Unlikely Acquaintances

The heart fears loneliness more than death, for in loneliness a vacant hope relentlessly drags the soul.

* * * * * * * *

Szak saw her blue hair make a left, just ahead.

“Out of my way!” He found himself yelling for the second time that day. Healers and assistants moved aside as he trailed behind her.

Even so, it seemed impossible for him to catch up to her. He stopped and turned back to the closest assistant, one of the Vizari clan with teal eyes.

“You. Which way is the entrance?”

“O-off to the fourth right, and then the end of the third left,” she stammered, side-glancing down the hall.

Szak gave a single nod and went as such.

There was only one entrance and one exit for the entire hospital, and he was willing to bet that the girl wouldn’t have known how to get out of this maze, that she was unconscious when she arrived, or at the least, not paying attention to how she had gotten to her room. As long as he blocked her from leaving—if whoever this “Reikon” was would find her in the hospital, then Szak would’ve done his job. He turned left.

The end of the crystal hallway was familiar. The front desk stood halfway through, with the bark still on the counter, as the harpy had left it, earlier. When he got closer, he could see the feather resting on top and the little bottle beside it.

“Is everything alright?” The male nurse behind the counter stood up.

Szak came to a stop and looked out the entrance. Outside the topaz doors, the amethyst walkway was clear, and the arboretum surrounding the glass walls were at peace. She wasn’t here.

And then, he heard a rush of footsteps behind him.

“Miss?” The nurse called.

Szak turned and saw her running up to the entrance from the hall just to the left of the counter. He stepped before the doorway, blocking her path.

“Hey. Wait.”

She stopped in his shadow, inhaled a breath in surprise as she nearly bumped into him. When she looked up, her blue eyes were so close to his in scarlet, that Szak held his breath, too, as if he didn’t want even his exhale to touch her.

But her eyes.

Freedom. That was what Szak saw her pleading for behind her tears. The same gaze he had seen before from prisoners and slaves he’d come across on the other side. Is she from Oblivion, too?

“Where were you going to go?”

Her eyes searched his face. “I—” she took a step back.

Szak, too, took a step back and cleared his throat to try again. “Szakarilis Drakon.”

She blinked. “I’m sorry? I don’t understand.”

“My name.” He clarified, taking in a deep breath for patience.

She nodded and looked down to the ground beside them. Szak waited until he couldn’t any longer, which was a total of about five seconds.

“And what is your name?”

“Alea,” she whispered, meeting his eyes again.

“Alea.” He repeated. That sounds like a sprite’s name. But she doesn’t have the genetic makeup of a sprite. He pressed his brows together. “Where were you—”

“Thank you, for trying to stop me earlier. In the marketplace.”

Szak stopped. Thought back to how she knew it was him, then remembered that he had been the last thing she saw before the siren collided into her. He was at a loss of words.

What am I to say? ‘You’re welcome’? Would that affirm to her that what she did was wrong? And why did she have to use the word ‘trying’ like I had failed? I grabbed her, didn’t I?

“Where were you going to go?”

“I—I had no destination in mind, I just…” she paused. “Have you ever felt the necessity to escape the ‘here’, even if it meant anywhere?”

Yes.

“No.” In the split moment he answered that, he felt Alea’s eyes dig into him before looking away—as if she knew, somehow, that he was lying.

“Well, I… I just…” she looked down at her hands covered in blood that neither knew was hers or the siren’s. “I shouldn’t have…”

“You did the right thing,” Szak said without thinking.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“No, I didn’t,” she shook her head. “If you knew of the pain she went through… no one should ever have to live that way. I shouldn’t have stopped her. I shouldn’t have made her continue suffering, I should have—”

“You should’ve what? Stood by and watched her die?”

Alea looked up at him. Thinking. That obviously did not sound like the right answer, either, and Szak was relieved that she had at least two brain cells to hear and process that much.

“You should’ve died back there,” Szak decided to say.

Alea nodded. “Yes… yes, I should’ve, I shouldn’t have done such a thing.”

“No, I meant—” he paused to try to recollect his thoughts among her idiocy. “You fooled me earlier to think you were dead. Are you going to explain that to me, or am I going to have to pry that out of you?”

“… Dead?” She tilted her head a bit. “Why would you think I died?”

“For one, your brain was smashed into the ground,” Szak recalled in a low whisper.

“I’m sorry I made you worry,” she whispered back, looking away. “But, I was far from death.”

The same words again. Far. That she would speak of being relative to death in a way that insinuated she knew more.

“How—”

“Alea?” Eulylia sang behind her.

Szak looked up as Alea turned around. Iago was there, too, and Szak tried his best to suppress his frustration, more for himself, of not getting the chance to ask Alea how in the world she survived that crash.

“I’m sorry, but how do you know me?” Alea asked.

“I am Lyly, and…” she placed a delicate hand on her chest. Her long, gold-tinted fingernails caressed her collar. “You saved my family. Alea, I am indebted to your compassion for—”

“Ah, ah,” Szak said, holding a hand out between them just as Eulylia outstretched her arms. “Her customs make her uncomfortable with being touched.”

Alea looked up at Szak in that moment. Szak saw from the corner of his eyes, the gratitude she had for him, but he opted to not respond and kept his eyes on Eulylia, instead.

