by A. R. Cook
Ayu had an odd twist in his lips, as if he was too torn to make a decision.
“I’ll give you time to think about it.” Desert Rain rubbed his nose gently, and then left him in the kitchen. She walked down the hall to her room, and went about rearranging her bed cushions to kill time. She sat patiently on her bed for what seemed like forever, until a thunderous
howl rattled the entire burrow. She cringed, racked with distress as she heard those roars of pain echo throughout the cavernous burrows. She heard him slamming against the walls, clay pots and pans shatter, and high-pitched screams that did not seem like they could have come from that thick demon throat. The earthquake he induced lasted a few minutes before coming to a stop. There was dead silence throughout the desert. Not even the dune screechers in the distance dared to make a sound.
Desert Rain sat still, clinging tightly to a cushion. She listened to the sound of her nervous breathing for a while. She slowly rose and made her way back to the kitchen. The room was in shambles, several of her clay wares in bits all over the floor. The walls had become riddled with more cracks and craters, and the fire pit was utterly smothered from existence. Ayu sat against the far wall, looking as if his brain had been drained rather than filled. There were tiny glass shards by his feet, the remainder of the orb, but no trace of liquid or memories.
Desert Rain approached him slowly. “Ayu? Are you all right?”
There was no response for a moment. Then he turned his head up towards her, and bared his teeth in a smile that Desert Rain had never seen before.
“I’m fine,” Ayu replied.
Desert Rain’s eyes bulged. “You…you can talk. The Mutual Language, I mean.”
“I’m fluent in all Luuvian languages.” He rose to his feet, shaking his mane. His stance was different, straighter, which made him look even taller. His voice was deep and dark, yet somehow alluring. His eyes were the most notable difference. They were full of cunning.
“That’s nice,” was all Desert Rain could say. “Are you…going to be all right?”
Ayu drew an arm around Desert Rain, holding her close. “I need some rest. Perhaps it is best if we go to sleep for now.”
“But—”
Desert Rain felt Ayu press his hand against her upper back. A strange sensation passed through her, a pleasant sensation, like being wrapped in a cocoon of hot spring water, and she felt herself become instantly drowsy. As her knees wobbled and her mind slipped into half-consciousness, she felt Ayu lift her into his arms, and carry her to her bedroom. He set her down on her cushions, and Desert Rain could feel him lie down beside her, his tails coiling around her legs and waist before she plummeted into sleep.
***
Desert Rain awoke the next morning to a gentle hand caressing her ear. She smelled something nice, and lazily opened her eyes to a hot bowl of soup and a cup of cactus milk resting by her head. She smiled at the caresses until her brain caught up with her, and her eyes shot open in alert.
“Rise and shine,” a warm voice whispered to her.
Desert Rain turned her head towards the presence lying at her side. She met the face of a young man, handsome and of excellent lean physique. His skin was tinted pale amethyst, and his shoulder-length hair was the dark steel-blue of a looming thunderstorm. He wore one of Desert Rain’s wool robes, but it was all that covered him. This was all Desert Rain took in before letting out a shriek.
“Who are you??” She jumped off the bed and picked up the bowl of soup, chucking it at the stranger. He blocked the bowl with his arm, but the hot liquid splashed onto his robe.
“Desert Rain, calm down. It’s me.” The man gave her a gesture to relax.
Desert Rain backed away, but then took a longer look at the man. He had the resemblance of claws on his fingers and toes, and his eyes had yellow irises. As he pulled open the upper half of his robe to wipe off the soup, she could see that on each side of his toned chest were the tattoos of three water waves over tongues of fire.
“Ayu?” Desert Rain went slack-jawed for a moment. “You’re…you’re…”
“Not bad, eh?” Ayu rose and spread his arms out in a presentational manner. “I admit, this wasn’t exactly what I had in mind. I never could form an imprint without keeping some of my original traits. But it will do, I suppose.” His eyes could now express so much more than before, and Desert Rain could feel them delving into her.
