Kâl had her legs splayed over my thighs, my hand innocently and lazily stroking her skin by the time we had dropped the books on the main table and switched our attention and grip over cold and refreshing bottles of Kendarian beer.
We had spent so many hours reading, our eyes were soar, our heads were heavy and our focus wasn’t as effective as it was at the beginning of our research. I had ogled the books and remembered the weird one covered with my tattoo somewhere below the gigantic stack of papers we had scattered all around as we were working on the translation together, her reading me the paragraphs and me writing them down.
Realizing now, maybe we had read for even more than twenty-four hours, although we had transformed the sentences, had shortened them so only the important knowledge was on the papers, since they couldn’t understand our hand writings, and we had to explain it to them either way. But still, three whole manuscripts, with more than five hundred pages each. Kâl’s giggle dragged me out of my thinking. “Why are your eyebrows so frowned? Are you trying to move objects with your mind?”
A faint smile appeared on my face and I closed my eyes for a second, releasing the tension between my brows I hadn’t even noticed before she called it out. “I, ironically, am unable to do any magic anyways.” I responded. And it was her turn to frown.
“Ironically?” she asked.
That statement had always been on my mind. And whenever I had that discussion with Hidram, I couldn’t help but laugh at the universe’s audacity. It was another point he couldn’t explain properly and that was completely incoherent regarding the story he had always taught me. Born with magic but deprived of it. “Forget it.” I stated. She opened her mouth, straightening her body, suddenly captivated with the glimpse of my personal history I had shared but I was quicker. “Should we skip to Velreh?”
Her lips thinned and she nodded, respecting my privacy. If only she knew my concern wasn’t that I would be unleashing a part of me I wasn’t ready to share with her, but that Hidram’s words were still twirling around my own free will and the vision of the Jalyon I had killed because of it was lurking behind my lids. “I’m already tipsy from the beer.” She warned, “Velreh is going to ravage me.”
“You poor thing.” I teased.
One of her eyebrows shot up and she was the one standing up pouring us the shots, before handing me one. “What do we drink for?” She raised her glass to me.
“Our liberty.” I answered. From Maorat, from Zelian, from the invisible shackles I had around my wrists, from the injunctions I still felt like obeying to. And that seemed to suit her because she clung our drinks and shoved the liquor down her throat. The rim still over my lip, I watched her swallow it and make the most adorable face. “This is… strong, damn it.” She rasped.
The few beers had relaxed me to the point where I laughed like I had never let myself before. “Strange coming from the one with a large bottle collection in her apartment.” She was frozen when I could open my eyes again and had removed the tears. “What?” I asked, “you should have seen that grimace.”
“Yeah? Well, I don’t see you drinking it, big boy. Come on.”
I shot her a wink and tilted the Velreh into my mouth. The burn fired up instantly and I winced when it reached my yet full stomach as if it was absolutely dry and empty. Kâl chuckled. “Hope you liked the show.” I whispered, unable to talk properly.
“Oh, I savored it.” Still standing in front of me, inches apart, she would be between my legs with a few steps forward. Both of our heads must have thought the same, our bodies smoothing under the alcohol’s pressure, our protective walls crumbling bits by bits each passing second, because she clenched her hands into fists multiple times, her stare sliding over my eyes, my lips, and my eyes again. “What is happening to you?” I mocked her gently.
She answered in a sigh. My head cocked to the side, unable to understand her reaction after what she had admitted in her apartment. “If I hadn’t been deeply wounded and deceived by men, to the point where even imagining being intimate with one makes me want to vomit the entire meal we just had, I would have fallen for you.” She admitted. And the pieces put themselves back into place as I could very much understand what she meant.
My eyes softened and the same sensation I had felt when my stare had roamed over her body a few days ago made my heart wince, as protected as it was. “Don’t let the drinks make you do something stupid.” I advised.
“Something stupid, or something I’ll regret?” she maintained.
“Either way, bad idea.”
“I know.” She closed her lids and breathed sharply a few times, as if she needed to control herself, and remember one ponderous element. She used the tone again, when she had more to say then she let on. I had to bite my lip hard not to ask questions.
The table had been cleared up by Min and Geia silently while we had sat back on the chairs a moment earlier. Since then, it had been piled up with sheets of our translation and summary, enough to recover the whole space. Kâl and I were now watching the mess, regretting being unorganized a few hours ago. And with the beverages in our blood, cleaning everything wasn’t really on our minds. “I wish I could move things around.” She laughed before wiping her face with her hand.
“What is your power? You never told me.”
“I can heal people.”
