Matters of the Heart

Perhaps one’s talent is their curse.

* * * * * * * *

Iago spent most of the day napping under the sun. With tomorrow being the first of three Mother’s Morning, today was the last of the summer until the following year. But as the afternoon came to an end and the sky spilled pink and lavender across the horizon, Iago sat up and reassessed his moment.

He should probably pick up some things from the markets before everything shuts down for three days.

He closed his eyes and inhaled. Then he exhaled, slow. What do I really need, anyway? He could easily go three days without food, although it would probably be awful for his stomach.

A change in rhythm rippled across the surface of the wide-set river beside him. Iago watched the river with a raised brow.

Another set of bubbles rose and popped free. From the surface, a scaly-skinned woman with bobbed turquoise hair and ivory highlights rose.

Iago lit up a smile for her. “Loelle! Sweetheart.”

She giggled as the water pushed her above the surface and settled back down with the currents after she stepped upon land. Her skin reflected under the setting sky the way vibrant flakes of opal reflect light in its multitude of hues. Iago got up from the grass and skipped forward to pick her up from the waist.

“What are you doing here?”

“Whatever do you mean?” Loelle laughed.

Iago swung her around before letting her down with a hug. “Everyone’s home for Mother’s Morning. There’s nothing on campus for the next—what? eight days?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” she answered. Her eyes kept on him as she smirked, pupils a wondrous shade of corals and anemones.

Iago shrugged. “You know the Glacial Rivers are too far from Essensia.”

Loelle stared at him. She kept her smirk, not believing that to be Iago’s true reason, but she said nothing for it. “Let’s meet up later and see what classes we have this coming quarter.”

“Of course,” Iago smiled. He leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. “I’ve missed you.”

“Oh, stop it.” Loelle’s response was light-hearted as she stepped back to the riverside and kicked her webbed feet into the water. Fins, slimy and translucent, regrew upon her legs and down her spine, and webs of silver lining branched down the fins as its turquoise body took form. “Aren’t you steady with another girl?” she asked, looking back.

“I’m not,” Iago said with a pout, “and if I was, you know it’d be you.”

“Oh, really?” she responded wryly.

“Most definitely,” Iago nodded. “I prefer my girls wet.”

Loelle let out a bubbly laugh.

“I should hope so!” she shouted before diving into the river. Water danced around Loelle before swallowing her whole, and all the sparkling droplets that flew through the air fell back with their kind to travel with the current of their crowd. Her silhouette wriggled away beneath the surface.

Iago stood there and watched her. Watched her figure shrink away and disappear. Something wanted to feel in his chest, but there was not enough energy for that.

Ironic.

“Mm… excuse me?”

Iago turned to meet that gentle voice. Another woman stood beside him with a bright smile. She caught him by surprise, not because there were few on campus during break, but because she was mesmerizingly beautiful under a head of strangely-colored blue and ivory hair. He couldn’t recall which clan that shade belonged to, but her beauty was comparable to a siren. She was almost as beautiful as Eulylia. Almost.

“Apologies. Was I interrupting something?” she asked shyly, stepping back.

“No,” Iago shook his head. “No, no, you didn’t do anything wrong, sweetheart. Is there something I can help you with?”

“I am not sure if you could help, but… could you possibly show me how to get to Perplexia?”

Iago blinked. She continued to look up at him sweetly.

“Yeah,” he answered with a raised brow. “That library’s on the other side of campus.” He pointed north. “I can walk you there.”

She smiled, blue eyes holding a bit of an aquamarine’s sparkle. “Thank you.” She did a slight bow.

“You from the Mist?” Iago asked, starting down the path. She followed behind, blue hair flowing with the soft breeze.

“Oh? How did you know?” Her fingers touched her cheek, as if hiding a bit of herself from him.

“Lucky guess, darling,” Iago winked. “Your body language reminds me of other people I know. Nothing to worry about.”

