Chapter 1

Existence

 

Their world was dark.

They sat in the dark together. The eldest boy kept looking at the younger one every other second just to make sure he was real. He held his wrist a bit tighter, too.

He remembered the first day of his existence. He opened his eyes and saw nothing but his own pale body. Everything around him was black.

The floor he awoke on was solid and flat. The learning process to walk on it did not take long, but in such a void, what was the point? No matter how far he walked or eventually ran, the darkness still shrouded him. He was alone for what seemed like an eternity. His eyes never closed and his body never yearned for nourishment.

The only thing he yearned for in this dreary world was a companion.

Suddenly, his wish came true.

 He was sitting down after he grew bored of one of his running sessions. Quiet once again, the boy gripped his bony sides and put his head into his bare knees. He stared right into them.

A moment later, a new sound echoed to him.

It was a whimper, then sobbing. The boy’s curiosity motivated him to begin running again. His thin legs wobbled at the start, but he fixed himself into a sprint towards the noise. As the sound came closer, the boy could see a small glimmer of white. His eyes began to make out a small, naked body curled into fetal position. The body was shorter, but was as lanky and slender as his. The boy on the floor kept sobbing until he came to his side.

The eldest kneeled down beside the newborn to take a closer look. The boy on the floor sniffled, looking at the other over his shoulder. They finally saw each other.

The youngest looked at his pale counterpart. The boy kneeling before him had really wide eyes that he never blinked with. In the dark, the child could see the wide whites that engulfed this boy’s tiny pitch-black irises. The small amount of hair he had covered his head in white curls. One lone, thick curl, however, hung over his right eye. His nose was long, narrowed, and pointed.

In short, he was hideous. The eldest’s appearance made the boy uneasy.

The eldest, ignorant to the boy’s discomfort, inspected further and was confused by what he saw. The child on the floor had his fists buried in his own chest. When the child saw where he was looking, the younger one shot a glare from the corner of his eyes, reddened by tears. The eldest then noticed the boy’s irises were a matching crimson. His hair was straighter and much longer than his, too. The eldest drew closer upon inspecting again.

He nervously reached out and tapped on his arms twice. The younger’s glare narrowed further as he grunted. He looked away as if to ignore him. Slightly vexed, the eldest tapped the boy again.

The child whipped his body around and began snarling at him. He got on all fours. His growling grew more intense as he began to bare his small fangs. The eldest stumbled back. When the youngling took a ‘step’ farther with his right hand, he stumbled and fell back on the floor facedown. He let out a cry and rolled onto his back with fists clenched once more. He shoved them in-between his thighs.

Letting his curiosity get to him again, the eldest returned to see if everything was okay. Behind the boy’s head was a small liquid streak of red. On the younger’s chest, the eldest examined what were two rows of three scars. The boy looked as though someone slashed through his skin. The blood slowly trickled down his ribcage. Sudden concern came over the eldest.

The younger caved in and finally opened his hands. In the palm of both his empty hands were four separate holes of shredded skin, bleeding. With more questions piling in the eldest’s head, he took caution of the boy’s temper and proceeded to touch his palm. The skin was mutilated beyond healing properly. The visible bones were still in tact, thankfully. He proceeded to check the boy’s fingers, but was stopped. When the side of his middle finger grazed the younger’s index finger, a sharp pain shocked his finger up to his wrist. After drawing back, the eldest saw his own blood running down his hand. With his middle finger again, he grazed the boy’s middle finger, only to receive the same results.

It was inconceivable. The younger’s fingers were as normal and as rounded as his, but they were razor-sharp. He pieced together why the boy was upset, though. When he first appeared into existence, he too was misled by the form of his own fingers. Now, he lied on the floor, writhing in pain.

The eldest drew focus to his own finger. His middle finger kept throbbing and leaking. He grabbed it with other hand, trying to stop the flow and it stung. He hissed. He couldn’t help but notice the arrogant smirk forming on the boy’s face. The eldest lowered his others fingers and opened his palms. Against his pale hands, he could examine the wounds more closely. The youngest watched the eldest’s face explode in excitement. The boy arched his white brow. The eldest revealed the finger to him from the broadside.

Where there should have been two gash-marks was his skin, pieced and mended back together. He could not explain it, but he could care less. The blood and mutilated skin was gone. The youngest looked on in awe, and then looked down at his chest. It was an unspoken demand, but the eldest, caring for this boy’s troubles, put his hands down on the boy’s chest. The boy’s back instantly arched and he let out a loud cry close enough to being called a howl. It echoed in the distance, however far it was. The boy did his best to keep his hands restrained, but his fingers dug deeper into his palms.

The eldest let go, and as expected, the scars on the boy’s chest had vanished. The younger finally sat up and gave him his open hands. If the eldest thought his few cuts stung, what kind of pain would this boy feel when he performed on his raw palms? He cringed at the idea, but could not leave the poor child to bleed anymore. He carefully placed his inner three-fingers in the boy’s hand and watched him with care. If this child would have attacked him the way he planned, he would have ceased to exist.

He did not have anything to lose, but the enticing questions that could lie ahead was his motivation to keep his guard up.

The eldest’s prediction about the pain came true, and the boy did his best to keep his fingers open. He kicked and screamed for a while, enough to give the eldest a headache. When he let go, there was a moment of disappointment.

The wounds were too deep. The eldest’s mysterious power could not fully regenerate the boy’s skin. In his palms were four indents. The boy flexed his fingers a little, and through his tears he saw that his fingers sort of fit the little holes if he didn’t clench his fist too hard. When examining the usefulness of his shortcomings, the elder noticed that the younger didn’t have fingernails.

As they stood, the boy slung his arms around the eldest’s neck. At first, he protested, thinking it was a strike on his life. Instead, it turned out to be the boy’s way of thanking him; a hug. The eldest still felt a bit uncomfortable by it.

Now together, the eldest and the younger began to explore their similarities and differences. They were of the same gender, the same pale skin, but stood at different heights. The eldest was an inch or two taller than the other. Their eyes were much different and their separate abilities remained unexplained. During their running sessions, the eldest noticed how much faster the younger one was. He began to question how. He existed in the void for much longer, so should he have not been…better?

As they ran for what seemed like a very long while, the eldest swore he caught a glimpse of something on the floor. He ignored it trying to catch up. After they came to a halt, he looked at his foot and saw blood. He looked under the arch of his foot, but did not see a wound. The child running back to him seemed fine as well. The eldest took a moment to stare backwards.

His suspicions lingered.

When they had nothing better to do, they would sit together and keep close, much like they were doing now. Whenever he looked down at the boy, he noticed how deep in thought he was. He did not have words to explain it, but his eyes stayed open, staring at the ground. His chin rested on his knees, fists balled and crossed around his ankles as his counterpart held to the nearest wrist. The eldest wondered what was on his mind. It was then he began to yearn for a way to communicate with him. Did this boy feel the same? Did this boy have as many thought as him? Who was he?

The eldest grew mad. The burden of all these questions began to drive him to the edge. Before he could decide to do anything, the younger boy yanked his hand away and shot to his feet. He took in a deep breath and began shrieking at the top of his lungs. He balled his fists too deep again, drawing blood again. Angered by the pain, he flung both his hands in front of him to fling the blood off.

He paused for a moment and stared into the distance. The eldest followed his sight but saw nothing but the darkness. The boy came to his senses again, and began an epic fury of swiping at the air, continuing his screams. The eldest drew back, terrify of whatever became of this child. Although scared, he was satisfied he finally received his answer. The child was going madder than him, sitting in whatever bleak, dank dungeon for so long. They had no concept of time; or patience.

After a moment of retreating, the eldest began to scream with the boy, encouraging him. He did not know what made him do it. Perhaps it was what he wanted. He wanted to see someone fight this abyss away. He was too powerless; too weak to fight anything, really. The child before him had an explosive amount of energy, swiping away at nothing over, and over, and over again.

There was a brief pause in cheering on his counterpart when the younger boy slipped over his own blood. The eldest almost ran over to see if he was okay, but he recovered on his own. The younger didn’t use his hands to get up, but rather his knees. Slowly regaining his posture, he began to snarl at the air itself.

The hair on the back of his neck stood. The eldest stood stiffly. He could feel the tension in the air. Something was there, but the eldest could not see it. The boy was staring into the eyes of something mysterious, taunting him to keep attacking.

The boy, now put to the task, began to reveal a new ability. He arched his back and bent his fingers. They began to thin out. Then, they lengthened pass his knees. When the child straightened his fingers again, the eldest swore he heard something close to a whip crack.

The child swiped once more.

The eldest looked on impressed. The child’s sharp fingers now had a purpose, but for what? Did the he have secondary abilities like this? His train of thought was broken when the child let out one last cry. It was perhaps the last swipe before he gave up, the eldest supposed. The child threw his left shoulder forward and scratched the air underhanded.

Something flickered.

Then, it happened.

The pocket of air the child slashed last left four smoky trails that etched scratch marks. In the smoke, small flickers of electricity sparked. The eldest could hear something tear. Tears in space were finally spreading. Glimmering light shot them both in the eyes as something behemoth began to reveal itself. The tearing turned into a roar. Although nearly blinded, the eldest did his best to keep his eyes open.

The younger boy jumped, and scared out of his wits, retreated back to the eldest. His claws retracted. The boy had ripped the air in twain after challenging it, and it retaliated furiously. Their hair flung back. The rush of it blowing against him made the eldest’s heart pound. Something about the new flow of it made him feel liberated. Was this the way out?

The tears began to melt and mend together. The two stared into the window of light inquisitively. It was almost like staring into an eye. The window began to grow until it shaped itself into a hexagonal diamond, pointing at the top and the bottom. The light brightened, and the two boys shielded their eyes with their wrists. The eldest did not close his eyes once. He wanted to see the phenomenon through. He wanted to see what the younger boy unveiled. Whatever it was, it might have been there longer than him. Maybe it held the answers to all his maddening questions.  He tried his best to see around his wrist, but he could not see a thing. Suddenly, the light vanished.

The eldest had to adjust his eyes again to see what had become of the window. He blinked and dropped his jaw. The breath he took in was short. He shuddered an exhale, amazed by the show in front of them. The diamond was still there, but in a new form. It was now taunting him.

The ‘edges’ of the diamond was lit by a flame. New colors unfolded themselves within its heat; they saw red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. Inside the diamond were two colors they were familiar with. Small, thin tendrils of glimmering white light stretched into the dark distance. They slowly weaved around each other in a tunnel of gray never touching one another. They were leading the eldest on. Where did they lead to?

He drew in closer with the younger hanging behind. When he came near the flames, he did not fret. Although brightly lit, the fire did not burn his feet. It was ghostly; the only thing his feet felt was more wind pushing against him. The eldest discovered that the window had a layer of something clear over its flat entrance. He went to touch it, he felt this odd entity’s breath. It was cold and wet, but he could push his wrist right through.

On the other side, his fingers felt his dried palm. Oddly, as the door breathed on the two from the outside, the eldest’s hand was feeling suction. Where was it pulling him? He thought once more, and concluded with another question: why should he care?

It was going to lead him and the boy out of their dungeon.

The door alone had showed them so many wonders; light, wind, colors, fire, and water. It did not seem dangerous. The eldest’s feet were unharmed, his hand was not lacerated, and it was actually seemed to be beckoning them.

Without a moment’s notice, the eldest latched to the younger’s wrist and jumped in. The boy screamed in protest, but could not escape the grasp in time. His small lanky body was swept in like a ragdoll. He detested being splashed. He screamed some more after he realized his feet were no longer touching the ground.

His body was floating.

2: Chapter 2 -- World Beyond

Chapter 2

World Beyond

The wind could not take his breath or his sight. The eldest yawped in joy with his arms stretched out. He ‘lied’ on his stomach and let the vortex do its job. His curly hair stood on end as he basked in the wind’s flow. Where it took him, he could care less.

The twinkling white tendrils refused to come near him. No matter what way he tried to grab them, they wriggled away. He caused his own body to flip quite a few times after getting desperate. That was when he discovered he could glide upright. He leaned back and ‘stood’ with his legs spread far apart. He wiggled his toes and twisted his fingers.

Nude, it all felt funny.

The younger boy, trailing behind, was still in a panic. Where was he going? What did that idiot ahead do? He frantically eyed his surroundings. The tunnel was first dark, but now, it was gray. The lines of white stretched into the depths of this corridor. They served no purpose but to guide, he figured. He watched the eldest fail at trying to catch one. Watching them move made the younger boy’s head spin. They were creatures of some sort. When they evade, it had a wave effect on their bodies. For a moment, a few of them swerved towards him when the eldest came up short.

The child began to notice that the grays on the walls were becoming brighter. They were almost white. This was it, he felt. He followed his companion’s example and was able to nail standing upright. He began to wonder what could have been on the other side. Perhaps it was a world covered in white; just another prison cell for them to occupy. He smiled. It would have taken that foolish smile right off the eldest’s face. It would have smacked some sense into him.

As he predicted, the tunnel went white. The eldest was practically invisible in the younger boy’s sight. Forgotten, the boy tensed up when the cold, wet layer of water hit him full-body. The water stung his eyes and his body hit the ground quite hard. After he pushed himself up, he tried to use the back of his hands to wipe away the tears but something was wrong. Something was covering his hands and it got on his face.

He heard the eldest boy splashing in something. It wasn’t until seconds later he could hear the eldest making panicking grunts. He even had the nerve to grab and shake him by his sides. When the boy was finally able to open his eyes, he discovered another new color: brown. His hands were covered in it, and it was wet. The boy looked at his elder and could finally see his face in better light.

He was still hideous. His nose was long and pointed at the tip. His skin and hair were both pale white. His body had turned into a canvas, splattered in the sticky muck.

Wherever they were, it was humid.

The eldest boy began to point outwards, splashing more mud in the younger one’s face. The boy picked his head up and saw what the other one was panicking about.

In the same field as them was a mass of people.

There was only a short distance that separated them. There was about thirty of them. They were all large, and very rugged. These men were of darker, browner pigment. They all looked savage, much like the younger boy a few moments ago. Their long black hair was strewn about; their eyes were yellowed; they were all drenched in their own sweat and the mud. Most of them stood hunched over, draped in fur clothing. Although their chests were bare, they wrapped and covered their hips. In their hands were sticks with pointed edges, or rocks attached them.

Weapons.

 Although they were intimidating, they yielded. They stood, almost frozen in place. They were all just as curious as them.

The eldest turned around and made another urgent grunt. The boy turned around and saw another group of people, standing in a line in front of an unfinished village wall. The boy was amazed by the sight. These people were dressed head to toe in a more colorful clothing. They shared the same pigmentation as the people on the other side, but none of them looked as savage as the others. They stood in an orderly line, looking right back. Behind them, the boy saw their brick homes, and how orderly they were set.

It was then the younger boy figured what was happening. The group of men was going to attack the village before they arrived. Did they see the same window when he ripped the rift open? Regardless, the two got stuck in the dead middle of what was happening. For them, it must have been as strange seeing two children with their alien skin complexion drop out of nowhere. The boy looked at the men, then back at the people. He noticed the people did not arm themselves. They all stood silently, and waited patiently. The boy thought they were mad.

One of the bigger men let out a howl. He jabbed his spear into the air, and chanted something to his army. They all howled with him and began to bang their instruments on the dirt. The boys began to feel their knees shake and their hearts pound. The world seemed to stop when the leader finally lowered his spear to point at them. He screamed one last word before they all charged.

The boy looked back at the villagers as the ground rumbled. They all looked on with concern. They were useless; pathetic. He looked at the eldest. The one he sort of relied on now stood frozen in place. He never thought the eldest’s eyes could get wider, but he stood incorrect. The boy snarled. The eldest probably should have thought twice before taking his wrist and jumping into that portal. Then again, he was at fault for opening it.

Now, looking back at the scene at hand, the boy stood his ground. He hunched his back as well and his fingers grew again. The army drew closer and closer before he began to doubt himself. They were all twice his size. They were all covered in different scars, and different afflictions. He noticed one of them running toward them did not have both his arms. The boy wondered, were these people the same as them? What would one more scar do them?

He concluded: they were monsters. They only did it for the rush of power. He knew what it was like. He remembered when the eldest would not leave him alone, he wanted to make him go away, and stay away. When he almost pounce him, his adrenaline was rushing. It was sort of thrilling to watch the eldest cower the way he did. For a split second, he was in control. In a way, that made him the same as them. They both stood on two legs; saw with the same eyes; they certainly screamed like he did.

One thing made him different, though: he would not stand to watch the village fall.

Lost in thought, the younger awoke in the shadow of a giant. The eldest screamed and shielded his face away from the man’s axe. The younger boy, without a second to think, threw his left hand open palmed. Out of shock, his fingers grew again. In one swipe, he felt his fingers glide through the eldest’s attacker.

The rumbling suddenly came to a halt. The man froze in place. A painful scream echoed in the awkward moment.

The man choked, then fell over, right on top of the eldest. Slowly twisting his neck to watch the fall, the child realized the man was torn in pieces. The eldest’s screams were muffled under the raw flesh and organs piling on him.

After the brute got out of his way, the child looked to the field and realized what he had done. The first slash could have been the last. His fingers grew to an unbelievable distance. The leader of the tribe stood back and watched the white tendrils glide only a yard away, tearing the earth with such ease. The leader heard a member of his screaming and rolling on the ground, holding a deep gash on his chest.

That man was lucky.

This one child dissected a good amount of the barbarians in their stride with one blow. They never saw it coming. And he realized it.

The boy realized that these people were not gifted with his strengths. They could not slash back, or recover their own wounds.

They were weak. Their numbers dropped to six. The remainders looked on with shock, frozen in fear. Three of them fled. Two of them retreated back to the chief in cowardice.

The eldest still had trouble getting back to his feet. He grew queasy of pushing the slime and blood off. The man’s heavy arm was what was truly weighing his fragile body down. With both his eyes still open, he retched and gagged. The putrid odor coming off the corpse made him dizzy.

The younger boy retracted his claws back to their normal size to lead the group on. He wanted them to come. He was half their size, and they could not touch him.

It felt magnificent. He flicked the blood off and glared them down. He wanted to finish them all. He watched as the men were being cursed away by their leader. He pushed one out of the way and took another’s axe. He stared at the boy and started pushing his way forward.

He started with a stride, and then began to run. The boy wanted him to get closer before he dashed the fool’s hopes. The man let out a final battle cry. Before the boy could do a thing, the eldest scared the both of them with his own battle cry.

The boy looked down and was bewildered. The eldest was back on his feet. He stood with his long arms, hands, mouth and eyes wide open. He was still reveling in his own panic, drenched in blood and waste. The lone bang was slopped straight down his nose. Some of it oozed from his crusted bottom lip and trickled down his chest. The younger boy saw his tiny irises turn red like his.

The blood on his skin began to recede. They bubbled together and trailed to his fingertips. Droplets on his chest and legs began to flow upwards against his body. In their leave, they left red stains on his skin. He brought his hands in front of him and watched the blood flutter from his body. The droplets gathered into a sphere that floated just a few inches from his face.

The younger boy, still amazed, smirked when he saw the leader stop dead in his tracks with his weapon. He would have struck him down right there, but he wanted to see what was going to happen.

The eldest bent a finger forward, and the ball drifted only a few paces away. He could not believe it. He was in full control of it. He threw his left arm forward and sent it flying. It zipped pass the leader’s head, but stayed afloat. The boy, wasting his energy and slinging his arm around, did this a few times to intimidate the man. To his misfortune, the trick did not work. Instead, the man found his bravado again and continued his run. The younger boy got his fingers readied.

The eldest boy’s fingers tensed up. Instantly, he could feel a burning sensation on his skin; in particular, wherever there was still a trace blood. He tried to reel the ball back in, but did not have a plan to stop their attacker. The younger boy raised his hand.

The ball came darting back and caught the back of the man’s shin in a splatter. A torrent of white smoke began to jet from his leg, hissing. He screamed in agony and hit the ground in front of them. They both stood over him and watched as the blood boiled away his flesh. He scratched at the mud to get closer, but failed. As the eldest stared on at him with those crimson eyes, the heat intensified. Eventually, the pain took his consciousness, and he bled out.

The eldest stumbled back and his eyes went dark again. He looked to the horizon and saw the other barbarians flee.

It was finally over.

His chest sudden sunk and he began to pant heavily. For the first time in his unnatural life, he felt exhausted. The adrenaline made his bones shake and his legs weary.

He turned to the crowd of people behind them, but was blindsided by a giant blanket of orange. Two arms wrapped around his neck and pulled him in. Against his chest, the eldest felt another, but this person’s was quite fuller, and much rounder. Hip-to-hip, his loins crossed theirs, he felt something different. This person held him tight and refused to let go. He flung his lanky arms about, and pushed himself away from the intruder in fear.

He locked eyes with a creature he had never seen before. It was surely a villager, but it stood, had longer hair, longer eyelashes, a wider chest, and a wider pair of hips. This person was beautiful; this person was a young lady. The eldest began to feel his face get hot again. Thinking he was under some sort of spell, he began to cover his face from her. He felt his face get hotter, and his fingers could not heal the sensation. The more he thought about it, the worse it got.

The girl giggled at him, watching his face turn a natural bright red. After a moment of watching him go berserk, he yelled in panic. He took a step back again and slipped into more waste. He struggled to get up again.

The younger boy rolled his eyes and caused the girl no problem. He deemed her no threat. He watched as the other villagers began walking towards them.

The boy looked up to the bright ball of light beaming overhead. It was so bright, and he could feel the immense heat coming right off of it. He looked to the clouds and the wide blue sky and let his mind go. All of his questions and concerns got lost in the smell of wet, moist nature. His hair flowed in the wind as he listened.

He knew there were no walls or barriers could obstruct this comforting breeze. It was welcoming force that blew all around him from one distance to another. It was quite relaxing compared to the nothingness the two were almost certainly bound to.

This world was enormous. It was full of color, beauty, and most importantly, other people. The villagers, who were now closer, seemed more than welcoming. Although there was going to be a language barrier to surpass, the boy finally felt relieved for the second time of his life.

Just like the first time, it was all thanks to the stupid one.

He closed his eyes and exhaled a deep breath.

So this was freedom…

3: Chapter 3 -- Depending

Chapter 3

Depending

“Is this your brother?”

Noc remembered the very first conversation he held seventeen years ago. Being the older one, he was held responsible to answer the village people’s questions once they taught him and his companion Canis their native language.

Who were they? Where did they come from? Why does Canis’s fingers grow? How did he move blood?

None of the answers came to mind. When struck with the questions, Noc froze up. He did not know how he came to exist, or why they were so different. Vaani, the girl that hugged him before came out and began to ask him simpler, yet more profound questions.

“Is this,” referring to Canis, “your brother?”

“Brother?” Noc asked.

“Is he the only person you have?”

Noc nodded. He could feel eyes honing on him from every direction. He began to feel sweat on the back of his neck.

“Do you depend on him?”

Noc stood silent. He looked at Canis who shot him a glare. Noc nodded.

“Does he depend on you?”

Noc looked back to Canis who was now glancing at the sky again. Noc rolled his eyes and nodded. Vaani giggled. Her laughter was soothing to him. The sound alone made him relaxed. He took a deep breath and admitted, “Yes, then. He is my brother.”

It was then they chose their own names. Honestly, they chose the first sounds that came to mind. The eldest thought ‘Noc’ would be at least a different, yet decent name. The younger boy thought of something a bit more complex. After hearing Vaani’s name, he tried to be a bit more creative with his. That was when ‘Canis’ was chosen. The people admitted it was a bit odder than just ‘Noc,’ but accepted it.

After their first display, the two were chosen by the city’s ruler to be guardians. They were given a home by the city’s entrance, but most of the time, they were never in it. The people were amazed by their ability to stay awake for days. They never slept. The two experimented with the idea, but found themselves endlessly staring at brick walls.

At night, the city life died. Bazaars were closed, the farmers needed rest, and so did their cattle. At these times Noc would find himself pondering under the stars by the river the people called Ravi. There, his questions would bundle up once again. However, the difficult questions began to fade away. ‘Who am I? Why am I gifted?’ became ‘Who are they? What makes them so special?’ The answers usually came to him the next day. He was a tad shy but no one had a problem approaching him with their daily hellos. They were fascinated by this odd creature. He took delight in their pleasures like clothes, philosophy, bathing, and food, although he could not eat. He tried to, but he could not swallow anything. Instead, he enjoyed the smells. It took a while to get used to it, but over time he loved it. Every once in a while, he would help the people and take on jobs just for the experience. The people’s happiness became his and vice versa. He grew to love them all.

