The Beaten Hearts, Colliding

The scar I bear upon my breast tells me I am as deceitful as I am beautiful.

* * * * * * * *

“Come pack ‘nother day, Mister Szak’rilis,” Hazeldine called from behind the counter as Szak reattached his sword to his hip. “’njoy tat haze putter cov’ee!”

“I will, old man,” Szak called out, walking with a cup in hand, briefly glancing up as he walked past the door frame. He continued to let his frustration bubble inside him as he strolled through the markets; the only difference this time around was the naturally sweet aftertaste of hazelnut holding onto his tongue. It was the little things that kept his brief moments of contentment intact.

With Fiera gone hunting and nothing much to do, Szak decided to stroll through the markets, thinking of the last time he spoke with his father.

Observe the string that threads together all of Aideyll, huh?

He sipped his coffee. When he looked up from the rim of his cup, a figure upon a building in the distance caught his eye. Szak automatically pinned the beautiful woman as a Desireen.

She stood at the edge atop one of the taller buildings in the village, eyes stuck upon the individuals going back and forth in the streets below.

People watching.

The cloth composing her dress was light, pushed around by the wind like a sail in the waters. Her hair was short and could not stray far from her face, thereby tangling with each other—to the best short hair may tangle—in the only space reachable before her eyes.

Szak continued walking toward her, mainly because she happened to stand in the direction he was headed regardless, but he kept an eye on her. The siren’s behavior was off, but he could not put his finger on why. He took another sip of his coffee.

Thoughts started to stray once again, to opinions of his father. How his mother was able to put up with him was beyond his comprehension, let alone her promises of commitment to him. Willingly.

Szak would one day have to be challenged and find his own, as well. At the rate women were in the Twinkling Hearth, Katarina was the most likely option in his age range. If anyone were to manage beating him in a duel, it’d be her.

She better still be resting in the hospital. Crazy woman.

From his left, a girl sprinted past him and continued through the crowd, hair in long, beautiful strands of a most unfamiliar shade of blue among ivory. Szak stopped his walk mid-step, and looked up. The siren upon the building turned along the edge.

Shit.

She had been watching the people walk back and forth, waiting for the opportune moment when there was no one below—when she would not take anyone other than herself.

“Out of my way!” He threw his cup to the side as he ran.

Faces turned to Szak before stumbling to either side of the street.

“Stop!”

The blue-haired girl avoided everyone in the crowd with supernatural ease as she sped through, managing to even keep distance from Szak without knowing he was after her.

Feet above tipped off the edge.

Szak reached out for that blue-haired girl.

Behind him, the cup fell onto the ground and rolled over, hazelbutter coffee spilling across the dirt like a sudden vomit out from the lips.

Just two paces away…

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The siren fell, arms and legs flung about gracefully in the air, back against the winds. Air wrapped its empty and elusive arms around her body.

“Stop!”

The siren waited for the impact to bring her peace.

Got it.

Szak leaned in and grabbed the blue-haired girl’s wrist just as her arm swung back mid-run. The blue-haired girl turned and met his eyes with hers for only a split moment, horrified.

Immediately, he felt his heart ripped to pieces.

All he could see after a passing glimpse of her aquamarine eyes was Anastilia’s warm smile, Anastilia’s fierce eyes, Anastilia’s strength, Anastilia’s patience, Anastilia’s tears, Anastilia’s back, Anastilia’s bloody head on a pike on the other side of the Edge.

And then he felt the girl’s wrist ripped out of his grasp.

Szak blinked and refocused on the present, breath heavy. All around, people were screaming and crying and talking in frenzied whispers. He looked down.

The siren’s body laid splayed on top of and completely masking the blue-haired girl. One of the siren’s legs landed bent in the wrong direction, and both arms were also, without a doubt, broken from impact. Beneath her, long strands of cerulean and ivory flayed about as blood trickled its way out, dying the strands dark brown and crimson.

