rubbed one of her hands over the twitching limb. “I don’t know why it’s acting up again now. It was almost gone for ages.” Without even really thinking about it, she slowly reached up to touch around her cheek and nose instead, just barely brushing her fingertips over her skin. “I don’t think it’s real pain. Just... Psychosomatic, or something. It’s been too long.”
“All pain is real, Ami.” Ranya let her voice drift nearer to Amiela’s ears. “I can try to help, if you-”
“I’m fine.” Amiela hated how breathless her voice became. She shook her head and reached back for her supplies. “Really. You don’t need to bother.”
Ranya merely waited there, resting over the ground. Her long, sinuous tail still flicked around in her nebulous form, tapping a steady, silent rhythm beneath the thorny brambles.
Amiela lifted a few of her smaller satchels away from the others. She realized her respirator mask could have used a more thorough cleaning as well. The sound modulator was barely functioning as it was.
Her knife needed immediate attention, however. Amiela picked up the weapon by the handle. She rummaged around for a jar of oil inside her nearest satchel. She opened up the switchblade with a smooth metallic click.
The edge was still sharp enough that she did not have to hone it, not just yet. But after a few more uses, Amiela knew it might need some closer regard.
Polishing the weathered blade with a rag of oiled cloth passed the time nicely. The work of cleaning each of the fine hinges felt much more satisfying than fretting over long-expired canned goods, at least. There were even still a few rays of sun left remaining in the evening sky, enough daylight to burn before it became safe enough for her to leave.
Amiela did not miss the way she felt some ghostly sensation begin moving where the muscles in her shoulder still twitched. She averted her gaze.
With a slight tremble, Amiela was forced to bite down a sigh when it felt like some smooth yet bristled phantom tongue was trying to ever so gently prod around and find the spots where it might have hurt worst without prior tending, an unseen attempt to press warmth and care against the stubborn ache and soothe it. Only it felt like the sensation was happening from deep beneath her flesh rather than anywhere else beyond it.
A twig snapped in the near distance. Amiela felt herself tense, but Ranya’s shadow remained sprawled out in a languid, unfussed outline, half-melded over her body and completely motionless beside her feet, so much that Amiela let herself relax again. She did not even bother to look up.
Olive peeked his way in through the brambles, glancing all around, before his eyes widened at the sight of the open switchblade. “Oh, I...” He suddenly looked quite bashful. “Um, I wanted to scout ahead a little. There’s some water, over-”
“We need to have clearer communication if this is going to work.” Amiela did not stop tending to her knife. “If you’re finally going to leave and go off on your own, then do it right now and get it over with.” The look on her face only grew less flexible the longer she spoke. “But if you’re going to keep trailing after me, what happens if you just wander off like that again and I have no idea where you are? You do want to follow me out of this place, correct?”
“Yes.” Olive frowned and let his gaze shy away. He found he could not even fully look at the true sternness in her eyes that time. “I’m sorry-”
“I don’t need apologies.” Amiela stared down into her own reflection in the sleek, well-worn metal. “But if this happens again, if you’re suddenly gone without even saying anything, I’m not waiting around to find out where you went.”
“I... I didn’t want to wake you up.” Olive slowly stepped back into the clearing. “But I won’t just leave, next time. Maybe if we find some paper, I could leave a note?”
Amiela thought it over. It was not the worst idea, but it would waste valuable supplies. “I’d rather you not go wandering off out there, making a target of yourself in the first place.”
The most shadowy of presences reappeared between the two of them with absolutely no warning, as usual. “If I could suggest a much easier solution!” Ranya smiled at them both, mischievous teeth glinting out through the foggy, sparkling darkness that swirled all around her rising visage. “With my very impressive skills of sensing and finding the both of you-”
“You are awfully chatty today.” Amiela stared Ranya down with a dry little tone. “I thought you were still taking a vow of silence in protest?”
“And protesting goes absolutely nowhere with you.” Ranya smirked towards Olive in particular, who was glancing rapidly back and forth between the two of them, as if trying to confirm that he wasn’t the only one able to witness such a bizarrely ethereal creature. “I’d be better off watching paint dry than try to make you listen to reason, Ami.”
