“Vyra…?” I stood in shock at the woman standing in the doorway to my dorm room. Her icy blue eyes seemed to freeze me in place. No breath left my lungs, no thoughts raced through my head. It was just Vyra and I in the silent hallways.
“You cut your hair?”
“You’re back?”
“I thought you liked it long?”
“When did you get back? You’ve been gone for so long!”
“Did the other guys make you cut it? If they did I’ll yank every hair from their heads!”
“You told me you would write to me, but you never did. Did you forget?”
“Are you ashamed of your hair? Here, let me in and I can tidy up the mess on your head.”
“Were you ashamed of being friends with me? Here, come in and you can tell me that we can’t be friends anymore.”
Vyra walked into my room, taking a seat on the edge of my bed. I sat on the other end of the bed. Neither of us seemed to address our parallel conversation. I swear that the two of us must have had 3 imaginary conversations with each other on that bed before either of us spoke up.
The silence in the room said everything that needed to be said. 3 long months passed since she had left. Promises were made to stay in contact, but I had been left hanging. I felt ashamed of everything I had ever done in her dorm room. Had she constructed Ester because she couldn’t stand Xavier? Wasn’t I the same person?
“Ester, I’m-”
“Xavier.”
The silence returned. The conversation lasted only a few seconds before the two of us returned to our statue-like position at the end of the bed. Both of us kept our eyes straight forward, like the simple act of looking at each other would cause our worlds to shatter.
“I won’t call you that.”
“It's my name.”
“You don’t want it to be.”
“Did you choose your name?”
“No, but-”
“Then why should I choose mine? I’m not any more special than anyone else.”
It felt like the two of us were fencing. En garde. Allez. A round would begin, we would exchange a brief bout, one of us would score purchase on the other, and then halt.
En garde. Allez.
“What happened to the letters? Did you forget?”
“Of course not!”
“So you chose not to send any?”
“I was forbidden! It wasn’t my choice. I wanted to send one each and every day!”
Halt.
En garde. Allez.
“The bullies? Did they cut your hair?”
“I did.”
“You hate it when it’s short.”
“It’s normal when it's short.”
“I don’t care if it's normal, you hate it!”
Halt.
En garde. Allez.
“I felt like I was dying every day that you were gone, Vyra.”
“I wish I didn’t have to be gone so long!”
“What made you leave?”
“Death in the family.”
“Are you back in Varenthell, or is this just a visit?”
“Family didn’t want me back.”
“Just a visit then.”
“No. I’m staying. I couldn’t leave you like that, Es-uh…I couldn’t leave you.”
“Why? Did you want to come back to turn me into Ester again? So that you can give me all of these promises about a person I can never be! Is that why you couldn’t leave me? You didn’t want to lose the progress on your pet project?”
“I couldn’t leave you because I love you.”
Halt.
The match had ended. We returned to silence. Eventually, I dared to turn my head towards her. She was already looking at me, tears collecting in her eyes. How long had she been looking at me? I thought we were both looking at the wall in front of us.
The collected tears proved too much for her eyes to hold, a solitary tear sliding down the side of her face. I moved my hand over to her cheek to stop the tear from reaching the bottom of her face. I pulled my hand away when I realized what I had done. Vyra made no motion to pull back. Instead, she moved her right hand up and towards my face. I felt her warm fingers brush against the back of my neck, pulling the breath from my lungs and suspending them in the motion of her hand. I felt like each breath I took was waiting for her to move her fingers higher up the back of my neck. Her fingers intertwined with the tangled mess of black hair on my head so easily that you would think they always belonged in such a place. It took only the smallest amount of pressure on the back of my head to understand what she wanted. I let her pull my head towards her face, my green eyes captured in her features like I was a fish being reeled to the surface of a whole new undiscovered world.
Our lips met as I closed my eyes. Between the faint taste of fire I could taste salty tears enter the mix. I had started crying at some point when she was pulling in me, so I no longer knew if it was my own tears trailing into our kiss or Vyra’s. Not that it mattered. Nothing mattered to me in the current moment other than the fire that had been lit in my heart. It swirled into a blazing inferno of passion that cast the past three months away like it was only a bad dream. Those three months no longer mattered to me, Vyra wasn’t in them after all.
Salt. I tasted the salt of my tears that trickled into the corner of my mouth as I slept. Another dream, another memory. I couldn’t get her out of my head. She was an itch I could never scratch. She was the embers of a fire long since extinguished. No matter how much I stomped on the embers, they continued to burn in my heart. Vyra ate away at the person I was, the person I always wanted to be, the person I could never be.
She was a Heartworm.
She would eat me whole if I couldn’t move on.
I wiped the tears from my cheek, brushing the wetness off onto my pants as I stood. I looked in the mirror to find that had changed even more since I had last looked. I awoke in the church on the 20th, a Wednesday. It was only the 28th, if Sebil was correct about yesterday being the 27th. Only 8 days had passed since I became a Deathless, yet when I looked in the mirror, my black hair reached past my shoulders. My face looked rounder, androgynous enough that I could reasonably understand if someone was to accidentally think I was a woman. Combined with my voice that only seemed to raise as each day went on, I was certainly becoming more and more like Lilith as she claimed.