He knelt down to the two women on the ground and checked the pulse of the siren.

Her heart’s still beating.

He turned to the crowd. “Find a healer!” He turned to the other side of the market surrounding him. “Closest Envra! Now!”

A few scattered away in every direction, frantically searching as ordered. Szak turned back to the two before him, checking the neck of the blue-haired girl.

No pulse.

Szak felt sick, and it wasn’t from running right after eating all those hazelnut sweets. He eyed the siren up and down. Her head was intact, with no blood along the top side. A quick check along both sides of her spine underneath. When he didn’t feel any punctures or rips along her flesh, he stood up and lifted the siren off as carefully as he could.

It’s not my fault.

Over and over again, he replayed what had happened at ferocious speed. He laid the siren gently down and turned back to the blue-haired girl.

Szak knew it before her distorted body was revealed. He had seen enough paled skins and empty stares to recognize the face of death. Even so, he pressed fingers against her bloody jugular.

Still no pulse.

He reached his other hand under her broken face, skin chalk white with a bloody mouth leaking red out of a dislocated and shattered jaw. He tried to lift her head, but his hand stopped cold.

Fingers pressed against the arachnoid layer of her brain, wet with blood and other fluids. What was there to protect her brain had spilled onto the ground beneath her. Bending one of his fingers, he felt a cavity in the groves of her brain as the ridged edge of cracked bone scraped under his knuckles. He seemed to have accidentally meandered his way between two parts of her skull. Taking a solid breath, he slid his bloody hand back out.

Why.

“I’m here!” a young man’s voice shouted from the distance.

Szak looked up toward that direction. Two people, a healing sprite and an assistant, made their way through the crowds. The man who called out was tall, with long, slender arms and even stalkier legs. Black and ivory hair hugged his stern cheeks as he ran over. The assistant, a younger woman with a round face, round eyes, and thin strawberry lips, floated beside him. Her violet and ivory hair intertwined its way down past her knees in intricate braids.

“That one’s heart is still alive,” Szak said, pointing at the siren. He watched the two approach her, feeling for her pulse the same way he did just moments earlier. And then his eyes widened, in disbelief at what he felt.

He had to be imagining things.

He looked back down at the girl, took his hand away from her jugular, and placed it back on.

“What of that one?” the healing sprite asked, pointing at the blue-haired woman.

There, soft, and slow, was a trying pulse.

Szak looked at the girl’s face. It laid there, floppy and lopsided. From the corner of his eyes, he saw one of her fingers move.

“… also with pulse,” he decided to say. As soon as those words left his lips, he heard the girl’s shoulder crack. Unmistakably.

“Take them both,” the healing sprite ordered the violet-headed faerie. “Bring to one of Reikon’s assistants.”

Szak watched the faerie lift both of the bloody women off the cobblestoned ground, controlling the air beneath them. They floated above the crowd and sped in the direction of the Academy Hospital.

What was that girl?

Shade of hair was always a giveaway for what the talent was, or to what family the individual belonged. Ivory hair meant she was an emittier, as opposed to silver for an innatier, but that shade of blue was unfamiliar. It was not the same as his mother’s darker shade, common for air sprites, and it was not the same blue-green shade as some of the mermaidens Iago liked to hang around.

If she’s able to regenerate so quickly…

There was no family in Aideyll that could escape death. Not even the most practiced of the Envra clan could heal at a rate this blue-haired girl did while unconscious, if not already dead, earlier.

And what was that all about? Me, thinking of Ana, of all moments to think of—

As soon as his mind saw his sister’s head on the pike again, clumps of long red and black hair moving with the wind, he stopped his thought and forced himself to blank out.

The crowd separated little by little, in loud commotion the entire time. Szak picked himself up, dusted his pants, and readjusted the sword he hung beside him.

There was no other answer. He had to let his curiosity guide him down the path to the Academy’s Hospital.