“Marina.” The Chief smiles, taking a long sip from her porcelain teacup.
“Yes, Chief?” I half-heartedly look up as I laze across this sinfully comfortable chaise lounge, channelling the exhaustion of a young noblewoman on the night after her debutante ball, my wings draped over the back of the sofa.
“Sit properly. There’s plenty of seats, Arshiya, so you don’t need to be on the floor, either.” She ‘smiles’, shooting a look at Arshiya, who’s laying flat on her stomach across the countless, luxuriously soft fur rugs covering the smooth wooden floor.
“Oh, let her be.” Arezza laughs, tickling my ears and sending a wave of happiness through my body, shrugging off the Chief’s complaint about Arshiya’s etiquette. “These are my personal chambers, and you are my guests. You are more than welcome to enjoy the decor however you please.”
Arezza’s personal chambers.
I never had the opportunity to visit a royal’s personal chambers, but I had visited a few palaces in my time. After all, the Retali family were the greatest luthiers in the Sovrana Republic; our violins, cellos, and violas were played in palaces and opera houses in the capital of the Giornovan Empire in the west, to the grand theatres of the Empire of Song in the east. We weren’t nobility per say, but our name was known in every noble household of note. Occasionally, us three daughters of the Retali family would put on our best dresses and join our father on journeys into the city to present our latest work to its buyer. Father was protective of us three, and made sure no no-good noble son got their hands on any of us, but he was just as eager to show off how beautiful, smart, and talented his daughters were.
As such, I’m not unfamiliar with the parlour rooms and foyers of countryside estates and city townhouses. These were always forward-facing rooms, though, where elegance and opulence is key to reinforce one’s social standing among high society. Our setting for tonight’s evening is a private room, however, one intended for gatherings of close friends where gossip and rumours are traded over tea and scones. The decor of this room’s focus is not elegance, but absolute, luxurious comfort.
Fur throw rugs, some white, some black, red, orange, even blue, covering every inch of the floor. Silk curtains of brilliant hues hang between every marble pillar lining the walls of white stone bricks, framing the green and gold doorways on either side of the room. Crystal chandeliers cast near-daylight across the room, in stark contrast to the dry dirt roof; the only reminder that we’re supposedly still in a cave. The Chief, Arezza, and I lounge back on deluxe lounges, sofas, and lounge chairs, sipping from porcelain teacups, while Arshiya has made herself quite comfortable on the floor. I’d join her, but this chaise lounge already has its clutches on me.
There is, of course, a question in my head. The elephant in the room.
“I’m sure you have plenty of questions for us, Arezza, but if you’d be so kind as to allow us to field the first question here.” The Chief says, taking another sip of tea.
“Certainly.” Arezza smiles.
Arezza’s lounge chair, matching the one the Chief is sitting in, is clearly designed with an Azorii in mind. The low arms of the chair are the perfect height for Arezza to rest her wings across them, her wingtips reaching down to just above the floor. The dark blue cushioning only further emphasises her pearly-white wings and their royal blue membranes stretching between each delicate finger, adorned with white gold rings, gemstones of emerald and ruby framed with silver, and the long, platinum chain hanging from each wingtip to the small of her back.
The Chief takes a long look across the room, making a point of scanning across every surface and piece of decor, before settling her gaze upon Arezza.
“Explain.” She speaks, furrowing her brow.
“What is there to explain? I’ve simply made myself comfortable here.” Arezza shrugs lightly, laying back in her chair as she takes a sip from her teacup.
“We’re in a cave in the middle of the Abyss, and I sincerely doubt all this furniture has always been here, let alone the brickwork or the marble columns.” She pushes, needing to get the bottom of this to sate her curiosity.
“Oh, all this. I just summoned it from home. It reminds them that I’m still alive down here.” Arezza smiles casually, as if this is just a normal, everyday thing. “You said you were a Sage, didn’t you? Is the idea of me summoning objects that outlandish?”
“The only magic I have witnessed you perform is water purification and basic metaphysical manipulation of water. Summoning objects is an entirely different school altogether!” The Chief stresses, resting her hand on the golden pendant around her neck. I realise now she never once hid that pendant on her, an elaborately detailed golden sigil showing her status as a Sage. Arezza just didn’t recognise it, if she even noticed it.
“Maybe, in the strange systems those from the ‘Overlands’ use. Summoning and water purification are but two of the many spells I wield with ease~” Arezza puffs her chest out, obviously stroking her own ego.