“That’s much better.” I reminded her.
A soft silence filled the room for a moment and I watched her, my eyes fixated on her beautiful face while she figured out what to reveal next. “That bastard made me heal the wounds I inflicted on him.”
I knew who she was talking about, seeing her curled nose wrinkle and her irises burst into flames. She kept her mouth closed but I could sense she wanted to unbridle so much more. Instead, I deviated the subject just enough so she would lose that terrifying rage. “Is it common? To be able to heal people?”
She crossed my stare. We were still standing, our shot glasses in our hands. “I never encountered another one. But I stayed away from anyone before…”
I nodded. None of the species on Zelian were known for having healing powers, but so many mutations happened since the beginning of the end. The planet had destroyed and shaped its inhabitants in ways we couldn’t start to imagine. Maybe she was one of the last ones, maybe they were many more that stayed away, hidden. Maybe she was the only one. And I remembered the little girl that helped me all of these years ago. Could they be…
She shrugged her shoulders and her fingers gently stroked mine. I stilled for a second, thinking she was about to concede on what we’d forbidden ourselves heartbeats earlier, but then I felt the glass being taken from my grasp and saw her pour us another round. “One more, for courage.” She said, but instead of grabbing the Velreh, I slipped my fingers in her hair, pulling out strands on her right side, out of her high bun. She blinked and opened her mouth, however too stunned to say anything. I just needed to see if my suspicions were true. I needed to see what I had seen on that girl’s scalp eighteen years ago. And when my hand fell on that strand of hair trapped in a black and white piece of fabric, my breath stopped.
The shining glow I kept seeing in her hair, when she turned her head, under the moon glaze, or the sun brightness, was the same accessory the little girl wore when she saved my life. I couldn’t believe it. After all this time, how come our paths crossed again? Did she know who I was? Did she remember saving my life?
The question stayed behind my mouth because my brain had a hard time functioning properly. It felt like decades had passed and I had aged a century. It felt like I had found someone close to my heart after losing them for so long. It felt like a piece of my body had been torn up and patched up repeatedly. “Nolis?”
My name over her mouth sounded so different. She never asked for mine and I never had time to ask for hers back then. She only saw me and decided I was worth saving.
With one quick motion, I grabbed the shot, drank it up and placed it back on the table, before throwing my arms around her waist, burying my head in her neck. “Okay, this is your last glass of Velreh, for sure.” She taunted me, giggling over my sudden show of emotions. Remembering what she had said when she first revealed herself, that no men will ever touch her, I backed away immediately, disgusted I hadn’t managed to control myself.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
“No problem. But don’t ask me to carry you back to the tent, I might be strong, I’m not that strong.”
“No. Kâl,” I grabbed the fabric of my pants and fisted it so I would remain on my side of her comfort zone. “Thank you.”
“For what?” The softness in her eyes threw me off guard for a second.
“Saving me in the shadows.”
She had said that when we took off from Ventris’ workshop. And I hoped it would suffice. She offered me the most genuine smile I’d ever seen on her. “No problem.” She repeated, taking my hands between hers.
“You knew? That it was me.”
“When I cornered you? No. How could I? You’ve changed so much.”
“I already was the Weapon.” I smirked.
“You were? Huh, I’m not sure I was aware. I had my own troubles to handle.” Her gaze drifted and I withdrew my fingers from her embrace. Our connection deepened and changed after what we had understood. A warm and soft feeling crawled into my heart anytime my eyes were laying on her.
She became more. An unbreakable feeling tied each other up. We had saved each other multiple times, we had shared parts of ourselves we thought would be our own forever, we were trapped together, reading stories to find a way out. I’d never believed in fate, but this… I couldn’t explain what it was, only that it felt meant to be.
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I was submerged by a sensation of necessary protection towards her. And although she had been the one who saved me when I was seven, it was now my turn to provide her security.
Her expressions were unreadable. She seemed happy, but also deeply torn away. “Should I know something?” I asked. She shook her head.
“I’m only a bit shocked.” Her tone and expression made me decide not to ask further questions. We might have talked a lot, we also had been living on our own for too many years. Suddenly having someone to share things with wasn’t making it easy to open up. And the last thing I wanted was to disturb her. She walked away to the large cushions with the book she started before and I did the same with mine. Only this time, we stayed seated on our respective sides.
“What have you learnt that seems important?” I asked her, reminiscing our ruffles with the Maor, and how she managed to defuse the situation with a few words. The night had started, at least my fatigue had taken a toll on my abilities and I figured night time had arrived, since we had no other way to really know the hours of the day. While she started talking, I covered a yawn with my hand.
