“You wanted to find some birch, right?” Qingxi rested a hand on her blade’s sheath.

“Yeah,” he adjusted the bag he carried. “A short one preferably.”

“Any reason why you want birch in particular?”

“I want to try working on it with the kit Lauka gave me.”

“Ah, I see.”

There was not a birch tree in sight. They hadn’t seen any recently either, aside from a couple huddled together in a distant tree cluster they sailed past a few hours ago.

“So it’s easier to work with?”

If they were going to go so incredibly out of their way to get it, she thought that at least knowing why he wanted it so badly was reasonable.

“...Yeah,” he responded, his eyes averted as far away from her as they could’ve been.

She blinked at him a few times, the complete blank of an expression on her face exuding an aura of unimpressedness. She raised an eyebrow, leaning slightly closer to him so that it would be harder for him to ignore her.

Yet, he didn’t respond, instead very incrementally inching his head further away from her as she drew near.

He audibly gulped.

“Hmm…” Qingxi hummed. “Is that so-”

He suddenly fell, tripping over nothing as he stumbled forward and away from her.

“Woah!” He corrected himself mid-fall, his arms swinging about in a manner not at all believable. “That was close!”

He even looked back in surprise at what tripped him over, though Qingxi kept her lifted eyebrows and unamused glare fixed onto him. Eventually though, she turned around to see if– by some miracle– he had actually tripped on, say, a rock or a gnarled root of sorts.

…Nope.

“There’s nothing there, Solei-”

He had disappeared off into the distance, jogging away as nonchalantly as he could while he held onto his bag to stop it from jostling around so much.

“Soleiman!”

She broke into a sprint after him, the distance between the two of them closing far, far more quickly than he had thought it would.

He turned his head back briefly, jolting a bit at the sight of Qingxi racing towards him, before promptly turning forward again and speeding up.

“Get over here!” Qingxi yelled, trying her best to suppress the sound of her smile in her words.

Soleiman yelped, before quickly regaining his composure and breaking into a full sprint to try and stay ahead of her.

“We gotta find some birch, Qingxi! Come on!”

“The only birch you’re going to find,” she put a hand on his shoulder, much to his horrified dismay. “Is my hand in your face!”

She grabbed him, ensnaring him in a bear hug and wrestling him to a stop.

“Qingxi-”

“Come here,” she grunted, putting her palm on his hair and ruffling it up even more than it already had been. “You can’t escape me!”

“Okay, okay!”

She released him, letting him stumble a bit as he put his hands on his head.

“It’s for Rumi,” he sighed.

“Oh,” Qingxi nodded. “Why didn’t you just say that?”

“I want it to be a secret,” he looked over his shoulder to check that nothing had spilled out of his bag. “You can’t tell her, alright?”

“Sure,” Qingxi stepped forward, offering to take the bag off his shoulder. “But how are you going to keep her from noticing you working on it?”

“I’ll work on it at night,” he kept the bag on his shoulders.

“...Are you sure you’ll get enough rest?” Qingxi tilted her head, her Chitite ears still firmly upright as they scanned their surroundings for any hint of unusual noise. “You can just tell her. I think she would like it just as much as if you surprised her.”

“Maybe,” Soleiman said. “But-”

Qingxi’s ears twitched.

The both of them fell silent, Soleiman himself already well aware of the implications her ears suddenly jolting about had. It was like a premonition of sorts, at least for him. To her, it was the same as picking up any other noise with her human ears.

His gaze slowly shifted from her ears to her fringe, and then finally onto her eyes.

And this time, he knew they were the ones on the hunt.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

They cannot be distinguished from regular people.

Rumi sat cross-legged by the fire, the sound of Pallas trying to set up their tents for the night and of Strapi nickering quietly in a cosy corner of the clearing filling her ears as she read one word at a time.

They emulate, to near perfection, every single need and want of a human body.

She squinted her eyes slightly at the word ‘emulate’, having to guess the meaning of the Saracenic cursive so that she could move on with the rest of the sentence. So far, though Soleiman had helped her gain quite a good grasp on much of the language between all the mini-lessons and nightly readings he gave her, she still wasn’t quite adept enough at the language to be able to read it with confidence.

They mimic, with errors undetectable to the untrained eye, the every can and cannot of a human person.

And yet, Rumi found the contents of the book she chanced upon too compelling to pass up on.

Those Who Bleed Blue, it was titled.

The Donoc, as they were called.

They are, by every measure, people.

And yet…

The sounds of distant crackling musket-fire and the sight of those refugees crumpling up against the wall flashed through her mind.

It must be remembered that they are not.

Those red shoes.