“Did it not cross your mind to summon something more useful than chaise lounges and throw rugs? Or maybe someone who could help get you out of here?” The Chief is obviously unimpressed.
“Summoning anything is a lengthy and strenuous procedure that requires intimate knowledge of the item to be summoned. Summoning a living being is entirely different from summoning my bed, or my favourite chair.” Arezza clarifies, pouting at the Chief.
“So for the three years you’ve been here, you’ve just been progressively summoning more and more of your residence here to make yourself more comfortable?” The Chief puts down her teacup on the small table beside her chair, crossing her arms.
“I must have emptied out half a dozen rooms by now. I’ve practically ripped out the walls of half a dozen rooms! I know no one wants to fly into the Abyss, but surely they must have noticed that it’s my things that keep disappearing from the palace. I’m very clearly still alive down here, so what’s taken them so long to do something about it?” Arezza huffs, crossing her arms as well.
“And why does no one want to fly into the Abyss? I know your wing is broken, but what’s stopped others who can fly from coming down here?” The Chief asks.
“Oh, there’s all sorts of silly rumours about giant birds with their entrails hanging out that live in the clouds smothering this place. It is a long way down, I know, but some people take these things too seriously.” Arezza sighs, confidently shrugging off such rumours.
“You mean the carrion hawks. Given their size, they could probably swallow someone like you in a single gulp.” The Chief nods.
“The car- the what? The carrion… they’re real?” Arezza’s confidence falls apart.
“Yes. Ask Marina, she killed one a few moons ago. Just sadly, not before… it killed one of ours.” The Chief sighs.
That really was several months ago, now. The fine details have grown hazy, but the two moments that ring clear in my head…
Seeing Nate die in seconds, and the feeling of the carrion hawk lifelessly dropping to the ground beneath me.
The smell of it lingers in my mind too, but for some reason all I can think of is a distinct yet unfamiliar floral smell, like the scent of a rose I’ve never smelt before…
“Really? You saw one? And killed it?” Arezza asks, right in my face-
“G-Gahh?!”
I jerk back on the lounge, nearly knocking it over as I recoil from suddenly realising that Arezza’s standing right in front of me. When the hell did she get so- Ah. The floral perfume. That’s the scent coming off her.
“What’re you so jumpy about? It’s only me~” Arezza smiles. Ah, she’s right, it is only her… Her long, dark eyelashes, framing her eyes as green and brilliant as emeralds, the white, iridescent sheens of her horns… It’s only Arezza, in all her beauty.
“Those two may be blissfully unaware of what you’re doing, Arezza, but I’ve read enough to know just what someone like you is capable of.” The Chief’s unimpressed voice pulls me back down to reality.
“Ehh? What do you mean, ‘what I’m doing’?” Arezza turns to pout at the Chief.
“First off, give Marina some personal space. She gets flustered when people get close to her.” the Chief sighs.
“I-I do?” … Yeah, I do, I feel less flustered now that Arezza’s gone back to her chair.
“What do you mean, ‘first off’?” Arezza frowns, sitting back down on her chair and crossing her arms. “I haven’t done anything else.”
“Secondly, what you’ve been doing with your voice. It was obvious when it broke earlier after I grew tired of your little facade.” The Chief narrows her eyes.
“What do you mean, what I’m doing with my voice? This is the natural cadence in which I speak.” Arezza brings her hand to her chest as she speaks in her natural, beautiful voice, to emphasise her shock at these frivolous accusations of… wait. Frivolous? Why am I thinking this?
“Every time you open your mouth, those two glaze over pink and bloom like a field of peonies. Did you think that I wouldn’t notice that?” The Chief lays out her accusation.
“... Hmpf. Soulseers are no fun.” Arezza huffs, crossing her arms. Her voice is now softer and more high-pitched; no less pleasant, but certainly not as persuasive as her voice was before.
“Your voice still sounds nice to listen to, Arezza.” Arshiya smiles, practically melting into the fur rugs.
“Thank you, Arshiya.” Arezza smiles. “You can all call me Arza, too. All my friends call me Arza~”
“I imagine a royal princess would have no shortage of friends… if you don’t take into consideration how genuine those ‘friends’ are.” The Chief mutters, taking another long sip from her tea.
