Eight

I floated weightlessly in a black space, no sound or friction existing for nearly as far as my senses could reach in every direction. A perfect void of silence that swaddled me in comfort like a thick, warm blanket in the dead of winter. This place, this deep recess of my subconscious, was always where I ended up when I slept. I did not dream, I instead retained my reason and merely hid away deep within my own mind, surrounded by a near-infinite expanse of black to shield from stray thoughts that skittered and deflected off the edges.

These thoughts could be viewed objectively from afar, dissected, and analyzed from safety with cold reason. Thoughts and memories danced at the edges of my consciousness, and I was aware of everything, yet it was as if it were all merely something playing on a television in another room, easily dismissed with the click of a remote. Some vestige of personal thoughts and feelings were displayed in that other room, thoughts and feelings I had been at odds with my entire life, playing out again for the millionth time.

My life was never anything special. Uncommon, maybe, in some ways, but never anything to be considered unique. I didn’t find anything I wanted to accomplish in my time on Earth. I couldn’t see anything within reach of my own hands to which I could devote my life. I just had zero desire to ever be more than I was. I lacked motivation. If I could work up the drive to reach beyond myself, life would always show me something ugly and cruel and remind me that it was simply not worth what little energy I had left within me, so my ambition would fade into a numb haze of apathy. This was how my days passed me by as I floated in a self-imposed limbo.

I thought, at times, that I was lazy. A simple enough explanation, and one widely accepted by those around me whenever they looked at me. With insults and abuse hurled upon me, I accepted that I was lesser, weaker, and directly inferior to the men and women around me who strove toward their dreams. They could move forward, one foot in front of the other, while I merely remained stationary.

I watched them, envied them, as they continued onward and struggled beautifully against any obstacles in their path. I watched as everyone grew and evolved into a better version of themselves through defeat and triumph and the sheer will to never give up. I watched as every other single person strove for more, taking destiny into their own hands and making something of themselves.

I waved my hand in a dismissive gesture to dispel that particular train of thought. I was not in the mood to rehash old wounds, to go back down that rabbit hole of impotent frustration with everything. If I recalled, something else important had happened that I needed to think over. Something quite unlike me, something new and interesting had just happened that I wanted to focus on right now. But the murmuring memories continued, and in fact, grew a little louder.

I watched, I admired, and I cried in envy. Those feelings of envy grew until they became something uglier. I felt jealousy. Something that came so easily to others, a drive to improve themselves, their lives, or the world around them, seemed so far out of reach for me. It wasn’t until I was in my twenties that I realized that I was lacking something vital that others seemed to have in spades. What I lacked, I discovered, was an attachment to the world around me.

People, places, things, ideals, philosophies. None of these ever held my attention for very long, the best I could do was a passing fancy or exploration of curiosity. Any passion I felt when discovering some new thing that tickled my fancy, was quickly extinguished as soon as I understood more about the way it worked, and realized that it wasn’t really that special at all. Disappointment and a sense of loss always accompanied that moment of clarity. I simply could not bring myself to get attached to anything in any meaningful way. It came as no surprise that nobody became attached to me in return.

I waved my hand again, more aggressively, like I was trying to brush off a persistent mosquito. Sometimes thoughts became a little stubborn and tended to linger, especially this particular train of thought, as it was very close to the core of my dissatisfaction with myself and my life. At those times I had to focus and give them a little push in order to shake them off. But again, it continued. My void shuddered, sending vibrations through me, as words and feelings pressed in on my bubble louder and clearer.

I was alone and detached, and I never really tried to change that. Because of that, I suppose, I always just sort of went through the motions. Morals? Respect? Justice? Just pretty words that held no real meaning in life, things to be exploited and abused for personal gain. But if you’re caught going against the stream of self-righteousness, you’ll be shunned and punished, so you have to at least pretend to adhere to those things in public just to make it through your days.

