CHP7

When she finally peeled her eyes open, the train stood still, and bright light beamed through the now open door.

She expected to see the trainyard that she had fallen asleep in, but the trainyard before her looked completely different and alien.

“You slept through the last stop,” Sohken said.

Desolate, stormy grounds stretched as far as the eye could see, and two silvery-eyed people, a man and a woman, sat with delighted beaming eyes staring at her.

She took their tall forms in; the woman must have been at least a few inches over Seneya. The man had light-colored hair and silver eyes, just like Troi.

She glanced at the woman, with her silken dark hair and silvery eyes—a shade darker but just as luminescent to her.

Can contacts do that?

“Good, you’re awake. They’ve been waiting there for an hour,” Sohken said raggedly.

“Good morning, my lady,” One spoke, and when she squinted back at them, their eyes averted quickly. She focused on the woman and noticed that her English had a bit of a bite to it, a pleasant one. It didn’t hurt her mind to hear it.

“There’s magic in them. Don’t ask questions. Tell them you want to go north and when I say so, drop you off. Pretend to have some class about you and be silent like you usually are. Any answers you get out of them are going to hurt you more, I swear it.” Sohken’s voice grew so faint that Seneya had to focus to hear it.

“Good morning?” Seneya squinted up at the sky, and it seemed significantly later than morning, late afternoon…maybe? Her voice cracked dryly in her throat, sore and wavering.

“You have just awoken, so it would be morning from your perspective. I assumed,” The woman said timidly and bowed her head.

“We were told to expect you and that you were in need of transportation.” The man spoke eagerly, and when he talked, emotion and light filled his voice, contagious emotion that tickled at her. It flowed off of him like a scent that only her brain could smell.

Seneya noticed a star tattooed on his hand as he fidgeted, a pentagram filled in at several random points. Her eyes opened wide with alarm.

Oh, holy shit, they’re cult members.

Seneya raised her shoulders. Every muscle in her body seized up for a shuddering moment and then released just as quickly. She couldn’t run—trapped here by these silvery-eyed strangers.

“Troi did say she was ill or injured,” The woman whispered to the man.

“Just… Give me a moment,” Seneya said as she moved to slip down and drag her pack from the train. She could barely hold herself up, barely move, and when she moved from the train, her knees bit into loose gravel that sent her buckling.

The woman looped an arm beneath her shoulder, cautious not to touch her back, though her eyes kept glancing there.

“Can I trust them?” She whispered in the songlike Acerrai language.

“I cannot help you now. Ask to go to Leston, tell them you need Kael,” Sohken faded out as he spoke, and an emptiness welled within her.

“Dax, go get the bed of the truck ready. I’ll carry her.” The woman held onto Seneya’s arm and rolled up the sleeves of an expensive and soft blouse. Everything she wore seemed expensive, sleek, and fashionable, down to cuffed pants and patent leather shoes that reflected the faded daylight and were devoid of scuffs. That changed by the moment as she hoisted Seneya by her arm and looped it over.

The man, Dax, took off running as fast as he could, over tracks, through weeds, and out into an empty parking lot that grew closer as Seneya’s weak steps fell in line with the woman’s.

When they got into view of the lot, broken pavement wobbled under her feet—weeds that grew through cracks holding it stable.

As they approached the empty parking lot, Seneya glanced about, fearful of other people and her vulnerability. Nobody approached them or even looked at them. For a booming business of that type, there should have been a lot more people there—not just them.

Dax crawled into a new sleek black dual-cab truck. Every bit of chrome trim on it gleamed.

“I don’t think you’re going to want to sit in the cabin with us, are you?” the woman asked.

Seneya shook her head and shifted as the woman hoisted her up into the bed of the truck. She lifted Seneya like she weighed nothing.

Seneya tried to take in the buildings, the waiting trucks, the empty lot they parked in, but it blurred by her.

“Where are we taking you?” Dax looked over the edge of the bed of the truck.