“Oh, of course,” she nodded, voice an embarrassed whisper. She swallowed, lips pressed together, and kept eyes down and forward, following Iago’s footsteps on the narrow dirt path. “Are you acquainted with many from… the Mist, you said?”

“A few,” he offered a casual shrug. “Friends of friends.”

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“Do they all have the same body language as I?”

He glanced over and the strangeness of that question, but her face was composed genuine enough. “Some similarities.”

“How interesting, and those not from another province do not? What similarities do we have? Your friends of friends whom I have never met, I mean.”

“Uh… just a… general vibe?” Iago tried. He did a few quick bows and then shrugged it off as his best guess.

“How curious…”

She said nothing more after that.

Iago glanced over, but tried to not stare for too long. Their feet made crunch sounds upon the gravel and pebbles, and Iago tried to enjoy this quiet between them how he could, but with the grey clouds rolling over the moon as blue hour arrived, he felt a bit of tension between them that grew heavier and heavier as the rain came closer, too.

“I don’t think I’ve seen you around here, before.”

“I know you have not.”

Iago blinked. He waited, but she didn’t say anything more. “What do you mean?”

She looked at him curiously. “Today is my first day in Essensia. Of course you have not seen me on campus, before.”

“Oh, of course.”

“Is that not obvious?”

“Oh, yeah. Quite obvious.”

“Then why did you ask?”

Iago let out a soft laugh. He could tell from her face that this question was of genuine curiosity, too. “What were you going to look for, in Perplexia?”

“Oh, mostly curiosity, perhaps,” she said with an embarrassed laugh. “It is an entire library dedicated to recording the world’s unsolved mysteries of the universe. Quite exciting, when one thinks about it!”

Iago pressed his lips thinly together and looked at her. She was skipping down the path at the thought. Ecstatic. To be in a room piled with questions that have driven direct disciples insane. He could not comprehend. “It’s more of a pseudo-library,” he tried to suggest. “It’s a collection of abandoned research and theories with no proofs to be found.”

“I know!” she squealed happily. “Unknowns that have persisted for as long as Aideyll has been. Can you imagine how much of the human mind can be discovered from understanding what exists there?”

He stopped in front of the entrance and glanced at this strange woman. Alright. Certainly one way to look at the situation. He preferred to consider the entire collection a waste of space. So rare was a puzzle from Perplexia solved and moved to a real library—but he wasn’t going to be the one to rain on her party. Pun intended.

“Why did you stop?”

Iago pointed at a gaping hole in the dirt, just beside the dirt path that continued even further north of campus. At a glance, it looked like a half-finished pit that had someone had forgotten to fill up after some construction or plumbing work. Iago held back a laugh at the thought, considering what this place was for.

The blue-haired girl stepped forward and looked into the pit. Upon a closer look, she saw steps that led down to a dimly lit corridor underground. The steps had been paved with gemstones, much like the rest of the architectural choices made on campus, but the stones had long lost their shine under all the debris.

“This is Perplexia?”

“Correct.”

She turned to him, smiled, and bowed again. “Thank you.”

He chuckled. “Of course, sweetheart. Iago,” he said, holding out a hand. “What should I call you by, the next time we cross paths?”

The blue-haired girl looked into his gold-tinted eyes.

“Alea.”

She did not take his hand.

“Alea,” Iago repeated carefully, bringing his hand back down to gesture a farewell, instead. “I’ll see you around, Alea. Transliteration class, most likely.”

She nodded. “I look forward to it.”

Iago reached over to pat her on the shoulder. He had retracted the energy from his pathways so that Alea wouldn’t freeze over upon his touch, but in the moment he placed a hand on her, he felt his pathways forced open inside him. A burst of energy surged through his fingertips.

