by Ashley West
"Maybe not."
She blinked at the screen for a moment more and then turned to head for the stairs. She remembered the way Samel had known that the creatures couldn't see in the dark. At the time, she'd had more important things on her mind than figuring out how he might know that, but now she wondered. It had seemed too instinctive to be an observation. No, it had sounded like something he just knew. As if he'd encountered those creatures before.
Which meant that wherever they were from, maybe that was where Samel was from or somewhere thereabouts.
Before she realized it, she was standing outside of the door to the room she'd given him, and she decided to just knock and have done with it.
"Yes?" came the call from inside, so she pushed the door open.
And her jaw nearly dropped.
It wasn't a large room by any means, big enough for a full sized bed, a dresser, and a desk. Samel had pushed the latter two objects off to one side, and was on his back on the floor, shirtless. His hands were behind his head, and he seemed to be mid crunch or sit up or something when she stepped in.
If she thought he'd been attractive with his shirt on, it was nothing compared to how he looked with it off. He was built like he was made of pure muscle, and as she stood there, trying not to stare, he completed his crunch and then two more. It was impossible not to watch the way his abs contracted, and she had to swallow hard as her mouth watered.
"Did you need something, Naomi?" Samel asked, and she shook herself, forcing herself to focus.
"I...um. What are you doing?" So much for focusing.
"I'm not entirely sure," Samel admitted. "I started feeling restless, and this helped it to go away. And it felt...right."
"I see," she said faintly. "Well. That's good."
For the love of god, she couldn't stop staring at him.
“Naomi?” he asked. “Are you alright? You didn’t say if you needed anything.”
She blinked and shook herself, hoping her face wasn’t as red as it felt. She cleared her throat and took a step back, trying to make herself look at Samel’s face instead of his body. And good grief, he was still doing the crunches and somehow managing to speak to her without sounding out of breath at all. Clearly he was good at this and had been for some time.
“I...right. Right. There was something I wanted to ask you about. Those...things from last night. It seemed like you knew something about them. Like maybe you’d seen them before.”
Samel sighed. “It felt like maybe I had,” he admitted. “I knew what to do with them. I knew they wouldn’t be able to see us in the dark. But I don’t know how I knew that. I have no memory of them, but that’s not surprising. Why do you bring it up?”
“Because there were more of them spotted in the city. Some people have already been hurt by them, and at least one person has already died,” Naomi said.
His face went still at her words, and he unfolded himself from the crunch he’d been doing and sat up, legs crossed as he looked at. “That’s terrible,” he said.
She nodded. “It is. No one knows what they are or what they want, and if they keep coming…”
“They wouldn’t be here if they didn’t want something,” Samel said and then looked surprised.
“How do you know that?” Naomi wanted to know.
“I...I’m not sure,” he said. “It just feels like the right thing.”
Naomi had always prided herself on the ability to tell when things were about to change. It was something she’d learned living with her parents. She had to be able to tell when her mother’s mood was shifting from one extreme to another because it was never a good idea to let her catch you off guard. That just ended in more drama than anyone wanted to deal with.
In her head, she described it like she was standing on a precipice, and she had the choice to either step back or fall.
That’s what this felt like. Samel’s arrival, those things that had been chasing her, his strange powers, the news story: it all felt like there was something big coming, and she was willing to bet a fair amount that it wasn’t going to be pleasant.
She looked at Samel and wondered how much of it hinged on him. Had he been sent here to work with the creatures? It was too much to be a coincidence that they had arrived at the same time.
All the same, he had saved her life. Naomi supposed at the very least she owed him the benefit of the doubt. He seemed honorable and good, but she didn’t know him. She didn’t know anything about him, really, and probably she never would because he didn’t know anything about himself. Or at least he couldn’t remember.
“Naomi?”
She blinked and focused on him again, annoyed that she’d been off in her own little world again, but pleased that she at least hadn’t been staring at him this time. “Sorry, what were you saying?”
“I was saying that you should be careful. Those things...they’re dangerous. You saw them. I would not want them to hurt you.”
That brought a smile to her face and she sighed. “I wouldn’t want them to hurt me either,” she said. “I’ll be careful.”
Samel nodded, but his face was still clouded and he looked troubled.
Well, she supposed that made two of them.
Chapter Five: Ember
“Recording.”
The voice was detached and monotone, and it kept saying the same thing over and over again. “Recording.”
Recording what, though? Samel didn’t know. He felt a sense of urgency though, driving him on as he moved through the smoke and flames that surrounded him. It was hard to breathe and harder to see, and he had no idea where he was going. All he knew was that he needed to get there and he needed to get there soon.
And then all of a sudden, the flames were gone. Or rather, they had condensed, and he could breathe again.
He was standing on the edge of a cliff, hands stretched out in front of him. When he opened them, the flames were there, leaping and cracking in his palms. It was terrifying, but at the same time it felt right. It felt like the flames belonged there. Like he belonged in them, and he knew they wouldn’t hurt him.