Even when my family abandoned me, it was all for the sake of the greater good. They claimed they couldn’t waste their time on someone who never cared about them in the first place. One less weight to drag them down was for the best. My entire life was spent doing anything they asked, putting in the effort simply because I was told to, expected to. For family. Family is the most important. If you can rely on no one, you can at least rely on blood.

Lies. More pretty words, exploitative reasoning, shallow and selfish preachings meant to reassure themselves when their own personal greed didn’t quite pan out. Only after I was completely alone in the world did I come to understand that the only truth within the human heart that was a constant in this world was self-satisfaction. As long as you could bullshit yourself into believing you had a good reason, anything was on the table, even if that meant stabbing your blood in the back and leaving them to die in a ditch.

The thoughts hammered on my void, sending ripples of pain through me as the intrusive thoughts and feelings pressed in with ever greater intensity. I winced away from the unexpected shock, feeling my composure rocked and sent into disarray. I swung my arm violently to destroy the assailing emotions rolling over me as I put the other to my head, feeling a painful pressure building behind my eyes. I didn’t need this right now, there was something else that I had to do, something more important, I needed to focus. But my void was shaking now, ceaselessly undulating, the integrity of my entire inner world was compromised. I curled up into the fetal position and began shaking along with my world as I continued to be assaulted from all directions.

All it took was justification. After all, anything could be forgiven if you can find some way to justify it. Even the most heinous acts in existence could be swept under the rug as long as you believed you were in the right. So, considering that, what actually is right? What is wrong? What falls within morally acceptable boundaries and what does not?

The answer was simple: Whatever you could convince yourself and the others around you to be correct. There never was and never will be any universal law that “Good” and “Evil” actually exist. It’s all just human perception. And humans are weak, gullible, and fallible. That perception will always be tainted with self-preservation, convenience, and stubborn faith. So, naturally, any conceptual belief will change according to what’s important to each person. And what shapes what becomes important to every human being as they grow up?

Nothing. Because it’s just whatever the hell each person wants it to be. There’s no rhyme or reason, just a selfish desire to attain whatever amount of personal pleasure they can within the boundaries set by things out of their control. Good and evil play no part, it’s just how you can get what you want without being held accountable by things you can’t resist the influence of.

I stood and swung my body to face where these thoughts were hammering into me the hardest. I swept both arms out like I was aggressively parting a curtain in the doorway, attempting to rip the torrent of oppressive thought in half and dispel it. It didn’t work, and I was left gasping, on the verge of tears, unwilling to relive all these old and painful wounds. A lifetime of effort to understand the world around me, merely crumbling away into disappointment and sadness as my own reason and logic cause a fundamental collapse of my belief in anything positive.

If I could find nothing good in life, in the entire world around me, why was I even living in it?

I was about to let loose a chest-wracking sob and begin weeping when I noticed something. A man, standing in the doorway to the next room, watching my thoughts and memories as they flooded passed him, flowing around him like liquid parting against a rock to recombine behind him and hammer into me.

He turned toward me slightly, looking back over his shoulder at me as my entire world shook violently, cracks beginning to appear within my void, and through them seething dark colors creeping into the black. His eyes were steel gray, intense, and unapologetically perceptive as he gazed straight into my soul. They softened slightly as the corner of his mouth quirked upwards into a small smile.

I stared at this man I did not recognize as he spoke softly to me in a patient tone one would take with a small child throwing a tantrum. “You’re awfully melodramatic, and a bit of a whiner, you know?”

My void shattered, and I was crushed beneath my own mind and heart as I was swept away from my inner world.

My eyes snapped open and I jerked upright. The world spun, bright light stabbed into my eyes like needles and nausea hit me like a truck, forcing me to collapse onto my side and empty my stomach all over the floor. My whole body hurt more than I believed possible, my head was doing backflips on my neck while someone was going to town on my brain with a hammer. I couldn’t think through the pain, and merely lay there shivering and gasping for I don’t know how long.