“No one’s falling over themselves to secure positive relationships with merely… well, with only the sixth daughter of the Royal Family. I hadn’t had much of a chance to show my merits before I, uh… ended up down here.” Arezza chuckles awkwardly, scratching her cheek with a finger.
“How old are you, if you don’t mind me asking? I had read that Azorii have the same average lifespan as humans.” The Chief asks, adjusting her posture as she turns to Arezza.
“A normal Azorii has a similar lifespan, yes, but I am no ordinary Azorii.” Arezza smiles proudly, resting her hand on her chest. “The Servikal are blessed with long life to oversee the prosperity of their people, and as such, many live past the age of two hundred years. My own mother, blessed be her reign, is only in her 160s, still as beautiful as the day she ascended to the throne nearly a century ago.”
“They made you rehearse that, didn’t they.” The Chief comments.
“Ah…” Arezza falters. “I-is it that obvious?”
“Don’t worry.” The Chief chuckles. “Just the little things you pick up on when you’re raised in the ‘upper class’ of society.”
The conversation briefly falls quiet, as the Chief silently scans up and down Arezza’s form, and I’m fairly certain Arshiya’s fallen asleep on the floor. As the silence draws longer, Arezza begins to fidget in her chair, her cheeks starting to redden as the Chief looks upon her.
“... M-my, I know I’m beautiful, but you don’t have to stare so much, you know…” Arezza speaks up, twiddling her fingers nervously.
“Ah, sorry, it’s only just settled in that I’m talking to someone that… that I’d only read about in books. That I never… that I didn’t think I’d see soon.” The Chief blinks, realising she’s been staring.
“So soon?” Arezza blinks, shifting forward in her chair. “And… books? You have books?”
“She lives above Haven’s library. I live in a room beside the library.”
“Haven has a library?!” Arezza shifts in her chair towards me, her excitement quickly growing.
“I thought you’d have questioned everything Crow knew about Haven.” The Chief raises an eyebrow slightly.
“I did, and yes Mole was there and he confirmed everything and he mentioned a library, but you really have one? Full of books and scrolls and comfy chairs by the fireplace?” Arezza is sitting on the very edge of her chair by now, her wings lifted off the ground and fluttering slightly in excitement.
“Scrolls certainly wouldn’t survive in an environment like the Abyss, but we have everything else you listed. Do you… not have any books here? You summoned all this other furniture here but not any books?” The Chief looks around the room, at everything Arezza has summoned down here for her comfort, noting the complete lack of books anywhere to be seen.
“Oh, I would love to be able to do that! But nooo, all books in the Palace are to be kept in the Royal Library, which is warded against any and all “unapproved magical intercessions” so I can’t just summon whatever I want from there whenever I want.” Arezza huffs, slumping back in her chair with her arms crossed and pulling her best pout.
“Alright, returning to the questions I wished to ask earlier…” The Chief sighs, waiting for Arezza to calm down before continuing. “There was one other thing I’ve noticed since arriving here.”
“And that is?” Arezza asks, fixing her posture and leaning back in her chair.
“There clearly used to be adults here. More than you, anyway. Otherwise, why would everything be dug out and shaped with adults in mind. Yes, Rann and Rob had to stoop a bit here and there, but this certainly wasn’t a space created by and for children alone.” The Chief asks her second question.
“Ah, that… Yes, you’re right, there were adults here. Before I was here. When I first woke up here, they, along with Wolf, were already gone. They had all left… to keep all of us safe.” Arezza manages a small smile, but this is clearly a painful topic for her.
“Safe from the Bone Breakers, I assume.” The Chief comments.
“Yes. As I’m sure you know, the Breakers ignore children in the Abyss. When I was brought here, the Breakers were much closer to the Hollows. If they found this place, they’d ransack it, abduct all the adults, and leave the children to fend for themselves. When Wolf left in one direction, the other adults left in another, leading the Breakers away from here. It worked, and the Breakers haven’t been near this area since. It’s just, as time’s gone on, I… I don’t think we’ll ever see those adults again.” Arezza’s shoulders slump forward, sighing to herself.
“Hmm…” The Chief ponders, raising an eyebrow.
“... What? Have I not convinced you? I’m telling the truth.” Arezza says, sitting up as her pained expression turns to one of anger.
“You’re telling the truth, Arezza, I can see that. What I also see is the guilt you feel about this subject.” The Chief clarifies.
