Niala46

I had a dream. It started as a good dream, one of those sweet things gone wrong. Thanus had touched up my tattoos and offered to start on my legs. I had plenty of time to wait and decide what went on my legs, and I laughed him off. The sting of the needle welted over my arm, buzzing to the tune, and the sensation crawled through me, making my muscles spasm.

“Thanus! That hurts,” I said, and his voice came back electronic and unwelcoming.

I’d felt things like that before, the crawling, the sharp sensations— electricity. Electricity shuddered through me, not the fires of my own kind, but something clicking and cracking against me.

I was awake.

It took me a moment to gather my bearings. My ikris twitched hard, and every sound echoed back at me as I pulled myself to sit up, eyes reeling as I tried to focus.

I kept cycling through the events of the day, trying to piece together what had happened. We left on a mission because Rolyn did something. I cried, trying to take my frustrations out in the fray. Then the Sentinels came…

I knew immediately when the glare of rough light finished what had happened—A federal job, sentinels waiting, Rolyn’s smug face.

She set me up.

Gaffriel traveled with us, an unintentional grab, much to the chagrin of our human barterer. Nevertheless, our captor seemed ecstatic that Gaff and I melded and that he came with no extra charge to ‘help things along.’ Help things along, with what? I wondered. A sentinel man that I recognized had Gaff by his head. I compared their size difference, and Gaff looked so much like the boy he was, not yet a man.

For a short while, we were the same age during migration. Gaffriel would be seventeen at the height of summer and me the middle of spring the best we could figure. The sentinel boy had ten years and a lot more training on Gaff, and I heard Gaff’s head ram into a steel wall with a sickening crunch. There wasn’t a mote of hesitation in the motion, just raw strength, the same we used for a clean kill.

Something inside me snapped.

I screamed for Gaff.

I hardly realized I fought as a set of doors opened to a reinforced secluded room. Images of my past flickered in, and a shrill whine suffused my hearing. My vision went spiraling like a kaleidoscope, and then I tasted blood, satisfying, salty, full of iron. I had bitten someone. Before I could realize it, I swallowed, and they restrained me. More flesh met my mouth, and I tore, letting every bit of rage I had loose. I drooled over the taste of it in my mouth and spat as he bled, slinging me full force into the doorway of the room, followed by Gaff.

Why hadn’t I used my fires?

The doors shut, my mind in a dizzying haze. Being slammed against the wall didn’t help. Full-grown men, bred for size and strength, trained for it, couldn’t handle us for speed and cunning. They were all bulk, but they were bulk designed to hurt.

My vision started to clear from the muffled and stuffy mire.

“Little bird girl.” A sickening voice called out to me as nausea roiled in my stomach. Though the room we sat in was no bigger than my room back home, everything surrounding me echoed from enameled metal in tinny clangs.

I tried to focus on the source of the voice ringing out from a speaker set into the wall.

The floor beneath me felt alive, and before I could do anything, a ratcheting pain rang through my body. Curling, I shook to the sensation of electrical impulses traveling into me from the floor.

Gaffriel’s body twitched, and I drew him to myself out of instinct. He wasn’t conscious, and I needed time to think, but everything surrounding me smelled like humans. His head lay in my lap, stable. Maybe I could protect him, I hoped. Unfortunately, though, I needed him to protect me. This felt like all the nightmares he ever woke me from with all the tears I couldn’t shed.

“Speak English, little bird girl? You certainly do in your sleep.” The tinny sound barked out, and I looked up at a speaker, jaw set as I prepared not to answer.

I licked over my lips and tasted blood—not human blood, but wildling blood. I didn’t spend as much time in scraps growing up to have never gotten a smear of someone in my mouth. The taste of wildling blood made my ikris twitch in a bad way.

I glanced up at the speaker then away.

“Answer me, or I charge the floor again.” I heard intent in the voice.

“Ea.” It took a trained ear to hear the difference between that noise and a ‘yeah.’ My mind buzzed somewhere else, stuck in a loop of memory from twelve years ago. All the while, my oblivion spiked stronger than I had ever known in my entire life, and I felt like I may forget myself.

I traced my fingers over Gaffriel’s face and temple, searching for signs of damage. The side of his face and jaw splayed in a bloody mess. So much so that I didn’t want to press my fingers to his temple for fear of worse. My hands shook too much to try.

“Gaffriel, met unil, besha,” I whispered the words to him to please be ok. He felt so weak, and his head had so much damage. It didn’t surprise me that his mana ran cold and stale, though his heart eked out a soft tattoo within his chest. Every few seconds, a shaken breath broke free, labored and weak.

I leaned over and pressed my lips to his. They felt so warm, and the blood on my face smeared over his bruised lips. If he died, I’d not say I never got the chance to kiss him first. I breathed in his smell to remind me—leather, sun.

Leather and sun. I thought it and mouthed it beneath my breath a few times, memorizing it on the off chance he left me alone for good.

I rested my forehead to his and closed my eyes, ignoring the barking voice on the other end of the speaker. Then, finally, it seemed to realize the severity of what happened. “Is he dead?”

“Focus… can’t heal… time, please,” I gasped out. I couldn’t talk to them right now. Everything in the voice reminded me of twelve years ago, and my instinct told me to claw at the walls, break my fires out, destroy everything I could touch. But, instead, the entirety of my body shook, defenseless.

“I’ve nothing but time, little bird girl.” The sudden patience with my lack of response angered me.

“[Ptenets devochka,]” a voice crooned in saccharine tones in my mind. “[Detenysh,]” I could hear it as clear now as I did then. “Fledgeling girl, baby bird girl, hatchling,” all sweet Russian words for me, words I didn’t understand.

My eyes squinted shut, and I brought my hands to the sides of my head, trying to squeeze myself, block my ears, anything to drown out the spiraling memory.

“Nei Nei Nei,” I breathed to myself, “Ik dyana ver.” My body still shook.

How could I let myself do this? Noises echoed around the room, my own sobs, every movement, machinery thrumming in distant vents and footsteps. Impatient fingers tapped on a desktop somewhere, drumming out a damning rhythm. I couldn’t stop shaking.

“Gaff… Gaff! Skahn gaffina, besha, besha, besha,” I just said to him as my tears ran down his face leaving pristine trails in the blood that trickled onto his neck. ‘Gaff… Gaff! Stupid carrot, please, please please.’ I felt a spike of his mana, and it flickered like a whisper in the dark, a single match of a flame, healing. I gasped as I pulled my head back and saw his lips twitching. I reached my arms around him in a possessive embrace, staring up at the wall, focusing every bit of my mana and intent on flowing alongside his own.

The songbirds wanted to teach me magic for so long, and I knew that I could, but I never could get it right. I needed intent, drive, and imagination to do things besides make our fires. So I closed my eyes and did the only thing I could possibly think of—I prayed.

“Besha Kirzir, met ai ada’re. Besha Kirzir, ileer Dyana. En’na adaya, Nal ira, Nal dinn, Nal frit, ilt ik Kriss unil’el vai.” Every word of my old tongue slipped from my lips in desperation.

“Please Creator, Father of light. Please, Creator, beautiful mother. First sire, take the pain, take the darkness and black, with all my fires that come from you.”

I don’t think we had religion. We didn’t have a church or sit in supplication to our Creator. We thought of him or her as an ever-present concept, and as far as I knew, we had blessings and praise for him that we never did, but I remember them as a child, in childlike ways. So if the Creator existed… maybe he would hear me.

My lips moved in rapid succession, eyes trained on the door, unfocused as I clutched to Gaffriel. My hands stroked over him, and I felt convinced at that moment that nothing could take him away from me, be it this life or the next.