There, from the abyssal corners of his mind, came forth the woman he had not thought of in what had felt like three cycles of forever ago. From nowhere, he could smell that lavender scent that always lingered in her hair, could feel the soft warm of her touch, could see the last time she looked up at him, tears rolling off her face and onto her bed, a forced smile, a final breath begging for forgiveness and asking to not be forgotten.

Iago took his hand off Alea. He had to blink a few times to come back to where he was, right then.

On campus, in Essensia. Standing beneath the heavy clouds.

“I—oh my… Iago, I am so sorry!” She looked at him in horror, tears rolling down her cheeks.

Iago looked to her shoulder. Looked down at his hand. Looked back at her shoulder.

Did she…

“Are you hurt?” was all he managed to ask, first. He was about to hold her and check her himself, but hesitated to touch her a second time. “Is your shoulder alright?”

Alea nodded, tears falling even harder. Iago took in a slow breath. The sky was getting dark.

His heart had not felt this heavy in a long time—had not felt too large to fit between his lungs in a long time. It was years ago, when Iago last saw that woman this vividly in his mind.

Years ago, had been the last time he found it this painful to breathe, his throat this unwilling to swallow. Iago tried to push down what distaste was in his mouth anyway, and the strenuous tugging of the throat brought back a familiar loneliness. One Iago had once believed was gone for good.

“… Did you see her?” he whispered.

Alea nodded soft and slow. “I am so sorry… I…” she held onto her chest, hands trembling before her. “I do not know how that happened. I did not know it would be this painful… your heart, I—oh, Iago, I am so sorry.” She bowed, again and again.

“Wait… you felt—you felt what I felt?” His question came out urgent, almost frustrated, and at seeing Alea break down further before him, he recollected himself before continuing. “You could smell it? Could you feel her touch? See her tears? Did you feel…” He felt his breath catch in his throat.

Alea nodded, faster and more apologetic. “I didn’t mean to pry, I—truly, I’m sorry.”

Iago closed his eyes. Pushed everything out of his mind. The best he could, anyway. Alea continued to apologize in front of him, but all of her frenzy became a buzz by the time it reached his ears.

Eventually, he opened his eyes again and let out a soft sigh. “What, exactly, is your talent, sweetheart?”

Alea stopped apologizing and bit her lip. There was a long pause before she responded. So long, that Iago wondered if Alea was stalling to come up with a lie.

“I—perhaps I am at the Academy to find out.”

The answer confused him. How does someone not know of their talent? Is that even possible?

“Iago, are you alright? I didn’t mean to—"

“Alea…” he eased, eyes kept on the ever-darkening sky, mind kept on that woman buried from his memories. “Alea, if it was an accident, don’t worry about it.”

Alea blinked her tears away when she looked up at him.

“Have you never practiced your talent? As an emittier?”

“I… I do not think so,” she murmured.

Iago raised a brow. “Wha—which clan are you from?”

Alea bit her lip. “I’m from the Province of the Mist.”

“Sweetheart,” Iago said with a soft laugh. “That says nothing about your genes. Your clan. Your family?”

“My father is a doctor,” Alea answered. “I do not have a mother.”

He pressed his brows together and stared her down. Thought about it a bit more.

The facts about her family sounded like they hurt—probably not the fact that her father was a doctor, but more so because she didn’t have a mother. He looked up at the sky, and decided it best to just go home before the storm. They were evidently schoolmates, but strangers, nonetheless.

“Well, then,” he finally said. “I apologize for asking something so personal.”

Alea looked down at the dirt path. She didn’t answer.

“I’ll see you around.” Iago gestured a good-bye, and then pointed at the entrance to Perplexia. “Get what you need, and get back soon. Mother’s Morning is to come in a few hours, and the hours of the summer nights are shorter here, in Essensia.”

Alea nodded. “I will. Thank you. For caring about my well-being.” She dipped her head for another bow.

“Anything for you, sweetheart,” Iago said casually, and started down the path back to his room.

Something wanted to feel in his chest, but there was not enough energy for that.