Chapter 19: Heart

"You're lucky that I didn't go to the crèche today," Shanti said. She coaxed the bindings around her sister's arm, shushing her as she hissed in pain. "You messed yourself up pretty good, didn't you?"

They sat together in their room, a fabric bundle and a wooden pail to their right. Her pain had dyed the water an off-red. Cleaning her arm wound had been an ordeal, one powerful enough to have Shreya biting on a stick to keep from screaming.

Shanti finished the bandages off with a knot. "That must've been one hell of a tree."

Shreya let the stick drop from her mouth. The teeth marks were apparent. "I was careless."

"Sounds like they've got deadlier trees than we do," her sister said. She took a spare cloth and scrubbed at her hands. "Did you fall face-first or back-first?"

"Does it matter?"

"I'd like to be able to picture it better, that's all. You, falling so miraculously out of a tree." Shanti grinned. "It's hilarious."

"If it's so hilarious, you should give it a try," Shreya said. She looked over at her torn cape. Getting a new one wouldn't do. Other than the hole, it had kept its integrity. She'd have to patch it up with something else, some other animal's fur. The patch would serve as a constant reminder of what happened that morning.

At first, she hadn't known what happened. Ellie and another woman had been standing there, both holding the same T-shaped objects. Intricate-looking things, crafted out of wood and metal. Ellie leveled hers at her. Took aim. Something shifted on the object.

And then, there'd been a noise akin to an arrow cleaving the air. She couldn't get that sound out of her head.

"I'd do it if it weren't for that little deal of ours. Without that, I'd be all over their territory," Shanti said. "What's going to happen next, a head wound?"

"Nothing's going to happen to my head."

"Your arm's awful. Y'said the branch impaled you? It went through your cape and all? Any closer, and you would be dead," she observed.

"I've lived through worse," Shreya replied.

"When? You've only started getting messed up ever since you went over the wall." Shanti counted off the instances on her fingers. "Exile. Tree. These things come in threes, you know. Something worse is yet to come!"

"This could've happened in our part of the forest just as easily. Don't blame this on her."

"Huh? Who said anything about a her?"

"I meant it. Don't blame it on the forest."

"Oh no, I don't think so," Shanti said. "That girl's got you falling out of trees now? What the hell, Shreya?"

"It was an accident. I wanted to impress her, and I fell." Shreya came up with the best lie she could. Something compelled her to cover it all up. Embarassment that she'd allowed herself to get tricked, perhaps. The shame at herself for believing that all of the Marjani texts had been wrong.

How long had Ellie wanted to kill her? She'd gotten too comfortable with her, and let her guard drop. The plan must've been set in motion when they found that house together. She'd brought her friend along to confirm her suspicions, to make sure she wasn't about to kill a fellow human.

Whatever she and Ellie had been building together had come tumbling down. It'd been a lie all along.

"You're not made out of stone," Shanti said. "You couldn't have come up with something better than that?"

"I thought it'd help me win her over."

"Did it work? Was it worth the trouble?"

Shreya held her hand over her bad arm, making sure not to press down. She didn't give her an answer.

~ * ~ * ~

It had been Shreya's fault when Loupe's bucket fell from his head. Lost in her thoughts, she'd walked straight into his back. Shreya jumped out of the bucket's path, green herbs bouncing out of it as it met the dirt.

"Sorry!" Shreya bent down to pick them up. Forgetting her two day old injury, she grimaced as she moved her arm the wrong way. She made a pile of greens and placed them back into the bucket.

"It's okay." Loupe got down to her level. He smiled, his eyes wrinkling at the corners. "We should put the bigger ones on the bottom first." He undid all the help she'd done so far.

For someone who considered himself a...were-human, Loupe looked like any other wolf to her. His ears were the same jet black as his hair. He wore a loose shirt, stained with dirt from a recent trip to the fields. Facial hair shadowed the lower half of his face.

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Shreya mumbled another "sorry" towards him, knowing full-well her attitude wouldn't be acceptable with any other older wolf. Was it more polite to treat him like he was a human? Drop all of the cultural niceties around him? Shreya didn't know what to do with him, and she wasn't the only one in their community who felt that way. She was actually surprised that someone let him help out with the herb garden today.

"I said it was okay," Loupe said, keeping his good-natured smile. He put the last plant back inside the bucket. "Take care."

"Please wait," Shreya requested. He stayed at the ground with her, one of his ears tilted in confusion. "Why did you say that?"

"You made an honest mistake. I'm not going to hold it over you."

"No, I meant 'take care.' Humans don't say that. We do." 'Take care' was a special send-off in their language, a sign of utmost love and respect. The Casternian Common translation of it didn't hold the same amount of weight. She switched to the Common language, "they say goodbye and see you later."

Loupe kept up with her, no longer using their native tongue. "I'm human and a wolf."

"How do you know that? You are human, how?" Speaking Casternian to someone other than Ellie or her friends felt strange to her. The strain and mental acrobatics of talking to her had been worth the effort.

"You know it. You can feel it. Humans are different."

Shreya narrowed her eyes. "Yes. Yes, they are different. How? What is it like not being a whole wolf? Incomplete wolf?"

"I think differently from the rest of you," Loupe said, having no trouble at all with his speech. "I don't see things the same way. When everyone goes left, I go right." He dropped his voice to a whisper. "The Elders aren't right about everything. There are inconsistencies in our historical books."

"You noticed?" Shreya's heart jumped.

"So many wolves have pride in non-truths. I'm awake. I know what's real," Loupe said. "They try to make it seem like humans aren't smart, but they are. They've got logic. They've got smarts. They've got intelligence." She wondered if he realized he said the same thing three different ways. "Did you know that our metal blades were repurposed from theirs? The Elders don't want us to know that. Humans are at the pinnacle."

"What?" The last part was too far-fetched for her to believe, nevermind the rest of what he was saying.

"Above all else, humans are good people. We're the traitors. It's our fault things have never worked out. It's all hidden in the books."

"They are as bad as we are. They will turn on you as fast as we would," Shreya said. "And logic? What logic is there in betrayal?"

"Humans are too pure and kind-hearted to do a thing like that," he replied. Loupe shook his head dismissively.

She went back to speaking her mother tongue, tired of the Common language's ugly sounds. "You're wrong. They'll do whatever they need to do to put themselves ahead. If they see something to gain, then they'll do it."

What did Ellie have to gain in shooting her? Killing Shreya wouldn't accomplish anything. She was just another wolf in the community. She had no reason for it.

"That goes against human nature!"

"I have to go," Shreya said, getting up. She couldn't take another minute with Loupe. "I'm expected at the crèche. Take care."

"Goodbye."

Talking to him had done nothing to answer any of the questions that had been haunting her since the last time she saw Ellie. Loupe insisted humans were built out of some combination of high intelligence and kindness, that there was a logical goodness to them. Where had that been when Ellie shot her?

Right before Ellie did that, she'd looked like she'd seen her worst nightmare. She'd gone from all smiles and jokes and casual conversations, to a look of all-out fear. Shreya had seen looks like that before, in those starving days when her family had used her as a pawn...but this time, the fearful girl could fight back. The fearful girl could kill.

What changed overnight?

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A/N: Next post on RRL will be Chapter 19.2. A new chapter on the main site (Chapter 31) came out the other day. Voting for Chapter 31 will end on Saturday night. Visit the main site to read it (and to finish Chapter 19) today.