-Niala 22-

Kiromir drove until the dusk of night began to creep upon us. Our destination had been a nearly abandoned rest stop along our route.

We started our drive in Oregon, and by way of Idaho and Montana, we’d get to Wyoming. First, We’d visit the Sentinels, then the Songbirds in Iowa, and finally move to Indiana for the Horizon clan. Beyond that, we’d get to New York state for the Grells. The Grells were always our least favorite, and we hardly counted them as ‘part of the migration.’ Not since I joined their flock had I heard of a wanderer woman joining the Grells. However, our men seemed to steal their girls with ease. The songbirds, though, remained our favorites.

We usually took the long way back through the southern routes and followed a carnival trail, and Kiromir took me off on our own to fly more. I wanted to cry as I thought about those stolen moments with them. It hurt my heart to know that my fire had ended this chapter of my life. I could no longer be my Ada’s little girl, just his daughter, who he respected—an equal. I wished I could fit into his arms and curl up to sleep in his embrace again. Still, Kiromir remained the only comfort I really knew. Then my mind wandered to a stupid-fucking-idiot-skahn-yarr-chata-sutz-gaffina….AUGH!

Why am I like this?

We pulled off in a rest stop in Montana, near Billings, far enough away from mass civilization that they’d not notice a clan of a few hundred wanderers with their weird ways, strange clothes, peculiar ears, and ominous tattoos that we treasured so much.

The rest stop we chose made a loop off the beaten path with a dilapidated RV park pitched far in the back. Once upon a time, before I came, there had been a stadium in the area. But, it had since been demolished. So, we claimed the park as our own. We had exclusivity to it on that night every year, and Kiromir said we paid for our privacy. We had keys to the gates and locked them once everyone had been accounted for.

Ada’s shell company actually owned the place, and it made occasional money from the odd campers.

A brick building stood with two barely-maintained bathrooms. Gravel lots and broken electrical posts marked slots for trailers. A similarly-maintained playground sat unused with rubber mulch made from recycled tires. But, the park's best and greatest feature is that it stayed hidden from the highway’s direct line of sight by a forest of trees. Our camper trundled over the path as we rounded up the tail end, coming to a halt amidst the back lot of trailers. Kiromir liked to be at the edges of things. It helped us evacuate, as we’ve had to do infrequently.

As we approached, the vibrating whirr of minute machinery rang out over the din of heavy motors. Thanus had his tattoo gun out, powering it off of his generator. A few lights flooded the area, and Gaffriel leaned over a table while Thanus worked on his arm. Gaffriel had never gotten any tattoos yet, so this would have been the first going on his bronzed skin. Hopefully, he found something he really felt strongly about or prepared himself to make a bad decision. Several of the men had gathered around, and I couldn’t help but approach as Kiromir went about organizing everyone. If anyone could wrangle the Wildling Wanderers and their unherdable blood, it was him. I shoved my hands in my pockets and loped over to watch with curiosity.

“What are we getting done?” I asked. Part of me worried he started something stupid.

Thanus had started bands on his upper arm. I touched my hand to the piece of paper before him with the design. I counted two circling bands, with an alternating series of what looked to be maple leaves and gentle swirls between them. Each maple leaf swirled with solid black and tipped with white via negative space. My lips slowly fell apart, and I stared. He designed small caricatures of my tail, and I couldn’t look him in the eye.

I remembered the look of horror on his face when he saw it, the twist of his feelings for me, and the betrayal he felt. I saw revulsion on his face.

How does this stupid—ngh. How… Who does he--? STOP CONFUSING ME!

Twenty-four hours ago, he was staring at it like it was an alien tentacle!

Well…

He grinned up at me. I saw the grimace across his face. The gaps on his teeth had almost been filled in by the white buds of new teeth pushing through. He’d be whole by morning.

I had nothing I could say.

Gaff made a low hiss of breath through clenched teeth.“I saw something really pretty the other day, so I wanted to have it on me.”

Thanus shot me a conspiratorial grin, and my cheeks went bright pink. Trust the man that peaked my ada’s fires to teach him how to do something so stupid and totally redeeming.

Gross.

“Gaff’s got a gift for you, don’t you boy,” Thanus dug the needle in a little too hard to punctuate his sentence. Gaff did his best to steel himself against the pain. Unfortunately, he would have to get another needle after this run.

My stomach knotted up, and I felt like I was going to be sick. Gaff held a bundle of something in his lap, cloth-wrapped, and as he used his free arm to hand it towards me, I heard gasps, groans, and laughter from the men around.

“You fucked uuuuup.” One of the men laughed.