Canis strolled through the streets at night on his own patrol. Roaming the city never grew old to him. Every day, there was something new in every nook and cranny. It was always his mission to find it. Sometimes he found burglars, other times he would find kids up to no good. He usually sided the children. He found amusement at this time of night to stroll by the ruler’s house. Outside the large house were two guards, sweating in the awful heat. Their eyes were adorned by the blackest bags, hungered for sleep. Canis would always walk by energetically and wave to them. The looks he got were less than welcoming, but he didn’t care. Out of the two brothers, they knew he was the most volatile. Although the attacks on the city were few and rare, the people have watched him tear through giant after giant. He was practically unstoppable. That was until it came to crowds in the bazaar. He couldn’t walk through the town with his arms to his side. If either of them swayed the wrong way, anyone could get hurt. At night, it was a lot easier to get around.

On this night, Canis could not find anything to do. The burglars did not dare challenge him anymore. The children he had fun with were all growing up with him. A lot of them matured faster than he did. To him they just became boring like Noc. Canis walked by the city leader’s house for a good kick. Maybe today he would dance and sing on by. Then again, his singing voice was a bit far from bearable. Perhaps he would do a cartwheel instead. He snickered at the thought, but was disappointed when he noticed the guards were not on duty.

Agitated, he threw his hands up and let the back of their palms slap his thighs. He looked around the city and saw nothing but brick building after brick building. He turned his head up to the sky, and looked at the stars. He thought, perhaps being boring like Noc tonight was not a bad idea. Before he could put his head back down, he noticed something shift from the corner of his eyes. He looked toward the house and saw her.

Saras, Leader Saatvik’s daughter, was peering down on him through her clear-red veils. The expression on her face was not one of judgment, but one of curiosity.  They made eye contact and neither of them could look away. Her neck shimmered in the moonlight, adorned in jewels. Her lips were as red as her clothes. Saras’s eyes were outlined in black, which blended well for her ebony skin tone. The headband jewelry also caught Canis’s attention. On its string was a small metallic coin. He saw it up close once before. There was an image of a creature he had yet to see on it. The creature had four long, yet muscular legs. Its face was rectangular, and in the middle of its forehead was a horn. In a way, Canis was glad he never saw something as ugly.

Saras shifted once more. She threw one leg over her window sill and sat. She could have stared at him for hours. Out of the two brothers, it was no contest that Canis was the more attractive one. Unfortunately, to her, he never came off as a people person. He was always silent. It made her wonder if he ever grasped the language at all. His buffoonery was well known, though. Most of the people never noticed it. The only ones who complained were the overnight guards. The townspeople shrugged it off as him getting use to them. They all knew he was in Noc’s care, and they all believed that he would someday be as acceptable as his brother. Saras did not want that, though. She loved the mystery surrounding him. Canis was himself, and cared less about what people thought of him. He had no parents, no competitors, and no law could bind him. She truly envied this.

Canis’s bright red eyes entertained her. She grew amused at his shocked face. Instead of his usual nasty glower, his eyes were wide open. She did something no one else could ever do: control him. She sat up high as he stood in the dirt below her. It was empowering.

She smiled.

*          *          *

On the river shore, Noc lied in the grass, peering at the stars once more. He took solace in the smell of nature. The sound of the river flushed all of his minor worries away. He could not think of a better way to spend these nights. Instead of toiling in pitch black for may have been nights, he was in tranquility.

He began to draw pictures in the stars with a smile on his face. He did it for a while before he began to wonder what his drawing would look like if he tried. He never took a hand in art before, but maybe when the sun came up, he could find a job that would let him. Perhaps he could take a hand in pottery.

He thoughts did not wander too far before he heard the sound of grass rustling. In a panic, he flipped onto his stomach and got to his knees. He calmed himself down when saw it was Leader Saatvik being escorted by two guards. Noc’s heart began to pound.

Leader Saatvik never really cared for Noc or Canis. He never stood around long enough to jab his questions at them like everyone else did. He kept a safe distance from them by assigning them the little house on the other side of the town from his. His daughter Saras was another one that was hard to entertain. Noc remembered waving to her on the brightest of days, and she would never give him the satisfaction of looking back at him. Instead, she just pushed her way through the crowd like he did. It kind of got under his skin.

When Saatvik drew closer, he halted, then knelt on the ground with him. There was a brief pause before anything was said.

“Noc,” he began. “In three moons, I want to hold an audience for you and your brother Canis.”

 Noc arched a brow at the man’s request.

“Is something…wrong?”

“No,” Saatvik answered, surprising Noc with laughter. As long as Noc knew him, he never knew this man ever could. “Not at all. It is beneficial. For you. Me. I think the people will love it.”

Noc’s eyes darted between the two guards.

“What is it?”

 *          *          *

Noc returned to his home shortly after Saatvik departed. He was delirious. He kept his eyes glued to the ground. He could not dare look his brother in the eyes; that was if he would have stopped blinking.

The words exchanged between him and that man shook Noc. He noticed his brother was in his respective bed with his shoulder arched over his face, arms hung over the edge. Noc knew he wasn’t much for words, anyhow. It was a blessing in his eyes.

He lied down with his back to Canis. At quiet times like these, the two would lie here to gather their thoughts. It was their version of sleeping. Noc kept his eyes wide open, staring at the wall. His thoughts began to run wild. The perplex questions began to return and it brought dread. The night began to drag on when Noc finally proposed to himself ask Canis. Maybe his cold intellect could help, he thought.

Before he could flip himself over, he heard an obnoxiously loud snort come from behind. When he turned himself, Noc was at a lost for words. Canis was facing him, but his eyes were shut and his mouth hung open a bit. Noc blinked again.

Canis was asleep.

 

4: Chapter 4 -- The First Day

Chapter 4

The First Day

“And how am I supposed to tell him that?” Noc asked.

Vaani and he were walking through the bazaar. Vaani was out to trade and spend while Noc thought being around her would get his mind off the subject. Instead, it only resonated. He could not resist but to tell her. Instead of just giving him clear advice on how to avoid the predicament, she went along with it.

“Canis is going to have to know soon,” she humored. “He has a right to. Do not keep him out of affairs just because you feel conflicted. It is just as much his problem as it is yours.”

The last comment hit home.

“I apologize, Vaani,” Noc began to grumble, “but I could care less about what is whose. How do I tell Canis that without it going to straight to his head? You know he would go along with it.”

Noc took a moment to realize his temper. He took a deep breath and took a minute to think.

Vaani stopped and gave him a taunting smile. Noc knew how she loved to play mind games. She revved him up until he realized he was overreacting. She didn’t need direct contact to tell him the truth. Her wisdom came from being as passive as possible. Sometimes when their conversations were over with, Noc would spend nights by the river mentally rewinding through them.

Women, Noc thought. If the barbarians were smart, they would have sent them to convince us to burn the village down.

“Since when is luxury such a bad thing?” Vaani asked. “Tell me, would it be any different if Saatvik chose just you?”

“No,” Noc blurted. “I want…”

“GOT YOU!”

Noc and Vaani jumped. Their hearts nearly leaped out of their chests. They rushed around the corner and were exposed to the center of a crowding. The people of the town scattered to the nearest walls to watch a massive, hulking guard take hold and hang a poor, scrawny child by the cuff of his shirt. In his small left hand was a vine of grapes.

“WE HAVE RULES FOR THIEVES!”

Noc stood his ground as Vaani trembled. This guard had to have been a bit taller than him,even standing at six feet. Noc’s own height always served an advantage over the short people of Harappa. It was probably how the guard had caught this child. The longer he looked at the child, the more Noc began to notice that the boy was not one of the citizens.

He was a foreigner.

The boy’s skin complexion was lighter than the other people’s. His pigment almost looked like gold. His hair was short, pin-straight, and black. His eyes seemed much tinier, but it might have been because he was crying. When he screamed something back to the man, it was in a language Noc could not understand.

The guard removed his blade from the holster and prodded the child with it. The sword dug deep through the boy’s shirt. The child squirmed, uttering more nonsense.

“Come to our land and steal our food!?” the guard asked, loud enough for the crowd and passersby. “Some of us have jobs, and we work for what we have! You are no better than a barbarian…and we deal with them a better way.”

The sword reeled back. It then thrust forward. Vaani let out a shriek the same time the child did.

Noc blinked.

The man began to furiously jab the poor boy, repeatedly.

The boy’s crying had gotten louder. The villagers were petrified. Why was this man doing this? The wandering children who were nearby could not look away.

The guard pulled the child out of his face and cocked his sword back, pointed to the sky. Noc shook and felt his legs again. The guard was going to deliver one crucial and final blow. He swung it down on the child’s head. Vaani yanked her head away, refusing to see the end.

Blood sprayed the guard’s face. The civilians that flinched looked back. To their surprise, the blood belonged to a set of pale wrists crossed together. A bony elbow came crashing down on the giant’s forearms, forcing him to drop the child.

Noc stood up to the guard with one of his arms practically severed. He took his working hand and held the torn pieces together. The pain brought tears to his eyes. He flinched in pain. He stared the guard down until his hand was back in its proper place and fully working again.

“Take another swing!” Noc dared. As weak as he looked, he was convinced he could make this all stop. There was a moment he looked down at the blood on the ground. The guard followed suit, and then backed away. Noc couldn’t help but smirk, and egged him on. “Go on, take another swing!”

“Do it,” a deeper voice entered the fray. It was Canis. With him taking the melodramatic stage, Noc retreated to the boy’s aid. He was still alive, but his breathing was stifled. Noc lied his hands down and began touching up the wounds showing through the shirt. The child could not watch over the overwhelming amount of tears streaming down his face. Noc took precious time to find every cut and gash the monster inflicted on him. The blood and gashes began to steam. The child became feral. With the little energy he had, his tiny hands clawed at Noc’s.

Noc carried on and continued to heal him. The gashes and wounds bubbled then faded under his fingertips. The skin restored itself to it’s pale yellow color. Noc shushed the child and wiped away his tears with his white robes.

He knew the child could not understand him, so he pointed. The child’s eyes lit up, and he was at a loss. He touch every torn spot on his dirtied shirt and couldn’t the feel pain anymore. He began to breathe slowly. He looked Noc straight in the eyes and began to chant something. From the way each chant ended, Noc could tell that he was asking questions. His imagination began to run wild again.

What was the boy asking?

“What did you do? Who are you?”

Noc shook his head and made the boy realize that he could not comprehend him. Instead, the child stretched his arms out and hugged Noc’s torso. Noc held his back and patted his head before he brushed him off. He tried to stand beside his brother again, until he realized Saras, Chief Saatvik’s daughter, was in his spot. He never heard her coming. He began to sway more towards Vaani again.

From the way the crowd became enclosed, it seemed like the townspeople were on Noc’s side. Saras began screaming at the brute, cursing him in her father’s name. Canis stood by and snickered as she fired insult after insult. Vaani and Noc listened on in silence.

Shortly, Saatvik arrived. After Saras yelled her explanation, the tired old man shook his head. As he passed by the guard, he patted the man’s chest. Saatvik looked to the crowd and raised his arms to the sky. He made an announcement.

“From what I am hearing, the people are upset with how Anish decided to punish the thief at hand. Is this true?” The people agreed. “Now, as a chief and your leader, I do not wish to see my people unpleased. But in this village -- in my village – there is order. Anish will be my problem to deal with, but this boy is the law’s. Rules are rules, and they will always be. A thief is a thief, and will also always be.”

Noc involuntarily stepped forward. He stopped himself before Saatvik continued.

“We will not execute the child,” he promised. “But we will send him back the way he came, in the condition he came.”

Silenced in accord, Noc had no choice but to let Anish handle the child by his cuff again. Everyone followed close by. The moment they reached the edge of town, everyone formed a distance away from Anish, Saatvik, and the boy. Noc had to fight to keep his spot in the front. The people could barely see the child over Anish’s thick back, so they struggled for a good spot. To Noc’s benefit, the pushy crowd forced to one. He was relieved the child was on his own feet again. Saatvik stood aside and watched over the child’s banishment.

Anish gave the boy a nudge with a knee to the back of his head. The child stumbled forward, but was reluctant. He tried to reason with Saatvik, but the man only glared at him from the edge of his nose.

Just leave, Noc thought repeatedly. Why are you making it worse?

When the boy finally seemed to lose hope, he looked to Noc in the crowd. His eyes were pin-point accurate to find him out. He pointed at him and began shouting a single word, or phrase. He kept repeating it. After saying it a few times, he began a tantrum. Noc watched the child break down and it tore at him.

Why? He did everything he could. As he looked on, he could see it. There was fear in the boy’s eyes. His home must have been far. The roughened condition Anish found him in was proof that he had probably seen the wild, and what lives in it. He was scared for his life.

The pain Noc felt was new. What was it? He felt sad before, but this was something unbearable. This was guilt.

Noc began to question himself again. Should he have just let the child die in the market? Was severing his arm really worth the price of seeing this child be sent to his inevitable death? Perhaps the brutal stabbing would have settled better.

The boy took a step toward Noc, and not even a second later, he was facing the tip of Anish’s sword again. He wasn’t able to inhale for his next wailing fit when a curtain of white concealed him.

Defiant once more, Noc had pushed his way pass to reach the helpless child. He didn’t know who the child was, or where he had come from. Noc could not do anything more in his position than to hug him and slowly weep like a child himself. The townspeople held their silence. Saatvik remained like stone.

“I am sorry.”

The child whimpered against his chest, arms hanging around his torso again. His fingers found the back of Noc’s head and got tangled in the shroud of white curls. After a second gone by, he fought against Noc’s tight grip to get a breath of air. Noc looked him in the eyes, both pairs glossed red. The child wiped his nose on his own wrist before he sweetly uttered, “Papa” to him.

As the guilt began to fade, he shook his head at him and finally whispered, “I am sorry, but you must go…”

The child actually nodded his head. Did he understand? He hugged him again for one last, brief time.

“Some day, you will too,” he whispered back in sniffles.

Noc cranked his neck back and blinked.

“That is enough,” Saatvik declared in a dreary monotone groan. “Noc, please…”   

Noc stood back up, but could not pry his eyes off the boy, who seemed to have sobered up in a matter of seconds. He was straight-faced, returning the same stare. Slowly, the boy turned around and began his journey. The people of the village watched him walk off into the horizon, and pass the river. The farther he got, the more people began to return to the town. The only remnants by sundown were Noc and Vaani.

Noc refused to leave his seat in the dirt. Vaani sat next to him in silence. She rubbed his back and wrapped her arm around his side. He watched the sunset with his head on her shoulder.

Vaani stayed by his side, knowing fully well Noc was not one to hold in his thoughts. As a being of otherworldly circumstance, he never got use to the feeling of depression. It was rare to spot him with anything but that dopey face the villagers became accustomed to. It was probably why his rebelliousness caught Saatvik’s attention. It had caught everyone’s attention…

Something began to piece in her mind.

“It’s not fair,” he mumbled. It sort of startled her. “That boy was causing no one trouble. He just wanted to eat.”

“I know,” Vaani said hurriedly. She did not know what else to say.

“Before he left, he…I swear he said something to me.”

“Well, he was screaming a lot.”

“No,” Noc finally sat up and looked her in the face. His eyes devoured her’s. “He said something in our language. When I told him to leave, he…understood me.”

“Noc, he probably…”

“I told him he had to go, and I swear he said that I would too, someday.”

Vaani kept her eyes on Noc’s. He was fully convinced. She shook her head.

“You have been under a lot of stress today,” she dismissed. “You sort of overused your powers, and probably exhausted yourself. You are probably not feeling well.”

Noc could not deny that fact. Perhaps all the healing made him delirious. To be honest, the seat in the dirt was pretty comforting. Lying back into Vaani’s lap and looking up at her face was bliss. Surely enough, his robes gotten dirtied, but he paid no mind.

“Well or not, what he said...scared me,” Noc admitted.

“And tell me,” Vaani smiled, “if you had to leave, where would you go?”

Noc hesitated. He looked out to the horizon again.

“Back to my world,” he said, straight as an arrow.

Vaani followed looking out to the horizon. For the past ten years, Noc avoided conversations about the place he was from. He would smile and change the topic, or politely excuse himself. He kept it a mystery, and seeing as Canis was nearly unapproachable, it was kept safe with him.

Vaani inhaled and thought thoroughly before she dared to ask.

“Would you ever want to go back to your world?”

“You know what,” Noc said rather quickly. He was going to excuse himself, Vaani could feel it. He sat upright again and tilted his body to the left away from her, but slowly. He stretched his legs out and leaned back against the earth. He put his hands behind his head. “I would not mind seeing it again when Canis and I get older.”

“Really?” she asked, unaware of her offended tone.

“Not for long,” Noc replied. “Back there, it is always dark. There is no color. There are no people. There are no buildings, no flowers, no houses, no clouds…nothing. Thinking about living in there again is frightening. Then again, it could have changed.”

“What do you mean?” Vaani asked, curious as ever.

“I am growing, Vaani. Canis is too. We have changed, and we will keep at it. Times have changed. The clouds change, the harvest change, the seasons change, and the lights in the sky change. Maybe after all this time…our world has too. Maybe it just needed time to grow…to become something else.”

“And if not?”

Noc chuckled, “Then I promise Canis and I will use what we learn here to see if we can change it ourselves,” Noc said with a smile. “I will see if we can plant things, or bring light with us. I will work until I can bring something as beautiful as this sky into it. We could always use some extra help.”

Vaani smiled. He was such a big dreamer, and so optimistic. After all that had happened, Noc was able to heal himself mentally. She glanced at him and saw a grin. His large, puffy red eyes watched the roaming clouds.

Thinking of what he just said, Vaani lowered her eyes to the ground. When he wanted to, he had such a way of saying such loopy things, and it always made sense to her.

Normal people would have succumbed to rage by now, but not Noc. It was as if he brushed off his sorrows and kept going. Then again, every day for him was just another adventure. He let his curiosities carried him wherever he wanted. What if his world really did change? What if it were better? What if he chose to leave one night without saying a word?

A warm hand covered hers. She looked over and saw Noc’s eyes again. He adjusted his eyelids half shut and gazed at her. She took his hand and held it.

Everything was going to be alright.

5: Chapter 5 -- The Second Day

Chapter 5

The Second Day

 

The next sunrise, Noc decided to retreat back home early. He had spent the entire night by the riverbank. Vaani left him to his thoughts soon after they spoke. Her father had gotten concerned and beckoned her home. Noc did not cling. He needed the time alone.

Canis was probably worried, he thought. He stopped dead in his tracks to rethink that. Canis was probably at home, drooling and snoring in slumber. He left as soon as the crowd did, and Noc had not seen him since.

He pushed open the orange curtain door to his house. The sunlight flew through his empty home. The light flooded the bare stone floors, catching the leg of a round wooden table and the three chairs surrounding it. Noc adjusted his large eyes to the new vase sitting on top. It was a gift from Vaani.

She must have somehow snuck out in the middle of the night, he thought. She had done it a few times when she was troubled or worried. Only then would she disturb him down by the river. Knowing the two’s nightly schedule, she sometimes left gifts in their house. That was how they obtained the table and the chairs her father crafted.

Canis objected to it, but she explained herself. She thought that they deserved a ‘nicer’ looking house. He used the back of his hands to pull the chair out. He snorted as he carefully sat himself.

“Yes, let us sit and enjoy the nothing on our walls. Lovely floor…”

Vaani stormed out. The two brothers argued until Canis grew tired of the conversation. The furniture remained. Vaani sat at the table every time she came by in spite of Canis. He refused to sit with them whenever all three of them were together. He would either lie in his bed, facing away from them, or simply leave. The two had settled their tension rather quickly, which was all Noc could hope for.

He stepped inside and observed the vase. It was simple, but its presence did add a touch of décor. Everyone else he knew had all sorts of neat items in their houses like baskets for food, different sort of tables, religious decorations, candles, torches, carpets, and all kinds of fabrics for their own decorative wear.

He and Canis had nothing. Nothing but the clothes on their back and their little square box they called home.

Their house was simply one giant room. Four corners, four blank walls, and two beds aligned vertically in the right corner. Being next to the city wall, they only had two small windows. One sat above the table setup in the

left corner, and the other one to the left of the door.

 Noc’s eyes adjusted to the remaining darkness, as he tried to be careful not to wake his brother. He slowly closed the door behind him and began treading quietly to his bed. As he neared, he began to realize that he was alone. Canis was not home.

Something to a short degree of worry came over him. Maybe he was asleep on the streets somewhere. Noc humored himself with the thought. As he sat there smiling, the concern began to grow. What if he was asleep and Anish found him? Or Saatvik? Or Saras…thinking of which, Noc began to wonder why they were so close together the other day. The thought never crossed his mind before.

Perhaps Canis fell asleep at Saras’s house; Saativk’s house.

Noc groaned and placed his head in his palms. He thought the possibilities through. Today was going to be interesting.

*                      *                      *

“That is awful,” Vaani retorted.

She was also not a big fan of Saras. If she ever came up in a conversation, Vaani would wrinkle her nose, scoff, or roll her eyes. Noc once heard her call Saras a ‘dirty rat’. She would mocked her small hooked nose and speak in her squawky tone. Noc knew it was in all spite, but he could not help but to giggle or smirk.

“It’s nice to do nothing but lay on my back all day,” she would cry. That was when Noc would try to hush her. He feared the ears of the gossip-hungry people he lived around.

After bathing and washing his clothes at the river, Noc met Vaani at her client’s house. She had made an earnest living on simply going house to house, cleaning. They took a stroll together through the bazaar. Noc recalled

Canis leaving with Saras with her, and she twisted her face and looked sick.

“Are you going to Saatvik’s house to get him? I will come with you,” she insisted without a moment’s hesitation.

“And grace Leader Saatvik with my presence after yesterday?” Noc rolled his eyes and proceeded to stare at a rack of dismembered, freshly bled chickens.

“Speaking of which, if you spent all night at the river after that mess, then that means you never spoke to Canis about Saatvik’s audience?” Vaani prodded playfully. She stared at the back of his head and smirked when it lowered.

They walked up the eastern slope together towards the upper-class district. Noc avoided the gaze of each person that stared. It should have been normal after all these years. However, he spent most of his days near his home on the western side. There were still some people who had never seen him before.

The people who lived by Saatvik lived well. Bigger houses and buildings began to appear. Bricked roads met Noc and Vaani’s dirtied sandals. They shined a bright gray in the sunlight.

People began to line the streets just to look at Noc.

“Goodness,” he heard a man say to another, “he really is white.”

“What is wrong with his eyes?” a child asked Vaani, avoiding eye contact with Noc. Vaani bent down, staring the boy in the eyes with a soft smile.

“He is just different.”

What a vague answer, Noc thought. Was that really all she could say?

“But his eyes are so…small,” he hesitated to say. “Or big…”

More children in bright and colorful clothes began to run to the boy’s side, trying to usher him away, but he refused. He turned his sights on Noc at last, staring intently. Noc kept his gaze on him for a second, only to withdraw his eyes to the ground.

“Well, look at all of you guys,” Vaani said, still smiling. “Would you guys want to wear the same clothes as each other every day?”

They looked at each other. One girl twisted her face at one of the heavier children’s clothes. Noc looked up to see their responses. They shook their heads in unison.

He knew Vaani was going somewhere with this.

“Would you guys want the same hair as each other?” This time, the heavier boy twisted his face at the girl’s long, curly hair. They shook their heads again.

“See,” Vaani said with a giggle, “you are all different from each other, but you are all friends, right?”

They nodded their heads. Noc smirked.

“He is different too,” Vaani said a bit more seriously. “He did not choose to be. He was born different, but he can still see the things you do, and feel the things you can.”

The boy withdrew his bottom lip, glanced at the ground. He looked back up at the lanky ghost standing in front of him. Noc could see it in his beady eyes: guilt.

“I am sorry,” the boy said sternly. “I did not mean to hurt your feelings.”

Before Noc could accept the boy’s apology, Vaani cut him off.

“You were just curious,” she assured. “There is nothing wrong with asking questions.”

She stood back up and held her back. She hid her painful groan as the children retreated back to playing in front of their houses. Vaani stood there and watched them. The smile on her golden face was not one of joy, but accomplishment.

“You do well with children,” Noc complimented.