At first, Amiela seemed to want to say something different. She pursed her lips and briefly held her tongue. “Better get used to her, then.” She gave Ranya a brief glance to inspect the more unusual shape that began to shift over her nebulous, mercurial body.
Ranya’s long tail swirled and twitched, drifting across herself as if sketching out new features with each flick of the feathery tuft. Her face became much like a ram’s, only elongated, far more feral, sporting a grand set of bizarrely forked horns. With the motion of muscles coiling, Ranya’s lithe arms tapered down into prehensile digits, yet her nails became more like sharply cloven hooves than the hawkish or catlike talons they usually ever looked like.
Amiela peered even further over Ranya’s newest guise, the tall, cloudy figure that was still mostly left unclear. Her eyes tracked the formless shapes of shadows and sinewy smoke twisting into the air. “Olive, I wasn’t exaggerating when I told you that following us is a bad idea.”
Olive slowly forced himself to relax. “Ranya helped me out.” He still fidgeted where he stood, hands trembling ever so slightly at the sight of her.
Ranya was huge. Olive found he had had to crane his neck just to even truly look at her. How in the world could she ever go from being merely a flat shadow to a creature looming far larger than him and Amiela combined?
Olive tried not to let his limbs shake any further. He cleared his throat to help steady his voice. “She’s nice, even if she looks, um... A little scary sometimes.”
“Oh, what a polite boy!” Ranya reached down to pat Olive’s hair with a set of spindly digits. She was, at least, careful not to poke his face with her pointed hoof-like nails. “I’d bet your mother taught you all those good manners, right?”
Olive laughed just a little bit for her. “Yeah...”
But his arm stiffened when he watched how those oddly hooved paws suddenly moved to press a thin pad of sticky cloth over the wound on his palm where he’d fallen, though not before smearing a dab of fragrant herbal salve from a small glass vial over the rough little scrape.
Olive marveled at the sight of it, the strange supplies that seemed to materialize over the fluffy pads of Ranya’s hands from nowhere at all. He found his eyes simply could not leave the colorful little bandage covering his wound for a prolonged moment, his mouth left open slightly in shock.
How had someone ever managed to place such uniform little images of flowers and strawberries all over the smooth, sleek fabric? Olive blinked at the sight of his palm and forced himself not to stare. “T-thank you.”
Ranya nodded. “Well.” She drifted down further to look at the boy from eye level. It was indescribably strange to see a wild goat’s long snout attempt to smile at him. “Look forward to tomorrow morning! We’ll have fresh food to eat by then. A whole lot fresher than anything from those silly little cans; rabbits, marmots, or with any luck, maybe even a grouse if I can find one.”
“Oh?” Without moving even an inch from where he stood, Olive peered past Ranya to glimpse towards Amiela instead, just enough to gauge her response. He felt himself clasp his fingers over his palms just to keep them from twitching in disbelief.
But Amiela did not seem to feel like confirming anything whatsoever. She only looked away from them both and closed her polished knife. Her nose slightly twitched at the scents of dust on the wind, colder than before, less twinged with the heat of the sun.
Amiela narrowed her eyes at the cloud-streaked horizon, past the thick nest of tangled thorns. It was high past time she got moving again, anyway. Nightfall was almost upon the wastes.
“So, kiddo, have you ever had rabbit meat before?” Ranya just kept babbling away to Olive, even while the boy tried his best not to shy away beneath the sheer, towering height of her presence. “I think it tastes really sweet, but sort of intense-”
Amiela drowned out all of the chatter whirling around the clearing. She slipped herself instead into the motions of packing up her things, reclaiming her dry socks and boots, pulling on her thick leather gloves, zipping her suit securely and clipping her helmet away over her backpack.
Unless the winds picked up into a proper storm again, she knew she did not need protection for her face. It would also be easier to travel and communicate with easy access to fresh air. Not that speaking aloud was preferable to safe, cautious silence.
With a tug of effort, Amiela pulled the umbrella out from between the rocks to carry it over herself instead. She eyed a few of the more obvious rips in the patchwork material, where the sandstorm winds had bit and torn.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
Amiela slowly touched her gloved fingertips over the worst of the damage. It was just enough that she almost considered waiting another brief while to make suitable repairs before traveling again. But the southward sky looked clear enough to risk it. Ranya’s constant rate of speech helped spur her forward as well.