I felt a cool cloth wipe across my lips and my face, then a gentle hand on my shoulder easing me down onto my back. A colder, damp cloth was placed on my forehead, which felt blissful against the heat that raged through my shivering body. I tried opening my eyes again, but was greeted with the same stabbing pain I felt before, so I learned my lesson and kept them shut.

As I lay there, I tried to collect my thoughts, but a heavy fog lay in my brain, shattering any attempts at coherency. So I just lay there and shivered, while baser emotions flowed freely through me. Sadness, fear, loneliness, and pain ran unchecked, and I began whimpering quietly under my strained breath.

Something slipped under my fingers a short time after, and I could vaguely tell that it was someone’s hand. I grabbed and squeezed it as tightly as I could in a panicked reflex of not wanting to be alone. There was a quiet hissing sound from somewhere outside the haze, and then there was another pressure against the back of my hand. It was a gentle, delicate touch of another hand. It stroked my skin slowly, reassuringly, and I realized someone was there, taking care of me.

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My tension deflated, my whole body relaxed, and I slipped back into a deep state of sleep. I did not have any more dreams.

The next time I was conscious, I lay in bed for a while without moving to adjust to my condition. I hurt significantly less, and the nausea was nearly gone. I didn’t think I could get up and walk around, but I no longer felt like my body was dying, and my head felt clear enough that I could think again. I was weak and achy, as if on the fading end of a bad sickness, but since I did feel that I was on the recovering end of it, I counted myself lucky.

Opening my eyes was no small task, as even the dim reddish light coming through my eyelids was causing a dull throbbing in my brain. Eventually, I managed, though I had to squint, and took a look at my surroundings. I seemed to be indoors, laying on an actual bed pushed up against the wall of a tiny room. A single window on the other wall let in a ray of sunshine that lit up a small patch of the floor, and there was a candle burning on a small end table a few feet away, but that was all the light in the room.

Even as dim as it was, I still couldn’t fully open my eyes, so I resigned myself to taking in the shadowy blobs around me for a few moments. My stomach growled, bringing my immense hunger straight to the top of my list of complaints. I licked my lips, finding them dry and cracked, and thought of finding a whole bucket of water to dunk my head into and quench my thirst.

I pushed my elbows down into the bed, trying to at least sit up, and the room started spinning again before I even got halfway up off my back. I groaned as my headache increased the tempo at which it pounded away against the insides of my skull, and slowly lowered myself back down to the pillow. The pain and nausea faded to the background again, so I decided that staying in bed was just fine.

I was starting to wiggle and flex my toes, fingers and other joints to check which parts of me were still working when I noticed a stirring in the corner of the room. A shape rose up, an outer layer fell away from it to the floor, and it came closer in near perfect silence. In the dim light, with my eyes having a few moments to adjust, it looked like a person shedding a blanket.

Whoever it was, they came to my bedside and ran a gentle hand across my forehead. It was cool and delicate, a small and gentle hand. The hand disappeared, and they knelt at the side of my bed. I could hear water swishing, and then a damp cloth was placed over my forehead. The relief of the pleasant sensation made me groan again, but my dry throat turned it into a painful cough.

There were more sounds of water, then droplets of it began falling across my lips. I opened my mouth and accepted them all, chasing away the parched desert that occupied my mouth. After a moment the water stopped, and I felt a small surge of annoyance, but soon it was replaced with some kind of sweet-tasting pulpy mash that reminded me vaguely of applesauce, so my annoyance disappeared.

I was hungry, and I sucked down every little bit of it that was fed to me. I was a bit too enthusiastic and wound up choking on it a little, but whoever was feeding me put a steady hand around the back of my neck, against the base of my skull, and helped lift my head enough that I could have an easier time eating. Food and water were given to me in turns until I felt satisfied, which made me feel very sleepy again.

Those gentle, cool hands ran themselves slowly over my head, stroking and prodding carefully at some of the more tender spots of my skull, and I thought I heard a gasp and some muttering, but I was too exhausted to make any note of it. The hands running through my hair felt good and were just enough to put me right back to sleep.