“They are young, and know no better,” Vaani said sort of harshly. “We, as their elders, have to teach them. Look at these people. They are all a bunch of busybodies, and do not seem to know what respect is. Those who do not know do not teach. We are still learning the ways of the world, but in the end, those children will be the ones to grow up far past our time. When we teach them what we have learned at a young age, they can pick up from where our lives leave off. Besides, we could use some nicer, more respectful people around here. All you have to do is teach a few lost children, and soon our village will be filled with brighter, happier adults.”

Noc really took what she said to heart. She really loved them. They continued walking up the road before he asked, “Have you ever thought about having your own?”

Vaani looked at Noc with an arched brow. She giggled.

“My father says I am too headstrong,” she admitted. “He heard men talk about how ‘mouthy’ I am. He knows it is true, but then again, guess who taught me how to be that way? He leaves me alone about finding a nice man. My mother always hints at it, but it grows tiring. Boys do not seem to care for me. I mean, other women cannot be bothered by my presence. They grow up and they nothing but money, money, money. Their friendships do not mean a thing unless money is involved. I just work and walk around the town, maybe hoping someday…”

There was a brief silence between them. Noc stopped. Vaani paused and looked back at him. He was not staring at her, but the large and long brick house isolated to the back of the town. This house had two columns in the front holding the highest room high in the sky. At the bottom of the short steps that surrounded the building were four armed guards. They all stood in their respective positions, glaring at the crowd passing them by.

This was exactly how Noc envisioned Saatvik’s house. It was big, separated from the commoners, and surrounded by his cohorts. He lived like someone with something to hide. Noc wrinkled his nose a bit. What was the point of having a big flashy house if he never wanted people near it? The large, brooding security force did not send a message of welcome or kindness.

“Are you okay?” Vaani asked, interrupting his train of thought.

Noc shook his head and looked at her. He smiled.

“I am fine,” he replied, “just a little nervous.”

“I am not,” and with that, Vaani began making a beeline through the crowd. Noc hurried to catch up with her. The two bobbed and weaved through the wave of people. Noc was a bit more apologetic than Vaani, who forced her way by. As she mentioned, she was too headstrong. She even yelled at people to move out of the way.

They stepped out of the crowd and landed in front of their destination. Vaani’s back bent forward and her hands automatically clasped her knees. She was panting furiously, and Noc knew why. The heat over here was unbearable; the air was tight, and humid. The sweat they were covered in glistening in the sunlight. The drops between Noc’s brows did not belong to him. He had frolicked so many times in this sort of weather, it never tired him out.

When Vaani could finally catch her breath, she marveled to realize the two stood only meters away from the statuesque Anish and another brute that looked twice his age. They, too, suffered in the heat. Noc could see their chests pumping like mad. They wore nothing but white loincloths and white turbans, but it did not help. Noc looked at their sandaled toes and even they shimmered. Pearls of sweat dripped off of their massive bodies and stained the ground before them. The two tried to look intimidating, but their heavy nose-breathing and weary eyes could not waiver the upright, perky, and curious Noc.

After he helped Vaani stand up straight, Noc looked Anish in his ironically-cold, tired eyes. He stammered to ask if

Canis had stopped by. Anish turned his head slowly towards the other man for approval. The older man did not speak, but swung his head back toward the house. Anish turned back to them.

“Yes,” he groaned. “He has been here with Lady Saras since yesterday night.”

“All night?” Vaani inquired.

“Is there any way of seeing him without running into Leader Saatvik?” Noc intruded.

Anish looked at Noc cynically. He turned behind him and looked up at the draped window that sat in front of the giant perched box. They were open slightly, but they could not see anyone inside over the beaming sun.

“I can bring you in,” he answered, “but I cannot promise avoiding our Leader.”

He looked to Vaani and held his hand out. She looked down at the brown skirt she wore and saw the handle of her knife. Noc knew what it was. He had heard the tales of unprotected maids in the homes of single men. Vaani handed over the knife, and Anish tucked it away.

He led them up the steps. Noc looked back to the commoners passing by and could see people staring right back. He could sense that he was going to be the talk of the village for a while.

Noc, Vaani, and Anish felt relieved in the shade of Saatvik’s manor. Vaani gave a fulfilling phew, and began to fan herself. Anish pushed one of the curtains open and let Noc and Vaani in under his arm.

Noc was blinded by smoke and his body felt warm again. Something was burning, and it smelled sweet. Behind the smell was a hint of burning wood. It was incense. The fog stung his eyes and his nose. Vaani and Anish did not seem effected by it. He hated it. The same day Noc discovered what incense was, he forbade it in his home.

He began to get a headache.

Canis stayed here all night? Noc pondered.

The three of them stood in the center of a tee-shaped hallway. To the left and right of them were torches leaned outward and attached to the walls between the spaces of each window. At the very end of both halls were bushes. Red flowers revealed themselves in the light. Noc could barely see them over the smoke. The fog of the incense slithered by in cloudy waves.

He tried looking onwards. The center corridor was a tad narrower. There were only two torches peering through the nearest corner. Ahead, there were only two windows facing each other.

Anish slowly led them down it. His wide frame blocked out what was ahead. His massive shoulders barely touched the unlit torches on both sides. Noc and Vaani had no troubles. Noc was also tall, but slender and frail. Vaani was a little stocky, but she was short. It seemed quite strange that Saatvik had a house fit for everyone but the men he depended on.

Anish’s shoulders were set free in the large room they walked into. It was dark, alit by more veils of smoke-filled light. The windows in the room were tall slivers in the wall. They were draped in long, silky blue curtains, blowing slightly in the muggy breeze. Short of where they stood were steps leading down into an empty pool. In each corner were tall, planted trees. There was a feeling of paradise here. Noc could not help but feel envious.

“This way,” Anish beckoned, walking around the right bend of the pool.

The two followed him closely. Vaani looked into the pool and shot Noc a mischievous smirk. He could not wait to hear her catty remarks.

Behind the pool was another hallway leading to a flight of stairs. He followed up behind Vaani, but was bewildered when she made a sharp left. Noc climbed the landing and came face-to-face with a thick, dark curtain. Embroidered on it was the royal unicorn.

It was Saatvik’s door.

Noc’s heart sunk. He took a quick left and fled. He caught up to Vaani again, but was thrown off again by another left turn. Noc turned the corner and saw Anish poking his head far up into a narrow hall. Noc and Vaani saw that there was yet another flight of stairs. Unlike the last one, this one was steep. The steps were tall and barely had surfaces.

“Saras’s room is up ahead,” Anish assured. “Please be quick.”

The two tiptoed up, and the walls devoured them. Vaani was bent forward, climbing with her hands and her feet like an animal. When Noc conformed, he began to move faster. Slowly, he realized what animal could relate to this: a rat.

Noc snickered and dismissed Vaani’s inquisitive look. She continued on until she found another landing. The alcove bent left again, but was tall and wide enough to fit both to stand in. They could hear voices behind the curtain.

“We can be powerful,” Saras’s voice carried. “We can be…anything…everything together.” Noc listened more closely. Between each pause he thought he heard a repetitive crunching noise.

“Whatever you please,” Canis spoke back in a stern voice. Crunch.

Noc grew impatient and pushed the curtain open. Vaani followed suit. Noc’s body flinched vehemently in shock at the clear, smokeless display before him. Vaani’s eyes flew wide open at the sight of Saras, still clothed, mounting Canis’s nude lap in the center of the candlelit room. He sat with his legs crossed, and with his wrists tied loosely behind his back by his own loincloth. The cherry on top of this vulgarity was the two kissing.

“CANIS!” Vaani exploded.

Both their heads snapped at them. Canis’s eyes filled with fear. His face flushed in horror when he saw his brother looking at him in such a fashion. He gulped and dropped his jaw. Nothing came out of his mouth but small utterances.

His long, straight hair was butchered into a miniature bowl cut. He barely had any left on his head.

Saras glared at the both of them. She swung her eyes at Canis for a brief moment.

“Relax,” she commanded. “It is only your brother…and that fat housemaid.” She looked back at Vaani, and snorted, “Did you run out of work to do?”

Vaani shook. She balled her fists, but she stayed beside Noc. She shot him a look, and he could instantly read it:Say something before I do.

“We came to see if Canis was here,” Noc stated, eyes fluttering. “I did not see him since yesterday.”

“You mean when you were whimpering like an infant?” Saras sneered. The room grew silent. “He has been with me. I have been taking good care of him”

The loincloth begged to differ.

Saras reached somewhere out of sight. Her hand returned filled with lentil beans. She whispered in Canis’s ear, and something she said made his head perk up.

“Yes,” he panted heavily. His mouth began to salivate.

Saras leaned her hand and the beans began to pour into his mouth. Canis began munching savagely. The crunching noise returned. He hummed sweetly until he swallowed each one.

Noc was feeling sick. What was he watching?

“Canis,” Vaani gasped, “are you…eating?”

Too focused on the scene at hand, Noc finally realized it as well. Then, he remembered that he never mentioned to Vaani that Canis had fallen asleep two nights ago.

“He eats whatever I give him,” she snarled. Her face reordered itself as she swooned over Canis again. Her voice turned sweet. “After we met the other night, he began to tell me he felt dizzy. He had fallen madly it love with me. It was so sweet. He kept swearing that he was dying while I helped him get home. For a moment, he was almost willing to accept death. He was so silly. He fell asleep the moment I put him on his bed. Yesterday, we met again and he was telling me his stomach was hurting. He was hungry. I took him in, and began to feed him, like a pet.”

“He is not a pet!” Vaani snapped.

“But we cannot eat,” Noc muttered out of place. He was telling himself more than he was Saras. He tried to eat numerous times, but his body rejected it. His throat closed and his teeth began to hurt. He would gag the food out and go into coughing fits..

“Hold on,” Vaani snarled, with her finger fixed on Saras. “You said you met the other night?”

“Yes,” Saras answered, “I am so happy you can hear.”

“Noc,” Vaani now snarled, pointing at him, “before that night, could Canis sleep?”

“No,” he answered innocently.

“I knew it! Dirty rat!” Vaani screamed at the top of her lungs. She laughed loudly, and then pointed at Canis,

“Sleep with a rat, and you catch fleas!”

Saras’s smile quickly turned.

“I get it now! You slept together!” Vaani turned her head to Noc. “He slept with her, and he became…like us! See, Noc, I told you, just awful.”

She put her hands on her hips proudly, swaying them side to side.

“And like us, he is starting to see that eating comes with a price,” Saras retorted. Noc turned his head and gave her a look of disbelief. “When you’re like us, you have to pay to live, Noc. It is a blessing that some of us can for nearly free.”

She pinched more beans into Canis’s mouth, and he chewed happily.

“He is a gem,” Saras went on. She thumbed Canis’s cheek. “He is beautiful, mystifying, enticing. He is so strong, but misunderstood. No one comes near him because they fear him; but not me. I can feed him and make him love me. His love and devotion, all for his survival. That is not a bad trade, right?”

Noc blinked and twisted his head. He still could not believe Canis actually found someone to mate with. Vaani’s discovery started to twist his curiosity. If what she said was true, the devious smile on his face was rightfully placed.

Coition made the two of them feeble. It broke their everlasting curse or gift. Canis was now put under forces he himself could not stop. To fuel himself for the day, he would have to eat. In order to eat, he would need funds. In order to obtain funds, he would have to work. The idea grew like wildfire in Noc’s head, until he came back to the reality that Canis was in cahoots with the chief’s daughter.

“It seems like you got less out of it than we did,” Noc bravely replied. “You took his virginity, and changed him for what seems like the worse. Now you are forcing him to bow to you for food? That is amusing.”

Saras was dumbfounded. She did not know how to react.

“Saras, do you know why your father is gathering an audience tomorrow night?” Noc asked. His smile tightened.

“No,” Saras admitted. “He will not tell me. He said it was strictly between you and him.”

Noc let the silence settle in as he strode across the bedroom floor. He left the two in suspense. Saras’s eyes begged for truth,but Noc could only shake his head and snicker.

“Saras,” he began, “your father is going to make the people see us as Gods.”

Both Saras and Canis leaned back, as though the words struck them physically. The news left them both bewildered. Without a doubt, Noc did not need to be asked for elaboration. He stopped in front of the two.

“This whole time, your father was just like the people of the village: confused, wondering, dying to know what

Canis and I are. He then came to the conclusion one night about where we came from. He believes we came from a spiritual plain of some sort; believes that we were sent here as ‘guardian spirits’ to protect this ‘sacred’ land of his. He is so high in power, people are going to have to believe him. Imagine, we will be worshipped, and empowered…but we do not know how to lead a village.”

“My father can tell you how,” Saras replied happily. With Canis at her heels, this news was bubbling her ego.

“That is exactly what your father said to me,” Noc replied. “If we pulled it off, we could have absolute control over this entire village. However, Saras, you seemed to have done some damage.”

Saras’s head now twisted.

“Some of the many fine points Leader Saatvik plans on making are all based on the fact that we do not require food, sleep, or much rest. Looking at Canis now…”

Saras saw what he was getting to. She blew an opportunity before she even had the chance to realize it.

“He is frail,” Noc said sternly. “If he is a gem like you say, you broke him. Your father will not be too pleased to hear about this at all.”

Saras gulped. It took a moment to realize the severity of his words, but he was not about to back down to someone treating his kin this way. Canis refused to look at him. Noc rubbed the side of his brother’s prickly head sincerely.

“Canis,” Noc called to him. He still rejected. “I will be at home, waiting for you. If you want, Vaani can cook you something to eat. I will leave now.”

He turned and left with Vaani trailing behind him. The stairs were even more difficult to go down.

*                      *                      *

After waiting a moment in Canis’s absence, Noc and Vaani sat by the river that evening. Vaani, playfully tearing at the dirt with her knife, roared in laughter at the comment Noc made about climbing the steps. She lied back in the grass, looking towards the sky. Her blue veils stretched over the blades along with her. She seemed more relaxed now.

“I cannot believe you spoke to the chief’s daughter like that,” Vaani admitted. “No one else can do and get away with it. You should be banished by now, or executed.”

It was harsh to say, but Noc knew she was right.

“I am extorting her. That is all,” Noc said faintly.

The two let the roaring of the creek flood their ears. Noc stared into the clouds with Vaani. It felt nice to be out and enjoying nature. The birds chirped, and the bugs buzzed. Noc fingered through his white curls and imagined getting a haircut like Canis. Then, Vaani’s words echoed.

“Would you want the same hair as each other?”

Like the children, Noc shook his head. He began to question Vaani’s words about raising children to know better.

Whenever Noc was with Vaani, he never worried about his younger brother. Canis was much stronger and much more independent than him. He should have been able to fend off Saras’s advances. Noc wondered, did he not teach his brother better, or anything at all? Guilt began to overcome him again.

“Noc,” Vaani called, “would you give up never having to sleep or eat for love?”

“That depends,” Noc answered quite hastily. Vaani sat up. His beaded eyes stayed focus on the river. “If I were to give that up forever, I would at least make sure the love would stay that long too.”

Vaani smiled.

“That’s what makes you and Canis different. You think about it more than he does. That is what makes you so interesting. Canis sees a woman giving herself a way, and he is bowing over it. You hang around me every day, and you are kind, and modest, and not once have you ever put your hands on me.”

Noc’s next thought flew by involuntarily.

That is because you never asked me.

 

6: Chapter 6 -- The Third Day

Chapter 6

The Third Day

Canis came home late that evening. He dared not say a word to his brother sitting at the table. Noc did not expect him to. He plopped down on his bed, cupped his hands, and went to sleep. Noc rolled his eyes and stared out of the window. The fact that Canis even came home must have meant he wasn’t too sore about earlier. Unless, of course, Saatvik thought Canis was overstaying his welcome. Come to think of it, Noc wondered if the Leader knew of the loose conduct happening in his own home.

Canis grunted deeply.

Noc had yet to adjust to Canis’s snoring. It was such an irritating sound, and he would have been damned to listen to it any longer. If they were anything alike, Noc swore he would have struck him a few times by now.

He ventured out by the river again.

Two days had long since passed and Saatvik’s meeting plans had reached everyone’s ears. Once they heard whom it concerned, Vaani reported the news to Noc immediately.

“Looks like I am staying home today,” Noc grumbled getting up from his spot.

Vaani skipped work to spend the day with him. They marched through the field of dirt back to his house. On the way into town, a man taming a water buffalo with wheat stalks on its back waved to Noc. He even called him out by name. Noc boldly looked back at the man and waved. With his hand halted in midair, the man smiled and took a step towards him. Noc whipped his head to the left and sped off to his house. Vaani followed shortly behind.

She walked into Noc’s home and saw him sitting alone in the chair closest to the wall, out of the window’s sight. His pale form was hard to see beyond the beam of light the window formed. Vaani took a seat, and then sat in silence with Noc for a few minutes.

Noc sat with his face cupped in his hands and his elbows digging at his thighs. He kept his face hidden before letting out a loud, agitated groan. Vaani did not even need to ask, because Noc threw his hands up high and cursed before going on a tirade.

“This is just perfect,” he snarled. “Now I am going to be confined in this damn place all day. Where’s Canis?”

Vaani was taken aback. He snapped the question at her. He began rubbing his temples and sighed. She knew he did not mean any harm. Besides, seeing him angry for once kind of made her happy. Instead of just waving it off like he usually could, he was now acting the way a normal person would.

“Well,” she submitted, “a lot of people are saying he is at Saatvik’s house again. And you know everyone is still scared of Canis, so he is free to roam all day.”

“Lucky him,” he snarled at the wall.

He sat back and rapped his fingernails on the table. Vaani gave him a moment to cool down.

“Do they know what this is about?” Noc asked Vaani directly.

“No. They are all starting to get riled up. I think Saatvik waited until the last day to tell everyone. If he had told everyone the day after he spoke to you, this whole thing would have became old news quick.”

Noc remembered what Saras said.

“He said it was strictly between you and him.”

Thinking about it deeply, Noc realized something. Saatvik was a lot smarter than he gave him credit for. Saatvik knew Noc would have never told Canis, had it not come to finding him naked on Saras’s bedroom floor. Telling Vaani did not harm his plans. The two were known to be very close. He must have figured that by now, after their intimate childhood, she knew many of his secrets. She kept them to herself and never told a soul.

Noc’s heart sank.

At tonight’s event, Saatvik was going to control the masses against him. If what Vaani said was true, the sporadic minds of the gossiping people would cling to Saatvik’s revelation. He could see it now. He would choke up, frightened by the crowd’s reaction. Frozen in fear, he would not be able to stop them from thinking any differently. Vaani could not say anything. The people would take Saatvik’s word over some housemaid’s.

Canis was not going to deny this divine opportunity. Not for Saras’s sake.

Noc began to change into the people he loathed. He started coming to rapid conclusions in his head without much effort. Was Saras seducing Canis part of his plans? Was the boy a part of the scheme? No, Noc, that child almost died.

He was doomed.

His fingers began thumping louder until a small, wrinkled hand smothered them. Noc did not realize his eyes were fixated to the ground. He snapped his head up and looked at Vaani. She was smiling.

There he was, panicking, almost in a sweat, and she was smiling. Everyone he knew and grew up around was going to turn against him, and she was smiling. His brother was going to metaphorically stab him in the back, and she was smiling.

She held his hand afloat between them.

“Noc,” she began. “You are the smartest man I know. Use that head of yours and think. Stop wallowing, and start thinking.”

“That is impossible right now,” Noc replied. A few of his fingers slipped her grip. “Saatvik is going to use them all against me.”

“Did you not say things change yesterday?” she asked.

“Time changes those things!” Noc barked. “Time changes the seasons, the harvest, but it cannot change the flow of the river. I can not stop Saatvik, or all those people.”

He broke eye contact, and was soon to regret it. Vaani squeezed his hand tighter and grabbed his chin with her other hand. She dragged those tiny beads he called eyes back to hers. She was still smiling.

“Noc, not only are you the smartest man I know, but the strongest.”

“Little old frail me?”

“Okay, then tell me, who took down that barbarian chief all those years ago?”

Noc knew the answer. That was more physical strength than what was ahead of him.

“Who threw himself into an execution for a child that did not even concern him?”

“Vaani, all that...”

“…and then made everyone turn against Anish? You saw how angry those people were before Saras and Saatvik showed up. They were mad alongside you.”

Vaani stood up, still clinging to Noc’s hand.

“You are a very sensible person. Every person may have seen that entire thing as a crime, but they felt the way you did. No one wanted to see that boy get killed, and you were the only one brave enough to risk this same hand,” she shook his fingers, “for his sake.”

Noc started to look at her willingly. She placed his hand back on the table.

“Time may not change the river, but you seem to be the only one strong enough to swim against it. You said yourself that if your world was still dark, still empty, you would change it. It sounded ridiculous when it was said it to me, but when it came from you…I believed it. I believe that if you could change your world, you should be able to change this one.”

With that she left.

 

*          *          *

 

The third night was warm. Crowded and warm. A mass of people gathered in front of Saatvik’s house, guided by torchlight. With all of the flames nearby, Noc began to sweat. In the center of crowd stood Canis and him, both draped and fancied up. They both wore turbans, jackets, and baggy pants. Noc’s outfit was a dazzling white, with a red stripe going down the center of his coat. Canis’s was black, with the same red streak down the middle.

They looked back and forth at each other. They felt ridiculous.

Canis had met Noc at home and invited him to a bath at the river. After they were done, one of Saatvik’s servants stopped by the house to drop off the clothes Saatvik prepared.

The nightmare was becoming real.

The village people did not hover by them. Instead, they gave the two a four-foot circle of space. Although no one stood by them, they could hear people speak about them. It was like they were not even there; albeit Noc wished he wasn’t. Canis’s lack of hair seemed to be a real popular subject.

From where Noc stood, he could see Vaani hovering to his left, growing annoyed and impatient. It was growing late and she was unreasonably tired. She had just been released from her midday duties, only to walk to the other side of the village for five minutes just to wait; and for Saras, to top it all off.

Saatvik had all fourteen of his guards outline the platform steps to his manor. Anish stood near the front door, glancing at the two from above. Noc wondered what Anish would be thinking when Saatvik made the announcement.

When the commotion finally simmered down, the thunderous crack of doors echoed throughout the crowd. People clapped and cheered as Saatvik entered the scene, dressed in heavier, silkier white robes and his white beard kempt. Across his forehead was a band of yellow, embedded with the unicorn gem below his white turban. Beside him, as expected, was Saras draped in white as well. Noc’s distaste made him mentally nitpick at her large gold hoop earrings, and all the other golden jewelry slapped on every inch of her body. The thickers braces on her neck, wrist, and ankles were far too much for him too look at.

He sighed.

“Good evening, and good harvest, everyone,” Saatvik began. Some people chuckled. “I am glad you all could make it to the gathering tonight. Anuja,” he nodded to a woman in the crowd, “Mani,” and then to an older gentleman who was hard of hearing. Noc rolled his eyes. “As most of you know, this is my daughter Saras.”

Saras stepped forward with a smile and waved to the people. Noc was relieved to hear someone else in the crowd say something about her outfit.

“It seems like only yesterday her life was in peril. When our beautiful city began to flourish, she was still just a baby. I remember after my wife had passed, a band of barbarians almost threatened our home and our children. Unarmed and restless from our days of work, we only had the strength to sit and watch them close in. I held Saras close to me. I could not take my eyes off of her. I wanted her to live, even if it meant I could not be with her. I tried to think of ways to get her out alive, but the thought of sending her to the wild frightened me. Just as all of our hope began to fade out, something else faded in.

“A door!” he boomed. “Not just any door, but one of fire. It was lit in colors no man has ever seen fire take. There was blue fire, green, yellow…The barbarians and us, we were at a loss for words. Both side stared into the eye of something far greater than us. Then…” he paused.

The seniors of the crowd turned their heads at Noc and Canis. Noc spent a few minutes catching the eyes of everyone over the age of fourteen who remembered that day. They all smiled at him. Canis stood there like a statue with his eyes half-open. He had heard this story sized up multiple times. Doing so now didn’t make it any more memorable.

Noc looked at Vaani, only to have his stomach fall flat. She wore a look of worry. She saw through it all, too. Saatvik was carrying on with the dramatics to make the crowd side with him until he got to the point.

“They appeared,” Saatvik put simply, pointing at the two brothers. “These people of white appeared before our attackers and our village. When the door finally closed, all we could see were two naked children, covered in mud. I think I remember some of you thinking they were old men because of their white hair,” he chuckled, with a few others supporting.

“I remember poor, little Vaani screaming out to them,” he looked directly at Vaani. It did not even take him a moment to find her bobbing in and out of sight. “She was crying that they were going to be killed.”