When she was ready, Amiela stood, grabbed the same dry stick from before to test the undergrowth, and started off at once. Olive hurried along after her, carrying only his gifted mask and the small leather satchel on his belt.
“So, um.” Olive tried to catch up enough to more easily speak. “There’s water up ahead. That’s where I was before. I wanted to, uh, see if there was anything good there for us.” He paused to try and make himself sound not quite so awkward. “It’s in a ravine not too far, and it looks like it might even be clean.”
“I’m sure we’ll come across it.” Amiela grasped over every ounce of her self-control not to snap at the other presence following after her as well. Why in the world couldn’t Ranya just go back to pretending to be a shadow?
“We really should be careful on the approach!” Ranya grinned with a knowing glint down towards Olive. “All sorts of creatures are drawn to water, you know.”
“Right.” Olive felt himself flush a little at that. At least the dusky glow of evening could mostly hide it away. “We’ll need to use the stick there, too.”
Amiela led the way through the dense undergrowth without hesitation. She kept tapping her chosen stick around to flush out the occasional spider or crawling lizard from between the thorny vines. “Listen, we should all try to be quieter for now, at least until nightfall. And Ranya, please stop floating?” She tried not to sound too weary when she said it. “Gods. At least try to look like a real animal, or something.” Amiela lowered her voice to a hush. “We don’t know what else is out here with us.”
Olive quieted himself for her. But while he walked closer in Amiela’s footsteps, he found himself staring out beyond the thick wall of thorns, down towards the vast desert landscape instead, far below the high ridge they walked along.
“Fine. But I still don’t see why you’re so worried.” Ranya dropped down to stand on the rocky ground with an exaggerated clicking thump of her two hind hooves. “You keep acting all twitchy and paranoid, and not even for the good reasons to be. It’s not like anyone or anything could possibly sneak up on us with me around. Especially out here.” She jabbed one of her hooved hands directly in Amiela’s direction when she ignored her. “I’d warn you, you know, if anyone does show up nearby.”
Amiela scoffed quietly at that. “You didn’t yesterday.”
“Yeah. Well.” Ranya huffed right back at her with a low chuckling snort, one that only somewhat resembled a deeply rumbling goat’s bleat. She pointed her strange digits towards Olive instead. “I mean, just look at the kid. Pretty harmless, yeah?”
Olive was not quite sure whether to feel miffed or relieved by the flippant tone of her words, or somewhere drifting in between. It did make him begin to feel less shivery, at least. He chose instead to stare out below the horizon, even when Amiela bickered with Ranya while they traveled near the edge of the thicket about being ‘mean,’ despite Ranya vehemently denying any sort of bullying behavior whatsoever.
He smiled a little to himself. Olive mostly stopped listening to them both for a moment, letting his thoughts drift out with the hazy swirls of the wind.
“I look more like a goat right now, anyway. A very beautiful, fancy goat.” Ranya muttered and snorted. She lifted her chin high and barked out a laugh even when Amiela gave her a firmer stare. “Not a bull.”
Amiela tried not to growl out her words. “Ranya-”
Ranya merely tossed her head to make her silken fur flutter in the evening wind. “Though I’d probably look just as gorgeous as an auroch! Hah.”
Olive gazed to the west. He slowly clambered atop a low rock where the thorns grew less dense, where the vines flattened enough to let him truly see the world beyond them.
The last rays of daylight lingered over the snowcapped mountains. Further below, the sea of dunes sparkled beneath the fading glow of sunset, as if the sands themselves were molten gold of the sun poured out over the earth, glittering around the occasional loose fleck of man-made stone.
Amiela finally stopped herself from arguing long enough to ignore the way Ranya prattled on about having already mastered the delicate balance between good manners and ‘calling things as they were.’
With a softer sigh, Amiela looked at the branch she still carried. She stepped over to slowly kneel where the last of the dry bushes tapered off into bare ground.
Ranya blinked and finally let her voice fall quiet. She watched when Amiela pressed the blunt end of the dry stick with a firm push into the earth.
Above that toothy muzzle, a set of gleaming eyes squinted, horizontal pupils narrowing out. That demonic gaze stared down at the quiet hands of a witch as they tightened, squeezing over the long-dead stick and urging it deeper beneath the ground, until only half of it was left remaining above.