“Ah…” Arezza sighs, slumping back down. “Soulseers really are no fun…”
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
“I was eleven, when I awoke in the Abyss. I wandered around alone, for gods knows how many days, with nothing but a suitcase full of clothes that didn’t fit me. I survived by eating whatever I could find that was edible. Roots, mostly, and I drank from the cleanest part of the rust-filled puddles I could find. I wasn’t going to last much longer on my own, until Rann and Haven’s expedition team found me. I was barely able to stand, but I certainly didn’t want to be taken prisoner by a group of adults. At least, until I saw what they were carrying.” The Chief says.
“Piles of food?” Arezza asks.
“One of their own. He was severely injured and deathly pale, but they were doing their best to save him. I figured that if they were trying to save one of their own, they weren’t your average band of brigands looking for people to rob and children to abduct. So, I let them take me with them. I passed out pretty soon after, and when I woke up, I was in Haven. The injured man they were carrying was dead.” The Chief sighs, looking down at her now-empty teacup. “After some time, Rann told me that it was the injured man who noticed I was in the area, and told them to find me. If they’d gone straight back to Haven, he might have survived. But their first priority was rescuing me.”
“We don’t always get to make the decisions about ourselves, do we?” Arezza sighs with a small smile.
“No, no we don’t. Neither when we’re children, nor when we’re adults. It’s just learning if those who make decisions for you have your best interests in mind or not.” The Chief nods.
“Eleven years old, to be lost in the Abyss… how many years have you been in Haven?” She asks.
“This is my twelfth year in Haven, and my third year as its Chief. Assuming years, moons, and days do line up in the Underlands as it does in the Overlands, then I’m twenty-two… to be twenty-three in another two moons, if I recall correctly.” The Chief answers, making sure she’s getting her own age right.
“Oh! So you’re the same age as me!” Arezza nods.
“We are? I thought you said your mother was 160 years old?” The Chief frowns.
“Just because my dear mother is 160 doesn’t mean I am anywhere near her age! My eldest sister is 87, and I have two younger sisters as well. Well… it might be more now, I’m not exactly in the loop on what’s happening with anything outside the Abyss anymore, aha…” Arezza chuckles awkwardly.
“So your mother had you when she was… and she’s still had more since… I see. The book on Azorii didn’t mention anything about the upper age limit for an Azorii’s sexual maturity, but it’s certainly higher than that of an ordinary human female. I should add a note of that in that book when I return to Haven…” The Chief ponders, getting buried in her own thoughts as she puzzles out the reproductive capabilities of an Azorii.
“A-are you that curious about how Azorii reproduce…?” Arezza asks, a little concerned at just how interested the Chief is.
“That book calls itself The Complete Story of the Azorii and it’s clearly lacking important information to make it complete! The minute I get the chance, I’m lodging a complaint with the author of that book about the missing information.” The Chief huffs annoyedly, crossing her arms.
“Well, that particular book has been out of print for over a century. It wasn’t even written by an Azorii, which caused quite the controversy when it was discovered. There’s a revised version telling the actual complete story these days, called The Complete Story of the Azorii, by the Azorii.” Arezza says, clearing the air. “Apparently it got most of the cultural and biological things right, it’s just the way they told history that was controversial.”
“The history involving the all-male Mazorii?” The Chief asks.
“... Let’s not talk about them. I’ve been wondering something else, actually. Marina!” Arezza turns to me, smiling. “How old are you? You look a little older than your Chief.”
“Fifteen.” I smile as smugly as humanly possible.
“Oh, be honest! The Chief and I are being… serious…” Arezza looks back at the Chief, who’s making no notion of correcting my statement.
“You’re kidding, right?” Arezza looks back and forth between the Chief and I. “She’s fifteen. Really. Only fifteen?”
“Are you familiar with The History of the Damned: Their Afflictions, Curses, and Gifts?” The Chief says.
“I’ve skimmed through that before, and I assume that’s why she has feathered wings, but is that also why she’s… like that, like… all grown up and adult-looking even though she’s… fifteen…” Arezza frowns, trying to wrap her head around this.
“I’ve also been here for less than a year.”
“But there’s only been children awaking in the Abyss for years…!” Arezza protests, her understanding of how things work falling apart before her eyes.
“For the past twenty years, yes. That included me. Anyone under sixteen is considered a child in the Overlands. She doesn’t break the ‘rules’ of this place.” The Chief comments.