“Be careful out there,” said a voice he knew he knew. It was familiar, like a scent or a taste that he’d experienced hundreds upon hundreds of times.
“Samel,” said another voice. “Samel. Captain. Samel.”
So many voices. And he was sure that he knew all of them, but he couldn’t remember. It was all there, just out of his reach, and thought that maybe, if he threw himself off the cliff, what he wanted to know would be at the bottom. Of course, it could be a trick, something meant to kill him, and so he hesitated, and he burned without burning.
There was somewhere he was supposed to be.
When he woke up, it was with a gasp. The dream hadn’t been particularly violent, but his heart was pounding all the same, and when he looked at his hands, he saw that they were—yes—on fire.
Samel sighed and concentrated until they went out.
It was the third night in a row that he’d had this dream, and he didn’t feel any closer to knowing what it was supposed to mean.
It was odd that he could remember it all so clearly when he woke up, and he wondered if that was a thing with him or if it was just because of this dream. Maybe they were real memories, coming to him in his sleep. Or maybe he'd hit his head harder than he thought.
For the third morning in a row, he laid there in the too small, borrowed bed and stared at his hands. There were no marks on them, no evidence that mere moments ago, they had been on fire. According to Naomi, who seemed in a position to know these things, normal people didn't just spontaneously burst into flame.
"I mean, sometimes in the movies they can set things on fire and they burn down their schools and kill their parents for years of neglect and abuse, but that's not a normal thing, no," she'd said.
Samel hadn't understood most of that, but he took it to mean that it wasn't something people did. And yet he did it. Usually without trying to, but all the same, it wa
s something that happened to him. No one had been hurt yet, and somehow he'd even managed not to light the room on fire in his sleep. Clearly it was some kind of weapon or defense mechanism, but he just didn't understand why he had it or what he was meant to do with it.
Sighing heavily, he pressed his warm hand to his forehead and closed his eyes. "Remember," he whispered. "Remember who you are."
He hadn't been expecting that to work, not really, and when it didn't, Samel just sighed again and then pulled himself out of bed.
It was still dark outside, and he wasn't sure what time it was, but the house was quiet. He'd been there long enough to realize what a novel turn of events it was whenever the whole house was silent, so he eased out of his room and down the stairs.
His foot hovered over one step when something caught his attention, and he turned his head to see the youngest member of the household sitting on the railing on the upper landing.
"That one creaks," she whispered.
She was increasingly odd, and Samel searched his mind for her name, only a little bitter that he could actually remember the names of these people he'd only just met and probably not anyone he'd known for his entire life.
Camille. That was it.
"What are you doing awake?" he murmured back. "It's very late."
"Very early," she corrected. "And I had bad dreams." She looked away from him for a moment, and Samel thought he saw a haunted look in her eyes in the darkness.
"Me, too," he said, offering her something of himself in exchange. "Bad and confusing."
"Because you can't remember, so it all seems new," Camille replied, and it wasn't a question.
"Yes. And because I feel like they're trying to tell me something. The dreams. But I don't know what it is they want me to know. It's...frustrating."
Camille nodded, as if she understood, and even if she didn't understand completely, Samel appreciated the attempt. "Naomi's awake," she offered.
"Is she?" Samel asked, already looking towards the kitchen on the floor below. Somehow he already knew that was where she would be. "Do you know why?"
The girl shook her head. "No. But you calm her. Just like she calms you." She made a shooing motion with her hands that was clearly meant to send him along to the kitchen.
Samel didn't have to be told twice. He paused just long enough to give Camille a smile and then skipped the step she'd indicated was the creaky one and made his way on down the stairs, stepping lightly into the kitchen.
And there was Naomi. The light over the sink was the only light in the room, but he could clearly see her, seated at the small kitchen table with a cup of tea between her palms. She was staring down into it like she expected the answers to all of life's problems to be swirling in the opaque depths. He cleared his throat softly, so as not to startle her.
Her head still jerked up quickly, and her eyes were wide as she looked at him for a moment before relaxing. "What are you doing up?" she asked.
"I could ask you the same thing," Samel returned.
Naomi just snorted. "It's my house. If I want to sit in the kitchen at..." she trailed off and looked over towards the cooking box to see the glowing numbers there. "Jesus, four ten in the morning, then I can."
"Undoubtedly," Samel agreed. "Is it alright if I join you?"
"Sure," she said, kicking a chair out for him across the table from her. "But seriously, what's going on? It's a dumb time for people to be awake."
"Camille was awake," he said.
"She's different. And she has insomnia, so she's basically always awake."
"I had dreams. Well, one dream. But I've had it more than once now," Samel told her. "It's hard to go back to sleep after that."
Naomi nodded. "Dreams are like that. Anything interesting in your dreams? Did you remember anything?"
Samel looked at the table, fingers tracing the wood grain for a moment while he gathered his thoughts. If there were anyone he would share them with, it was Naomi. She had gone out of her way to make him feel at home here, and she deserved to know what was going on in his head. But how to make it sound like he wasn't a crazy person? He was so worried about her feeling like he was too dangerous or unstable to stay here, but when he thought about it, that was probably unlikely to happen. She only asked questions because she cared, and she never made it seem like him staying was conditional. And it seemed to be the same with everyone who called this place home.