The difference between the Donoc and people is that the Donoc do not have rightful possession of their bodies. Their bodies are an expansion on the already well-established concept of Oldenburger puppetry, which in and of itself is an expansion upon the once prevalent Teodorian form of the practice.

Rumi blinked her eyes a few times. She felt as though she’d heard that term before.

“Olden…burger?”

Rumi jumped ever so slightly, turning to see as Pallas knelt down beside her.

“Oldenburger puppetry,” Rumi shifted, letting Pallas have a good look at the book as well.

“Isn’t that what powers Qingxi’s sword?”

“Oh, right! Wow, I… forgot that?”

“No shame in it,” Pallas snuggled up a little closer, making herself comfortable on the tarp Rumi sat on. “Sorry.”

“No worries,” Rumi gave her a little more space. “Uh… the book is about Those Who Bleed Blue.”

She turned it over momentarily, letting Pallas take in its starkly utilitarian, unattractive cover. The black calligraphy had been painted on with little to no attention to style, a fitting choice given the weight of the subject matter.

“Huh,” Pallas yawned. “Didn’t Chloe say something about them back when we were in Karnouia?”

“I… don’t quite remember.”

“It was a long time ago,” Pallas admitted. “I think she just told us about how she and the other Silenters were brought to Minerva around the same time the crisis began.”

As such, they function in much the same way an Oldenburger puppet does. They require imprintment, where they pick up the rules with which they will operate on for the rest of their lives, and they are destroyed only when they are completely drained of their mana.

“It’s a bit crazy, isn’t it?” Pallas mused.

“Hm?”

“I mean, the difference in complexity between, ‘fire a blade of wind’ and, ‘be a functional human being’, is sort of…”

“...Yeah,” Rumi said. “It is.”

However, in order to properly execute the complexity of commands and rules required of a Donoc, a soul puppet has to be sufficiently well developed and robust; far more than what the souls of beasts or felled trees can accomplish.

As such, the soul puppets of Donoc are fashioned from the souls of the deceased, who are caught by an as of yet unexplained phenomenon that lure them towards Phia’s northern coast. These human souls are then imprinted upon, denying them a proper ascendance to the Land above the Clouds, and condemning them to a false existence as walking mimics of life.

“A fate worse than death,” Pallas whispered. “At least, that’s what my mother used to say.”

“Mm,” Rumi mumbled.

If this was true, then what was she to make of the little girl? Of the family? Of every single refugee they came across in Yellow Rock?

As a result of this, the Donoc live borrowed lives.

They exist in a limbo state, not entirely fitting into the category of the long-forgotten fae or the flesh-and-blood creatures of this world. Though they die deaths much like that of faes, ‘their’ souls still operate by the rules that govern flesh-and-blood creatures.

And without a physical body ‘their’ souls may be separated from on death, they are not given the grace of ascendency to the Land above the Clouds.

They are merely forgotten, lost to time.

“And it is as if they never lived at all,” Pallas read.

The image of those frozen pieces of leather armour, laying in the blizzard of the battlefield, surfaced in their minds. And for Rumi, the image of those red shoes followed not too far behind.

“So… their existences just never happened?” Rumi set the book down, staring into the roar of their campfire.

“Apparently not,” Pallas squinted, rereading the previous few paragraphs. “Maybe that’s why the Yusheed were as bent on killing them as you had said.”

Rumi felt her stomach churn a little.

“They grow and get hurt, but they can’t have children with each other,” Pallas continued. “And in cases where they partner up with a human counterpart, the child is always a stillborn.”

Pallas sucked a little bit of air in through her teeth.

“...What about this?” Rumi pointed, her curiosity momentarily subduing the welling discomfort within her.

“It says that all Donoc seem to forget, over a period of time, what happened to them at their point of genesis,” Pallas read. She squinted, continuing, “So basically they have amnesia, and after some time they just become a blank slate.”

“I suppose that makes sense,” Rumi said to herself, her eyes pointed upwards as she recalled the confusion in the refugees they came across. Perhaps they were already beginning to forget?

Her stomach lurched again.

What if she was a Donoc? She wouldn’t be able to tell while she was still alive, and the only time she’d ever know was once she died. And at that point– she would be able to do nothing to save herself.

Though, she did remember her childhood. It was not as though there was a gaping, memoryless void where her younger years were. She remembered her parents, their shop, her siblings.

She remembered everything, perhaps a little too well.

“Come on, Rumi,” Pallas put an arm around her, rubbing her shoulder and drawing her in. “Why don’t we read something else?”

“Yeah,” Rumi closed the book, giving its drab title one last glance before putting it back into Lauka’s satchel. “You’re right.”

Perhaps she would forget the little girl at some point, and perhaps there was nothing she could do about that. But she would always have her little red shoes with her.