“Just as I thought I was starting to understand how things work here…” Arezza sighs, slumping back in her chair dejectedly.
“The Abyss is never lacking in surprises.” The Chief says.
“Did you have any other questions…?” Arezza asks, still looking down at her lap.
“Can you teach Marina how to fly?” She answers with a question of her own.
Arezza blinks, sitting up and looking over at me, her eyes tracing along my wings to get a measure of their size.
“Have you flown at all before, Marina?” Arezza asks.
“If you consider jumping extra high ‘flying’, then yes. I can stay off the ground for a few seconds at most, but keeping my balance in the air is… difficult, to say the least.”
“Hmm…” Arezza stands up, walking over behind my lounge to get a better look at my wings. “So, they are big enough to get you off the ground, but being in the thoracic region and having no tail, balance would be an issue… assuming these generate the same lift as non-feathered wings… Ah.”
Arezza pauses, holding my cloak with one hand, pushing her other into the enchanted space contained within it.
“This is a cloak made for Azorii. How did you get this?” She asks.
“An old man gave it to me shortly after I woke up here.”
“An old…” Arezza looks back at the Chief for confirmation again; who just shrugs half-heartedly in response. “You’re full of surprises, aren’t you, Marina.”
“It’s not intentional, I promise.”
“Hmm. Well, I see no reason why I couldn’t teach Marina to fly~” Arezza smiles, nodding to herself. “What’s the end goal of teaching her to fly?”
“So that she may fly to the top of the cliffs directly above Haven, and hopefully find the crane that helped build Haven still intact. I don’t expect it to be in fully working order, but if it’s there, that means it can be repaired.” The Chief answers.
“You wouldn’t… find someone and ask for help?” Arezza asks, frowning a little.
“I’m operating under the assumption that there are no settlements in the immediate vicinity of the Abyss. I’m also aware that Damned from the Abyss are a very rare sight, and I don’t want to risk Marina being captured.” The Chief continues.
“And what if this crane isn’t there at all?” Arezza pushes.
“Then we’ll have to come up with a new plan.” She sighs.
“Didn’t the Red Wolves say that Wolf left to find the path out of the Abyss…?”
“I’m reluctant to accept the idea that a path out of the Abyss exists, but people have escaped from here before. They must have gotten out somehow.” The Chief admits, resting her cheek on her hand.
“Do you… really believe you can make it out of the Abyss?” Arezza asks, shuffling forward in her chair again.
The Chief remains silent for a moment, thinking about how she’ll answer. The Chief, myself, and almost everyone else in the Abyss; we were all ‘born’ here. Reborn here. However you want to word it. The Abyss is the only thing in this world we know after being ripped away from the world we knew, and we all universally agree that this place sucks and we want to get out of here. Arezza, however, has only ever lived in this world. She didn’t awaken in a cave full of skulls with the smell of sulphur in the air. She was born in a palace. She’s royalty, but unfortunately, she’s found herself trapped in a place so dangerous that no-one, to her knowledge, has tried to rescue her in the three years she’s been down here.
I can’t help but wince in sympathy every time I look at her broken wing. Wings aren’t a limb I’m used to seeing, but hers is obviously, painfully broken. No limb is supposed to bend in a Z-like shape. Her wingtips move freely, but she’s very, very careful with how she moves her wings, always keeping them low to her side, or resting on the arms of her chair. I’m no doctor, nor am I a mage specialising in healing, and I’m very much a novice when it comes to having wings, but… unless there’s some truly exceptional healing magic in this world, she’ll never fly under her own strength again.
“I certainly don’t intend to spend the rest of my life down here.” The Chief finally speaks. “One way or another, we’re escaping the Abyss. All of us.”
“All of us? Even people that aren’t part of Haven or my Wolf Pups?” Arezza asks.
“Everyone who wants to, and I can’t imagine why anyone would want to stay here. This place was designed to make people suffer, and I can imagine no greater joy than denying its ability to inflict suffering on the innocent.” The Chief smiles dryly to herself. Nothing would make her happier than getting revenge on the Abyss itself.
“Do you…” Arezza hesitates, before continuing in a softer voice. “Do you think the Abyss is… alive…?”