“Feather’s sake,” another breathed.

Krell stood there, giving me a knowing and encouraging look. Gaff had to apologize in his own way, he said. Krell crossed his arms, assuming a casual posture and a leering grin.

“A… bouquet…” I mouthed, nearly speechless, as he kept holding it out to me.

Despite a small spattering of blood on the cloth, I reached out and accepted it. The twisted bunch of plucked feathers consisting of a few primaries, a couple of secondaries, and a thick handful of scapular feathers felt heavy in my hands. It wasn’t enough to stop Gaffriel from flying, but it’d be noticeable. No girl would look at his wings this summer without knowing he’d done something awful.

Gaff pulled his hand from the bundle of his brown and grey feathers. “I’m sorry, Ni.”

He startled me, had made me feel self-conscious about a body I had hidden from the world, and all because he wanted to hold onto me like a comfort blanket. If I didn’t know before, now I knew he felt sorry.

I stared at him for the longest moment, thinking of all the snarky things I could say to ruin this moment. Everyone had clear expectations of us. Nobody wanted me to leave. They all had some hopes, all of Kiromir’s men.

Don’t you dare fucking cry. Don’t…

The familiar sting of tears started in my eyes.

Ahhh shit.

I leaned down to Gaff, touching my forehead to his. I closed my eyes so he couldn’t see the glassine look of them, and I could feel the muscles in his forehead relax as he closed his own. Even over the generators and the tattoo gun still buzzing, I heard his breath slow and deepen.

“Just ask,” I whispered to him.

Something within me shifted, told me it was the right thing to do, and I tilted my head up to part from him and gave a soft kiss to his forehead. “Apology accepted.”

A few jeers and snickers passed around as I pulled my face away from everyone. Then, finally, Gaff’s face went beet red.

“Shut it, and someone get me a drink,” I announced before finding an unoccupied bit of table to sit on and sprawled out to watch Gaffriel wince and grit his teeth to finish the tattoo he’d chosen. I felt bad that he did this, the feathers, but I still wanted to watch him squirm under the needle. I kind of liked it.

Our first tattoo was our Ikris, and they faded in gradually from the time we were born until we turned two. So this tattoo could not be given.

As we got older, they allowed us to use henna and things, and I had spent many a summer with other girls and Gaffriel marking my body up with all the strange things that I had thought looked cool. Kiromir had some photos of me that I would rather be burned. I had weird markings, some edgy, some that left my arm in sleeves. I had thoughts of my birth father, brief glimpses, and I remembered his markings on his arms, so dark. So I drew how I remembered they looked, and I had done a summer with black arms and a summer with songbirds drawn on my arms from the songbird clan. One summer, I had skulls that I quickly decided looked awful and blacked them out. I really liked the black, but I liked the real tattoos I had now better.

Two years ago, when I turned 14, and they gave me my own barracks. I had been sad. I sat alone a lot, wondering why Kiromir let them separate us. My room reminded me of a cage.

Back then, Thanus came to me that night, and he had his tattoo kit with him. He did all the tattoos for the men in the clan because he was a beautiful artist, and I had looked forward to having his ink on me someday.

“Ni. Kiromir is going to kick my ass, but you can pick your own markings now,” He told me. I was frightened at first, but he had barely proposed it before he sat on my creaking bedroom stool, cleaning up my arm as I sat on my bed. We were technically supposed to wait until we got our fires, but Thanus wasn’t much for rules.

“I think I know the perfect design for you,” he told me, and I hesitated. But then, he thumbed an old paper out of his box, well cared for and cherished. I stared at it, and my eyes went wide. It was the perfect design.

The drawing of feathers like Kiromir had, winding up his arms and shoulders, a little different, less refined than the ones he had, sprawled across the page. Winding flowers scrolled over and around them. I saw in the corner a scrawl of words, and it had been Kiromir’s handwriting. I wanted those marks more than anything.

Getting the tattoos hurt. A bullet could barely break our skin, so a needle had to be extra sharp, titanium, the gun extra powerful, and even then, only the harshest of inks that stung would take. So I bore through every moment of it with teeth bared. My canines protruded longer and sharper than the wildlings, and I had to be careful not to bite my lip or tongue.

“Lowak wouldn’t let him have the vines and flowers on his arms,” Thanus said quietly as he buzzed the ink across my skin, freehand from Kiromir’s design.

Kiromir cried when he saw my tattoos. Thanus was convinced that he would get his face beaten in for it, but Kiromir only sobbed, and though I wasn’t allowed to stay with him anymore, he stayed with me the entire night outside, holding me to his side as we watched the stars, and eventually the sunrise.