“Hm.” Ranya yawned at the sensation of pressure lightly lifting in the space between them. She flicked her pointy ears and tossed her head back with a flourish of her spiraled horns. “It would take a miracle for that out here, you know.”
Amiela’s shoulders bristled, but she ignored what Ranya told her. She let the warmth of her hands drift away from the half-buried branch. Olive’s gaze returned from the vast desert sands to see it. He could feel the air stirring in that same tingly, unnameable way again, but it did not last for long.
“I’ll tell you a little secret, kiddo.” Ranya leaned down to whisper close beside Olive’s ear while they both watched Amiela start off again, walking away from the edge of the desiccated thicket. “Witches? Oh, they’ll deny it all day and night, sure, but they can’t get enough of stuff like that. Dead sticks, driftwood, petrified branches. Anything that even resembles that kind of thing.”
Olive wondered for a moment if that was where the old tales of elusively subtle witches and their most favored wands and brooms of enchantment might have come from.
“I know what you’re probably thinking, but no. It isn’t like a magic staff.” Ranya winked at him and ambled forward on her hind hooves, swishing her long tail around while she did so. “Witches generally don’t even use that sort of thing. Except the little ones, sometimes, for practice. What the more powerful ones can do... Ah. It goes even further.” When Olive did not reply, she tipped her head back again to stare at him, craning her graceful neck upside down behind herself. “They use them to hatch huge, gigantic bugs that gobble up lost little human children in the woods-”
Amiela snarled under her breath. “Ranya.”
Somehow, it did not make Olive shiver like before. Even when he moved to follow after them both, his eyes kept wandering off instead to watch the way the sands far below the high ridge glistened, how another abandoned village slowly drifted deep beneath the shining surface of the dunes.
Olive listened to the faintest of sounds on the wind, the air groaning and creaking ever so softly through the fractured buildings, almost imperceptible from such a faraway place. He observed the passage of the unrelenting earth, how the ground itself split apart in such gradual, unhurried stages to claim the ruins away for itself.
Ranya glanced down at the dilapidated village as well, but she moved instead to quicken her pace. Her pointy ears twitched. Her amber eyes changed from wide oblong pupils to a set of narrow vertical slits. Ranya swirled forth in a swift haze of shadows and glistening red liquid, shifting her body into a sleek feline shape to lope along on four nimble paws.
Only a few paces southward, Amiela ignored the sinking village and the massive wildcat trailing her steps. She focused her gaze on the forward path and that path alone, clambering over the dry rocky slopes and the occasional patch of dead grass.
Amiela’s arms stiffened and tensed. She exhaled and began to grit her teeth. She knew she had to slow her rate of breathing. She could not let Ranya work her up like that, gradually riling her into such a silent, stewing fury. But the demon always knew exactly just where to poke, which of the more tender spots in her proverbial armor could make Amiela tremble and break.
As if on cue, she felt that very same swirling force of energy return to herself all at once, flowing forward in a silent, visceral rumble. Ranya’s presence purred her way deep into the back of her mind, stretching out through Amiela’s limbs and veins and swiftly warming up her blood.
When Amiela shivered and looked down at her own feet, that second shadow returned right back to where it usually took claim, swirling out beside her own natural silhouette.
Breathe steady for me. Ranya’s thoughts swirled deeper inside Amiela’s mind. It always felt like a prickling chill of foreign water spilling out into a more familiar stream. Your heartbeat’s strong whenever you’re angry, but it can’t keep going without fuel. If you won’t eat anything more just yet, then let me try and help you.
Amiela let her eyes slip shut partway. She could let her in, only briefly, maybe even just for a moment or two...
Good. Ranya’s heartbeat began to pump around hers. It slowed and evened its pace to match the smaller human heart inside it. There we go. Keep breathing steady. You should stop and have a drink once we get to the brook. You haven’t been nearly hydrated enough lately, either.
Yeah. Amiela realized she did not even have the mental reserves to try and deny it. She tried not to sway on her feet. The surge of renewed energy coursing into her body actually had the opposite effect at first, making her feel almost tipsy. Don’t let him get into trouble like that again. He’s not good at lying. Whatever happened-
Don’t you worry. Ranya’s ethereal heart squeezed Amiela’s entire body like a hug. I don’t mind babysitting once in a while. And we’re almost there.