“Not in the traditional sense, but there is certainly a malign intellect at work here. Such a hostile environment doesn’t occur naturally. This is a Sump, after all, and if you’re familiar with the theories that the Sumps are the physical remains of the dead gods, we’re sitting on the corpse of the God of War. From what I’ve read of his teachings, he’d certainly approve of the nature of this place.” The Chief explains her point.
“The remains of the War-Invader…” Arezza mumbles to herself.
“Regardless of the circumstances, Marina is instrumental in my plans on escaping this place. Just as instrumental as an alliance between our factions.” The Chief gets back on topic.
“You’re certainly not lacking in confidence, Mia Lichtrufer.” Arezza smiles.
“Naturally. A leader must be confident in themselves if they are to inspire confidence in others.” The Chief preens.
“You don’t have to rub that in, you know.” Arezza narrows her eyes.
“It’s getting late, and we’ve had a long day.” The Chief yawns, standing up from her chair. “If you don’t mind, Arezza, I’ll go check on the men to make sure they’ve settled in and aren’t causing problems before I retire to my room for the night.”
“Go ahead~” Arezza smiles, waving her off. “Marina and I still have plenty to talk about.”
“Good.” The Chief says, going to take her leave from the room before stopping and taking a step back after she steps on something that makes a strange squeak.
“Ow…” Arshiya groans, waking from her otherwise peaceful sleep.
“Ah… If you’re going to sleep, Arshiya, at least sleep in the bed your host has so graciously provided you.” The Chief scolds, playing it off like stepping on Arshiya was somehow an intentional disciplinary action and not a mistake.
Arshiya mumbles something, slowly getting up from the floor and wandering over to her room for the night, disappearing through the doorway as the Chief leaves through the throne room. Now, it’s just Arezza and I in the room, who’s made herself quite comfortable next to me.
Next to…
“Hi, Marina~” Arezza smiles.
“H-Hi, Arezza…” I manage a smile, trying not to look too shocked at how she’s caught me off-guard again. She keeps doing this. Do you just not pay attention to her, wings? You just let her get as close as she wants without telling me.
“Call me Arza.” She pouts.
“Right. Arza.”
“Sorry if I snuck up on you, I just…” She sighs, trailing off as her pout fades into a sullen, withdrawn frown, shuffling a little closer to me as she rests her azure wings in her lap.
The amount of jewellery adorning her wings probably costs more than my entire house, back in the Overlands. The pair of large, golden hoops hanging from each wingtip, the left adorned with rubies to match her hair, the right with emeralds that match her eyes, and the slender platinum chain that hangs from each hoop, connected near the base of her wings by more golden rings. The pearly-white, almost iridescent upper part of her wings are adorned with smaller platinum rings, studs, and star-shaped jewellery, all showing off her immense wealth.
Wing piercings aren't something I’d ever thought of before, assuming they function like ear or nose piercings. How sensitive are her wings to being touched? What do they feel like?
“Do you want to touch them?” She asks with a small smile, noticing that I’m staring.
“I mean, I’m a little curious…”
“Go ahead. It’s only fair, given I’ve already run my hands all over those luxuriously soft feathers on your back~” She sits up again, raising her wings a little to make them easier to touch.
Wow. They looked smooth, but to actually touch them… they’re as soft as silk, and almost amazingly smooth to the touch. I thought it’d have the texture of rough leather, or something similar. I almost feel like I’m getting them dirty just by touching them, they look that clean…
“I was a little worried how Mia would take me asking her if she thinks the Abyss is… alive. It sounds like such a nonsensical idea.” Arezza continues, her posture slightly slumped as she leans towards me, just shy of our shoulders touching. I let go of her wing to listen.
“With everything I’ve seen in my time down here… I’d believe it. The gods shaped our world, so the idea that their remains shape this world isn’t that far-fetched.”
“Do you hear it…?” She asks quietly, resting her hand on mine.
“Hear it…?”
Hear what? There’s nothing besides… Oh. That.
The constant, distant thudding that I feel in my chest, almost drowning out my own heartbeat. The same thudding I heard in the tunnels earlier. I didn’t notice it once we got above ground again, but now that we’re here, and everything’s quiet…
That's all I can hear.
“You hear it too, right…” Arezza squeezes my hand. Her shoulder brushes against mine.
“That noise. It’s easier to notice when it’s quiet.”