“Leston,” she whimpered as tears welled in her eyes. The pain in her back intensified, sending her into a trembling cringe.

“Leston?!” His eyes went wide, and he looked to the woman. “Alyria, can we?”

“May I ask why you want to go to Leston, my lady?” Alyria, the woman, stared down at Seneya.

Seneya felt this rising prickle in the air of unease, and like words written in the air, she could ‘read’ something about the prickle, could read that forbidden element to Alyria’s question.

“Kael… need Kael….” Seneya breathed harder as her skin went pale.

“Looks like we don’t have a choice.” The woman’s voice went suddenly cold and sharp. She looked at Dax, sharing a meaningful glance before they both looked down at Seneya.

Her head dropped, asleep again and shivering. Alyria reached out a hand to touch her ankle and felt how cold she was in the afternoon heat. “She’s in bad shape.”

“Let’s move.” Dax pulled his keys out and closed the gate to the truck.

-

The wind blew over her, whipping about her form. The shadows of looming trees flickered over the bed of the truck.

The lights danced behind heavy lids and heavier breaths.

“What is wrong with me?” She asked herself.

Sohken said that he would help her, but she didn’t know when it would come.

The warm sun beat down on her back, sending relief flowing through her.

“Nothing that Kael can’t fix,” Sohken managed to speak in a dimming whisper.

“Who is Kael, anyway?” Seneya wiped her face against her arm.

Sohken hesitated. “The less I tell you, the less you’ll hurt. You asked that boy too many, and it’s gotten worse.”

“But why is it getting worse?” Seneya sobbed.

The wind whipped harder, then softer, roads growing bumpier, and she shouted with tears in her eyes at the wrenching sensations that wrought her back.

She bleated out a sharp sob of pain, fully awake again and shaking as she tried to sit up.

“It hurts,” She squeaked out, coughing a sob that squelched out as they hit another bump.

“We’re getting close.” Dax, the blonde man, shouted from the driver’s side window.

Something felt different in the air, and less like the world itself sucked the life from her, a fullness. Her breath felt like it pulled more oxygen in. A buzz rang in the air, and Seneya let loose a heaving sigh and torrents of tears.

She braced herself as the rocking terrain of what had to be country roads shook her back and forth in the bed of the truck. She could barely lift her head, and all she saw was the occasional looming form of a tree and the afternoon sun high in the sky.

She felt the speed of the truck increase, jarring her worse as they rushed against the clock for some unknown deadline.

She didn’t know why she ended up there, why she hurt.

Am I dehydrated from the ride?

The questions in her mind swam as the truck came to a slow stop, then lurched. A stoplight passed overhead, and a few buildings peeked over the edges of the truck.

Seneya saw more in the reflection of the back window, motes of distorted suburban life.

“We’re sorry about this, my lady, but we don’t have much of a choice,” Dax said as he pulled something from the back of the truck. Seneya whimpered, balling up, and waited for something horrible. She closed her eyes and felt the light weight of something plastic and crinkly being laid atop her. A tarp?

Blue suffused her vision in a gridded weave. She took in its cloying new-plastic smell, and Alyria’s door opened. Then, a click of distinctive heels over gravel crunched. Two doors closed, jostling the truck

“Wait for us, and hold on,” Dax whispered, and they left Seneya there alone.

A bell rang, a door chime?

Finally, a door closed, and glorious silence welcomed her.

She thought she could close her eyes for a moment, let the pain take her to blissful unconsciousness, but the bell rang again, bringing three sets of footsteps this time, and the bright light returned as someone jerked the tarp from her.

“What do we have here?” A new and intense voice asked in blithe tones and restless cantor-- deeper than susurration, hollower than a cavern. Rocks ground together in the throat of such a voice, yet it played the melody they spoke before. Blue eyes lit with a strange ethereal light from above, a man, and Seneya didn’t panic.