He sighed and bent at the waist so he could rest his head on the table, arms pillowed under him. "I heard voices," Samel admitted. "In my dreams. I don't know whose they were, but they seemed familiar. And...I burned."
"You burned?" she asked, arching an eyebrow. "Like properly, or were you just on your usual amount of fire?" There was an amused twist to her mouth, and the light in the kitchen made her eyes light up and look impossibly green. Samel focused on her instead of what he was saying.
"You say that like it makes sense for me to be on fire at all. No one else bursts into flame."
"Maybe they do and maybe they don't," Naomi said, shrugging a shoulder. "That's not for me to say. And anyway, it might make sense for you to be on fire. It seems like that's just...your thing."
He sighed heavily, frustration building up in him. "But why?" he asked, voice a harsh whisper so he wouldn't shout and wake everyone up. "Why is this something I can do? Where did it come from? What am I supposed to be doing with it?"
The look on Naomi's face was nearly one of pity, and he didn't want to see it. He turned his face so that it was pressed against his arms, and he dragged in deep breaths, trying to calm the storm that was raging inside of him. The kitchen smelled like tea and he was getting hints of a sharp, nearly spicy smell from whatever they used to clean the table. It was soothing, and gradually, his heart stopped pounding so hard in his chest and he was able to unclench his fists.
"I'm sorry," he murmured.
"No," she said back. "You don't have to be sorry. This...I can't imagine how hard this has to be for you. I know sometimes I wish I could forget my past and who I am and how I got here, but I don't think I'd actually want that. It seems...horrible."
"It is," Samel said, voice rough. "It's...I have no idea who I'm supposed to be or what I'm meant to do. I don't even know where I come from. I feel untethered and unwanted and like I'm just drifting. I know there's something I'm supposed to do. Somewhere I'm supposed to be. I feel it pushing me sometimes, urging me to move, to do something, but I can't think of what it is, and it's maddening." He lifted his head and sighed again. "I don't know what to do."
Slowly, Naomi reached her hand across the table, letting her smaller, more slender fingers brush against his. "Samel," she said. "I know it has to be hard, but I'd like you to remember that you're not alone, even if it feels like you are. You're here, you're not drifting. You can stay as long as you'd like, and no one will ever question your right to be here." She made a face. "Well, Raven might, but that's just how she is."
Her words were kind, and Samel appreciated them, for all they didn't really help solve his problem at all. He could stay here, that was true, but he'd always be wondering what he was supposed to be and if he was letting people down by staying.
Those voices that he'd heard in his dream had been real, that much he knew. They'd been real, and they wanted him to do something, and he wouldn't be able to relax until it was done.
Naomi was getting up from the table, and Samel wondered if he had offended her. He watched her move around the kitchen, putting her mug in the sink and then making a face before she relented and washed it, setting it in the rack by the sink to dry. She stretched, body moving fluidly as she lifted her hands over head, revealing a strip of pale skin between the waistband of her pants and the hem of her shirt.
Samel averted his eyes politely, and then glanced back a moment later to see her leaning against the counter.
"I should go to bed," she said, seemingly talking more to herself than to him.
"Should you?"
"Ye
p. In about five hours this house is going to be a mess. People on their way to work or class or just making noise for the heck of it. You know how it goes by now."
He did, so he inclined his head. "And you?" he asked. "What will you do?"
"Me? Online classes and cleaning this place up," Naomi replied with a shrug. "And I should practice for the meeting with the investors. That's the thing, Samel," she said. "People always want to help causes like this, that help vulnerable people get back on their feet or find a place to belong, but they don't actually want to see any of the vulnerable people." She smiled ruefully. "I guess they still have to see me, though. Anyway, good night."
"Good night," Samel murmured, watching her go. She was an odd woman. Or at least he thought she was. Sometimes she seemed so heavy, like she was weighed down by something ancient and all encompassing, but with the flick of her long hair or the slight upturn of her mouth, she could make you forget that you'd seen her drooping under the weight at all.
He had to wonder where she'd come from, how she'd become this strong and yet still so vulnerable person.
But she did have a point. It was late. Or rather, early, and in the morning proper, the house would be awash with noise. In some ways it was nice, giving him something to focus on other than the mess his head was in, but in other ways, he hated it. All of them had places to go, places to be, and he was just stuck and lost.
With a heavy sigh, he dragged himself up from the chair and walked into the living room. He didn't want to go back to his room. It was perfectly serviceable, but it was cramped and the bed was small and at times like this, it made him feel trapped. Instead, he went and sat on the soft, squashy couch in front of the television, yawning as he tipped his head back to rest against the back of the couch.
He closed his eyes and exhaled slowly.
When he opened his eyes again, it was to look right into the face of Samantha, the oldest resident of the house. She was upside down for some reason, and he jumped, pulling himself into a more upright position and then wincing when his neck protested the movement.