More than the human changes, I noticed that the tip of my nose began to look black and leathery. Cecelia mentioned it looked like that when I was sensing, but I wasn’t right now… was I? Were the transformation effects merging with my human form? Even more things to keep track of, I suppose. I pulled my hair towards the front to drape it over my shoulder. It was getting long enough that I would need to cut it, otherwise people would start to look at me strangely. I extended a claw out of my right index finger and held it next to the collected strands of black hair. I paused. If I found a way to put up my hair, maybe I could avoid cutting it for now.
I moved to the armoire, rummaging around through the various drawers for some sorts of way to keep my hair tied up. Phern and Cecelia had to have something somewhere in these drawers. Eventually, I found something that would be able to hold up my hair. It wasn’t the manliest accessory, being a ruby red piece of fabric. But it was practical enough to tie up my excess hair into a messy bun on the back of my head. At least the red matched my red eyes.
I exited my room to greet the rest of the people in our tent. The already small center table had become even more short on space as the Marked man sat on one of the ends. A few of them looked towards me and my hair, but after a quick smile, returned to the prepared breakfast that sat half-hazardly arranged on the tiny table. I saw the plates filled with eggs, toasted breads and assorted fruits, and continued walking past the table to leave the tent. None of the food was edible to me, so I might as well go and find my own.
Cecelia’s hand wrapped around my arm as I reached the exit of the tent.
“I was going to get breakfast, I can’t eat any of the-”
When I turned to face Cecelia, I saw that she held up a plate towards me with an unusually bright smile across her face. On the plate lay a freshly skinned and deboned hare.
“It sounded like you were having a rough night, so I went out this morning to catch you some breakfast. That way you can eat with the rest of us, yeah?” She pushed the plate into my hands, but I had yet to pry my eyes away from the familiar eyes that I swear I had just seen crying in my dorm room.
She always wormed her way into my heart.
“Oh. Thanks.” I smiled back at Cecelia. It was incredibly kind of her to go through so much extra work just to make me feel like I could sit with the group for breakfast. I found a seat across from Lucas, and next to Cecelia who sat in a nearby chair that was painfully close to my own. It was almost impossible to squeeze up to the table without my legs running into her. Though whenever it happened, she didn’t seem to mind as much as I thought.
Each of us ate breakfast, some messier than others. I was the messy one. Despite wanting to be polite about it, there was not much I could do to not eat the freshly killed hare in a respectful way. Lucas was sure to address that fact.
“We’re all going to eat while ignoring that thing eating raw meat?”
“Thng? Mh I’ll shw you thng!” I growled and spoke through the large piece of meat in my mouth. My attempt at standing from the table was quickly spoiled by the inability to pull my legs out from under the small table. Was this table made for a child?!
“Don’t make it sound sexual, bandit.” Cecelia added.
“You really shouldn’t call him a ‘thing’, love.” Sebil remarked.
“He’s eating a fucking hare like a dog and you’re all completely okay with this?”
“Tone it down, cornrows. I’ll take your speaking privileges if you keep that up.” Cecelia spoke casually, but I began to wonder if they had already had a conversation about this before considering Lucas went silent and ate his meal without further comment.
I finished my meal as well, albeit much more self consciously than before. When everyone had finished up their food we returned to our trek up the mountain. The hours passed in a frustrating monotony. Not much changed about our environment other than the incline grower steeper each hour that passed.
Cecelia, however, seemed completely undeterred in our walk. She strode through the woods in the front of the group, walking like we weren’t having to occasionally lean forward for balance.
Once, Phern nearly slipped during one of the more steep parts of the hill.
“Pebblestink!” she yelped as the earth beneath her foot gave way. I had luckily been close enough to reach out towards her and catch the half-elf before she could tumble down the rocky hill.
After the sun reached the center of the sky above us, I made the effort to push myself up to the front of our pack where Cecelia guided us. The longer the day went on, the more we drifted between each other, sometimes being thirty feet away from each other while remaining in line of sight. Everyone had their different paces, and it’s not like we were in much of a rush, our only goal was to be at the destination before nightfall.
Cecelia noticed me making a deliberate effort to pick up my pace to walk next to her. “Something wrong, bandit?”
“No, no I’m fine. I just wanted to say thank you.”
“For?”
“This morning of course. It was just, y’know, very thoughtful of you.”
“I didn’t want you feeling othered any more than your nature already does. You aren’t a monster, much as some-cornrows-would like to suggest that you are.”
Not a monster? “That’s an interesting thing for a Life Hunter to say.”
“Well I’m not much of one anymore. You’d be in a lot more pain right now if I was.”
“Right. About that, I don’t know if our deal still stands, but if it does, I might want to talk about Vyra.”
Cecelia seemed to take a moment to remember the original deal that we had made. She told me that she would tell me why I was being hunted by the Marked if I told her about Vyra.