Noc remembered that. When they first reached the newer world, he remembered looking back to a scream. It was Vaani, waving her hands about. She tried to wave them over, but he couldn’t understand her. When he looked to the plains, the crowd of warriors shook him. He froze. That was when he tried to get Canis up and moving while the feeling in his legs needed to recover.

 Vaani tried her best to smile for the people looking at her, but Noc knew she was only playing along, just as Saatvik wanted her to.

“Then, those terrible monsters came running. These two’s fates were surely sealed. Whatever those sick bastards were going to do with them was exactly what they were going to do to us. We could only watch. Then, with only seconds to spare, one of these boys swung one hand. With that one hand, he crushed an entire army. I can see it so clearly again. Everyone was silent. These long, white…things, dancing over field as the blood of hundreds painted the dirt. Their weapons ripped from their hands, and their existence…scattered.

“This power was terrifying. To watch a lone child take down a fleet of men twice his size…The leader of their tribe tried to challenge him, but the other boy stepped forward. Using the blood of their enemies, he casted down righteous judgment and saved our lives. This boy, able to use blood as a weapon, boiled the man alive in the blood of his own warriors.”

Noc arched a brow.

“Because of these two boys, Noc and Canis, my daughter is alive and well in my vigilant care.” Canis rolled his eyes and snorted. Noc nudged him with his elbow. “We can all live to see our families grow and prosper, thanks to these two boys!”

Everyone began to look at them and applaud. That was, everyone except Vaani. Noc, in between smiling and waving nervously, kept looking to her for help. Instead, he found her glaring at Saras, who in turn was smiling at Noc. Vaani’s lips trembled, pursed as Saras could only wear a devious grin. It took a moment for Noc to realize why.

In just a few moments, Saatvik was going to put them in the spotlight. The tide had only pulled from the shore. The next wave was going to be the last. Saatvik, the manipulator, knew Noc’s weakness and was going to extort him for it. Saras was going to have a new pet after claiming minor revenge.

His heart began pounding. After the roaring applause faded, Saatvik continued.

“Now, I am sure from time to time, we have asked them just who they are, and where they came from. To our misfortune, they tell us they do not know. They came here on their own, with no other family but themselves. They are so thin and fragile, yet they do not hunger; they do not yearn for sleep; and most interestingly enough, Noc’s powers can heal wounds. We all saw it two days earlier in the market. His right hand was accidently sliced almost in two by Anish. All he did was hold it with the other hand and it was like new.

“My people, these are not powers of our capabilities. We could never dream of sharing a divine power as these two. Destruction,” he held his hand out, gesturing to Canis. He swayed his body to the right and turned his hand to Noc. “And creation. If these two are not like us, then what are they?”

The crowd stood in silence for a moment.

“My people,” his excitement finally vanished, “it has taken me some time to figure it out, but believe me when I say…we stand among two beings from a higher plane, sent here to guide us and protect us. My people, believe me when I say that we stand amongst two divine spirits.”

That was when he unleashed the word that echoed in Noc’s head relentlessly for the past few days: “Gods.”

The wave crashed hard. Everyone had a different reaction. Most of them began conversing in joy with their what-ifs, and creating logic to Saatvik’s theory. As his eyes shifted about, Noc found a person that gave him dubious looks. It was boy from the other day that had ridiculed him.  

Canis’s eyes were pried open in feigned shock. He looked around the crowd, trying to hone in on the conversations. He was actually looking to get a second opinion. The overwhelming joy of the people was contagious. If they believed it, who were to say they were wrong? After years of not knowing, or having a guess at what he was began to grow dreary. He looked down at his hands. Saatvik was right. They were the means of his destructiveness. It was why people feared him; avoided him.

He looked to his brother. Noc’s large eyes were now fixed into a glare, and a deathly one at that. He stood tall with his chest pointed out and his arms folded beneath his ribs.

This was it. As Vaani said, it was time to swim.

When the commotion began to grow, Saatvik demanded that they would quiet down. His speech was far from over; at least to him. Before he could speak another word, Noc interfered.

“That is enough!” Noc yelled angrily over the crowd. Everyone began to look his way. Vaani’s head snapped back to him. “Stop this foolishness, Saatvik!”

Everyone began chattering again. Saatvik’s eyes raced over the crowd as both Saatvik and Saras could only stare back at Noc. There was a fire burning in their heads, but they could not act on it. Appearance was everything. Their powerful stance had put them in a rut. Now it was Noc’s turn. It was time to not only think, but to act fast as well.

“This man speaks lies and deceit,” Noc stated, his finger pointing high over the crowd and directly at their leader. “I speak out because I do not have the heart to stand by and watch you lie to these people, Saatvik. If I remember correctly, it is my job to protect them!”

Now everyone was confused. Canis actually gave Noc a look of worry. He tried to get his attention by nudging him with his elbow, but Noc’s focus was fully on Saatvik. His eyes reopened again, but to their fullest extent. Canis felt uncomfortable looking at them. He may have been the one the people dreaded, but Noc had the look to scare grown men.

“Everyone,” Noc shouted firmly, “this man brought all of you out here tonight to make you all believe that this is truth. He almost believes that he is telling the truth. He wants to make us your idols, to have you in the dirt and on your knees, praying to us. He is taking your fascination in us and using it for his advantage! He wanted us to be worshipped, praised, and eventually, followed blindly. Saatvik wanted to hide in the shadows of his comfortable home, and make us do what he wants. If he wants to build a bigger house for himself on your land, all we would have to do is say it. If he wanted your wife in his bed the next morning, so be it.

“For this, he promised me and Canis riches. He told me that he would move my brother and me into our own temple, and then make us ‘leaders’. I am sorry, my lord, but I do not want it.”

A whispering commotion began to fill the air. Saatvik flung his arm out at Noc while trying to maintain his ‘honorable’ posture and shouted, “What are you saying, boy?!”

“I am saying we are not Gods, nor are we Leaders.”

Saatvik made Noc’s heart leap when he began to pace towards him. The crowd split into two separate sides to make way. Saras followed closely behind him with not a hindrance in her step. They both began descending the steps of their home, looking straight at him with fake smiles on their faces.

“But my dear Noc,” Saatvik began, “do you not have them listening obediently to you now? How can you deny an entire city that have done nothing but love and accept you of this heritage, of this gift? You two are so…different from us. Your abilities are so out of our reach, so out of this world…With powers like yours, what do you consider yourself? One of us?”

“I do not know,” Noc admitted, lowering his finger at last. As Saatvik drew closer, Noc’s head grew faint. He began to regret even speaking out of line. He paused and lost his place. He wanted to say something else, but he didn’t know just what. A sharp pain coursed through the back of his right elbow. Noc hissed in pain and looked at Canis.

The look on his face was one of worry. He darted his eyes towards Saatvik then back on Noc. He tilted his head towards the man, as if to tell Noc, “Continue…”

Noc blinked. When all hope seemed lost, his younger, arrogant brother was by his side. Noc looked to Vaani. She was right. The tides were changing.

Noc continued off the top of his head.

“But it does not matter who or what we are. We may be different from all of you, but are we not the same?” He expected the puzzling looks. “Do we not have eyes to see with? Do we not bleed red like you? Do we not have hands—” he looked at Canis “—erm, feet on which we walk? Do we not hide when the monsoons come? Do we not weep when your loved ones die? Tell me, do we not have mouths from which we speak with? If anything, you all taught us how!”

Saatvik paused in his steps and held Saras back with a firm hand. It was working.

“I do not remember my how I came to be. In my world, there was nothing but me.”

Noc placed his left hand over his bleeding elbow. He waved his hand in front of himself and the crowd gasped in disgust. A long and thin stream of blood followed his fingertips, floating aloft. When he finally drew a good amount, he used his right hand to start dividing the river equally into multiple orbs. Each segment flew over the crowd like small red balloons. When they reached their destinations, they dropped. Torches began to go out all around them. His arm grew numb trying to extinguish more, but he cared less. It had a purpose. The faces in the crowd finally went dark. In the dark and out of sight, Noc could clearly get his thoughts together.

“I was alone for what may have been days, or seasons…in this. I sat alone, naked, until my brother Canis appeared before me. Without a language to speak, we could only speak through our actions. It was awful. We could barely see each other. For a moment, I thought Canis was a part of my imagination.

“Then, I began to question my own existence. What was the point of a beating heart if I was stuck here? What was the point of being able to see when it was so dark? Why walk when this prison went on forever? I almost snapped.

“I think Canis had the same thoughts in mind, because he broke first. I remember it,” Noc laughed. “We were just sitting there when Canis just got up and screamed, he just…AAAHHH!”

Noc gathered minor enjoyment from the frightened reactions he heard all around him. The memory of his younger brother going berserk, stark-naked, did make him laugh. He broke it off, but had trouble regaining his serious tone.

“Angry, he sliced and he diced at nothing for a while. Then—” Noc stepped out of the steep darkness and stood at the edge of the remaining torch light. He stood face-to-face with Saatvik. “—he ripped the air open. That ‘door’ appeared before us. We were confused, but taken in by its beauty. When I felt the wind coursing through it, I went crazy. I did not care where it led us; I did not care what was on the other side. I just wanted to be free. So, I pulled Canis in with me,” He pulled his right arm forward and pulled Canis out of the dark by his wrists. “Then we landed here. Do you know how overwhelming it is to discover that you are not alone in the world?

“Tell me, do most of you remember your births? No. But you all know is that each and every one of you entered this world kicking and screaming, covered in blood. Now tell me,” he demanded, cracking another smile, “did we not do the same?”

Some of the crowd laughed with him this time.

“As time went by, we have watched and learned so many things from you people. We have learned to speak, watched you make plants grow overnight, and watched you herd cattle. You people took a river and built a beautiful city all around it. Every night, my head fills up with questions of how it all works. I get my answers by spending each day that has gone by with you people. It is beautiful.

“As we all know, people come, and people go. I have seen people come into this world, and I have seen people leave it. I may have the power to heal, but I cannot stop the flow of time. I remember when we were shorter than most of you here. Now look at us. We have grown so much here. There will come a day where we, too, will die.

“Now tell me: are your lives no different?”

“If you are so much like us, then how come you do not need nourishment and sleep to live?” Saatvik challenged. His annoyance was slowly becoming visible. This put a grin on Noc’s powdery face.

Noc looked to Canis and whispered an apology. Canis groaned and simply rolled his eyes, and then stuck them on the ground.

“Canis does,” Noc admitted.

He looked to the crowd to see if anyone had food. To his luck, there was a shorter older woman nearly hidden behind two different shoulders. Though he couldn’t see her face fully, but he could see pinching away at something in her hands. Noc pushed the people covering her aside and managed to pinch a few lentils out. She jumped in protest, but he walked back to his spot on the runway.

“Most of you have seen me try to eat,” Noc began to explain. He popped a few beans into his mouth and tongue to twist itself. As he expected, his throat closed up and he went into a coughing fit. Bent forward, he coughed both bean up onto the ground. When he looked Saatvik in the eyes again, his eyes were watered and irritated.

“And, eck, you know I cannot swallow. But Canis...”

He pinched a few more from his own hand and made Canis lean his head back. When the beans hit Canis’s tongue, he began to chew. Swallowing food in front of a mass of people somehow became entertaining. After the first, Noc gave Canis his whole hand to eat off of. The people who knew and were closer to Noc in the crowd showed more surprise than the few who didn’t. The word began to spread, and the wave of information began to circulate.

Saatvik’s eyes grew wide in disbelief. He had no idea what was going on. The two boys he tried to immortalize were stripping themselves weak to everyone around them. His plan was failing. His daughter gulped harshly.

“Saatvik, when you came to me three nights ago, you left your house unguarded for a rather long time. While we talked, my brother happened to stumble across your daughter. He also happened to lie across her.”

Noc had to word the last part carefully. He could hear Vaani’s distinct giggled as some people gasped again. Noc shrugged his shoulders. He shook off how blunt he was being. He took advantage of how nosy the people were, and drew their attention closer than Saatvik could. What was a better than juicy gossip to them?

“As he explained to me,” he lied, “it was after he finished when he began to feel weak. His eyelids grew heavy. For a moment, he actually believed he was dying. He was merely tired. He came home and went straight to bed. The next day, he began to feel hungry for his first time. Saatvik, your daughter fed him out of the public and your sight, so your trick almost actually worked, but I stopped by the other day, and…” the vivid thoughts of yesterday started to linger. Noc shuddered. Saras’s stare intensified. “Anyway, their impulsive behavior has revealed something we did not know could happen. My brother began to yearn for the things you all do. The two of them sleeping together brought my brother one step closer to relating with you all. He is normal.

“I hope, too, that someday I change and can be like him and all of you, too. I would love to be able to eat, to sleep, to dream…

“Besides, if being different makes me divine, then would that not make you all divine? We are all different from one another. Look at you all,” Noc began to point out random people in the crowd. “He’s tall, he’s short. Her hair is gray, her hair is brown. He likes meat, he probably prefer vegetables. I can go on all night. Your family members, are they really all the same from one another?

“That boy who was almost killed the other day! He was different, and he almost got his head chopped in two just because of it. After you apologized, you just sent that child on his way into the wild; into his death. Saatvik, you said you would have died to save your child, but you lived to kill someone else’s.”

Saatvik did not answer. Everyone’s focus was on Noc. The tension between the two was intense. Everyone had thought Noc had crossed the line, but looking into Noc’s eyes, Saatvik saw something. It was not hatred, but disgust; disappointment; judgment.

He was being judged, stripped, and revealed by this creature standing before him. The lies he wanted to spread were crumbling inside. He wanted to speak, but could not think of anything reasonable enough to retort with. He knew he could not atone for his sins after coming this far. A feeling began to take over his entire being.

Guilt.

“The only thing I want by the end of tonight is to be treated as an equal,” Noc said, turning to his left and right, “to be treated as a normal person!”

“Seconded,” Canis spoke up. “In the past few days, it has been interesting seeing what kind of food you people eat. It is nice to see that I am not so unusual, eating the same things as you all. Perhaps now, I can find my place amongst you. Besides, I always wanted more friends.”

Emotional and compelling. It would have pulled at Noc and Vaani’s heartstrings as well, had they not known that it was a lie. Noc had heard every name in the book being casted down on these people by Canis. He lost his temper over their shortcomings more than Vaani.

Noc knew why he was said it, and it did help. For the next, what may have seemed like a lifetime, Canis was going to have to put up with the people around him, begging to be his friend. After revealing Saras’s dirty acts, Noc was certain they were going to go the extra mile to hover over them like vultures.

“Now, if you do not mind, I am going home. I am getting tired.”

With that, Canis broke Noc’s grip, turned, and left. The crowd let him pass by in silence. Noc watched him disappear before he turned back to Saatvik and Saras. There was a brief moment of silence between them all.

“Well, Noc,” Saatvik sighed, looking at down the ground. “You may have what you ask for.” His eyes lifted. “But I do not give it long before you begin to face the facts.”

Noc did not say any more. He snorted breathily above Saatvik’s covered head, and then turned away. The crowd remained silent as he made his exit through the abyss of darkness. On his way out, someone grabbed his waist carefully.

It was the boy. Noc rubbed his head and hugged him back shortly.

It was beginning to feel like a night to spend by the river.

 

                       *                      *                      *

 

 

Noc kept his eyes on the river tonight. After the confrontation, he was feeling more down to Earth. He did not sit, but stood and watched the water rush right by him. The thought of actually kicking himself up the main river made him grin.

It was when he finally began to let the anger go, a large body tackled him to the ground. His breath was lost. His chest hit the ground first. His attacker pinned his waist down with their knees and their hands on Noc’s back.

Noc wriggled and flipped his body over to come face-to-face with Vaani. He was at a loss of words. There were tears in her eyes, but she was smiling again. Was something wrong? He sat up and positioned her into his lap.

“I am so proud of you,” she said. “You did it, Noc! You did it! I told you, I knew it! I believed in you, and you did it! I told you you were strong!”

Noc was going to speak, but words did not come. A noise squeaked from his lips, but nothing more. They looked at each other over the sound of Vaani sniffles and the Ravi. Noc’s eyes began to devour hers again; both his hands engulfed hers. Their breathing went silent.

His lips devoured hers.

7: Chapter 7 -- Life Goes On....

Chapter 7

Life Goes On...

 

“Papa,” Noc heard her call, “get up, get up!”

Noc opened his hazel eyes. His vision was blurred. His chest lied flat on the bed. His toes cringed when he noticed they were sticking out from underneath the blanket Vaani and he nestled into the previous night.

Was it time to get up already?

Noc locked eyes with his daughter kneeling before him on the bed. She smiled and giggled a bit. She had predicted his next move. He would try to close those full, rounded tawny eyes and try to brush her off. He did. In protest, she bounced on the flat mattress, shaking and rocking the furniture until her father caved in with a pitiful groan.

“Noc,” he heard Vaani’s voice call, “get up! Smita, stop bouncing on the bed, and go gather your clothes for today. Your father is going to take you to get washed while I clean. Now.”

Noc’s eyes flew open and his body sprung up as he began to realize what day it was. According to the messenger she sent, Saras was coming by today.

It had been ten years since Noc had seen her up close. Ever since his rejection, Saatvik and Saras kept a good distance away from him. They both refused to talk to him, let alone look. They kept in contact with Canis, though. Before his death, Saatvik watched Canis become his son-in-law eight years prior. Noc wasn’t invited to the wedding. He had not seen his brother once after that. Their home became even more silent empty as time went on.

Since those days, Noc refused to walk around the east side of town, especially after Saras took reign. Everyone who was old enough to remember that night had differing opinions about him. The wealthy folk of Harappa despised him, even enough to call him a traitor, a fool, and a wretch. The people who lived around him, however, still loved him. They understood his reasons, and welcomed them. When his eyes changed, no one asked why. Once they saw Vaani and him finally holding hands, they knew.

He became one of them.

Vaani and he had gotten married, and had a child shortly after she moved in.

Noc eyed their eight-year-old daughter, Smita, as he came to from slumber. She, like her father, was born a bit eccentric. She had the pale skin, the slender frame, and hair that caught both Noc and Vaani off guard.

It was pin-straight and electric blue, the same color as her eyes.

Noc refused to let Vaani cut it short. He reasoned that Smita should decide whether or not to lop off the long, stringy veil that draped her shoulders. It was her body, so it made it her choice. In return, Vaani was allowed to chop his hair down to ears-length before it turned matted. He hated the new look, but he thanked his wife.

“Papa! Auntie Saras is coming, Auntie Saras is coming,” she exclaimed, bouncing again. “Maybe she will bring Uncle, too!”

Noc could not help but grin. He grabbed her by the back of her head, and drew her in closer to him. Her baggy black garb dragged behind her as she scooted back against his chest. He tried to ask a question, but giddy little Smita’s mouth was quicker than his.

“Is Auntie Saras nice? Do you think she will bring presents?”

For a faint second, Noc’s smile almost broke. To cover his tracks, he gave a toothy smile, and simply nodded. His eyes wandered toward Vaani, who was gathering wet and washed clothes to hang. She had gotten distracted and looked right at him, frowning. She tilted her head downwards and looked up at him uncertainly.

“Yes,” Noc lied. “Your aunt Saras is a very lovely lady.”

Behind Smita’s head, he saw Vaani lower her eyelids and twist her lips at him.

“She will probably bring presents and Uncle Canis might come down too.”

Vaani did not say a word or make a face to this. She continued to slap wet clothes into her arms. After all of the days that had passed, Vaani had not said a word about Canis. Noc knew that she was angry with him, but at the same time, a little lost without him. Despite his belligerent attitude in the past, she missed him but was too stubborn to say it.

“What is Uncle Canis like?” Smita asked, turning her head back to her father. Noc never grew tired of looking into her ice blue eyes.

“Smita,” Vaani snapped, “enough questions! Go get your clothes!”

The both of them jumped out of the bed immediately. Noc wrapped his bare chest up in his usual white veil to match his white pants. Smita put both her sandals on, and grabbed the pile of garments sitting on the table. Noc slipped his shoes on and pecked a kiss on Vaani’s cheek. Smita took a step outside before Vaani turned her sights to him.

Without their overzealous daughter in the room, they could finally come back down to Earth again. The past ten years had changed them both. Vaani’s eyes had visible bags underneath them, and she was a bit heavier now. Her once sleek black hair had frayed from a combination of both stress and age. She complained more about her back, and her knees were starting to get to her.

Noc, on the other hand, seemed to have done a bit better in the past few years. After ten years, Noc had not complained once about aching joints. He got a job helping the farmers, and not once did he twinge. The fierce heat started to get to him, though. His skin finally caught pigmentation. His ghostly pallor changed to a bronze tone. He also grew two more inches.

After Noc and Vaani mated for the first time, the pupils and irises of Noc’s eyes grew. His eyelids finally came to a rest. When the two-day conversion ended, some people almost did not recognize him.

“Do not be long,” Vaani demanded quietly. “You know I hate fighting out rats when you are not here.”

“Do not worry,” Noc smiled, “at least you see this one coming.”

Vaani returned the smirk and kissed him back. Noc pushed the orange drape open and met his daughter outside. He took the clothes from her and stuffed them under his left arm so he could hold her hand. Smita was left-handed. Another quick of hers.

As they walked to the river, Smita asked more questions.

“How come Uncle Canis does not visit often?”

“I do not know,” Noc lied. He could not tell her that her uncle was Saras’s little prize. She was only eight. “He is the chief’s husband. I am sure he is pretty busy.”

“But do you not miss him?”

“Every day,” Noc replied, then went on to explain, “but Uncle Canis has met new people and moved on, and so have I. Besides, I got you to worry about every day now.”

“Not everyday,” Smita mumbled.

Noc knew she wanted to keep digging until she got real answers from him, but he kept evading the truth. When they got to the streaming river, Noc hung their clothes off of a nearby tree. They both spent no time getting ready for their cold bath. After Smita undressed herself, she hugged and covered her privates. The rushing cold air emanating from the river made her shiver. Noc was already used to it.

“Smita,” he called to her as they stood a few feet apart, “how is your back today?”

“It’s fine,” she answered quite coldly and quick, staring off into the riverbed.

“Smita…”

Smita tilted her head at him and looked down the river again. She let out a groan. Noc knew this pain. Smita was born just like Noc; different colored eyes, wild and gaudy hair, and lastly, the explainable deformity. Noc stepped closer to eye his daughter’s shoulder blades. He watched her get hunched as they rose through her hair. Two ten-inch, scaly, deep blue wings spread upwards and flapped a few times into an arch.

When she was born, Smita’s wings were tiny, almost unnoticeable. Noc had the medicine woman that had assisted him to swear to him not to tell any of the other villagers about it. As a friend and a neighbor, she kept her word. Vaani and he were at a loss for words over it. The two did not speak of it for days until Smita’s blue hair began to grow. Vaani thought they were beautiful, and made her daughter unique. Noc, however, saw the torment it was going to conjure. Just as Canis hid from the village because of his hands, Noc was scared Smita was going to do the same.

Thankfully, she was usually upbeat and positive. He believed if she heeded the lessons Vaani and Noc put before her at a young age, she was sure to grow up strong and happy. Noc could see it now. Her wings would be fully grown, and the village folk would have to get used to it. She would have to go through her own tribulations before she would have to remind everyone again that she was no different than them to gain their respect.

Smita tucked her wings underneath her hair again with precision and immerged into the river. She fidgeted at the first toe to go under, but did not stop. She dreaded when her father would stare at her. He would not say a word, but smile, as if he were laughing at her. She had been raised unaware of her father’s history. He was not laughing at her, but at the headaches, the drama, and the happiness he foresaw.

Watching his child grow was exciting.

After they were finished bathing, Noc helped Smita wrap her chest and her wings up. Noc could not help but wonder how long it would be before they grew to their full potential. He continued putting a blue shawl on his daughter while she wrapped and tied her skirt together. Noc put on his white garments again and they marched back to the village.

 Noc pulled the curtain to his house open, and then froze. There was a creature he had not seen in a decade sitting at his kitchen. This monster had seen better days, being much shorter and much plumper since those times. The waistband on her fiery red pants was unforgiving on the overhung stomach she perched on her lap. The arms she crossed couldn’t hide her shame. Noc’s eyes could not decide on whether to stare at her trademark beak or the extra chins that find their way under her pursed lips. Her beady little black eyes laid upon him apathetically. Noc could barely tell, but she too had developed the bags Vaani had.

Noc’s eyes eventually found Vaani, who was standing in the opposite corner of their house. The glance from him was one that unintentionally read, “what happened?” Vaani shot him a cold glare and tucked her bottom lip in. She was about to laugh.