“So you had the power to shape-shift all along?”
“We call it imprinting. It’s a simple matter of soaking up and copying your physical makeup into myself. All we Darkscale can do it. It’s a wonder the rest of you people haven’t figured it out yet.”
Desert Rain was mesmerized by his change. She approached him, and touched his ears lightly. They were long and fringed, like Desert Rain’s. “You look like…me,” she said softly.
His hand brushed her hair away from her face. “I can look however you would like,” he purred. “It’s one of my many gifts that have been reawakened. Do you like this look for me?”
“Yes…yes, it’s fine,” she replied, jerking her head away from his touch.
He twisted his lips into a grin. “You didn’t shrink away from me when I was grotesque. Why shrink away now?”
She wrung her fingers. “I didn’t mean to shrink away.”
He lifted her face to his. “It’s the apparel, isn’t it? Too ‘comfortable’?”
Desert Rain made a little nod. “I guess I’ll have to go out and buy you some clothes.”
Ayu took a step back, and suddenly the robe morphed. It changed from the dusty brown robe to a crimson jacket and pants, trimmed with gold embroidery. A gold sash hung at his waist, and a pair of red leather gauntlets adorned his wrists. “Better?”
Desert Rain, slack-jawed, nodded.
“Basic Darkscale magic. Such a simple trick is practically inherent. Perhaps I could make something nice for you.” He placed his hands on her waist.
“No thanks, I like my clothes the way they are.” She cautiously pushed away his hands. “You never showed me that trick before.”
“Tricks can’t be done if you have no memory of how to do them.” He placed his hands under her ears, his fingers massaging the back of her neck. “All those memories flooding back into me last night, remembering all my secrets, all my gifts…it was like being reborn. I was filled with an incredible sense of life and power. It was thrilling. For the first time, I felt truly released.” His claws pressed down hard, nipping at Desert Rain’s nape. “And you were going to keep them from me.”
Desert Rain’s face was burning as she stared into the eyes of the demon holding her. His pupils turned into splinter slits, like a cat’s in bright sunlight. She stared back at him, unable to counter his statement. His grip on her slackened.
“But I understand. Your fragile little heart wanted to spare me the pain. You’re afraid of pain.” A smile spread across his face when he said this. He held Desert Rain close, his hissing breath creeping into her ear. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of you.”
Desert Rain gasped as one of his claws cut her neck right under her left ear. She tried to push him away, but he clung to her, not allowing her to escape. He kissed the spot where he had cut her. He licked a drop of her blood off his lips. “That wasn’t so horrible, was it?”
CHAPTER NINE
A Date with the Distortionist
She sat out on top of a dune, knees hugged to her chest, as the wind blew sand against her back. Her hair tangled in the breeze, shrouding her face. She saw the occasional dune screecher scuttle by, its head popping up every now and then among the dunes stretched out before her. Tears rose in her eyes, but she did not allow them to fall.
A hand came to rest on the crown of her head. She had not heard him approach, not even with her sensitive ears.
“Come home, Desert Rain.”
Her lips tightened.
“You can’t stay here forever.”
She sighed. “I want to be alone to think.”
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Ayu squatted down to her level. “You’re afraid.”
Desert Rain faced him. “You’ve changed. That’s all.”
“Perhaps you liked it better when I was your dumb pet?”
“I never saw you as a pet. You learned to understand me, and I understood you. But now, even though you can speak as I do, I don’t understand you at all.”
The corner of Ayu’s lip curled upwards slightly. “I see. A friendship changes as soon as one friend takes on a new appearance. You have a strange way of judging people.”
“It’s not how you look!” Desert Rain stood up. “You look fine, all right? And I’m not judging you. I knew everything would change as soon as you put those memories in your head. There’s…something about this I don’t like.”
“You’re a mess of worries and paranoia. It’s not a surprise. Look at the life you’ve led, hiding out here in this wasteland. Oddly enough, you’re probably not scared of things that would scare everyone else. Isolation. Stillness.” He put an arm around her shoulder. Desert Rain pulled away from him. “You hate being touched.”