Amiela shivered once more when the otherworldly feeling eased back into a more diminished force. Ranya’s presence receded like the tide; she was still there, undeniably, but her influence faded more towards the far corners of Amiela’s mind rather than near the forefront.
Olive quietly eyed the secondary shadow on the ground for a moment. He stared at the way Ranya’s dematerialized form spanned an even longer stretch of space than he’d ever witnessed in the glow of the sunset, at least until Amiela moved to hide her entire outline with the umbrella’s shade again.
“Um.” Olive spoke up in a half-whisper. “I think the river was just past these rocks. But be careful, okay?” He did not let himself shuffle his feet. “There’s a lot of gaps in the rocks. And it’s really steep.”
“Right.” Amiela could feel herself begin to breathe just a bit easier than earlier. Her blood flowed more freely into her limbs, urged by the source of renewed living energy, magic in the form of physical vitality. “Let’s get some branches ready.” She tipped the umbrella to gesture aside. “There’s a dead tree over there.”
They both spent the first half-hour of evening darkness tapping a pair of sticks down into the moonlit path. A spider or two occasionally scurried away to hide elsewhere, disappearing between the dusty rocks. Swift geckos scuttled along as well, but they seemed far less concerned over the presence of humans wandering around their chosen territory.
Further down, closer to the banks of the river, a tiny coiled serpent abruptly fled from the tip of Amiela’s branch, darting out from the shadows of dry grass. It gave a weak hiss as it dove away into the reeds beside the water.
After Olive checked the shore with his own tree branch, he moved to sit down atop a rock by the river’s edge. “The water sounds so nice.” He listened to the faint sighing gusts of the wind, the cool evening breeze billowing far over the shallow blue stream. “It looks really clear, too. It’s not all gross and smelly like before.” Olive looked over to see how Amiela was still only standing there, waiting motionless beside the water. “Do you think that’s why the fireflies led us this way?”
“Probably. But we were going south, anyway.” Amiela watched how the moonlight shone over the flowing river, observing the mirror image of that one small vivid fleck of color, the narrow streak that lingered over the far edge of the massive celestial surface. “All I know is they can sense water in a way science can’t explain. At least not yet. Moisture in the air, maybe?” She knelt close beside the riverbank and reached down to delve into her packs, rummaging around until she found a cylindrical item with a pair of tubes fixed on either side. “Who knows.”
The water filtration kit was something she had purposefully sought out several weeks prior, rather than trying to scavenge around the wastelands for one.
Amiela still remembered that particular shopkeeper, a refreshingly forthcoming individual who promised her that even though the device did have its limits, it was just as effective as boiling water traditionally to remove impurities, just as long as the filters within the kit were cleaned out often enough.
She placed one end of the clear tubing beneath the surface of the water. Amiela then leaned back to rest against a tall rock on the shore. She began the process of feeding river water into the intake pipe by drawing it up with a manual hand-pump, until it spilled down with a muffled gurgling slosh into the filter reservoir.
Olive moved to sit closer beside her. “What’s that?”
“It cleans the water.” Amiela pointed at the waterskin clipped to Olive’s belt. “Toss that over. We should both drink and carry as much as we can for later.”
“Oh. Right.” Olive moved to gulp the last of the reserves he had in it before he placed the empty skin on the ground for her. “I didn’t know there were tools for that. I always just boiled it over a fire. But it’s really tough without a kettle.” He sat there and pondered over such a novel concept for a while. “Do you think that thing could make the muddy water in the ruins safe?”
“No.” Amiela began to fill up the waterskin. After only a minute or two of work, the container was full. “Drink, then I’ll fill yours again.” She placed the pouch on the riverbank between the two of them. “Drink until you can’t anymore.”
“I will. Thank you.” Olive did as Amiela said, tipping the waterskin back to drink as much as he possibly could. The clear water that swirled from the skin felt so very cold and sweet, and it only tasted a little bit like dirt. That much could not be avoided, Olive supposed.