Eulylia glared up at him. “Well. It is not like you, Szakarilis, to be aware of a custom that is not your own. How thoughtful.”

“She’s also from the Mist,” Iago eased. “That’s how he knows.”

Is she? Szak looked down at Alea. Or did he make that up just now? He didn’t meet the glance Iago sent his way.

“Regardless,” Eulylia hummed, turning to Alea. “I overheard everything you said. Siren ears, and all,” she smiled and tapped her one of her ears a couple times. “Please do not utter such perverse thoughts. You did not err.”

“Lyly… all I thought about was me. I ran to her—got in her way, without considering what she would have wanted. She did not wish for the siren’s curse any longer…”

Szak repeated what Alea said in his head. Why does she sound like she has a siren’s voice when she says these things?

“Everything I did was wrong, Lyly. I stole from her the choice to die, to move on from what she could never change about her… this filth, this perverse existence…” Alea’s voice cracked at the thought.

“Alea,” Eulylia stepped forward to close the distance. “Thank you.”

Szak raised a brow. He looked to Iago this time, and Iago’s face told Szak that he was equally confused.

“May I?” Eulylia whispered, arms lifted open.

“I—all this blood, I—”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” Eulylia said, teary-eyed. She leaned in and hugged Alea close to her chest, digging her nose into her shoulder and smearing her cheek with blood not yet dried. Iago fell further for her in that moment.

A darling little bird with a song.

A mother’s death in the dark.

Bruises up and down the arms and legs.

The healthiest yellow and ivory hair ripped out and cut to pieces.

And then Eulylia had been sent away, never to sing near home ever again.

The onslaught of these memories brought even heavier tears to Eulylia’s eyes, and when Alea tentatively brought hands up to return the hug, Eulylia only hugged even tighter, with soft sobs humming a ballad’s whisper. Both Szak and Iago paid close attention to the two, but Eulylia did not act as if she had private thoughts heave forward out of their own accord, and each had wondered, in that moment, if they had imagined their initial encounter with Alea, themselves.

“It truly is such a venomous pain to endure,” Eulylia said, voice soft in Alea’s clumps of bloody hair. “And if we are not steadfast in our hearts, it consumes us so. Alea, my dear, thank you for acknowledging our pain. It is a burden that inhales such emptiness, the vacuum shrivels our lungs and takes away all that we wish to be.”

“Sweetheart,” Iago said, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Sorry to interrupt this, but let’s get out of the way, there’s someone walking up to the entrance.”

Eulylia let go of Alea and looked up just as Szak side-stepped out of the way, turning to see who it was. Not that he’d recognize them. It was a mother with a child, both of whom kept inquisitive eyes upon the four of them the entire way past them and to the front counter.

Eulylia inhaled a soft breath and wiped her tears away, recollecting herself.

“Lyly…”

“Yes?” She turned to Alea.

“She never manipulated his emotions.”

“Of course. Yukina would never do such a thing.”

Alea turned to her. “Why does he believe she did?”

Eulylia’s smile was soft for her. “That does seem to be the curse that comes with our talent, does it not? We are the monster wrapped in beauty. In truth, we are disgusting. Wretched. Ugly. Filth. When a man falls out of love with a siren, it is only because he was a fortunate man who came to his senses and saw the kind of predators we are.”

“That may not be how it is in Aideyll,” Szak interjected, “but sirens are the predators to watch out for in Oblivion.”

Eulylia kept her gaze away. “Perhaps.”

“Excuse me.”

All four turned toward the hallways, where a healer stood. His long black and ivory hair was tied behind him in a low ponytail.

“Reikon Envra. Miss,” he said, pine-green eyes on Alea. “If you’d follow me, I’ve a room prepared. Check up and clean up. Come along.”

“Ah—alright,” Alea nodded shyly. She turned to Eulylia, Iago, and finally Szak, offering each of them a quick bow before following Reikon around the corner and down the hall.

Iago waited until Alea was out of sight. “Sweetheart,” he turned to Eulylia. “I don’t believe you use your song to control my feelings for you.”

“Do you?” Eulylia said, a smile in disbelief crawling up a cheek. She met Iago’s eyes with her own. “Are you certain you would still have faith in that if I did not so intently keep you at a distance the way I do now?”

A second’s pause. That was all Eulylia allowed Iago to give her before she bid him and Szak each a nod goodbye. “I will return to my aunt, now.”

When Eulylia, too, was out of sight, Iago turned to Szak, but before he could ask, Szak already had an answer for him.

“Yes. You did fuck that up. But at least you tried to be honest, for once.”

“That’s not fair,” Iago pouted. “I’m an honest guy.”

Szak rolled his eyes. “And I’m a nice one.”

Iago laughed as he watched Szak walk out to the amethyst path.

Then, he looked down at the crystal floors beneath him and thought of how beautiful Eulylia looked beneath all the bloodstains Alea had smeared on her. He thought of their summer days under the tree upon the hill, and he thought of her being dispatched out to the Edge upon graduation from the Academy, where she’ll likely get more than the bloodstains on her cheek, today.

He sighed and went back down the hallway, listening for her song again so that he could see her one more time.