Desert Rain looked at him darkly.
“You did the same to that handsome warrior friend of yours. You couldn’t even hold his hand. Meanwhile, you had no problem giving me gestures of kindness when I was a beast. Your coldness to me must be a sign of real affection. I’m touched.” He said the last two words in mockery.
Desert Rain let out a deep breath. “Are you my friend, Ayu?”
Ayu was quiet for a full minute. “You will come home,” he said. Before he walked away, he added, “My name is Katawa. Never call me Ayu again.”
***
There was a dark blue canvas punctured with spots of starlight across the sky when Desert Rain walked back to the front door of her burrow. She stood there for a while, watching the flickering light of the hall torches emit from the bottom of the steps. She re-tied her hair back, it having come undone in the desert winds.
“This is my home,” she told herself. “If I don’t want him here, I can send him away. He’ll leave if I make him see that I mean it. I will not be driven out of this home that I built with my own hands.”
She straightened her tunic, and descended the steps. She was greeted by the floor of her front hall being covered with desert rose petals. An orchestra of scents wafted from the kitchen, where the trail of petals directed her. She crept down the hall to the kitchen, peaking in before entering. The whole kitchen had been reformed, the mess from the preceding night cleared away. There was a new fire pit, which was bordered by pearly white stones in a ring. But what took Desert Rain’s breath away was the massive table covered in the finest array of food dishes she had ever seen. There was a multitude of meats that excelled her rabbit and insect roasts. Her wooden goblets were filled with mead, a mixture of cactus milk and honey from burrow bees. The food was set on strange, abstract plates of obsidian. She assumed that Katawa must have morphed some of her clay dishes into these new ones. The table, too, had turned into a darkened color, and it had been pulled out of shape like sticky gel that hardened. In the middle of the table
was a clay vase bursting with desert roses, but even they were different from the usual variety. Instead of the dusty, mauve color that desert roses customarily were, these roses were so saturated with a deep, radiant violet that they looked as if the color had been painted on.
“Sit.”
Desert Rain snapped her head towards Katawa, who leaned against the wall in the far corner. He made a gesture that reiterated his request. Desert Rain hesitated, but sat down on the cushion at the closest table end.
“Ayu…I mean, Katawa, what is all this?” she asked.
“I thought you would enjoy a decent meal for a change. You’d be amazed by the edible choices this desert truly has to offer.” He sat down at the opposite end of the table.
Desert Rain’s nose wrinkled as she observed the dishes of desert quail, savannah sheep, and especially the Laspher legs. “I’m really very flattered. But I don’t eat meat.”
“Not willing to be a bit adventurous? Well, I took the liberty of getting you something I knew you’d like.” He gestured towards the bowl of what Desert Rain thought were greens. When she picked up the bowl, she saw it was full of mint-hued, topaz-patched Dulamok moths, with huge leafy wings. Even though she was a bug-eater, she never ate these moths because they would soar over the desert during the late spring, creating one of the most beautiful sights the desert had to offer. They were a work of art, too beautiful to eat. She did not want to acquire a taste for them.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t eat these either. They’re too pretty.” She set the bowl back down.
Katawa tapped his fingers on the table irritably. “You have a passion for aesthetic beauty, don’t you? Preserving it, I should say. With all those murals you painted and plays you wrote—don’t look surprised, I read two while you were out—I can see how you love to trap beautiful essences.” He sipped his wine. “I’m an artist myself.”
“I saw that. You did an interesting job on my table.”
Katawa laughed. “That’s not reflective of what I can really do. A Distortionist can create a whole new vision in the creation process.”
Desert Rain furrowed her brow. “A Distortionist?”
“It is a rather blunt title, but it was bestowed on me back at the Court of Darkscale. I believe they took it from the term ‘illusionist,’ but what I do is very, very real.”