“Auntie Saras?” Smita called to the beast, pushing her way through.

Noc watched in slight entertainment as Saras’s face folded twice to turn her head to her niece. Saras’s eyes shot open and she smiled. Noc almost stopped Smita from getting any closer. He had sworn he had seen the same look on hungry, rabid animals before they snatched up their prey. Saras held open her arms and Smita ran up to give her a hug.

“Hello there,” Saras smiled and laughed. They pulled away before she continued. “I have heard so much about you. You are so beautiful!”

“Hm?” Smita ignored her aunt’s compliment and turned her head away to look at something out of Noc’s view. Apparently, Saras brought something and it was sitting around the table. Noc watched his daughter eye whatever it was up and down before she asked, “Who is this?”

Saras flipped her face the other way and told someone behind her, “We are out of public. You are allowed to stop hiding.”

Noc let go of the curtain and watched two small covered feet hit the floor. They shuffled out from behind Saras’s curves. It was a small person, wrapped from head to toe in black and gold. The only part of this person Noc could barely see was their eyes through a narrow slip.

“I am sorry,” a voice squeaked from underneath.

The person unwound her facial veil. They pulled a piece of their wrap back, and Noc saw this person’s powder-white forehead. Then, he saw the person’s ice blue eyes…and her long, pin-straight hair.

It was almost like looking in the mirror. Before them stood a slightly shorter Smita who seemed quite nervous or scared. Unlike his Smita, this one’s face was not as long. Her head was small, but it carried that long, sleeked hair just nicely. Her nose was small, too. The girl had a mousy face.  Noc did not want to admit it, but this girl was a tad prettier than his.

Vaani and he stood in shock. They and Smita looked back and forth at each other as though witchcraft had just happened in their home. What were they supposed to say?

“Anala,” Saras called her, “say hello to Noc and Vaani.” 

“Hello,” she squeaked, then hesitated, “…Uncle Noc, Aunt Vaani, and Smita. I am Anala.”

“My and Canis’s daughter,” Saras chimed in.

Saras stumbled to get out of the chair and block Anala from Noc’s inquisitive sights.

“Would you mind watching her?” Saras asked forwardly.

“You are not staying for dinner?” Vaani asked with a daring look on her face.

“No,” she replied flatly. “You know me. I cannot breathe in small, crowded places.”

With that, she threw her veil over her face and scurried out the door. Noc swung towards Vaani just to avoid her wide, reckless path. Without a single goodbye, Saras was gone without a word of when she would return.

Anala stood amongst them very nervously. She did not smile much. When she sat, her eyes remained glued to the floor. Vaani insisted and stepped outside to cook lunch on an open flame. Smita sat with her at the table while Noc stood nearby. Smita could not help but look at her twin, and then back at the floor.

There was a long awkward silence amongst all three of them. Noc wanted to ask her a lot of questions, but her timidity was not something he wanted to take advantage of. He sighed and folded his arms. His eyes rolled up toward the ceiling and he waited for their meal.

Suddenly, an eerie melody began. It started with six escalating notes, the last being held so sweetly. The second part consisted of ten declining notes. Noc listened to Anala whistle the lovely tune twice. The third time, the sixth note was held higher, waivered ever so slightly, and then she repeated the tune normally. It sounded like a question being asked, but differently each time. 

“That was beautiful,” Smita said in disbelief.

Anala looked up from the ground with a nervous smile. Noc saw her pretty smile and began to wonder why she did not smile more often. He became stale with anxiety, wanting to barrage her with the questions that just kept building.

“Thank you,” she said gently. “Mother thinks it is annoying, but I cannot help it sometimes.”

“That, Anala,” Noc began, “is just a beautiful talent. Do not be ashamed of it. How did you learn to do that?”

“I known how since I was five,” she replied, finally showing her freckled face to him. “Whenever I just stare off, I find myself whistling different things. Mother finds it obnoxious and hates listening to it.”

“What about Uncle Canis?” Smita asked, bouncing a little in her seat. Noc thanked his lucky stars.

“Papa does not say anything,” Anala said. “He never does. When I am yelled at, he stands off to the side. He keeps his head down and follows Mother’s orders like the rest of the village. I know he feels sad for me, but he cannot hug me. He gets scared whenever I get near him.”

Smita’s exuberance suddenly vanished. The joy on her innocent face went blank, only to replaced by a look of sympathy.

“Mother gets scared is all,” Anala covered. “She says I am her ‘precious gem,’ so father near me.”

“Why not?” Smita asked in a rebellious tone.

Anala looked back at her cousin skeptically. She looked back at Noc, and there she could read it on his face. He never explained to Smita about his brother’s condition. Anala smiled while she elaborated her father’s special abilities. Smita listened with her bubbly enthusiasm returning.

“Yes,” Noc gallantly went on to add. “Your father and I used to fight back barbarians. They stopped coming after quite a few days. We lived and grew up in this house in the village’s favor.”

“Uncle Noc,” Anala squeaked. She quivered when his eyes met hers. “Is it okay to ask about where you and Papa come from? I have tried to ask Papa, but he tells me he does not know. I asked Mother once, and she laughed. She told me, ‘out of a hole’.”

Noc smiled a little when she imitated her mother’s nasally voice. It was spot-on. The grin faded, however, when he saw Smita’s pleading eyes. Wrapped around her seat, she stared patiently. Anala had instigated her questions and now Smita was going to see if his answers would line up with the ones she wanted.

Noc sighed. He looked to the door in hopes that Vaani would have been done preparing the food. To his dismay, that was not the case. He looked at the two girls and sighed again.

He bent down on both knees and began the tale. He told them everything. He watched their eyes brighten up with the story of escaping their dark prison and landing in the village. He got a little offended when Smita twisted her face in disgust after telling her about his ability. Her smile came back when Noc told her that her mother was the first friend he made.

Noc hesitated when it came to explaining Saatvik’s meeting, but he went on with it. He explained to them what Saatvik believed, what happened days later, and then explained to them why it came to such a conclusion. The two girls coincided with his past decision, and seemed to have understood his pain.

“Is that why Uncle and Auntie will not come by?” Smita asked.

“Yes,” Noc replied bluntly, “and I want you girls to do me two favors.”

They did not have to say a word to give him compliance.

“First, do not repeat any of this to your mothers,” he implored. “And secondly, that you two must change these bonds.”

The two agreed to the first part, but did not understand the second.

“Do not grow up the way my brother and I have. Look over and take care of each other. We may be the same as one another, but we are all we have.”

They both nodded their heads. Anala smiled and looked at Smita.

“So what can you do?”

Smita looked back over to her father. He shrugged his shoulders. Smita’s eyes darted.

“What can you do?” she fired right back.

Anala swung hair out of her face and replied, “I can not do anything. Whistling seems to be all I have.”

Something about that answer made Smita have second thoughts. If Anala was being honest, Smita was holding out. This girl at her table was apart of her family, and seemed like a new potential friend. There was no reason to not trust her. She nervously lifted her shawl and undid the band around her chest. Her web of hair bounced twice before her wings came into view. They stretched over her shoulders before arching properly.

Anala’s jaw dropped, but Noc could see it was more out of amusement than horror. She rushed behind her twin and courageously began to stroke them both between her thumbs and index fingers. Smita’s wing twitched vehemently.

“Can you feel that?” Anala asked.

“Yes,” Smita giggled, “and it tickles.”

Anala marveled them again with only her eyes.

“They’re beautiful.”

“You really think so?” Smita asked, turning around. Anala nodded her head. They all smiled. Vaani interrupted with a platter of roasted chicken. She paused in her tracks when she saw Smita’s wing out and about.

“Mama,” Smita giggled, “Anala thinks my wings are pretty!”

Vaani saw the toothy grins on both of their faces. Her heart felt at ease for them. Her daughter had made a friend, and it was family. The little girl who had kept to herself the entire time finally came out of her shell. Vaani did not need to question to know Noc had something to do with it.

The four of them ate, and spoke about the little things. Smita kept her wings out the entire time. When Vaani stepped out again to make dinner, Noc took a carving knife and demonstrated his powers for the girls. He made a small incision on his wrist and made the small trickle of blood dance for them. Noc only did it for a short while before he was almost caught by his wife. He patched himself up right in time before Vaani returned with the second round of chicken.

They spoke some more over their meal until they had a guest intrude their happy home. The curtain flew open and a man in black stepped inside. He was an average height of five feet and nine inches tall. His skin was bronze, but Noc could not misplace the man’s silvery white hair. It was as short as his. Canis’s blood-red eyes surveyed the entire house. Vaani froze. The man’s silence made Smita began to feel uncomfortable.

“Papa!” Anala announced, running up to hug him.

Canis’s arms flung up to the sky as her arms wrapped around his waist. It was just as she said: he was scared to touch her. Noc heard Smita greet her uncle with a slight nervous tone.  She remained turned in her seat.

“Brother,” Noc called. He rose from his spot on the ground and walked to his brother. As he came closer, he saw the smirk his brother wore. It was the same devious smirk he always had when he said or thought something sarcastic. After the past eight years, it had not changed. Not a single bit.

“How have you been?”

“I have been good,” he replied vaguely. He looked to Smita. “She told me your daughter looked just like ours. Funny, how that happened.”

“I was surprised, too,” Noc laughed. He stood patiently when he noticed his brother eyeing Smita’s wing. His eyes narrowed for a brief second before returning to Noc.

“Are those…” Canis began, but stopped. “That is different. You know, I always wondered if Anala would grow up with anything special like we did. Instead, she just wanders around the house and annoys Saras. She is only a child, though.”

Anala’s eyes found the floor again. Before Noc could say anything, Canis batted the curtain open with the back of his hand.

“Wrap your face, Anala,” he demanded. “Your mother waits.”

Anala looked at her father with those big, needy eyes before she stepped by the table to grab her head veil. She slipped her face away and calmly walked out of the door. Canis said his sudden goodbyes and vanished.

“That was pretty quick,” Smita commented disdainfully.

Noc’s shoulders sank. He returned and ignored the two at the table. They ate the remainder of their dinner in silence. Afterwards, Smita dressed herself in her sleepwear and lied on the bed next to her parents’. While Vaani tucked her in, Noc stepped outside. Instead of being able to roam freely to the river as he was accustomed to, Noc stayed close to his house for security’s sake. He leaned against the front wall of his house lost in thought.

Ten years went by and Canis did not seem to care at all. Ten years went by and Canis was still the same shifty, mischievous little brother he had always been. Years in Saras’s care did not change a thing. Besides, she was the one with the responsibilities.

Noc smiled to some degree. At least he did not change for the worse. But why?

He took a deep breath and looked up to the moon. It was full and very bright. The torches on the street did not need to be lit. The moon’s powder blue light swept over his house and a few of the neighbors’. He smiled. He could always count on nature to brighten his mood.

“Some things never change,” Vaani said.

Noc turned his head and greeted her.

“The same light shines above us every day and night,” she continued. “The same light puts that same smile on your face.”

“You know me,” Noc aloofly answered. He turned his attention to the sky again.

“Then if I know you, it is safe to assume that you are burrowing your feelings again?”

Noc’s head snapped back again. Vaani was not looking at him, but at the sky. She propped herself on the opposite side of their door with a mournful look on her face.

“Is everything okay?”

“No, Noc,” Vaani choked her reply. “You know what is wrong.”

Noc did not say a word. His chest felt tight. He was not prepared to admit to the things he pondered. He prayed to himself that age had broken her keen intellect as it did her body. Once she spoke, there was not going to be a way to fully dodge and avoid the conversation.

“I do not appreciate Saras coming into my home,” she uttered through tears, “and leaving her miserable child at my house! Saras treats that girl like a slave. And why did she look just like Smita?”

Vaani began to pant heavily, still looking at the stars. There was something more brewing beneath just this rage.

“I get it. You two boys look the same, and so do they, but how long are you all going to look the same?”

“Vaani…Wh-what are you…”

“When Canis came in the door today, I froze up. I swear I thought I was looking into the past. His body, his eyes, his face…nothing has changed.”

Noc did not want to say it. He could not admit to it. Noc did not want to think about it. The puzzle pieces were coming together too quickly. The bigger picture began to unfold in his ears instead.

“I see it in you, too,” she whined. “I had a child, my back is starting to go, my eyes are weary from exhaustion. My hair is not what it used to be. The people in the village…I have watched them all grow up and change. That boy, Chakor, is now a farmer. He is so big now. Lady Anjali from the market has finally quit her business. Now, she just sits at home and watches the days go by. She is sick and will die soon.”

Noc stared holes through her head. Just once, he wanted Vaani to look at him. She was going mad. Her face was slowly becoming drenched in tears

“And then, there is you. You work every other day, day in and out, take care of our daughter, and run to the market, yet your body does not seem to take any tax.”

“Maybe it is because of my healing power.”

“Then—” she banged her fist on the house, “why—” again, “has Canis not change either?!”

Again, Noc could not answer.

“Will I be able to see my little girl grow up?”

Noc’s jaw dropped. He looked away, and felt a heavy lump in his throat.

“You…people…do not eat, you do not sleep,” Vaani shook her head. “We saw through that. Then again, some things really do not change. Noc…you have not aged past this. Can you even die?”

Noc’s head began to spin. The pit of his stomach felt tight. His mind began to accept that the simple dream of growing old with his beloved was now a challenge. Smita and he would be stuck in an age of youth forever while Vaani grew old and slipped away.

Saras must have planned this, he thought. She saw it too.

He wanted to blame anyone he could but himself. The overly-complicated questions of his past began to haunt him again.

Where am I? What am I? Who are we? Why are we like this?

Now, a new question formed in the bunch.

Can I die?

 

 

8: Chapter 8 -- Black and White

Chapter 8

Black and White

Time had changed it all.

Time had changed the weather, the seasons, the days, the weeks, the months, the years, and everyone affected by it; everyone except Noc and Canis.

Just as Vaani feared, Noc’s boyish face had not withered. After twenty more years passed, the villagers marveled at him. After years of watching people he knew and love die, Noc became a recluse. He stayed at home with Smita and watched her grow into a delicate, tall, slender woman. Her wings grew long enough to arch themselves over her head and nearly touched her ankles. They grew so wide, her shoulders and her hair could no longer hide them away.

Just as Noc dreamed, the age of hiding her true self went by and people were intimidated. Smita had to use the wisdom her parents passed down to her to prove them foolish to ever think of her as different. She was forced to stand up for herself against a trio of elderly women whilst running errands in the eastern bazaar for Vaani. Her point almost fell flat when she flew away after the argument.

Smita had grown into quite the trouble maker. Noc and Vaani never heard the end of the complaints. She is making some people uncomfortable the way she dives in the sky, Noc heard once. The complaints got worse when she learned about her ability to breathe fire in the midst of her early teen years. Noc could only roll his eyes when he heard Anala was an accomplice to setting a farmer’s water buffalo aflame.

Anala explained to him that she was simply trying to teach Smita how to whistle. When Smita formed her lips just right, she blew. Quite abruptly, a stream of jet blue flames rocketed a ten foot distance and caught the animal in the middle of transporting a bail of hay. The poor beast never saw it coming. Noc supposed having watched the animal tense up and sizzle to death was enough for punishment. He and Smita both apologized to the owner and paid him back off of Vaani’s earning.

Despite all the vexing opposition, Noc and Vaani were proud to watch their girl grow. As Smita did, she began to notice her mother’s graying hair and pruning skin while her father remained the way he was. The bigger picture began to dawn on her over the passing years. The following forty years did not make a dent in Smita’s youth. Just like her father, she, too was stuck in time. The same resulted in Anala. Together, they all clung to the tender youth of being eighteen.

Vaani, at the age of eighty-eight, had lost her mind. One night, Smita came home to the sight of flipped furniture, broken pottery, and her mother broken down on the floor in tears. Beside her was Noc, holding his head over hers.

“I am sorry,” he whispered.

He propped himself onto his feet and made a beeline for the exit. Smita could see pieces of the table vase stuck on his face. There were no scars or bruises underneath. His eyes were puffed up red. The scowl on his face was one his daughter had never seen before.

She did not say a word. She stood against the wall closest to the door and watched her mother weep. What was she to do?

Noc did not return home later that night. Instead, he stood by the river, just watching the stream. He looked up the moon and wept.

 *    *    *

Days had gone by since Noc, Smita, or Vaani spoke to each other. They all woke up in silence, bathed in silence, and ate in silence. Seeing her father depressed discouraged Smita from saying anything foolish. Noc spent his days of forlorn with his head down or by the river. He refused look either of them in the eye. Vaani had the same setback.

One night, Noc wrapped his head underneath a white turban. He put on a matching jacket that had a red stripe down the center. He sat at the end of his and Vaani’s bed. She sat next to him, looking at the floor. Smita sat at the table, watching them inquisitively. With things the way they were, she thought it best to stay quiet.

To Smita’s surprise, her mother looked up at Noc. Vaani did not seem angry, but she was not happy either. Her beady, yellowed eyes hung to the side of his head. Smita could see her mother’s lips curled downwards when her father refused to look back. Just when the both of them had given up hope, Noc’s hand clasped down on Vaani’s swollen fingers. He took a deep breath and squeezed as hand as he could. Vaani, even at her brittle age, returned the favor. Noc opened his mouth to speak, at last.

“I am…”

Their door flew open. Petite, mousy Anala hopped inside with her face unmasked. She wore a less than eager look on her face. She brushed Smita with a nod of greeting, but turned her focus immediately to her uncle. Her head tilted in favor when she saw the two lovers gripping each other’s hand.

“Uncle Noc,” she beckoned. He turned his head up to her. He looked like a criminal ready for his execution. “It is time.”

Noc released his wife’s hand and pushed himself off the bed in an unneeded hurry. He did not reply to Anala, but nodded. He told Smita to follow him closely as they both stepped out. Before she could even ask, she was welcomed outside by Canis leading the entire village in a crowd. Most of the villagers had torches in their hands, revealing each and every one of their faces. Canis kept pacing as if time was of the essence. When his family finally met him, he asked, “Are you two ready?”

“Ready?” Smita repeated. “For what?”

Noc stared at Canis a moment before he looked at his daughter. When the two’s eyes finally met, he smiled. Smita did not know why she felt at such ease. Somewhere deep down, she could almost see the worst answer forming on his lips.

“We are going home,” he replied.

Smita looked at her mother, who took awhile before making it outside with her walking stick. She looked back to the old shack that they called their home for years.

“We are…”

“No, Smita,” Noc laughed again, choking a bit. She could see the tears swelling in his eyes. “We are going back to our home.”

Smita’s heart dropped.

“The entire village is here to see us off,” Anala added

Smita looked in the crowd and saw their many faces. She saw their olden, grayed faces and slowly began to understand. There was no point of living in this village anymore. Her father had lost hope, and he was tired of swimming against time’s course. Her father had stopped fighting.

Her wings began to tremble. She looked to her father again, and saw tears on his face. It was then her body and mind decided to let go. Smita held herself with her arms crossed and lowered her head to the ground. Everyone could hear her sniffles as her wings convulsed with each sob. No one said a word.

Noc placed a hand on Smita’s shoulder and pulled her close. He could not see his daughter’s face under the shroud of blue.

“I am sorry,” was all he could say to her.

There was no response.

“Where is Saras?” Noc asked Canis.

It took a moment for Canis to notice that his brother had asked him something so abruptly. He snapped his head back to his brother, blinked, then shook his head. Noc furrowed his brows.

“She has decided not to come,” he said gravely. “She could not bear to see us go. Vaani, may I ask you a favor? Could you please check on her after we leave?”

Canis saying ‘please’. That was something Noc never expected. He remembered when he introduced the idea of leaving to his younger brother a few nights ago, he rejected. Noc had to argue. After hearing his brother’s reasons, Canis had rolled his eyes and agreed to inspect it. Noc could only imagine how Saras reacted to hear that her kingdom was going to fall apart. With no next of kin, she would perish into history like the lot of people before him.

Vaani nodded to Canis’s plea, then ushered the people out of the front gate of the village. Noc held onto his daughter as they made their way out to the dusty fields they both knew they would miss. Noc would have preferred doing this by the river, but this was where they first arrived.

He saw it all so clearly again: his brother and him heaving each other out of the mud; their first fight; their first encounter with a girl…

Canis halted the crowd by simply raising a hand at chest-level. Everyone halted and watched him take a few steps forward. He glanced at the moon, and then smiled. Noc knew why. Right after Noc had made a fool of himself in front of Vaani all that time ago, Canis could not take his eyes off the sky. Noc believed it was the first time he saw his brother genuinely happy.

Did he really remember the exact spot?

“It is still here,” he said bluntly, smelling the air. He turned to Noc and asked, “And you are sure you want this?”

Noc nodded his head.

“I told you like I told Vaani,” he said. “If nothing is still there, we can change it.”

Canis did not argue. He simply bobbed his head in agreement, hunched his back, and made his fingers grow a little past his knees. For the first time, Smita saw her uncle’s abilities in action as he swiped at the air a few times. The way he swung seemed a bit random. There was no visible target, but after the fourth swipe, he stopped and seemed to have smelled something else.

“Got it!”

Canis took his left hand and slashed underhanded. Sparks lits and the air tore open again. Instead of slowly piecing itself together like the last time, the diamond-shaped door shot itself open. A wicked, fierce wind blew Canis’s hair straight to the back of his head. They could barely breathe. Instead of looking into darkness like they had before, the two brothers and everybody else were now staring into a corridor white.

The people of the village, being of a new generation, all gasped and hooted in excitement, but did not dare go near it.

The colorful flames the two remembered did not appear until after the wind subsided a bit. Canis looked to his daughter and caught her jaw dropped. Her eyes glistened in the flame’s glow. She took a step towards it and made contact with the wall of liquid. It was cold to the touch. Anala looked back at Vaani, then Noc, and then her own father. He nodded his head. She looked back one more time and smiled to Vaani. Before Anala’s emotions got to her, she took the first step in and vanished.

Canis turned to Vaani. They stared at each other for a moment before he simply gave her a wave and vanished as well.

“Now it is your turn,” Vaani stated.

Smita and Noc both gave her a hug and a kiss. They stood huddled together for a moment.

“The both of you be good to each other,” Vaani demanded. Her tears followed the path of each wrinkle, creating pools over her bags. “And do not forget about me.”

Noc thumbed her tears away, and then wiped his with his wrist. Everything was becoming blurred.

“I cannot forget you. I only have one mother,” Smita giggled through her crying, giving her mother one last smile.

“I love you, Mama.”

With that, she left. She walked through the door backwards. Her blue hair blew wildly before she, too, disappeared.

Now, Noc held his hands under Vaani’s. They stared at each other. The strong-headed and cunning girl he had fallen in love with was now old, feeble, and worrisome. He thumbed the back of her hands lightly, feeling each bone this woman used to stroke his hair with; to hold his face with while they kissed; even slapped him once with. They were the same hands he took to wed, to love, and to cherish. They were the same hands that raised their beautiful daughter into who she was now.

“You should be on your way before you get trapped here,” Vaani said with a smile.

“V-Vaani,” he stammered. She listened. “Do you remember when I never used to blink? When my eyes were kind of large…?”

She turned her head in confusion. She remembered, but was wondering where he was going with this.

“Do you remember how my eyes would dart back and forth, as if I was searching for something?”

She nodded.

“Well, I, um…I think my eyes are now normal because…”

Noc paused mid-sentence, spaced out, and suddenly latched to her lips. When they parted, he dropped the entire speech he was making, and simply said, “I love you, and I always will.”

The two had one last moment together before he finally made the walk. He kept looking at her as his body was fully engulfed.

            Vaani waved to him one last time.

After the door had dissolved and closed, Vaani kept to her word to go check on Saras. Granted, it took her a moment to get to the house. When she got there, she looked about and saw that there were no guards outside. Vaani had not been to this side of the village in a long while. When Saatvik passed, his old cronies must have gotten booted out as well.

She ached climbing up the few stairs, and ached more when she stepped inside. The smell of incense still lingered in the house seventy years later. Vaani’s breath was shortened, but she still made it down the hall, and up another flight of steps. While she walked up to Saras’s room she noticed something odd. The house was as silent as a temple in prayer.

Vaani took a moment to recuperate before she pulled Saras’s room curtain back.  She took one step in and stopped dead in her tracks. She squeaked, and whipped herself back out in a hurry and ran. Her muscles began to throb. Vaani sat on the steps and began started hyperventilating. She put her head down on her walking stick and started sobbing. Slowly, she wound up cackling.