“The start of the book was really about how the Maor lived on Fryor,” she explained. “And how they were evicted from this planet—terrible story, but unimportant at the moment. They were shoved inside the portals and arrived at different spots. Some of them found themselves trapped behind a gigantic closed door and had been discovered days after, when Maorat had been unveiled and the Maors had settled here.”
“What are you saying?”
“This door, they talk about. It is right after a portal. And must be inside Maorat.”
“The location?”
“I’ve stopped reading there.” She answered, already focusing on her pages while I fought for sleep not to grab me just yet.
On my part of the book, the rest of it was an explanation of how the Maors were living on Zelian and the decaying demonstration on the latter that this explorer managed to witness. He talked about his research concerning the entrance of Maorat and its appearance—around a tremendous number of centuries before our civilization. He also pressed on the fact that the knowledge about them had been suppressed, not only about their species but about a whole pan of history.
When I finished reading the first half of the book, I could discern the time of the writing process, which must have been after the Great Suppression but more than five hundred years from our time.
Which would put the creation of Maorat so far back that it could easily enter the large space of legends and historically unprovable information that lingered in our society. Since there was no tangible explanation, fewer people delivered the message. Until whole pans of history disappeared.
The other half of the book remained covered by the page, the book flat over my stomach as I had drifted into sleep, rocking over the sound of Kâl’s regular breathing, as I wondered if she was still deeply into her book, or she had face-first fall in deep sleep too.
Warmth.
My skin sensed the rays of the sun and my whole body screamed to wake up. It was the light sun of the morning, where the wind was still cold, and the warmth of the star was just enough to feel perfect under the covers.
My limbs extended and stretched, a delightful sound emerging from my mouth as I sighed from restful sleep and an already demanding tummy. I smiled and extricated myself from the bed, stood right in front of the mirror and grimaced at my reflection, as I liked to do every morning.
As I got dressed, my t-shirt still over my head while I ran down the stairs, the dreadful picture of the living room unraveled in front of me. The usually full table was empty, the furniture had been opened, ravaged, destroyed. One of the chairs had flown all the way to the kitchen and big holes were scattered here and there. With everything so upside down, I almost missed Hidram on his knees, his face on the ground, his shoulders jolting at a regular pace. “What happened?” I murmured, walking closer to him.
He turned, his face red, his eyes and cheeks all wet. “They robbed us.”
“Who?” I asked innocently. And Hidram only shook his head, ogling his hands facing the sky. I kept my arms along my body, feeling deeply powerless when even my father was devastated.
“Things are going to become very difficult for us, Nolis.” He didn’t even bother looking at me. I frowned. “You’ll have to be obedient. Do you promise?” I wasn’t sure I understood the whole meaning of that sentence. I had only just woken up, my mind and thoughts still dizzy from the sleep, not yet showered, clean and ready. I nodded. What else could I have done? I was a little boy, I knew nothing of the world, how it worked, how cruel it was, how disgusting it was going to be. My helpless father was crying, our home had been violated, and I hadn’t lost my faith nor my emotions yet. So, I nodded, placed my palm over his shoulder, and rubbed awkwardly while his sobs resonated inside the hut and my tiny young body.
The ache of hunger didn’t leave me for the weeks that followed, despite taking huge amounts of protein in a powder shape. Hidram was always away, I was only waiting for him all day long, playing with sticks and stones and objects in the house that wasn’t yet broken or sold. Waiting to be an obedient little boy. Waiting to put my life in danger, among the shadows.
And the mornings became different. I still grimaced at myself in the mirror, only because I was repulsed to see how I changed, how big I was, how my youth was stripped away as my muscles grew, how my body got covered in bruises from dangerous fight instead of trying to climb a tree as a bet with close friends. Slowly, I forgot how the warmth of the sun felt, I was only burned even at the first hour of the day.
The darkness startled me as my eyes opened slowly. I imagined seeing the massive chandelier spreading its colorful lights around the room, the table covered with scrawled papers, Kâl nudging me with her foot or her hand whenever she had crossed a part rather interesting in her book, talking as if I had also read the entirety of her book and fall back into muted silence whenever I would ask more information on the matter.
Instead, I couldn’t see a thing.
Complete darkness surrounded me, the silence chilling the whole place, tearing from me shudders I’ve never experienced before, in my entire life. Did they leave me here, thinking I seemed relaxed enough? Were Min and Geia still close?
My questions answered themselves when a large and thick cover ruffled under the pressure of my body shifting. And I didn’t remember falling asleep with something on me.