“Only the really young kids can hear it… but they’re used to it, somehow. I… I just can’t. I hear it all the time. When it’s loud, or when it’s quiet. The perfect rhythm of a heartbeat, thudding in my ears. I hate it. It terrifies me. It terrifies me so much that it makes me want to just get out of here and run, as far and as fast as I can away from this place, and hope that I can escape that sound, but…” She catches herself, her voice having grown so desperate she’s panting to catch her breath as her body shakes in fear. She’s squeezing my hand so hard it’s starting to hurt.
I do my best to reassure her, giving her hand a gentle squeeze. She relaxes a little, realising she’s been squeezing my hand to death as she finally turns to look at me, with tears filling her emerald eyes.
“A-ah, sorry, I got a bit…” She sits up, wiping her tears from her cheeks. “Just, uh… I can’t let the kids know I get like this… nor… nor can I leave them to fend for themselves just because I’m afraid.”
“Don’t worry.” I smile. “Your sense of responsibility is admirable. You’ve earned some of the Chief’s respect in that regard, too.”
“I have…? I can’t get a read on that woman. She’s prideful, overbearing, short-tempered, mean…” Arezza says, counting off the descriptors for the Chief she’s come up with.
I almost reflexively check behind me to make sure that the Chief hasn’t just walked back into the room as Arezza describes her, but thankfully, she’s not here yet.
“She means well, but… she’s certainly prideful. She cares about others and always wants to help, though. It was her decision to come here and form an alliance after she heard about your situation from Crow.”
“What is Haven like, in your opinion?” She asks.
“Compared to the rest of the Abyss, it’s almost… comically ‘normal’. Normal houses, a normal farm. A normal village. The only sound at night is the distant roaring of the waterfall, our lifeline of clean water. I’d never heard that… thudding noise before until I came along on this journey with the Chief. Maybe I also heard it when I first woke up in the Abyss, but I shrugged it off as just a throbbing headache then. I had greater concerns at the time than just a strange thudding sound.”
“My condition to see Haven for myself isn’t solely based on my desire to escape that thudding sound…” Arezza pouts.
“Besides the young children, can you hear it because you’re an Azorii? I know a human’s sensitivity to sound decreases as they age, so are an Azorii’s ears more sensitive to sound?”
“That would make sense, but then… all the children older than eight can’t hear it anymore. Why can you hear it too, Marina?” She asks.
“Uh… That’s… a good question. I don’t know why I can also hear it. I’ll just credit my wings for it. Since I’ve got them, I’ve been far more aware of my surroundings than I was before, whether I want to be or not…”
“Then why do you keep getting startled when I snea- when I sit next to you?” Arezza asks, trying her best not to grin.
“That… is a good question. Something I’ll have to ask them about later.”
“Can you ask your wings why they like touching my wings so much?” She asks, looking down as an outermost pinion feather of mine pokes at her wing. Wait.
“Oi!! Stop that!” I hiss, grabbing my wing and pulling it away from her, much to Arezza’s amusement.
“They really do have a mind of their own, don’t they. It’s rather endearing how they misbehave~” Arezza giggles.
“At least, when I need them, they’re happy enough to cooperate… they dislike hard landings just as much as I do, and do their best to keep me in the air, we’re just… it’s a lot to figure out when neither you nor anyone you know knows how to fly.”
“I had special teachers who trained me to fly with grace, and even then it’s difficult. I can’t imagine how hard it would be to try and figure it out on your own without anyone else to help.” She says.
“Which is why you’ll help teach me how to fly, right…?”
“Don’t worry, Marina. I’ll have you flying through the air before you know it~” Arezza grins as she leans close to me, her honeyed voice right in my ear, “If you can make it worth my while…”
“W-worth your…”
“Marina, please, you can’t go red up to your ears so easily… It just makes me want to tease you even more~!” Arezza giggles to herself. Her giggle reminds me a lot of Tiff’s. I feel like they’d get along. Worse still, they’d probably double up on teasing someone to overload them even faster.
They’d probably team up against me, first, knowing my luck. Is that good luck or bad luck? I’ll leave that up to interpretation.
“Well then, Marina, I do believe it’s time I retired for the night~” Arezza stands, giving me a polite curtsey as she turns to her room. “We have a busy day tomorrow, so we best get some sleep.”
The bed awaiting me in my room was, without, a doubt the most comfortable bed I’ve slept in since I first woke up in the Underlands.
Not that I was able to get any meaningful amount of sleep with Arezza’s teasing voice still ringing in my ears.