The next time I woke, there was no light coming through the window, only the single flame of a candle illuminating the room. I felt pretty good, compared to before. I even managed to sit up with some grunting effort, though I had to lean heavily on the wall to keep myself upright, and even then I was still swaying.

The noise I made in sitting up must have gotten the attention of my mysterious caretaker, because it didn’t take very long before I felt those reassuring hands on my shoulders, steadying me. I tried to look at the person, but the room was too dark in the late night, and my eyes still had trouble completely focusing, so I could only make out a thin silhouette to match the small hands. A young woman?

After a moment, the hands retreated, but I had shaken off enough of my stupor that I could sit up with only minimal wobbling. The womanly shape spoke some soft words that I couldn’t understand, but I felt a wet rag press against my chest and begin long and slow wiping motions. It took me a moment, but I figured that I must have been sweating a lot and was just getting cleaned up.

I closed my eyes, and the cloth continued to slowly and thoroughly wipe me clean, only disappearing at times to be rinsed off. Every now and then, those little hands would grab my arm or leg and try to lift them to reach more places to clean, and I did my best to help and hold my heavy, wooden limbs out of the way.

At some point, the rag touched my crotch, which made me jump and sent some confusion through me. After a few seconds of trying to push the cloth away, with those hands patient and insistent on wiping every inch of my skin, I noticed the smell in the room. A smell coming from where I was laying. I also didn’t remember getting up at all to relieve myself when I had been bedridden, so facts slid into place and I felt a flush of embarrassment heat up my cheeks. I murmured a low apology under my breath.

After that, I did my best to help the hands reach wherever they tried to go, and I felt much better afterward, knowing that I was at least somewhat cleaner. Getting the sheets out from under me and replaced with clean ones was a bit of a tricky chore, involving me rolling around so the hands could remove and replace one side of the bed coverings at a time, but we eventually got there.

Just then, a small jolt of panic shot through me. My slimes! What happened to those little buggers? I tried to ask and explain to the silhouette, but my mouth felt like it was full of mush when I tried to speak, and all I got in return were comforting shushing noises as those hands pushed me back down onto the bed. It wasn’t much, but all that moving around had exhausted me, and as soon as I was laid back down and tucked in I passed out again.

Later, I was awakened by some slight jostling and rumbling, and when I came to it was daytime. The whole little building was rocking from side to side, and the rumbling was coming from underneath my bed. Shadows flickered across my face while I blinked my eyes, and focusing hard on the little window, I discovered it was from some tree limbs and leaves passing by.

Oh, it dawned on me that I was in one of those enclosed wagons, and we were traveling somewhere. Looking around the room, I found the corner that the silhouette had previously occupied, and found it there again.

I tried to call out to it but nearly choked on the words. I coughed and had to clear my throat, which caused the bundle of blankets to stir. They fell away and a small head emerged, pushing away from the corner and into the light cast by the window. Framed as it was in the light, I could not see many details, but I could see her face.

She was relatively pretty, but not quite in the territory of beautiful. She had a slender face that was a bit too angular and gave her more of a stern impression. Especially the eyes, the cool and steady eyes of a person who’s seen everything and is no longer surprised by any of it. She put a hand on what looked like a table under the window and stood up to make her way to me.

I cleared my throat once more as she neared me, peering down at me with a detached curiosity. I gave her a weak smile, feeling a little shy toward this person who had been nursing me, and managed to utter a quiet “Thank you.”

She tilted her head, studying me for a few seconds, long enough for me to have a small paranoia creep in about whether I had actually said “thank you” instead of something significantly less grateful. After a tense few seconds more, she closed her eyes and gave me a nod of her head that resembled something of a bow. When she opened her eyes again she spoke to me in a moderately heavy accent I wasn’t familiar with.