Amiela began the same process with her own supply. The rest of her gear did look a bit more sophisticated to Olive’s eyes than any mere cache made of leather and sinew. He glanced down at the simple clasp of the satchel at his belt. Amiela even had a bag with a flexible straw tube designed to reach past her shoulders, held up by a clasp by one of her backpack straps that could lead towards her mouth whenever she unclipped it, even while the reservoir pack was still slung securely inside her backpack.
His own waterskin was still nice enough, Olive reasoned, even compared to something so fancy. He drank, and drank, and drank, sipping the fresh water until long after his belly ached.
Finally, Olive paused to gasp quietly and catch his breath. “So, um...” He brushed away a few stray water droplets from his mouth with one of his wrists. “Ranya’s still here, right?”
“Yes.” As if on reflex, Amiela glanced down at where her second shadow would have been more visible if nightfall hadn’t already arrived. She still kept the umbrella propped close above her body, even in the gathering dark. “We can’t be apart from one another for too long.”
Olive began to feel his brow slowly knit. “But she said you weren’t the same person? Or born together?”
“We weren’t.” Amiela’s voice gained the slightest edge. “We aren’t.”
Olive stared back into the starlit waters, clear and blue and shimmering. “So, if you guys can’t be away from each other for very long, then you’re both traveling here together. But... Why?” He looked back at Amiela, then down towards the faint few traces of Ranya’s bizarre outline. Olive could see how her hazy figure still lingered beneath the glow of moonlight, just past the edge of the umbrella’s shadow. “You said you’re doing something important. But there really isn’t anything left out here. So, why?”
Something about Amiela’s mouth tightened much like before, when Olive first truly saw her there in the firefly light. It was the clench of her jaw that made it look like she was holding something back, keeping it down; some hungrier, far more desperate something that strained beneath her greater control and rebelled towards it, until she finally forced a weary sigh and pushed it all away again.
Ranya’s horned shadow rippled and stirred. Yet she did not seem to want to interfere for once, content to merely wait there and watch in silence while something much deeper in Amiela warred bitterly against itself.
“We are going to fix things.” The grinding tone of Amiela’s voice barely even rose above the hush of the flowing river. “Anything else is just a consequence of that.”
Olive felt something in his chest tighten. “I don’t understand.”
Amiela would not meet his gaze. Something else about her voice darkened to a far more unusually melodic edge. “Understanding can be the most dangerous thing of all.”
“Okay, okay.” Olive shied away and lost the last of his nerve. He moved back, clambering a few shaky paces off across the river rocks, where he mumbled his next words instead. “I won’t bug you about it...” Olive, with one small lingering glance to spare, sat down beside the water to start washing off his face and arms.
Amiela drew a deep, shaky breath. She turned to position herself even further from Olive. She reached for her gloves, pulling them each away so she could rinse her hands in the tranquil waters.
Olive watched the moonlight play over his fingertips. He soon noticed how the pale mirror image blurred whenever he dipped his hands beneath the water’s surface. He had not seen the moon’s clear reflection in so many long, lonely weeks. He realized he hadn’t actually seen true open water in just as long of a time.
He peered at himself there in the rippling waters, at the color of his eyes. But it was difficult to even see that much about them in the current moment, much less their soft hazel hue, the bright flecks of green splashed over hazier brown.
The fair light of the moon shone through the flow of the water and his reflection alike, distorting his own image enough that Olive could not even really see the way his features looked, how thin his face and shoulders had truly gotten.
With a tentative little smile, Olive lifted his hands back out from the water to hold them towards the sky instead. The liquid glinted as it dripped over his skin. He pressed his thumbs and index fingertips to their matching twin, creating a somewhat triangular shape to frame the moon in the sky with the soft curves of his clever hands.
It was good luck, the elders of his village always used to claim: an ancient fable told that if a person could catch the moon for only a moment in her nightward path, whenever she might look the smallest, to hold her light fully inside one’s hands for even just a brief moment in time, that it was the luckiest thing in the world. Maybe even luckier than finding fireflies.
The distant celestial shape shone with a passive, steady light. In the darkness, among the cold glow of the stars, the moon itself looked far more vast than the sun always did in the daytime. Olive lifted his hands even higher to try and wrap his fingers around the full span of the luminous white crescent.
A few of the books he’d once skimmed told that the sun was actually the largest object ever recorded in existence, even larger than the massive fixed horizon of the moon, even if the moon itself looked several times vaster than the sun ever did in the daytime sky.