“What makes you want to talk about her now? I’ve been hearing you talk about her in your sleep almost every night.” Cecelia looked cautious when I dropped Vyra’s name. It made sense, it was a name that floated around without ever being addressed.
“Too many memories have been coming up as of late. I think maybe if I talk about them, they can finally work their way out of my head.”
“Sounds like some heavy memories.”
“You could say that.”
Cecelia reached out a hand to pull me up a ledge that jutted out from the path that we walked.
“What do you want out of it? You already know about why the Marked are after you.”
I gave a moment's pause. She seemed to be waiting for me to ask something personal, the slightest tensing of her hands signaling her stress.
“I just want to know about why you became a Life Hunter.”
“Those are some heavy memories.”
“Looks like a balanced trade then. If you’re up for it, of course.”
She let out a sigh, making me assume that her answer would be a no. But the wider the gap grew between my last sentence and her impending answer, the more I became uncertain.
“Fuck it. Maybe talking about it will help.”
“Great! Uh, do you want to start or should I?”
“The enthusiasm is adorable button nose. But no, we should wait until tonight. If I remember this area as well as I think I do, we should only be a few hours out. I want to wait until we get there. It’ll be a lot easier to discuss then. More private as well.” She pointed her head to her side, and when I followed the direction I saw that Phern had caught up to us.
“Oh, hey you two! Gosh this mountain stinks!”
“Tonight then.” I smiled at Cecelia.
When I turned back to Phern, she was looking between the two of us with wide eyes like her favorite play was about to start. Her excitement was quickly cut off by Cecelia.
“Ah, I don’t wanna hear it, stump!”
I looked at Cecelia with confusion. I hadn’t heard the nickname stump before from her. My answer came from Phern herself as she walked past me.
“Oooo! You’re going back in time for that one, CiCi! Someone feeling nostalgic today?”
Their teasing continued as we walked. I had to admit that it was a very entertaining thing to listen to. After a while, I started to wonder where Sebil and Lucas had gone off to. As subtle as I could, I slowed my pace until I could pick up on their conversations. From this distance, I doubted that they knew I could hear them either. I had not disclosed my enhanced hearing to anyone yet.
I had begun eavesdropping half way through their conversation.
“I cannot help you if you don’t want to be helped!” Lucas sounded frustrated.
“How many times must I tell you, love? There is no spell on me. I am more than capable of avoiding such manipulation.”
“You seem like the most reasonable of the bunch, Sebil. Logistically, freeing you from the influence should be easier than the rest of them!”
“Lucas, love. You need to understand what it feels like to be wrong. It’s an essential part of science! You would not believe the amount of mistakes I make when I am inventing. Each prototype is nothing but a collection of mistakes to improve the next prototype!”
“I can absolutely understand what it means to be wrong! But I am not wrong when it comes to this!”
“You aren’t really demonstrating a willingness to accept when you are wrong, love.”
“I was wrong about my sister!”
For a moment, I wondered if I had been caught listening to their conversation while walking ahead of them at a distance. Instead, it seemed the conversation had naturally stalled as Sebil thought of a response.
“Do you want to talk about that, love? I could tell something weighed on you from Thrum.”
“I am not receiving life advice from my captor.”
“Another time then, perhaps?”
Their conversation stopped, and I was left in silence for the following hours of our walk. As the sun began to set in the distance, we reached the first deviation from the monotony of the mountains. Small stone steps that trailed up the mountain.
“We’re here!” Cecelia called out towards the scattered group that heaved their legs up the mountain with a days worth of exhaustion weighing them down. I once more pushed my pace to rejoin Cecelia as our journey turned into our destination before our very eyes. Up ahead, I glimpsed a structure that was nestled inside of the ‘crown’ of the mountain. As we neared the top of the stone stairs, I saw that a large wooden gate stretched across the entrance. Curiously, the gate seemed to be made of very thin wood. Was it more of a suggestion than a fortification? I could see the top of a building peak above the top of the gate. Thank Gods we would have a house to sleep in tonight.
We climbed the steps to the front gate, pausing to allow the rest of our group to make it up the stairs and join us. When we once more a dysfunctional group of people, Cecelia walked up to the door of the gate and opened it with a shaking hand. The door swung open gently to reveal the decadent sight beyond.
Each of us filtered through the door only to let out a short gasp upon seeing what was beyond. It was a beautiful estate. A large temple-like structure stood center in the estate, surrounded by two smaller buildings symmetrically placed on the left and right side of the main building. The courtyard of the estate was made of chiseled stone. I was sure there was some kind of significance to the engravings on the stone paths, but I was ignorant of their meaning. The chiseled stone had rivulets of water that streamed through the cracks in a mesmerizing pattern. The source of the water filling the cracks in the stone was the large fountain in the center of the estate.
The entire area looked like it was made for forgotten royalty.
“Is this some kind of abandoned town?” Sebil asked.
Cecelia looked at the main temple. I could almost smell her emotions. She reeked of regret and guilt. The scent of those emotions were so pungent they made me feel like I had wronged this place.
Cecelia spoke. “No. Only one man lived here. This is my home.”