There wasn’t much sunlight in the coming morning but Idrus walked on; he welcomed it—he needed to dry his scales.

Nala rode the sloth, uncommonly quiet. Idrus was as well. He’d waited for the rain to come back. In a way he almost wished it would return worse than before.

Sitting above the sloth, posture stoic, Nala rocked side to side with each sluggish step.

Finally, Idrus slowed the beast.

“We’ve traveled in silence until now. Do you intend to remain contrary?”

Nala gave no response. She didn’t even look at him.

The rocks in the distance would be a good place to rest and sun for a spell.

Idrus brought the sloth to a halt. Somehow, he felt that whenever Nala got like this, she responded better, faster to the Earther tongue than the old language.

As painful as it was to use it, Idrus persevered. “Na’am, you worry me. Please say something; please greet me.”

He let out a sigh at the ongoing silence.

“I must sun before the rain returns.”

“It won’t return,” Nala said. “Of that we can be certain.”

Rather than argue, Idrus handed the reins back and hurried to the stone. The larger one toward the side would be a perfect fit for his broad body.

Beyond the hill a small river babbled along. Water would help Nala’s surly disposition.

Nala dismounted the sloth some ways down and tied it to a tree.

Idrus lay on the low resting stone, pleased to feel it hot. He tossed the robe down and flexed his poorly formed left hand. It took on no armor. No sooner had he lay, Nala sat beside him.

“You shouldn’t stay here,” Idrus warned. “The suns will damage your skin.”

Still with her back to him, Nala said, “I had barely grown my scales in before I was separated from my clan.”

Guarding his eyes from the meager amounts of sunlight peeking through the clouds, Idrus stared up at her.

“In the confusion I lost my way. Stumbled a bit and then found a line with other Summoners talking of shelter. With no clan, no protection, we wouldn’t have lasted long—I wouldn’t have lasted long.” She quieted before looking back at him. “I let them cut my tail, even though I was wild.”

Idrus pulled himself up to sit.

“It’s true, others do it sooner but me. I chose to lose it.” Her body hunched, Nala shook her head. “It was a Summoner who did it. He even held it out and said it would be a nice prize for some Earther. I regretted nothing more.” She felt at her lower back. “I used to romp so much but without it...without it I couldn’t jump as high. I couldn’t...I couldn’t run as well. And I couldn’t swim.”

The suns had already started doing their work; