-Kiromir 20-

Fighting over boys!? Me and Niala? The jarring thought brought a look of pure disgust over me as Thanus and Gaff pulled up with concern. As far as I knew, there had been only one ‘boy’ I found myself interested in, and Niala, like me, was similarly one-track-minded. But like father, like daughter—not everything is up to genetics.

Thanus held a respectable distance from me, the withdrawn arm’s reach that belied the awkwardness we both still held. I don’t know if he knew I’d made some peace with it or if I felt angry with him for revealing that truth. He seemed coy in the same way that he got on a difficult mission—wearing a fake mask of calm.

I wanted to spend more time with Thanus, exploring that particular aspect of ourselves. We’d been friends and together so often in our lives that it just felt right that I’d reach a hand out to him, literally, and share his fire.

“Everything ok?” Thanus asked as Gaffriel climbed out of the motorhome, all glass and spring in his step.

“Yeah. Ni’s just being a comedian,” I grumbled. Niala just grinned wide and shrugged, showing off the sludgy purple stain of her lips and tongue.

“Looks like it,” Thanus said before taking a bold step closer, closing the space between us as if we were all good. He took my drink from my hand and stared at it with distaste. Not many of our kind quite could stand sugar, sweet things, especially artificial flavors. We tasted the strongest aspects of their chemical counterparts. I think we’d narrowed it down to this one gas station over the years that had one that tasted remotely unoffensive and palatable. They used real fruit juice. Thanus took a brazen sip of it, swished it in his mouth for a moment, and then swallowed. He didn’t look displeased.

“Good, right?” I asked him. He shrugged before handing the cup back to me. Then, he walked back to his camper, and Gaff followed with that eager puppy-dog stare. Apparently, the two of them were doing some much-needed bonding. Gaff was excited and anxious to continue the journey.

The boy stuck his tongue out at Niala, and it did not escape me that his tongue had been stained purple. I glanced over at her drink, then her, and saw a pink smattering over her cheeks. Finally, she wiped the end of the straw off on her shirt and went back to drinking. Then I sighed with relief and slid my straw straight back into my mouth for a suck. Then it hit me, and I looked up, locking eyes with Thanus from his window, seeing heat in his eyes that had me blushing, too. If I ever had a doubt about my swan-ness… I didn’t anymore. He smirked and drove off.

Feathers…

“We still taking our detour?” She asked. She loved those moments where we went off the beaten path, delayed our stops, and let her tail fly free.

I shook my head gravely. We were already a day behind, and as much as I wanted her to fly free and to delay my trip to the Sentinels… we just couldn’t this time. She wilted a little.

“Can’t. We’re already behind. Maybe after the sentinels.”

She pouted and got back onto the caravan, slush drink still in hand. I know those trips and flights meant the world to her, but we got delayed. It could wait for this once. There’d be plenty of stolen flights off the beaten path between the Sentinels and the Horizon clan.

“Oh, come on, it’s just this once,” I pleaded with her.

“Imagine you have one wing that you must keep wrapped and tucked away. Imagine that you only get to let it out a few days a year. It grows weak and still.” Niala sulked and slipped further back into the camper to let her tail and wings free in the cramped space. She bundled to herself and curled up in the bed, letting the slender appendage twitch.

“Then we can leave the Sentinels a day early so you can have more time before we get to the Songbirds,” I promised her. She loved the songbird clan, and I’d never cut her visits there short.

She grumbled in agreement. I didn’t want to spend any more time with the Sentinels, particularly my mother, anyway.

The road went on forever; the silence over the din of the RV grew until Niala had a question, one that I didn’t want to hear.

“Is that why mama Rolyn doesn’t speak to us?” She shifted in her seat nervously. Niala had taken to calling her that early on when she couldn’t get the hang of her name. Rolyn put on a face around others, but she sharply corrected Niala in private. It became a game just to annoy her, in the end.

“Don’t let her hear you calling her that. She’d die of embarrassment. And what? What reason?” I’d long since stopped trying to excuse my mother’s behavior.

“Your fires,” She said quietly.

“My fires?” Truth be told, Rolyn had been one of the few people unphased by the ice in my veins.

“How they don’t work for women….”

Her words hit me like a punch to the gut, but no. Rolyn didn’t talk to me because… because of Niala, because I didn’t side with her… because of a lot of things we disagreed on. I also reminded her of my brother, who had always been her favorite. We never spoke of him. I took Lowak’s side when they split. The things she wanted, the opulence, the stability. She wanted us to settle down and meld into the world, to carve a place out where we could live untouched. We’d done that, in a way, with the barracks. Our home base became something that mother never could understand.

She had a vision of stability in her mind that showed a neighborhood with houses and lights, trees, and children in parks. She saw us becoming one step off of human. Lowak saw us becoming an army, a unified force.

I imagined a world where we had row houses, and the hunters gathered around a grill in sweater vests. I could imagine Dimal turning a burnt hot dog and nodding sagely over the pit before one of them asked the other the best way to snap a neck, and ‘oh, by the way, junior is going off to t-ball camp.’

“No. We take the day off before coming to the Sentinels because of the pleasantries before the opening ceremonies. Mother feels like I disowned her when I pick dad’s side. She wanted to do something with the clan that we weren’t designed to do. She wanted stability and a human life. She wanted a neighborhood, not a military base.”

Niala wilted—disheartened.

“But the barracks are nice,” She said in her quiet, thinking voice.

“You’re damned right they are. It’s just too bad mom never got to enjoy what we made.”

Dad worked hard on it, and I inherited his legacy. I wondered who’d inherit mine. I just hoped it would be someone that loved our ways as much as I did.