“You are welcome, wanderer. Though I also must thank you for rescuing me. I am most grateful to you.” She reached up to place the back of her hand against my forehead, and I noticed her hands were much warmer now. She nodded then looked me straight in the eyes again. “Now that you are better, we are mostly even, yes?”

My eyes only just then adjusted enough that I could see her clearly, and the only thing I could notice as she stared into my eyes from two feet away was the striking bright green color of her eyes. “Um, yes, we could call it even, I suppose. You don’t owe me anything.” I pushed myself up, finding it much easier this time, and manage to sit on the edge of the bed and face her under my own power. I didn’t even feel like throwing up. I took that as a win.

As soon as she was apparently convinced I wasn’t going to fall on my face, she stepped back and sat in one of the chairs that were pushed against the table, running her eyes over me from head to toe and back with slow, clinical thoroughness. We were still only a few feet away from each other, and her intense scrutinization made me feel a little naked.

As soon as that thought popped into my head, I looked down at myself and found that I was, in fact, actually naked. The blanket had been pushed aside when I was sitting up, and I was just exposing this woman to full frontal nudity. I cleared my throat again and pulled the blanket over my lap, muttering an apology and looking over at her while trying not to make eye contact.

She stared at my hand holding the blanket for a moment, then looked back up at me, her eyebrows raising slightly as she sought out my evasive eyes. “You have no reason to feel shame. Your body does not displease me.”

This time I felt the blush more intensely in my cheeks, and I cleared my throat for the third time. “Right. Well. Thank you. Um, moving on.” I glanced around the room nervously once more. After thirty seconds passed, I was feeling pretty uncomfortable, so I forced myself to meet her eyes again and give her sincere gratitude. I swear there was the glint of something mischievous in those eyes, but I tried to ignore the thought. “My name is Wil. Thank you, again, for helping me. And for..” I grimaced and motioned to my lower half. “For cleaning me up. I’m very grateful.”

I swear I saw a little twitch at the corner of her mouth to go along with those sparkling eyes, but it was pretty dim and I was still pretty woozy, so I convinced myself that I was merely seeing things. She only nodded once again and regarded me with the same cool expression as before, “You may call me Amiri.” Her hands were folded across her lap and her back was set straight. She looked kind of regal if you ignored the fact that she was wearing simple, ragged clothes.

She followed my eyes as I looked at her clothes, then motioning to herself as she met my gaze again. “There were not many choices for garments. Your magic sent some embers of fire into the clothing wagon, and what was not scattered over a large area by the explosion had been set alight.”

I winced and drew the blanket tighter against me. “I’m sorry. I don’t really know what I was thinking. I made a big mistake in attacking like that, it was pretty foolish of me.”

She was perfectly still except for moving to interlock her fingers, and the sparkle returned to her eyes. I had the distinct impression she was actually enjoying herself. “I do not mind. Nor do the others. It was a rather impressive display, even if it was foolish.” She leaned forward only an inch, but I swear her presence became many times more imposing as she looked down on me. “However, you almost died. Not from the wounds you took in the fight, but from your own careless use of your power. You injured some of the innocent, as well, though only minor scratches and bruises.”

Squeezing my eyes shut, I took a deep, shuddering breath and hung my head. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. When I saw what was happening, I just reacted.” The small child’s body flashed before my eyes, broken and bloody, and my whole body shook with the effort of pushing that hallucination away.

I could only see her legs and her hands, but she waved dismissively after a few seconds, which brought my head up to meet her eyes again. They were serious, and peering at me as if trying to pry open my soul to have a good look at me. “You are not to shoulder any blame. No one you saved will offer a complaint, only gratitude.”

I nodded weakly, and she continued, a harder edge in her voice. “But, I must ask you a question, wanderer.” That imposing feeling returned, amplified threefold, and I felt something close to pressure against my skin as her presence radiated heavily in the small room. “Where are you from, and why have you come here?”

Crap. How was I going to explain myself to her?