All of the thoughts that crossed my mind were driven away by my own brain, as if it was guiding me to the real answers. Should I try to reach out my hand to the side and see if Kâl had finally managed to carry me back to the tent? Was I still in the library, only Min and Geia had magically lifted me to a private area, where I could find peace and quiet?
Nothing seemed to click. And then I knew.
Another dream.
I sighed. These were painful. The way the air would disappear from my lungs, how unaware of every single moment and each person I would cross. How powerless I was of my own feelings, my own movements. Who was I about to meet this time? Who was I going to impersonate?
And in a flash, bright and warm light filled the room, blinding me for long seconds, as I rolled over to my flank and laid there, my head buried in a cushion. “It’s time.” The voice was familiar but the tone was drastically lower and surprising.
A young lady stood at the foot of the bed, hair so dark no light passed through the strands. Her arms crossed over her chest, her harsh stare on my face, she tapped her fingers on her bicep, and waited.
My mind was so foggy from the sleep, I noticed the covers, but failed to remark my own nakedness underneath them. And my body wasn’t completely masked. “Can I ask what time it is, exactly?”
“Time to get up.”
“I didn’t know I had a human alarm.”
“I’m not a human.” She said with so much disdain, I felt her judgment right into my very core. I blinked, feeling much more accommodated with the light, and hid my right leg back under the cloth while I analyzed her features; long hair and lashes, equally dark, bringing out the clear eye color, oscillating between gray and blue with the sunlight as she was shifting her posture from her left to her right foot. Square jaws, round lips, puffed cheeks typically wore over a juvenile body. She looked like she had things to prove. “Are you planning on staying while I change, lady…”
“Nua, get out.”
Red. She entered. The one I remembered. From where, not a clue. It just felt like I knew her. They whispered to each other, Nua visibly upset, tapping her foot on the floor like a child. I realized the scenery. Two women in my bedroom where I laid, naked. Where was this dream driving me? “As always, you get the fun part.” Nua spoke louder, unable to retain her anger. My eyes must have betrayed me but for a second, I thought seeing fire swirling around her knuckles.
“This is not supposed to be fun.” The other responded. Not a lustful dream, then.
“You know what I mean.” Nua rolled her eyes.
“I know. And you exasperate me.”
“Whatever.” The younger answered before leaving the room. One minute passed.
“Excuse her.” The woman sighed.
“No harm done.” One hand over her hip, she ran the other one over her face before realizing the situation. Her expression darkened and she regained her serious attitude. “You are expected in the main hall as soon as possible.”
I frowned and shook my head. “For what?”
“Your trial of course. Did you forget everything in one night?”
It was my turn to sigh and touch my hair in frustration only to notice it was tingling my ears again. The drape slid down my abdomen. “I tend to forget a lot these days.”
She cleared her throat, her hands in her back, her chest high and proud. “You have twenty minutes. A guard will escort you once you are ready.” And as she left, her red hair slowly lifted by the breeze, her tight cargo pants molding her muscular body perfectly, a sneaky sample of her sweet perfume filling my nose, I was pulled back violently to my consciousness. When she shut the door, I was left to reality with not an image, but the scent of warm and clean clothes and a touch of intoxicating dark chocolate.
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Two fingers tapped my shoulders as softly as a feather stroke. One of my eyes opened slightly and I recognized the slender figure of the Maor, their huge face so close to mine I almost jumped out of the chair. Their long white hair nearly reaching the ground as they were bent over my body, they gestured to me Kâl from above their shoulder, head buried in a book, her hair untangled from her bun, contouring her lovely visage. “You two should find rest in your habitations. You’ll be more comfortable than here.”
Their kind and compassionate tone made my eyebrows frowned, but I cleared my throat and nodded, straightening myself over the soft cushions and stretching my aching members I had twisted in ways that would probably give me soreness the following morning. “How long have I slept?” I asked, whispering.
“Around two cycles.” they responded. My lack of expression warned them from my miscomprehension. “I’d say five hours, if my conversion isn’t too rusty.” I had so many questions regarding their time system and how they managed to stay aware of it passing but my mind was so confused and still in deep need of more sleep that I only stood up and reached for Kâl with a less gentle caress than the creature. She grunted, then shook her head up, detaching a piece of paper from her cheek that stuck from the drool coming out of her mouth. “Sorry, what time is it?” she spoke, her voice still hoarse.
“Time to go to bed. We deserve it.” She didn’t battle for one second and leaned on my arm around her neck all the way to our tent, where we collapsed on the bed and joined the stars again.