The grisly spectacle she had witnessed had worried yet delighted her a bit. At her age, she was free to express any feeling she had. She chuckled at how Saras made a slave out of Canis. She laughed at how she used locked away Anala to her former bedroom. She snorted at that fact Saras and four of her guards were dead.

The faces of the guards Vaani had seen had small holes punched in them. Saras lied in two different spots, bisected. Together, they all laid in their own blood and filth.

“…please?”

Vaani closed her eyes. Both of her hands clamped down onto the top of her cane. The smell of the incense didn’t seem so bad after all. It was actually rather calming.

She smiled and let it take her breath away.

9: Chapter 9 -- Grey Area

Chapter 9

Grey Area

 

Noc had fallen behind in the tunnel. He was relieved to at least see a small black star up ahead. There was no doubt it in his mind was Smita, enjoying the tunnels as much as he did so long ago. Once the tunnel had gone gray, he lost sight of her.

Noc stood upright and closed his eyes. The wind that tussled his hair so elegantly came to a halt. The ride must have been over. He opened his eyes again and his heart sunk. Everything was black. Nothing had changed.

But where was everybody else? He took a step and his foot sunk. The tunnel was still pushing him through…but to what? The wind stopped, but he was being still being carried. In a few moments, he saw a small speck of light. It was like a star.

It rapidly grew larger until it swallowed him whole.

On the other side was beauty. Noc’s body stayed afloat in a cavern of some sort. Its walls were a deep, celestial purple that faded to black at the top and bottom. Small crystals appeared and disappeared as he drifted by. All was silent, even the sleeves on his coat as Noc fumbled and twirled about.

His inspection did not last long, however. He was awakened from his spell the moment his right shoulder collided with the cold barrier. The water stung his eyes, sending him tripping over his own feet when he finally landed.

Underneath him, Noc could feel a bed of something. When he familiarized the texture in his fingers, he had an urgent need to rub his eyes open. Right there, beneath him was the healthiest and greenest field of tall grass he had ever seen. He stood up and looked around. He cared less to see the portal off.

Noc could hear water rushing. It was easy to hear over the long winding gale. The sounds echoed and clashed. There were two steam-filled rivers, running far alongside him. He looked into the distance behind him and saw two rivers at great distances apart running down a steep hill. He began to realize that he was in the plains of an unknown valley. It was something the shape of a bowl; a private enclosed canyon.

He looked to see where the water may have been running to. In the distance long ahead of him, there was a lone institute of some sort. Noc could see darkened towers standing very close to each other.

He began to sprint towards it. He could not believe it. As Noc fought the grass hindering his boney legs, he looked to the sky. There was a sun shining ever so brightly. Conversely, his mind was not racing about that. Around this sun was a dome of light blue. In the middle was a ring of orange, reds, yellows, and pinks like a sunset sky. Beneath it were stars twinkling in the midst of a night sky. The amount of clouds varied between each set, and none of the diverse patterns clashed with one another.

Noc marched on, wanting to see the faces on his family. He needed to see more of it. The building came closer and closer to him, but it felt as though it was going to take a while before he reached it.. He could have cared less, however. This beat looking into a dank, stagnant void. He called out to his family starting with Smita. No one responded.

Finally, as the grass began to finally wear him down to a stagger, the institute became easier to see. There were tall, gray towers standing in what seemed to be a circular formation. On top of each one were spheres of some sort. From a distance, he could count ten of them. He could tell there were probably two or three more hiding out of sight. They were all different heights. From the direction Noc was heading, he was between the shortest and the tallest building.

Taken aback by all of this, there was still something he was not seeing in the center of it all. There was something else that was being shaded out from his view.

It came to view in a matter of minutes. The differently sized towers were surrounding an even bigger one. It was a castle, spiraling toward the sky. At the very top was another fortress. It was all constructed of bricks of black. On its coiling outer layers were more spires pointed to the sky. Noc started to see stairways that connected the separate towers to separate parts of the castle’s base. The highest tower, however, seemed to have an easy, straight path to the very top.

This was their new home?

Finally, Noc caught a glimpse of three people. He was disappointed to see that they were not looking upwards at the monstrosity before them. They all had their heads down towards the ground. He called to them again, and none of them, but Canis, responded. His brother raised a hand and gestured him over immediately.

Noc ran again until he was by their sides. He looked to the ground and shook two steps back. He spun three-hundred and sixty degrees, and then uttered incoherent sounds.

He looked back down at them. Noc did not know how to respond to all twelve naked bodies, kneeling on the ground before them.

They knelt in a V-shape. The person in the lead was a female about as tall as Canis. Her long, silky blonde hair draped over shoulders and parts of her back. She picked her head up and looked upon him with her violet eyes. She looked as though she was surprised.

“You must be our lord, King Noc?”

“Excu—”

“Please,” she jolted up to say. Noc kept his eyes on hers. This girl seemed very determined, yet shy to speak up. “We have waited for you.”

The other people in her pack lifted their heads up. There were seven males, three females, and two creatures he was nervous to look at eye-to-eye.

One of the monsters amongst the young girl was a man with the long neck and face of a balding rodent. From his mid-torso down, he was a man, but from his chest up he was a beast. He had arms and hands, but they hung from his oversized throat.

The other creature was a lengthy golden serpent. Its head trembled while its glossy green eyes darted between Noc’s family and the pack. The cobra’s dazzling hood tried to conceal something, but had failed in its attempts. Four smaller serpents reared their heads out and hovered carelessly, sticking their tongues out and about.

Two of the boys groveling perked up their wings for Smita. The one on the left had the wing of a dove. They shimmered like frost in the sun. The child on the opposite side had wings nearly like Smita’s, but black and furry. He kept eyeing hers, entranced.

Who were these people?

Noc looked at the girl.

“What do you mean by waited?”

She smiled, “My name…or the name I chose, is Everest. We are lost people much like you. We do not know how, or why, but we all awoke inside that castle not so long ago.”

She stood up and turned to it. The others did exactly the same, all standing in awe at the castle’s magnificent height.

“We all knew how to speak to each other,” Everest continued, “and we named ourselves. Although we all chose separate callings, there were still two that lingered in all of our heads: yours.

“While we waited, we explored the castle altogether. At the very top,” she craned her neck back, “there are two thrones, and four rooms. We did not quite understand, but as you stand here before us now, I count four amongst you. So, it has to be true…”

“None of you made any of this?” Noc questioned,

“No,” Everest sworn. “Like I said, we were born in there.”

Noc slowly started to piece together their motives. They were just as clueless as him and the others. When the four of them arrived, these strange people must have assumed that the four rooms were theirs. In total, there were twelve towers and twelve of them. This world had changed to fit all of them.

How did it know about Smita and Anala? The thought scared him.

“Show us,” Canis commanded. The pack began to buzz a little before he snapped at Everest, “Just you.”

Canis demanded their daughters to stay close behind them

Everest nodded her head and turned tail. It was only when the crowd parted that Noc could finally see the bridge to the blackened inner walls. It was wide, and each board was perfectly straight. Beneath it was the giant canyon of a round, dark, and hollow moat. As Noc marched forward with Everest, he finally saw where the rivers led. They emptied into the canyon, but it seemed very redundant. He could not see any water below.

The five of them entered through the castle walls and Anala’s heart began pounding.

“Oh my goodness!”

There was a neatly organized and radiant garden of green shaped around the long and circular dirt path they stood on. Trees and bushes bearing different fruit aligned the fort walls, soaking in the world’s sunlight. There was food that none of them had seen before, dazzling in different colors, rounded to succulent proportions. Anala had to stop the tour to pick a pear. It was so plump she could barely fit it in her tiny, delicate hands.

As they all progressed, Anala enjoyed her find until the very core. Everest walked up to a pair of wooden double doors and pushed on them. From the way she strained, the doors seemed pretty heavy. With a good heave, Everest managed to crack them open. The loud creak echoed inside the castle walls. They all stepped inside and their eyes immediately flung upwards.

The castle was dark, but light bled in from everywhere. The solid stone stairs to their left spiraled their way upwards. There were open doorways and landings along the stairs’ path, which Noc rightfully assumed were connected to the many bridges to the outer towers. Oddly, though, he could only count six doorways. After that, the stairs ascended into another floor.

Still looking up, they continued to follow Everest. Smita and Anala were both amused in seeing the first and smallest outer tower from the first doorway, but had to hurry on to keep up. Everest was such a hasty walker that both Noc and Canis almost had trouble keeping up with her. She had reached the fifth door when she heard a distinct shrill of disgust utter from Anala’s mouth. Everest stopped and saw her clinging to the railing.

The girl was looking down at the hive’s empty and desolate floor. Smita and the others joined her in gazing at a large mosaic painting they had missed being subjected by the light flowing out of a hole in the ceiling. It was the art of some long and deep blue creature. It seemed like something serpentine, but had two wings, and four legs on which it crawled. The beast’s body was so long, it had to pose into a ring shape to fit the room. Its long head nearly devoured its own tail.

“What is that?” Anala asked.

“‘Dragon,’” Smita read out. She pointed to the lettering in the beast’s inner circle. She then pointed to the letters above the dragon’s neck and read aloud, “In that world, I will think for you.”

Smita pointed to another set of lettering below the dragon’s tail.

“Out of mind?”

Before anyone even asked, Everest told them, “None of us know what it means. This world…is shrouded in mystery, which makes it that much more beautiful. Please, come. There’s much more I must show you.”

Noc, Canis, and Anala pulled away when Everest continued onwards. Smita stared at the mosaic for a moment longer before she was called by her father. The stairs led her into a new and more intimate room.

All around them were glass windows. Their eyes had to adjust to the light. Anala looked out and saw more land and more towers. From the backside, in the distance, she could see another bridge leading out to the vibrant fields and two more rivers emptying into the gorge.

Smita took the step towards the center floor, where there was a long, single red carpet. It was being pinned down by a long wooden table and twelve wooden chairs. The table was empty, but had a small round hole in it. Looking up, Smita could see a white light gleaming in from above. She could have sworn Everest could read minds when she began to spout more.

“This is the room we were born in. We all awoke in these chairs and at this table moments prior to your return. We all got up, and Oko…” she giggled a bit, “began to ask who the hell we were. He was a bit nervous.”

“Oko?” Smita inquired.

“He was the boy with the red hair,” Everest explained. As Smita tried to recall, Everest reassured her, “Not to worry. You will see him time and time again. He is quite the pretentious one. Harmless, but pretentious.”

Before Smita or anyone else could question her more, Everest took off up the continuing flight of stairs. Again, the group saw doorway after doorway before they arrived in a grand hall.

The floors up here were made of a simpler and neater material. Large white tiles greeted their aching feet, and the broad walls of white stung their eyes. One of the two beige pillars supported Anala, who was winded by this point. While she caught her breath with Smita, Noc and Canis adamantly stared at the two large doors barring them from the throne room ahead.

Again, Everest had to struggle a bit to push them open. When both of the doors finally flung open, the four stood in awe at the completely white room before them. Just as Everest said, there were two white thrones, supported and reinforced by gold. In front of the chairs were two separated pools, divided by the runway of another red carpet.

 When they stepped in, Anala abruptly stopped. She gasped. The others turned to look up to where her eyes were. There was another monster painted on the high, flat ceiling. They all stepped right under it to see it clearly.

This creature was in the same ring formation as the dragon floors below. This creature was a bird of some sort, lit aflame in dazzling and sparkling hues of orange, red, and yellow. Its talons were sharp, and it had long tail-feathers. They all read its name as ‘Phoenix’.

“In this world, I will fight for you,” Smita read out. “Out of sight?”

“It is pretty,” Anala commented immediately.

“Pfft, the dragon was better,” said Smita quite standoffishly.

Canis rolled his eyes and walked over to the thrones. Noc and Everest followed him. The three of them looked to the left and the right of the two chairs and saw four separate doorways, two to each side. It was just as Everest had said, and just as Noc thought. Twelve towers for twelve subjects and four rooms for his four family members. Everest looked upon him as he took hold of one of the thrones’ armrest. He eyed it lost in thought.

“Will you stay?” she asked.

Noc looked up to her with anxiety in his eyes. He did not know how to answer.

“Yes,” Canis replied instead. He gave a glance to Noc, smirked, and then looked to Everest again. He said loud enough for the girls to hear, “If you believe that we are your kings, then so be it. None of us know why this world is the way it is, but forget it…We can all live here in peace. My family would be delighted to build a future here with you all.”

A ray of joy dawned on Everest, as her toes began to shake her body up and down. She was too excited for words. Before she could think of any to say, a commotion had entered from outside.

A naked, scrawny red-headed boy came waltzing around the corner, yelling at someone out of view. He seemed very agitated. His furrowing auburn brows and scowl brought out the golden freckles heavily populating his face.

“Would you guys relax!? Everest is not going to care!” he yelled. As soon as Everest came to his view, he shouted, “Did they say yes, yet?”

He strolled right by the ever-curious daughters.

“Yes!” Everest exclaimed back, running down to him. “They are staying! Tell the others!”

The serpent slithered its long, narrow body into the grand hall. Its underlings eyed Oko intensely. The others followed behind him.

“We have ears,” the black winged boy retorted. He looked at the serpent as he stood next to it. “I think…”

Smita and Anala parted from the group and watched them line up. Everest took center again and they watched Canis and Noc draw near.

“Do you really think this is a good idea?” Noc whispered.

“Noc, I am tired of wondering what we are,” Canis said boldly, still looking forward. “I am tired of seeing people come and go. These people will be our people. If we are their elders, then let us rule as elders. We can teach them, raise them, and see their abilities. We will live to understand each other very well. It is a new start for us here.”

“But…”

“Times change, Noc.”

Noc almost didn’t notice that they were at the meeting spot.  He had heard the words he preached so long ago, but it had such a different meaning now. To move on from Vaani and place all of these new people in his life seemed like too much.

“So,” Canis started out loud, “who are all of you?”

“Well,” Oko started…

 

10: Chapter 10 -- There Was...

THE TALE OF FINDING

Chapter 10

There Was...

As time went on, Noc’s family learned their new servants’ names and of their unique personalities. They all chose their own tower to live in. Each one came with a torch, a bed, a table, a chair, and a ring of adjustable glass windows. They made their respectable rooms their homes. When night came, and the bottom row of clouds began to devour the skies away, the people would retreat as Noc and his family slept.

From the bottom tower up, there was:

Oko, the red-headed child from before. Just as Everest had said, he was pretentious. He was a loudmouth, and he had quite a knack for name-calling. His primary targets were his neighbor Sierra, Amaji, Alastor, and Everest. There was never a day that had gone by that neither of them was mad at him. When the people saw that head of red hair or that mischievous grin of his drawing near, they would turn tail and avoid his path. Canis would have been able to relate to the child, had Oko not asked him multiple inappropriate questions about his fingers. The King became slightly annoyed by them, and was grateful Oko lived on the bottom.

There was Sierra.  She was Everest’s younger twin in every way. Their long blonde hair and their faces were clearly identical. The only difference she had in looks was her green eyes. Everest stated that when she awoke, Sierra was sitting across from her. The two bonded like friends at first, and then came to accept that they were siblings. They were the only siblings amongst the newborns. Being so, she was picked on by Oko for being the runt. She was timid and feeble, so she never spoke back. She mostly kept to herself, but was kind enough to greet passersby on her way up to visit her sister.  A lot of the others pitied her. Sierra was lonesome. As days gone by, Everest had not been able to find time to see her. Everest’s excuses started to build, but Sierra understood why. Her big sister had responsibilities and duties under King Noc’s orders. It was not her fault. Sierra would sit in their usual spot in the garden against the castle awaiting the day Everest would be free to see her again.

There was Monster. Noc asked Everest why he chose such a name. It was because he was a bit taller, thicker, and muscular for a boy who seemed like he was only twelve. He had a mess of greasy, wavy black hair. He even allowed it to grow over his face. His looks were not the only attribute that portrayed one of a beast. Monster had an explosive temper that amused Oko. Together, they made Sierra and Amaji’s lives a living hell. Name calling and bullying went hand-in-hand.

There was Ying-Ling, the rodent man-creature. After some time, he began to grow fur from his face to the bottom of his wide, long throat. It came to be that he resembled something of a mongoose. His broad ears shaped his long dark brown face. It almost came as a shock to hear him speak. Surprisingly, he had a soft, deep, soothing voice that would almost hum as he spoke. His temperament was collect and calm, but he always looked forward to the next conversation. Once Noc realized how kind he was, despite his overwhelming figure, Ying-Ling was appointed with Everest to run errands such as gathering food and watching over their rooms at night. The security was intended, more-or-less, for Oko and Monster’s late-night shenanigans. He took the position eagerly and became a role-model for everyone else. The people showed him respect. Oko and Monster never said a word to him. Ying-Ling would catch Oko shooting him questioning looks from time to time. Unnerved, Oko would snap his head away, or leave the proximity. It made Ying-Ling happy to know that there was someone the bully feared, and it was him.

There was Sutara, the third girl in the castle. She had natural beauty, and she could not help flaunt it. Her thick, dark blonde hair fell in waves down to her shoulders. Her frame was not as frail as her cohorts. Sutara was born with wide hips and a chest that matured a bit faster than all four of the other women. She had thick black eyelashes that made her gray eyes so much more welcoming. Sutara had it all, except a personality. She was a very social person, but the conversations people held with her usually became one-sided and about her. On a daily basis, she would go to the garden to see which plant she could keep in her hair for the day. She would purposely ask almost anyone she could if the style she chose ‘looked good’. After a while, it grew annoying. Everyone avoided her path except Ying-Ling and Monster.

There was Baaj, the boy with the black, batty wings. He was one of the silent ones amongst the group. In a way, he was apart of Oko’s clique, smiling and chuckling at the jokes he heard Oko tell. It was rumored that he only tagged along so he wouldn’t have been a target. Baaj’s form was not as normal as the others. He was tall, but had a relatively short torso. His limbs were very long. His arms reached to his knees. The people who had heard the rumor understood that he was a bit self-conscience. He hid half of his face away underneath a wide bang of black hair. No one understood why he would not get his hair cut. Despite his moderately long nose, he was not a bad looker. He seemed like a gloomy character, but his closest friend was Alastor, the dove-winged boy. Although they were neighbors, their dormitories stood at a greater distance than the others. Once they learned how to use their wings, the commune became better. They flew together. The two would meet each morning and took turns diving off of either’s tower. Some days they circled the other towers. Other days they would walk to the very top of the castle and jump off of Wan’s bridge. The two of them would glide in spirals, and then part over the canyon to the fields just to see how far they would go.

Alastor took pride in bragging about how far he went, or how he landed. The walk back was tedious, but the anticipation encouraged him. The two of them would usually rendezvous back at the palace doors. Sometimes, Alastor found himself waiting. Sometimes, he would take the journey to find Baaj when he could remember which direction he took off in. It was rare that Alastor would actually find him. When he did, he would find Baaj lying in the grass, bellyaching about walking so far back. Alastor’s favorite response to Baaj’s wit was a casual roll of his brown eyes. Oko’s wit, however, crawled under his skin. ‘Birdy’ was Oko’s nickname for him. Whenever they would pass in the halls, Oko would tweet at him. After day after day, Alastor started to retaliate. He would throw slurs right back, but they weren’t as profound as his foe’s. His face would look like the sunset skies above, glowing red, draped by his blonde bowl-cut hair. His boyish looks and his puny stature gave him no power. He would cower if Monster was ever nearby. Sometimes, Ying-Ling would have to interfere to break them up. Alastor was a sweet natured child, but snapped very easily. If anyone ever caught him yelling, it was usually because he was provoked.

There was Vincent, a boy of few words. Amongst the castle, he was the only one to bare an ethnical identity. His skin had a golden undertone. His brown eyes were very narrow. His eyebrows were triangular in shape, and his black hair was naturally spiky. He had small stubbles near both ends of his lips and one growing on his chin. After meeting him, Noc and Canis could not help but discuss why he was the only one born with a skin complexion, and his name. Vincent was bit of a pariah at first. The first few days, he would sit in the garden under his own bridge’s shade, enjoying the fruit nearby. He seemed shy, which gave Oko a reason to pester him. The boy called him ‘yellow-face’. The silent glare he shot Oko down with shook the child. Vincent stood up and simply dwarfed the child in his shadow. He was assumed to be older, if not, the same age as Everest. Oko, stiffer than a board, apologized and ran off. Canis had seen, and elected him to watch over Anala. Like Yin-Ling, he, too, became respected, and almost feared.

There was Amaji, the serpent. He was a rare creature to find outside of his room. After hearing Ying-Ling speak, the royal family assumed he could. They were right, but his voice was faint. His tongue would eject whenever he slipped on his lisp. He held his S’s, which Noc actually expected. The newly appointed king remembered fleeing from this creature’s kin multiple times as a child. They were fierce. Amaji, like those cobras, had no limbs. His wide, golden hood was intimidating. Seeing him stand upright made Noc uncomfortable. He kept his distance, and so did Amaji. Oko was, perhaps, the only one brave enough to approach him. When Amaji had his back turned, Oko made a game of tugging at one of the four snakes that lived off his back. Amaji would retreat back to his room without a word to anyone and stayed there. No one else dared bother him.

There was Connor, who was perhaps the most handsome male in the kingdom. He was the tallest amongst the others when their unnamed kingdom was established. As the past four years marched on, his height didn’t improve, thus leaving him slightly taller than Oko. His hair grew like Noc’s, in long, thick, black curls. His jaw was defined, layered by a coat of clingy, long, black beard hairs. For some reason, the hairs of his cheeks stopped parallel to where his eyebrows began. They all grew in aligning his chin perfectly. In the middle of Connor’s chin, the strewed hairs extended to the bottom of his lip in thick line. Above his lips was a thin moustache. One of his best features, though, was his calm silver eyes. The thing about Connor was that he was a silent man, but not as reclusive as the others. Wherever he went, there was pep to his step. He was always smiling, fearless enough to wave to anyone. The ladies fawned over him. His charm made almost everybody overlook his rather odd name. Secretly, when Smita saw him, she would try to catch his attention up close. Seeing him look up made her head swim.

There was Everest in the second-to-last tower. Ever since her tour with the royal family, she had been seen as the perfect role model. She was respectful, nice, and above all, the supposed oldest. After four years, she stood as the tallest at six feet and three inches. Her voice deepened to that of a mature woman. Her stringy blonde hair grew even more, down to the center of her back. Her tall, slender frame accommodated it well. When she walked, it flowed around her like an aura. Her figure was haunting. If they saw her coming, the others straightened up before she could even speak. The only one excluded was, of course, Oko. As an authoritative figure, it was Oko’s goal to undermine her in every way possible. He had a remark for everything she said. As much as she wanted to strike him just once, she kept her composure. Everest’s calm demeanor annoyed him, and that satisfied her enough. There were more important things to fret about. Her king, Noc, made her a figurehead and the one to care after Smita. She enjoyed her job, but lost focus of Sierra. Those who noticed never said anything.

The last one was known as Wan. He was not one for the scenery. It was rare to spot him outside of the throne room. It was also rare to hear him speak on his own. His nonchalant demeanor alone won him Canis’s favor as a guard to their room. Like Connor, Wan was a silent character, but always had a welcoming face. Devoid of sleep, his eyes hung like they begged for it. His eyelid remained half-opened, shuffling those blonde eyelashes over his ice-blue eyes. Oddly enough, the bottom of his eyes always seem flared up, puffed red. He looked sickly. His frail body never grew any wider, and platinum-blonde hair was always in a mess, standing from end-to-end. No one else had any right to speak, but at least they tried to keep theirs in some order. Amaji and Connor lucked out. As a guard, Wan’s only order was to stand watch over his two kings. It was a simple job, and it was only a walk away from his tower. His only duty was to check people coming to speak to their higher-ups. That rarely happened.

As time passed, within the first two years they lived there, the two princesses spent an extensive amount of time taking in this new world’s beauty. From the twinkling sky that surrounded their valley to the etchings within the castle. In fact, the etchings were both their favorite things.

There would be days when Everest would catch Smita out of bed, in a daze staring at the dragon in the ‘moonlight’. The sun that hung above them dimmed itself at night, enough to let the royal family sleep. There was still enough light, though, to reveal this giant, lonely creature.

There were days when Vincent grew impatient with Anala because she could have spent minutes looking at the mural on their ceiling. He would find himself talking to her, when her attention was far elsewhere. Sometimes, she would stand in the light beaming from the center of the mosaic piece just to peek at the sun. She could feel the phoenix’s heat radiating from the sun. It was comforting.