That particular stage of the lunar cycle stood at less than a half-face, enough so that Olive could almost just start to wrap his fingers around the enormous image of the glowing object, but only when he held his hands very close before his eyes. It was cheating, the elders also always used to say, to touch one’s hands against one’s face in an effort to try and catch the moon.
But his little fingers were just not enough. No, it looked much too close, that lovely, silvery moon. Olive realized that even with the shadow of the earth, the pale celestial curve that night seemed far larger than a slice of cantaloupe against his hands.
No such luck, he pouted. No good luck for him that night. But, Olive realized: no, that could hardly have been true, now could it?
He peered over at the figure who rested just a bit further downstream. A shaky little smile crossed Olive’s lips. The positives, he remembered. No, he was not unlucky at all, not when he finally had someone else to talk to. Especially with an extra new acquaintance to boot. He blinked at them both and wondered for a brief while if Amiela’s hands might have been enough to catch the moon’s light that evening. Ranya’s long, slender digits surely could.
Amiela finished replenishing most of her filtered supply. She began to drink deep from a canvas-fabric water pouch. It was only in that moment that she realized just how parched she truly felt, how the quiet surge of cool water filled her mouth almost greedily, nearly spilling over her lips. She knew Ranya must have felt it too, given the way she began purring so deep into their shared thoughts again.
Any observer would likely assume the two of them were one body with multiple personalities, magical or otherwise. Maybe that was what Olive thought of her, deep down. The boy likely believed she was insane, bewitched. A liar.
Those two individuals, in the eyes of any other person, would surely appear to be meshed together that tightly. And yet, Amiela reminded herself, as always, if two vials of dye could be poured out, mixed with each other into one singular vessel, even if the color they made was entirely new, nothing in the world could change the fact that they both still originated from two separate bottles.
Ranya smirked into her mind. But can you ever unmix the paint?
Quit eavesdropping. Amiela briefly closed her eyes and huffed. She did have the ability to force Ranya out, to silence her own thoughts towards her, as if muting a radio. But in that moment, Amiela only cared about drinking as much water as she possibly could without choking on it.
He’s just confused. The warmth of Ranya’s mental ‘tone’ softened to become all the more gentle. I don’t think he thinks you’re a liar. I mean, the poor thing didn’t run away screaming when I showed up. That counts for something, right? You’re practically ordinary in comparison to me.
He’s just some unlucky kid lost in a horrible desert wasteland. Anyone in his position would already be too freaked out to even react much to weirder things, even people like us. But, it... It doesn’t matter, anyway. Amiela paused to breathe. The water was good, but it made her stomach feel so heavy. Just as long as he doesn’t get any ideas floating around about ‘killing the witch...’
Ranya tensed in the very same moment Amiela did. There were no strange scents along the evening breeze, nor were there any sounds to disturb the silence in the distance, nothing beyond the low hum of the water and the wind billowing through the dry river reeds. But there was something there, something so much deeper, even if it was miles away upstream.
Amiela suddenly felt as if she could not draw in another breath. A cold shot of fear struck her out of the blue, coursing down her spine as a silent icy thunder. “Something’s wrong.” She rose to her feet with an ungainly lurch. Amiela peered out far over the horizon, searching for whichever point the river might have flowed.
Olive frowned at the stark tone of Amiela’s murmuring. “What is it?”
“I... I don’t know.” Amiela hesitated just a moment longer. “We need to go.”
“Oh.” Olive stared down into the crisp, clean water with a fierce little pang of longing. He truly did wish he could have spent just a little bit more time there by it, just enough to wash off his clothes and boots. “Well, if you really think we should-”
But Amiela was already packing up, slinging everything onto her back and taking off down the pebbled shore at a briskly paced jog. Olive scrambled to even catch up with her.
They both hastened beneath the moon’s pale light, hurrying into the cold, bare winds that whispered over the southward prairie and the glistening path of the riverbed.
Every fiber of Amiela’s being prickled with alarm. She desperately tried to keep herself from breaking away into a full run, forcing herself to step slow enough so that Olive would not fall too far behind.
Amiela’s breath shivered through her teeth. If they really have my trail again-
Ranya’s thoughts rang dark and steady. We’ll deal with it.