That’s when Desert Rain noticed a scorpion scurrying across the table on Katawa’s side. She herself was not afraid of scorpions, but she remembered Katawa’s last encounter with one in his room—of course, he was Ayu then—resulted in him sleeping on the floor of her bedroom for two nights.
“Katawa, there’s a—“
Without even looking at it, Katawa smacked his hand down on the scorpion with the ease of a cat pouncing on a mouse. He tightened his fist around it, creating a crunching sound, and after a moment he lobbed it at Desert Rain. She gasped in surprise, but what landed on the table and rolled towards her was no longer a scorpion. It was a thumb-sized blue bead. She poked at it warily.
“I have a knack for making little charms as well.” He rose, and walked to her end of the table. He stood over her. “We’re a pair of Charmers, aren’t we?”
“You know I’m not a Charmer.”
“I beg to differ.” He smiled, taking her hand and helping her up from the table. He plucked a rose from the vase and offered it to her. Desert Rain cautiously accepted it, although she found something about the pungent fragrance of it peculiar—even unsettling.
Katawa put his arms around her waist, staring into her eyes. “Play me something,” he requested.
***
Desert Rain played her Strimbo more elegantly than ever. Her elongated fingers allowed her to manipulate the strings in a way no human or elf could. She played a sweet song, one she had composed, inspired by the flight of a sand glider across the night sky. Katawa listened silently, his eyes focused on her fingers intently. When she finished, he applauded casually.
“You could make the stars weep in joy from such beauty you play,” he said.
Desert Rain could not help but blush. “What a silly thing to say,” was all she could reply.
Katawa continued to stare at her, a tiny grin in his lips.
Desert Rain began to wonder if there was something on her face causing him to stare. He moved closer to her on the bed cushions, and brushed his fingers against her cheek. He leaned
in, bringing his lips very close to hers, and they were about to meet when—
“No.”
He froze. He grasped the nape of her neck. “No?”
“No.” The second time was firmer.
He pulled back, glaring at her. “Maybe I should wear a mask. Would that impress you?”
Desert Rain clenched her teeth behind her lips. “I’m not going to talk about this.” She stood up and turned to walk away.
Katawa grab
bed her arm and yanked her back down. His grasp was so tight that a simple backwards jerk could have snapped her shoulder. His eyes flared like yellow fire. Desert Rain’s eyes for the first time were as solid as stone, combating his vicious glare.
“Don’t you dare walk away from me,” Katawa hissed.
“You think you know exactly what scares me. Then you should know your jealousy doesn’t. This sort of pettiness doesn’t earn my respect.”
Katawa loosened his grip. He dropped his gaze. His hand drifted down next to hers. “Forgive me,” he murmured.
Desert Rain was surprised by this response. Something about him became soft, as if now his gentleness was more genuine than before. She felt a twinge of pity, but she did not know what for.
“Why are you jealous of him, Katawa?”
His hand lingered on hers. “The Swordmaster has something I want, and he doesn’t even know it. He will never hold it dear, as I would.”
Desert Rain did not take time to formulate a proper reply, but instead impulsively said, “You don’t love me.”
His fingers curled around hers. “You assume too much.”
“You’re not capable of loving me, Katawa. You’re a Wretched. Love’s not part of you.”
She regretted saying this as soon at the words escaped her lips. Yet Katawa did not make any reaction to it. His whole face washed blank. After a long time, he rose and left the room. Desert Rain did not see him for the rest of the night.
***
“Tell me about your Sage,” Katawa asked one day.
They were out at the oasis that day. The oasis was a pleasant spot, about half a mile from home. It had once been a stagnant pool of water, but Desert Rain had collected from all around the desert various plants to place around the pool’s edge. It was as close to gardening as she could get. Katawa had even contributed himself when he was still Ayu, his strength able to bring three palm trees from the savannah and put them in a triangle around the water. At present, Katawa sat on shore while Desert Rain was knee-deep in the pool, trying to cool off her legs.