It was decided amongst the kingdom that the two’s names were to be changed. Smita was now to be known as Princess Dragonia, and Anala was now Princess Phoenixia. The girls loved the idea, and embraced it. Canis agreed to the idea. Like him and his brother, he believed they had a right to name themselves whatever they pleased.

Noc abhorred it.

11: Chapter 11 -- The Best of Her

Chapter 11

The Best of Her

“Love is overvalued,” Princess Dragonia told Everest in discretion.

The two of them sat side-by-side in the garden, watching Alastor and Baaj dart off into the distance overhead. Although the weather was fair, it had gotten quite windy. Dragonia wrapped her shawl tighter while Everest had to bare herself underneath one of her bed sheets. King Canis was not too fond of watching them run about in the nude. The only option their people had was to wrap themselves with what little they had. Sutara had made a daily game of finding different ways to tuck and fold hers.

“I think the concept is nice,” Everest admitted timidly while tucking a bang behind her left ear. She craned her long, thin neck, still looking down at her superior. “Two people telling each other they ‘love’ each other. It is like they become one. Thinking the same thing and knowing must be amazing.”

“Yes, but they have to constantly remind each other, like one of them forgot,” Dragonia sneered. Her voice deepened and heightened repetitively to mock, “‘I love you,’ ‘I love you,’ ‘I love you,’ ‘I love you.’”

Everest giggled.

“Did any boys ever take an interest in you?” she asked.

Dragonia shot her a skeptical look before she flapped her large wings twice. Everest’s face began to burn in embarrassment.

“I am sorry,” she hastily said.

“No, it is alright. Besides, even if I did not have my wings, I was too tall. Men kind of…feared me. A lot of people did.” 

Everest took the comment to heart and looked straight forward. In secrecy, Everest was self-conscience of her height. She wondered if the people of the castle were actually afraid of her. Dragonia was the only one who could relate. Cursed by her father’s genes, she vividly recalled being called out to be one of the tallest women in Harappa. A lot of people on the street spent their time gawking at her for it. It was embarrassing.

The two created a close bond through her tales. Everest would listen, showing much interest in life in another world. Dragonia could have went on and on about the people, the village, and her small family. Everest’s curiosities got the best of her. Sometimes, she would ask Phoenixia. The princess didn’t have as many tales as her cousin, and she apologized. She admitted that she, as well, had many questions about the world she was raised in. 

“Maybe one day, we could all take a journey there,” Anala said with a smile. 

Vincent, standing behind her, rolled his eyes.

“And what would people like us do there?” he asked. The princess’s eyes fell, which startled him a bit. “I do not mean any disrespect, Princess. I just hear that the people there are a bit…dull compared to us. We would probably scare them.”

While the two debated, Everest began to wonder what life would be like if they lived there instead. The more she wondered, the more she found joy in talking to the folk around her. Whenever she spoke to someone, Everest would try to imagine them in a world surrounded by ‘dull’ people. Their personalities were all different from one another. Each individual tale she fabricated in her mind pieced very differently. She tried to imagine Amaji on the outside, but she couldn’t. He was a closed book. He barely came out of his room, and when he did, he never spoke to anyone.

Whenever she had spare time, Everest would catch herself staring at Amaji’s tower from hers, wondering what it was he did all day. She knelt on her bed bent toward the window sill, creating small scenarios in her head. Perhaps he spends his time teaching the other snakes how to speak. Everest smirked. That would have been ridiculous, but plausible. Maybe he just spends his time looking out to the fields. He must have felt so lonely.

Perhaps she could start talking to him. Perhaps they could become friends.

In that moment, her eyes were blinded from below. She lurched back and looked down to her sheets. Everest was sitting in the center of a violet ring of light. Everest panicked and tried to crawl backwards out of her bed. Where the edge of her bed should have been was the flat, rounded edge of the ring. Everest’s palm felt a sleek surface within the inner circle. Just as she tried to think straight, the ring filled itself in with luminescence and burst. Everest shrieked and tucked her head between her knees. She quivered vehemently. 

What was going on?

Everest did not feel harm. She opened her eyes again and saw that she was sitting in the center of her round room, afloat. She looked around and saw the ring again. There was now an inner ring beneath her, indicating where she sat. The platform she sat on came to life. Pink letters danced clockwise around her. They seemed similar to the cuneiform she was born to know, but etched wrong. None of it made sense. There were characters she had never seen before.

What does this mean?

Everest stroked the surface again. It felt like the glass on her windows. She simply requested to be let down and it obeyed. It dismissed itself only when she wanted it to. Back in her semi-lit room, she leapt and wondered if it would come back. The purple lights flashed again beneath her. Everest kept her eyes on the disk as she managed to move it across the room, from her bed to the door, and to the opposite wall. Not once did her knees buckle. She picked up her speed a bit, and halted abruptly by her door. She lost her bravado. She closed her eyes and knelt on one knee. She gripped the front and kept one hand free. Everest expected to fly off, but she didn’t even jerk. She couldn’t believe it. 

Everest was the first of the newborns to discover her powers. She had to tell her majesties.

She stepped out to her bridge when a mighty, frigid gust hit her. Her bed sheet toga caught like a curtain, pulling her aside a bit. After she stumbled, Everest noticed her clothing hanging over the rail. Without missing a beat, her curiosity got the best of her again. She looked over and down into the court. No one was seen. Everest knew that Wan stayed in the throne room while Yin-Ling and Vincent went to the courtyard. Alastor and Baaj’s expedition had long been over. 

She hopped and her magical stage returned at her unspoken command.

“HUCK!” she exclaimed. The lights came back as her hair blew about. She knelt like before, with one hand on the ring, and the other hung behind her head in the opposite direction. Although her newfound ability hung to her feet like a magnet and vice versa, Everest posed this way for ‘balance’. 

The platform peered over the edge of the rail timidly. The wind picked up behind her again, sending her hair into a flurry. Her mauve eyes sprung open once a chill caught an open area between her shoulders. Everest shivered. Bumps grew on her hardened skin. For a brief moment, her conjured ring began to shake, and lower. The light was going dim. As she sort of expected, it gave out on her.

In the brief second her knee would have bounced of the pavement, she wondered, “What did I do wrong?” 

A loud snap cracked, and her platform returned. She paused momentarily. As the lights lifted her aloft again, she began realize that her ability solely depended on one attribute: her inquisitiveness. Ever since she had first brought it to life, her mind had been in a race between her questions and her discoveries. 

What is this? What does it do? What are its limitations? Will it return whenever I want?

Before she made her daring leap over the edge, she needed to test her new theory. She turned her long neck to look down her bridge. The board twisted in her favor. She stood up tall, and crossed her arms. Her nails dug into her hands through her sheets as she stared at the castle a distance apart.

Could I make it there in a matter of seconds? I wonder…

In a second frame of mind, subconsciously, she wanted to jolt forward with all she could. It worked. The ring took off, straight down the bridge as she planned. Her speed was phenomenal. She had never felt anything like it before. What was this rush? Everest’s body stayed ever so still while her hair flew back, and her eyes watered. She did not dare whip her head about just to look around. Her heart began to pound as the castle’s gray bricks began to dawn on her sooner than expected. 

Will I stop in time?

She thought this with a smile.

Her sight came back. There before her was the wall of the interior castle heading to the throne room. To Everest’s jolly, she was not embedded into it. Her faithfully platform stopped just in time. Her body became statuesque in the halt, as though the board had paralyzed her just to keep her on. It kept her safe. When she was able to move her hands again, she lifted them up to relieve the strain. Everest did not fret when small pink sparks of electric rose from the board, in sync with her squirming fingers.

This thing was amazing.

“Everest?” a rather shocked voice called to her.

Everest looked to see Wan standing a few steps above her. Before his crystal blue could trance her, the board twisted again and shot back down the path to her tower. 

Was that Wan? Did he see me? I wonder what he is thinking…

Everest giggled at the thought before she returned. Finally having an answer to it all brought her some relief. Even the pettiest of wondering brought her powers to life. It fit her so well. Her heart was soothed by this. She was one step closer to her majesties. Perhaps she could have been the one to unlock everyone else’s hidden talents.

But first she would have to tell her higher ups.

Everest looked back down the same path again and shook her head feeling foolish.

 

* * *

 

The news of Everest unlocking her potential ran rampant like a plague through the garden. After catching wind of it, Monster informed Oko, whose loud mouth alerted Sutara. After Everest informed the royal family herself, everyone was summoned to the throne room watch her demonstrate. Even Amaji came out to stand back-row to see what the fuss was about. 

On her platform again, Everest dashed across the room a few times. She caught the intrigued looks from Alastor and Baaj, and was slightly entertained by Oko’s head trying to keep up. She bolted by the crowd twice before she reached out and swept Sierra off her tiny feet. Clinging to her own seat on Everest’s stage, Sierra giggled as her sister turned them vertically and spun in place. Their dresses twirled together as they laughed. Everest shot them backwards toward the ceiling, and the board twisted them  completely upside down. Even before Everest could remember what forward was now, the stretcher darted through the body of the blazing phoenix and lapped the corners of the room twice before she stopped back on the red carpet.

Finally dizzy, Everest stood tall. She went to grab her head to stop the spinning when conjured sparks out of the magical ring. The bolts snaked themselves upwards in the same motion as she moved her hand. As she grabbed her head, the sparks finally connected overhead. A loud, crackling snap boomed, startling the two. Sierra shrieked. The electric vanished in a hurry. Everest and Sierra dropped to the floor. Sierra hit harder on her side. Unaware of what happened, she looked among the room, bewildered, as though it had come from someone else. After slightly putting it off, she adjusted her draping clothes against her slender frame again. Before she joined the crowd, Sierra gave her sister a hug around her waist. Everest put one arm around her and held her before releasing her. 

“That was…” King Noc paused. Everest got a thrill watching him try to come up with a word to express his utter astonishment. He rose in his seat and started throwing his hands about. “Brilliant. Absolutely amazing!”

“Can you do anything else?” Canis jabbed before Noc could continue his praise. The king had his head rested on the back of his palm, wearing a look of indifference. The man shuffled the lengths of his fingers.

Everest cringed. She could not say she did not expect his displeasure. King Canis was a hard one to please. His affiliation with the two dreariest guards had increased his apathy over the past few years. He spent most of his days inside the castle, unlike the rest of his kin. His days consisted of eating, bathing, sleeping, and sitting alone in the throne room. While everyone else got out exploring their new world, Canis remained isolated with Wan. Both of their lazy, cynical attitudes had rubbed off on one another. 

“I am glad you found your power, my dear,” Canis added. He leaned forward, narrowing his apathetic glare. Those crimson eyes bored holes through Everest. “However, we already have three people in our kingdom who can fly. Seeing one more does not impress me.”

Noc and Dragonia both shot him a horrified look. Anala, standing by her father looked away, and down at the floor. Oko, standing at the far end of the crowd, snickered before Canis turned his head towards him. The boy silenced himself.

“Congratulations.” Canis finalized.

Everest turned away with the top of her cloth held lightly in her hands. She kept her eyes to the ground as she began her walk back to her tower. She figured maybe she could explore her powers even more. She came close to meeting up with Baaj and Alastor in the crowd before something tugged at her dress from below. Everest almost lost her clothing in front of everybody. She stopped and looked back. Where she stood was where the sunlight came into the room. It beamed at the scene at hand. Everest’s dress and the carpet had somehow become one. The beige and red threads had mended themselves together.

With no explanation, and already embarrassed, Everest turned around began tugging at her sheet. It would not tear. The more she rubbed the sheets against the carpet, the louder the crackling got. Not before too long, a purple spark flew from one of the stitches. That part of the sheet came undone from the carpet without a single tear. 

“What is going on?” King Canis shouted to her.

“I, uh…” Everest stammered

“Are you okay?” Sierra, blocked from seeing, asked.

Everest tried to block them out and continued tugging back at the carpet. In one final pull, Everest started something she never saw coming. While her mind was already jumbled, a wave of electricity flowed through her clothing as it all finally came unstuck. The violet sparks flowed up to her body and split down both of her arms. The last sparks shot off her fingernails, still clawed to the bottom of her sheets.

Her dress was spotted black. Everest thought her wily abilities had scorched them. She took a closer look and began to thumb at it. What she had thought would be crisp was actually still soft. Everest rubbed it over and over just to be sure. The new fabric felt thinner and smoother. 

“Everest,” Canis called one last time. “Are you okay down there?”

“Yes, sir,” she replied jubilantly. “I…”

The more she began to explain, the more she lost focus on the main force behind her power. Everest decided not to speak, but to bring them into her muddling. She conjured the ring again and began to float. She ignored her younger king’s glare and allowed the sparks to fly again. She aimed the small bolts at herself and took everyone by surprise. As she shocked herself, Everest did not feel harm, but rather invigorated, Her heart began to pound.

I want to know what more I can do, she thought.

The bolts grew thicker and wider. They forked together around her waist.

I want to know how I am different from the others.

She stretched out her right arm. Her long bony wrist turned as her finger blossomed. Another ring of lights and etchings appeared only an inch away from her hand. 

I want to know my limits.

Everest created another ring with her left hand.

I want to know my full potential.

She leaned her head back and looked up at the sun. The royal family watched her eyes brighten. There was a faint purple light behind it. Canis jolted up off his chair. His face and mood had finally changed, but Everest was still aloof. Three more rings appeared in front, above, and behind her, blocking everyone out. She flicked her right elbow to herself and the rings began to twirl around her. She smiled.

I want to learn what we are all capable of. 

The rings did not need her hands to guide them. Everest reached down to the bottom of her dress. The light around her waist ceased to follow her rising fingers.

I want to know who I am.

Everest’s rings formed together into a blinding bubble of light. It burst and faded away. The lighting in the room finally returned to its normal blinding pallor. Everest was placed back on the ground in all new clothing. She wore a long, billowy, black hooded robe.  The fabric clung to her sides and her forearms, but belled heavily around her waist and her elbows. She looked like a giant, elegant fish. Everest stretched her legs apart to test the endurance of her new black pants. The front and waist were knotted together by thick thread. Everest was proud to see she no longer needed to worry about her chest. A single cloth wrapped around her back just right. She felt them through her matching black gloves.

She spun around gaily to watch her cloak trail behind her gracefully. She spun left and right twice before she realized that the royal family and everyone else had gathered around her. They all oohed and ahhed and began to jab their comments at her.

“That was quite the show,” yawned Wan.

“Do my clothes next!” Sutara implored.

“Everest,” Dragonia called, “you look amazing!”

“”I was going to say that,” Anala snapped. Dragonia snicked.

Noc and Canis silenced everyone with a gesture of their hands. Everest finally stopped laughing with everybody and stood straightforward, but she could not help but smirk a bit. Noc stepped forward to speak.

“I think we can all see that Everest has not only discovered her talents, but divulged them into impressive capabilities.”

Canis rolled his eyes before he, too, stepped up.

“Yes, I agree,” was all he could say.

“Everest,” Noc continued, looking up to her eyes. “After seeing your incredible display, I must ask, how were you able to do all of that?”

Everest was shy at first, but admitted, “My powers are based on my curiosity.”

Noc arched a brow.

“The more I ponder, the more life I give to my ability. The more questions I ask myself, the better the results”

Noc’s brow lowered. He understood what Everest said. The concept, however, sounded new. He began to remember how she jolted across the walls and pulled off picking Sierra up. Everest had to remain in a constant state of curiosity to use her ability.

“Then I am sure it is different for everyone else?”

It was Everest’s turn to look puzzled.

“I am quite sure for the time we have all lived here, we have been curious about this world,” Noc said. “However, yours seem to be the only one to spark.”

Canis shot him a glare.

“If your curiosity is what makes you even more talented, then I must insist you to be the one to explore everyone else’s talents. There is no doubt in my mind that all of unique traits will play some sort of role to finding your hidden abilities. This very news has brought so much to look forward to, and to be honest, it is about time.”

Everyone laughed and jeered with him.

“You know,” Oko shouted over everybody else, “I would hate to ruin everyone’s fun time, but, um…”

He shot a finger pointed at Everest’s feet. There was four-inch rounded strip of carpet that must have gone missing beneath her during the demonstration. The edges of the carpet and the floor, however, had not been singed. The floor remained pearly white , in tact, while the carpet look freshly cut. Everest was lost and scratched the side of her head before Noc laughed.   

“Come off it,” he said with ease. “Your curiosity has gotten curious.”

The king reached out to grab the billowing robe by her waist. He rubbed the fabric gently beneath his thumb. Everest looked down upon him and watched in bewilderment.

“You unintentionally took the rug into your transformation,” he deducted, “but you needed it. Think of it, your light sheets are now stained with color. And your gloves…”

He took her hands and showed everyone that the threads and fluff from her hand-wear was identical to the . 

“Everest, my dear, you seem to have the power to change objects around you to your will. You made the air to lift you, and now you have torn at the very ground we stand on. All the world is your stage, and your clay. How fitting,..”

Everest was amazed at how fast he figured it out. His mind always seemed to move faster than hers. That and he was a bit more perceptive. After Noc pointed out her threaded gloves, she was in a daze just looking at her own hand. She was wearing them and never realized it.

“Everest,” Noc grabbed her attention again. “I believe you have what it takes to change the world.”

She smiled. It was the first praise Everest had received that made her feel empowered. She turned to the crowd and threw her long arms into the air. She cheered and everyone followed. She recommended that everyone returned to their rooms and waited for her. Everest was going to stop by everyone, but Amaji’s room for wardrobes. Noc allowed her to take the other half of the carpet that lead to the large stained window outside the room. Sierra helped her roll it up, and together, they started the excursion beginning with Wan.

As King Canis watched the crowd leave at once, he humored the glare he was receiving by ignoring Noc. He did as much as turning directly the opposite way from his brother in a huff. 

“Would it really hurt to show some sort of compassion?” Noc snarled.

“Oh, quiet,” Canis yawned off. “She was flying all over the room with that light and it was giving me a headache.”

The young king plopped down onto the cushion in his chair. Noc rolled his eyes when he saw his brother’s traditional smirk.

“Besides, had I not broke the girl’s spirit, it would have taken longer for her to find her secondary ability. Remember, my brother: you cannot create if you do not destroy.”

King Noc’s eyes furrowed even more. He hated hearing that last bit. Creation and destruction; the titles Chief Saatvik had placed on them. Just after Canis reminded him, Noc began to remember that man’s fullhearted, haughty speech. The same chills that man used to give him were beginning to return as the reflection dawned on his brother.

“This whole excursion might be interesting,” King Canis solemnly continued after patting a small amount dust off the shoulder his olden black robes. “Sweet, old Tall-face” --his nickname for Everest-- “is going to have to break all the others too. Imagine when she finally gets that ugly lizard to talk.”  

His traditional grin returned to the thought of Amaji being subjectified to speak again, and in front of everybody. In a way, King Noc wanted to see that as well. As they grew together, he began to realize that the serpent’s withdrawal was not one of hatred, but timidity. Amaji was approachable, but only if he saw who was coming. King Noc had once made the mistake of catching him off guard whilst he was staring at the dragon painting. He tapped the creature on the back to greet him, but the serpent scurried after the first poke. Amaji hit the ground, onto his belly,  circled, and slithered away with gusto, leaving the king startled and confused. Amaji never even turned around to see who his aggressor was. He did not even give a warning hiss. 

Come to think of it, King Noc was surprised the other four snakes that grew out of the monster’s back did not hear or see him coming. They were also looking down at the floor. 

“I am going to see what Everest is doing,” a peeved Dragonia assured everyone in the room. “Maybe she can touch up this old thing.”

As she walked away, she fluttered her blue skirt. Princess Phoenixia looked at her clothes, and could not help but agree. Four years did some wear and tear on her dress after sitting in the grass and along the dirt road. She chased after her cousin without a moment’s notice and walked alongside Princess Dragonia. 

After they left, Noc sighed to his brother, “Sometimes I worry about you.”

12: Chater 12 -- The Grand Shism of Things

Chapter 12

The Grand Schism of Things 

King Noc stood before his daughter in her chamber as she showed off her new dress. It was quite the gown. Everest had done her best work for her majesty. Princess Dragonia dress had no shoulders, but a light blue ribbon around her neck that hung her almost backless dress up. The trims of top and bottom were white. From top to bottom, her dress was as blue as her own hair, then faded to violet. Towards the lower portion of her shin-length skirt, the colors turned back to azure.  To match the white trims of her dress, Everest made her two white bands for both of Dragonia’s wrists.

“It is unbelievable,” Dragonia said whilst she twirled about. Her deep blue wings opened fully when she finally stopped. “Just wait until you see Phoenixia’s.”

“Who?”

The two stared at each other in an awkward silence. Dragonia turned her head towards the ground and stroked back one of her bangs back behind her ear. Noc’s eyes also retreated to the floor. Dragonia sighed.

“Anala....” she murmured.

“Um, yes,” Noc stammered. “My apologies...Phoenixia!”

Noc’s shout was that of a small cheer. He looked back up at his daughter. His heart sunk. She was wearing the same look she had when they had left Harappa. Her face was stone cold; emotionless. Dragonia picked her head up, but not to look at him. Instead, she stared into the light of the torch hanging by the door. She did not dare to look her father in the eyes for what she was going to say. She began to fiddle with her own fingers, nervous.

“I miss home, too, father,” she began. “But after what we saw Everest do today...we were not meant to live there. This is our new...”

“Not meant to live there?” Noc cut her off. His voice was soft, but he sounded offended. His impulsiveness quickly caught his daughter’s attention. “If we had not live there, you would not have been born. I would have never met your mother. I would have never learned how to speak. I would have never saved that child, or taught anyone any better. What are you saying, Princess Dragonia,” he mocked, “that our lives there were just wastes of time?”

“Father, no,” Dragonia whimpered, inching closer.

“I sacrificed so much for us,” Noc continued in a snarl. “My home, my friends, my life...for all this!” He twirled himself to look around Dragonia’s grey-bricked room and at all the things in it. After his first spin, he reconnected his eye contact. “I do not even know what this is! When Canis and I left this shit-hole, there was nothing here, Smita, nothing. We left this world, and I met Vaani. I made so many friends.” 

Noc’s eyes went up to the ceiling. The smile that lingered made Dragonia uncomfortable. 

“When I saved that boy in the market...when I hugged him goodbye,” Noc’s arms made the gesture, “he told me that I would have to leave. He told me...”

“What?” Dragonia asked. As she recalled, the child he saved was a foreigner who could not speak their language. This bit of information was new. 

When her father did not respond, the princess realized what was happening. He was no longer talking to her. He was talking to himself, and out loud. Her chest sunk when the glimmer of a tear rolled down her father’s face. Had he suddenly gone mad? 

“Vaani said I was tired. I did not hear what I heard, but I heard it and it has been lingering on my mind since....The words keep coming back to me in my dreams. That same day, I told Vaani about coming here when I...got older.” Noc choked on his tears. “I told her that I thought this world might have changed over time. She looked at me with those eyes of her’s and asked me, ‘and if not?’ Oh, she was such a cynical girl. A cynical, marvelous girl. I made her believe, though. I made her believe that I would bring the skies of that world into our’s....that I would bring her here.” 

He grabbed the side his head with his shaky left hand. His eyes finally met Dragonia’s again. She quivered. 

“Then, we came back,” he uttered stiffly. His voice sounded strained. “There are three skies here, all beautifully aligned, just like I promised. Then, we meet those people. Our people, Canis called them. When he called them that, I had to accept it. I had to accept that maybe we really were not meant to exist in the other world.

“But something about this one is driving me crazy. This castle, made from nothing? I do not understand...how are there just enough rooms here, not just for us, but an entire kingdom made of twelve more. The others...they do not need food, or sleep like Canis and I used to.  The pickings in the garden is all for us, and it never spoils. Our water dissolves grime on touch, making it safe to drink whenever. My dear, this world is so beautiful, it is mesmerizing...but haunting...

“It is like this world does not want us to leave ever again,” Noc whispered, stepping closer to her. His eyes were widen. He was genuinely scared. “The minute we got here, we were being revered and praised, like we were...Gods. These people all look endearing with their kind smiles, and their hearty personalities, but I cannot trust them for a second. How far will they go to please us? What would happen if we request to leave?”