A great paw of a hand reached over her body and wrapped around her waist. With but a tug, he pulled her to her side, stirring weakly as he peered over her back. He tugged at the stretched, sagging neck of her shirt and mumbled beneath his breath.

His eyes went hypnotically dark as he glanced over the dim outlines of tattoos down Seneya’s back.

“Gaff rahl neh,” he spat in cruel syllables before hooking an arm around her waist and lifting her as if she weighed nothing. Thickly tattooed arms, blacked from wrist to shoulder, held her tight to a firm chest.

A musty smell met Seneya’s nostrils—his shirt… he had not washed it in some time. He moved his hands, cautious of her back. Their now-combined weight sank the bed of the truck a few inches.

The truck’s springs creaked as he jumped—Seneya in his arms. The sudden impact of his feet onto the ground jolted her body, and she squeaked in protest, her breath caught in her throat

“Easy child, shh,” he spoke in kind English to her. It sounded as uncomfortable on his lips as it did hers.

Seneya opened one eye and looked over his sharp features, impossibly blue eyes, slightly foreign cast.

“Our contact said she was speaking Acerrai, and she asked for you. We kept it quiet,” Alyria whispered to the giant that held Seneya.

“Thank you for bringing her here. I have no idea where she’s from and what’s happened. Please, just keep this out of the grapevine if you don’t mind. I’ll handle it,” he looked down over the girl in his arms, full of contradictions and wrongdoings.

“Please…don’t hurt….” Seneya tried opening her eyes, but she could only flutter them lightly.

“What do I smell like to you, girl?” He sneered, showing sharp teeth, impossibly sharp. He jostled his arms a bit, and she bleated a shrill noise, a squeak. His thick arms cradled her as his masculine scent caught her nose.

She breathed him in, and he smelled, for lack of anything better she could say, like home.

He smelled of earth and spice, bready and like the salt of sweat. She wanted to bury her face in it and never pull away. Instead, her breath came out in a squeak of a sob, and a mote of alcohol caught her nostrils.

Ordinarily, a man being too close to her sent fear and panic beating in her chest. But, instead, he felt right. Good.

Home.

His sharp angular face tilted. He could pass for around thirty-five or so with the barest hint of creases around his mouth and across his forehead, but his rich cornflower blue eyes told another tale, a much older one. He searched Seneya’s face for an answer.

“Smell… home.”

“There’s your answer,” he said with confidence as if his scent told her some sort of secret.

The heat of his touch felt so good, so warm, and he knew just where to keep his hands from hurting her. His breath smelled sweet, too, tainted by liquor.

Seneya’s face tangled in several locks of sleek black hair, half bound in a leather thong as it spilled about over his toned, tanned features. From beneath, the silken hair peeked the tip of two ears, large in size and pointed, bedecked with all manner of earrings and decoration. His features appeared somewhat Asian in shape and in the eyes.

He wore a black shirt, black jeans. He looked unnatural in them as the taut fabric stretched over solid features. Every inch of flesh exposed to the air he had tattooed with solid black. Even his bare ankles, down to his equally bare feet, bore the black ink.

Had Seneya been able to wake, she’d have been frightened not by all that but by his sheer size. He could not have been an inch shorter than seven feet tall, taller even, but then again, she only felt comfort now.

He walked away, his rolling gait carrying them away from the whispers of Dax and Alyria with uncommon grace and coordination.

His touch felt so gentle that she let herself fully succumb to his motion and gentle grasp.

At almost sixteen, Seneya stood at 5’8” –still growing. She looked willowy and slender, lacking the curves of a matured woman. Though she looked gangly now, she had vague features piecing themselves in like a swanling transitioning its baby feathers, beautiful things sticking from the discord.

“Halfbreed,” He grumbled beneath his breath as he bunched his arm over her legs and continued his journey. “Come on, child. Let’s see who you are.”

“Sen-eya,” She breathed softly.