“Nothing,” Dragonia bravely retorted. “They would let you, father. They are not working against you, but working for you. Everest, Baaj, Yin-Ling, even Monster...they all respect you, and I know they would never as much as touch a hair on our heads. They are like children, father. They only want to learn about the things they will never get to experience. Almost everyday, Everest asks me about our first home. She sometimes even asks about mother. Had it not been for her asking me for all those tales,  she would still be walking on her own two feet.  Now look at her. She is making us clothes. I mean, hell, father, she can fly.”

The princess, still downhearted, crossed her arms in a means of defiance. Her father did not respond. Those crystal blue eyes of her’s kept him silent. He could see the disappointment quivering through her pursed lips. For once Dragonia’s father was going to hear her out.

“She has asked me,” she began again, “how come I did not stay? Do you know what I tell her?” Her father swallowed hard. “Because it was the right thing to do. I think we both know the real answer: I never got a choice. You and mother...you two grew apart. Ever since, you could not even trust as much as your own daughter to talk to. You took me from my mother because you were scared. You did not even see her through to the end. Sometimes, I find myself wondering if she...”

Dragonia did not dare finish. The word could have devastated the both of them.

“Now look at you. You are so frightened, you hold suspicion against those who have heard our stories, and understood the pain. When I took my name, the one they call me by...it is not out of disregard. I do it because I want to move on. We cannot bring back yesterday, father. Things change, remember?”

King Noc could not believe this. It was happening again. His words, his beliefs, were being twisted right back at him. What was he supposed to say? Things do change, but...It is not the same...He had nothing. 

“This world...” he uttered.

“What is wrong with you?”

 The king froze. There was a look of horror in his face. His bony body swayed back as though the last question literally injured him. Dragonia’s glare paralyzed him. Noc could feel something resonating from his little girl. It was the same thing that began to grow in Vaani after so many years. It was a passive entity that finally made itself perfectly clear.

She despised him.

Princess Dragonia rolled her eyes to the nearby wall. She grumbled, “Just leave.”

 He did without a moment’s hesitation.

 

* * *

 

Noc’s arms stayed still stretched out. He lied on his back and allowed the water to carry him afloat. The cool, but calm waves helped him gather his thoughts. He kept his eyes open with caution.

What is wrong with me, he thought. He began to see what his daughter saw. For a brief second, he lost his mind. He truly missed the other world and Vaani so much, he began to grow a disdain for the one he was currently in.

“I never got a choice,” played over and over again in his head. The narrowing glare his daughter gave him stuck in his mind. 

She may have been right, but how was he supposed to apologize for his behavior? Instead of thinking of a way to argue back, he should have been thinking of a way to apologize. The more the defeated king pondered, the more he began to see.

Debates that taught him the more he thought on it...it was like talking to Vaani. It brought a slight smile to his face. Slowly, King Noc was finally understanding where his daughter was coming from. Things change, and Noc had to accept that. The least he could have done was given Smita closure with her passing mother. Because of it, his life had been thrown two steps ahead that he was not prepared for. With the weight of wondering where his wife was now, he truly had no room for a whole new home.

“...I want to move on.”

He sighed and accepted that Dragonia had every right to be livid with him. Everything between them was going so swell before he had to open his big mouth. Noc did not want to make enemies with his own daughter. The only thing he could do for her, the only right thing, was to accept the past and move on with her. Holding a grudge against the ‘newborns’ was not going to bring back his wife. 

However, his mind was still set on discovering how this world came to be. The fact that the newborns were head over heels in throwing themselves into servitude still did not sit right with him. 

The suspicions returned.

Noc gradually sunk his two feet to the pool’s floor. He groaned as he tried to wipe the area around his eyes dry with his soaked hands. The king decided that he had been in the water long enough. He buoyed his body toward the edge with a light push off the ground. 

As his hand neared the rim of the pool, he felt something by his ankle. He stopped to look behind him, but all he saw was the dark, but clear water. He brushed it off and hoisted his elbows onto the dry floor. As he pulled himself up, he felt something wrap his right ankle. It squeezed and beckoned him back,

King Noc’s horror grew as his right arm slipped back into the waters. Whatever had him managed to grab that, too. He turned and kicked with all of his might, but the assailant  would not let go. The worst of his fears came true when his body was tugged and dragged back to the center of the pool. 

Noc kept his left arm up and free. With his left leg, he jabbed the waters blindly, hoping to at least strike something. As his ankles grew weary, he found nothing. When the back of his head submerged, Noc panicked. When his foot touched the floor again, he tried to leap away. When his free arm touched the pool, Noc finally let out a cry for help. He kicked away once more, but could not break free.

Whoever was with the king did not want to be caught. The next turn of events caught him off guard. The water around Noc’s shoulders splashed his face. His eyes stung. The water that rained on him was heavy. It actually forced him down in a powerful push. Without a moment to breathe, Noc felt himself lying on the floor of his own watery grave. His body was being pinned down by a person he could not see.

He kept kicking until he finally gave up. His breath was growing short. Noc could not believe it.

He was going to die.

In Noc’s last moment, his mind drifted into a memory. He could see the twinkle of diamonds. They hung above and below him, shining through the overwhelming darkness. He was back in the dazzling cave within the portal, except this time, he was not being pushed anywhere. He could not see the doorway to his world, or the other’s. Noc was not even floating; or at least not as freely. His feet treaded on an invisible floor. He stood dead center of the panorama. 

Slowly, he could feel his breath return to him before a voice shocked it away.

“I am sorry,” a boy’s voice spoke behind him.

Noc spun around and there before him was a child. His skin was the same tone as Vincent’s. His hair was short, straight and black. It was the same child from the bazaar. The moment Noc laid eyes on him, he confirmed his own death. He wanted to smile for the child, but could not. The boy hugged Noc’s sides empathetically.

“Do not feel sad,” the child spoke again. “You will wake up soon enough,”  he looked up and finished with, “but only when I say so.”

The child blinked and his eyes changed color. His small brown irises became much more vivid as they changed to mauve. He grinned. Noc leaned away in fear. This was wrong. Noc remembered how this child could not speak his language, or so he had to conclude years ago.

Noc calmly broke the boy’s grasp and backed away.

“Wh-Who are you?” Noc stuttered.

The boy shrugged his shoulders and lifted his hands nonchalantly.

“I am still the same child from the bazaar,” the boy replied. “What you heard before we parted was not the result of ‘exhaustion’. The moment I touched your head, I was able to interpret this language. It is one of the many talents I possess.”

“Who are you?” Noc asked once more with a snarl.

The child giggled, “You may call me Jowgen. I am your God.”

He stuck out his hand to make Noc’s acquaintance, but the king refused.  The king shook his head in disbelief. This was not an afterlife, but rather the oddest dream Noc ever had. Under his control, all he had to do was turn away and wake up.

With a sigh, Noc swung around. He froze in fear. The boy was standing in front of him, with his hand still extended. Noc twisted his head around and saw that there was no one behind him. The entity that claimed godship over him refused to be shooed away so easily. 

Jowgen lifted his hand again and refreshed his grin.   

Noc closed his eyes. When he opened them he would be back in the castle, floating in the pool, or in his bed, perhaps. His logic was incorrect. When he reopened his eyes, his sight was shrouded by mauve. The bubbly child had abruptly appeared before him, face to face. Noc stumbled and fell back. As he lied on the floor, he realized the child’s feet were no longer touching the ground. He was floating on his own.

Noc attempt to kick himself away became futile. 

“Eengha...” the child sighed, shaking his head. “I told you already: You will wake up, but only until I say so.”

“Take me back home!” Noc snapped.

“Oh, so it is your home now?” Jowgen chortled. “Before, you said...”

“Silence!”

The boy twisted his head in confusion and utter bewilderment.

“You are nothing more than a figment of my imagination,” Noc declared. “You are just the past come to haunt me! No more! Begone!”

Cursing the spirit did not banish it from his mind. Rather, the grin that shone on the child’s face vanished. He shot Noc a look similar to his brother’s natural face. His serious look of apathy seemed a lot harsher, however. 

Jowgen’s arms spread apart as feet finally touched the invisible floor again. He was as graceful as a bird, holding his arms out and his hands wide open.

“You are right,” he grumbled. “I am your past...and I am also your future.”

A white mist began to roll off the boy’s shoulders. It was faint at first, but it built up. The steam began to drench the child’s forehead, resulting in more. Something began to form.

“And as we talk now, I am your present!”

 The mist finally settled. The boy’s body went limp, but still stood. His head dropped, and he seemed lifeless. Noc could only watch.  From the base of the child’s neck, King Noc could make out an abdomen in the smoke. It was slender, yet seemingly long. The arms and hands of the foggy entity finally settled in their form as a head finally ebbed from the top of the body.  This monster’s face was blank, but its thin ‘hair’ was long and flowed through the nonexistent wind.

Noc’s arms began to push him backwards. His heart began to pound. It sunk and leaped repeatedly in a fit of confusion.  He could feel a bead of sweat run down the side of his nose. He blinked for a second to scratch the itch. When he reopened his eyes, the fog monster finally had eyes. They were mauve, like the child’s before. 

“I can come in any form I please,” a man’s voice echoed from the ghost. “I can be a child, a woman, a beast....it is all about imagination. This, however....”

A black cloud of smoke began emitting from the child’s neck. Noc could only see it in contrast to the creature’s body. Slowly, it began to etch various designs into the ghost’s ‘bare skin’. Different black markings began to cover its body. There was a long one with jagged edges across his forehead. In the center of the tribal mark was the drawing of an eye. Below it was a marking that  looked like a flame that started from the bridge of his nose, but never touched his brows.  The black fog formed the picture of a star of his chest. Inside of it was an odd symbol.  It was triangular at the bottom, and rose into two separate humps. The inner symbol was split in half. The left side was white with a black circle inside its hump; the other side was black with a white circle.  Below and beside this intricate mark were even more tribal markings along Jowgen’s ribcage.

After Jowgen’s tattoos took form, his body glowed brightly. In the flash, the child’s body began to vanish. In his place were two long, thin legs. The creature’s foggy form finally turned to flesh. His skin was manila. His long, free-flowing hair was as black as night. He was as tall as Noc. 

The being before the king looked very similar to the child that had stood in his place previous. Jowgen looked down his nose at Noc with a smirk similar to Oko’s. He took a few steps towards the king and extended his right hand again. He did it not to make the king’s acquaintance, but to help him up.

“....is me.” Jowgen finally finished.

Noc ‘s body refused to respond. He shiftily eyed the hand in his face and the nude ‘God’ standing in front of him. He felt uncomfortable.

“This is probably the first time you have felt like those people in Harappa,” he chuckled. “You cannot believe yourself that such a being could exist, right?”

Noc continued looking back and forth.

“You have to remember, though: You had to start somewhere, yes?”

“I began my life....We began our lives in a void,” Noc corrected.

Jowgen finally withdrew his hand.    

“And I am sorry,” he said remorsefully

“Why?”

“When I tore you two out, there was no place for you,” Jowgen began.

“What do you mean?”

Noc got up on his own. The conversation was beginning to draw his attention fully. The king could feel something coming out of this. What was his ‘God’ about to tell him? After Noc asked his last question, Jowgen almost avoid eye contact. The pinkish-purple hue of his eyes darted upward. Noc thought he had rolled his eyes at him.

“Noc,” Jowgen called, lowering his eyes again, “I am a being of higher power that lives in a world of beings who I thought could never understand me. Since the day I awoke in that world, I have always been able hear what the people around me thought. As I came to age with a tribe of nomads, I discovered I can use my mind to do things like this.”

Jowgen’s feet lifted off the ground, hanging himself in mid-air. It caught Noc’s full attention. After his short demonstration, he continued. 

“I could create illusions,” his form widdled away into the child, “to fool the masses.” The child vanished again and grew back into the man before. 

“I can use these hands,” he said, lifting them to his face, “to break into other peoples’ minds to learn things that they have. Whenever I wanted, I can close my eyes and peer into a future that had yet to happen. The people that I sheltered myself with began to fear me. However, they needed me. Simply showing off my power frightened barbarians. When a child could kill a man with the same spear he threw without touching it, it was time to call it quits. As much as I protected them, I was called everything but my name: Cursed, blessed, an abomination...a God. 

“You see, Noc, I, myself, have gone through what you and Canis have, only alone. I watched the people around me grow old, widdle away to disease, and be reborn. I watched this cycle time and time again as I stayed stuck in my youth. As time passed, my power became so much more than I expected. I began to fear myself, so I withdrew I isolated myself. In a night, I vanished to a far away land and blocked myself off from all human contact.”

“Hu-man?” Noc asked.

“Those who possess no power like you and I,” Jowgen explained. “Normal people, which I had no relevance with. I spent my time alone I wanted to know who I was...what I am. My purpose. Lost in a never-ending typhoon of confusion, I started to grow weary. I became frustrated. With all this power, I wondered if I could take the entire world for myself. Yes....”

Jowgen turned to his right and began to tread.

“I wondered how easy it would be to just....” he aimed a hand at Noc and lifted it in his stride. Noc’s stomach churned as his back arched. His arms dangled by his feet as his body lifted itself off the floor. He felt as light as a feather. “To just take them and make them bow to me. The barbarians were no threat, so why would taking them and the others be a problem? I wondered day and night about it! I would have made them writhe until they call me by name; until they were screaming ‘Lord Jowgen’.”

He turned around and came back. He dropped his hand and the king fell to his knees. The king wanted to get back up until he saw the sinister smile on Jowgen’s face.

“Could I do it? Would it of had any benefits? Then I thought, what if I were to use my powers for good? What if I could create a world unified by me? But then again, why bother? They never really cared. They were just beasts, rolling in their own filth and disease. I thought, to hell with all of them!

“I wanted to see my potential to the fullest, but I could not go through with it. I used my power to peer into the future. My mind took me to a farther time where humans were still striving, populated by the billions. The inventions, and tools they use were beyond my comprehension. They make such a world for themselves...and my name is nowhere near existent. If I was not an entity of any importance in the world, then why was I made this way? I was lost in myself again, and it was too much to bare.”

His smile disappeared again. This time, his face seemed emotionless.

“As my heart tore, I broke myself apart from within. I sacrificed my foresight and tore my own soul. I took the two pieces that mattered in the conflict and threw them away. I did not care where to. I just wanted them far, far away. Little had I known, my concept of mass destruction and pure creation had taken separate forms.”

Noc’s stomach sunk. Jowgen stopped and glanced back at him. 

“When you two found a way to break out of the void, my head began to throb. It was when you crossed the lines of existence that you two came to be. I could see and feel you two walking among the humans; I could hear you both talking from far away. It was as if you two were still...a part of me. Everything you all felt, I felt. Your heart pounding when you were near Vaani; Canis’s hatred for other people....and the excitement when the people accepted the both you. 

“You accomplished what I could not, and I envied you both. I caused that raucous in the bazaar, knowing you two would could flocking to the scene. I wanted to see you both for myself.”

“Wait a second, you nearly died!” Noc screamed with a squeak to his voice. “You nearly got us both killed!”

“Ha!” Jowgen chortled. “You needed not to worry about me. Had you not helped, I could have survived on my own. Who do you think gave you your regenerative ability? I could have wreaked chaos before that final blow. I could have disposed of you and Canis right then and there and been done with this struggle. But instead, you stepped in anyway. You threw your life for mine and made those people see something in you. I was touched. Of course, you had no idea what you were doing...”

Yes I did, Noc thought defiantly.

“However,” Jowgen hummed. Noc turned his head embarrassed. He did not know if the man in front of him could still read minds. “I simply played along. When I was ‘banished’ your rush of emotions began to throw me out off balance. Your anger and despair overwhelmed me. Then, suddenly, you felt hopeful and humble so quickly. It was then I realized that you two living was beginning to conflict me. For being the courageous one and throwing yourself out for me, I could not fathom the idea of ridding you two.

“As we shared those powerful emotions once, your imaginative, optimistic mind began to shape a new world within this empty canvas. You melded every one of your deepest desires with my power and changed your ‘home’. The rushing rivers, green grass as far as the eye can see...You began draining me, like a leech. 

“There was only one thing I could have done. I tore all of those basic emotional links from myself. I rid them back to where you and Canis began. They are now your subjects, serving you in a world you dreamed of.”

Noc froze.

“In the real world, I am now but an empty shell of a man now. As I stand here in the in-between, I can feel myself become whole once again. It is sad that it must be this way now.”

Jowgen stopped and turned the same way Noc faced. If the portal was working, the direction they looked was where the doorway to Noc’s world would have been. 

“But the castle?”

Jowgen turned and head and hummed a curious sound. As Noc began to talk, the man twisted his body back towards the king.

“The castle in...my world,” Noc swallowed, “why is it there? I have no need for such gaudy things. If it was really my world, then it would have been Harappa. Those people would not call us their kings, but their friends! What was the point of me arguing with Saatvik when I am contradicted in my own world?”

“And just like that, we hit the root of the subject; the reason why I am here,” he finally admitted. “Remember, Noc, you were not the only one linked to me at the time. Your brother, Canis, is also another one of my unintentional designs. Just because he is an envoy of destruction does not mean he cannot create. How can you destroy something that is not there? His power lust seemed to overwhelmed him. He dreamed of having a castle filled with people to do his bidding and he got it.”

Noc twisted his head. Power lust? As long as he had known Canis, there was never an etch of greed, or ‘power hunger’. Especially not in Harappa. Saras had taken leadership after her father. Canis had only joined along for the ride to an easier life, and Noc knew he was only using her...

“That front you gave Leader Saatvik was quite compelling,” Jowgen complimented. “However, whereas you thought you salved the commotion, you only started another.

“After you slandered Saras’s name in your rebellion, were you not at all at a loss for why he allowed Canis to return to his home? How he welcomed him back with open arms after Canis assisted you in turning some of the people against him? You fool...”

Jowgen’s body hovered limply towards Noc.

“Do you remember how Canis told everyone how he wanted to be ‘friends’ with everyone? You could tell it was a lie. Vaani could tell, and Saras could. Saatvik was no exception to that. 

“The one thing Saatvik had an expertise in was creating monsters out of people he could not trust. You and your brother, in his eyes, were the real monsters; the unstoppable monsters that could ravage an entire city in one night. He wanted your head more than anything that night you embarrassed him. But how? How was he to know the outcome of your wrath? He knew his place before you, and hated it. 

“But then there was Canis. Your brother. A boy who could not stand the little people, but found an interest in his daughter. Saatvik could see the desires he yearned for, and acted on it. After discovering that Canis had the needs of an everyday human, the chief showered your brother in gifts, riches, and the life he wanted; the life he could have had if you had not rebelled. That man coaxed Canis on until his breath came to a halt. On his deathbed, he gave rulership to the daughter he had long forgotten about. 

“After Saras had been casted aside for so long, she made Canis out to be a pariah in his own lofty home. Unable to hug or hold his own daughter, he was treated as a mere tool in Saras’s wake. After Saatvik passed, Canis was given his own quarters to dwell in while his wife and his daughter lived on high. He was sometimes starved, or beaten whenever Saras was enraged. He was abused in front of his own daughter, but too weak to stand on his own. And to who? Humans. People who were less than him in his eyes.”

Noc could not believe what he was hearing. Was that really what happened to his brother? After the years of his disappearance, Noc never imagined such a fate to befall Canis. He was stronger than that. He was...

“In his downfall, as his hatred grew, he cursed you for it. To this very day, he still holds the grudge against you. It is only a matter of time before he brings it all to light.  

“Tell me, Noc: why did you not say yes to taking rightful rule of godship?”

“Because we are not Gods!” Noc yelled back. He pounded his fist on the floor in anger. He had no idea the strife his brother endured. “We are...”

Just normal people?

“Who are you trying to fool?” asked Jowgen with a sinister grin on his face. His mauve eyes lit to pink. “I just told you what you were.”

Jowgen suddenly vanished into thin air. Noc thought he was alone again, but was wrong.

“Envoys,” Jowgen’s voice said from behind. Noc turned but the man was gone. “Mere representatives of my thoughts....my being.

“Creation,” his voice echoed from the right. 

“Destruction,” from the left.

After Noc struggled to keep up with his head, he jumped back to see Jowgen standing right in front of him, looking him spot on in the eyes. His bright eyes in the dark were like those of a predator who knew his game was won. Noc’s shoulders tensed up. His body merely responded by leaning away.

“As you two began walking down separate paths, I begin sense all of the answers to my ultimate question are to come to the forefront. How long can you protect yourself before destruction rains upon your head? Standing here, I am curious to know. I cannot wait to watch. Who will win? Loving creation, or the hateful destruction?”

Jowgen turned his back to Noc again, willing to finally leave the odd dream before the king called out to him.

“Wait,” Noc beckoned. “Why are you just letting this all happen? If you cannot predict the future anymore, how do you know Canis will not try to destroy the other world, too?”

Jowgen smiled.

 

* * *

Noc awoke on the floor in a daze. The only sound he could hear was the water of the pool splashing behind him. He felt wet and cold. His face was in a puddle of water and his own saliva he validated as he got up. The slime he retched up clung to his face. 

To his surprise, it was still nighttime. The torches by the royal chambers were still lit, and the moonlight peering through the ceiling was as white as ever.

The only thing he wanted was to get his head together.

 

* * *

 

Dressed again, Noc decided to sit on the wooden bridge between Oko and Everest’s towers. His eyes were fixated on the moon. He could hear the rushing waters in the echoing distance.

This world was created out of our desires...and our imagination....

A pain stung his chest.

Would that not make us one and the same..?

His humbled attitude broke. A grimace came over him.

Were we not meant to exist?

“Are you okay?” a deep, feminine voice asked from behind.

Noc sprung up in an uproar, flailing his white arms about. He almost lunged himself into the gorge below before he had enough sense to turn around. The king was relieved to see it was only Everest. Her face was lit by the magical platform she sat on above the canyon. 

“Everest,” Noc gasped, “good God, you scared me!”

“Good what?”

“Sorry, I just...” Noc placed his hand over his heart to calm the pounding. “I just had a bad dream.”

“I am...sorry?” 

The inquisitive tone reminded Noc that she did not know what dreams were. Devoid of sleep, she had never been through the out-of-body experience. 

“Yeah, when I went to sleep,” he began to explain, “I saw some horrid things.”

“Like what?”  she asked so innocently, nearing in on her board. 

“Um, it was nothing honestly,” he lied. “I came out to look at the moon. I have not had nights like these in a while.”

He sat back down in his original spot while Everest stayed afloat beside him. She too gazed up at the moon. There had been a brief silence between the two before Everest finally spoke up.

“It is so beautiful and peaceful,” she empathized. “This is a lot better than being inside my room. There are no walls to close you in, and your thoughts are just free to roam. There is no place for worry once you realize how marvelous this is. I am curious to know what other beauties this world holds.”

Noc turned to her. Everest’s board had disappeared. She sat near the bridge’s edge, dangling her bare feet. She was truly relaxed.

He envied her. She was having such a good time, unbeknownst that she was a drone to some mystical being’s emotion. She was the envoy of Jowgen’s curiosity, but she found bliss under the moon and stars. She had never been to the other side, but took pleasure in the things he did. She wasn’t real, but loved real things.

He turned his sullen head back at the dazzling orb in the sky, and just like that, his mind drew empty. Everest had described the fixation perfectly.

Then, the thought hit him. Out of mind. Out of sight.

Out of sight, out of mind. The phoenix and the dragon. Noc’s mind raced for a second as something became clear. As Noc recalled, Jowgen had broke all contact from the humans. He stayed out of their sight, so out of their mind. But why the creatures? Him nor his brother had ever seen such beasts before. 

Noc looked down and into the dark, oversized hallow. Why would any person desire this? Noc began to piece together that this world was not only comprised of solely Noc and Canis’s desires, but perhaps Jowgen’s.

Then, Noc concluded: This world was withholding secrets. Perhaps, it held the secret to who Jowgen was, and why he existed. The only way Noc was going to find his answers was to play along with Jowgen’s game and walk down his path as king, and in the meantime, find a way to throw Canis off his destructive trail. Doing both was probably going to be a gassle.

As he looked back to Everest, he met her purple eyes. He found his solution.

“There is a lot of mystery to this world,” he said. “I would love to gaze every nook and cranny of it, but I have my limitations. I am not as valiant as I used to be.”

Everest gave him a look of pity, just as he wanted.

“If you really want,” she began, “I can look for you.”

“What do you mean?” Noc asked, longing to hear her explanation. 

“I know I am supposed to help everyone in the castle learn their own abilities,” Everest said shamefully at first, “but I can spend some of my spare time, like now, to start exploring for you. I can tell you about what I find!”

“It is pretty dark out, so I would not recommend now,” Noc said with an soft smile, “but you would do that for me?”

“Of course!”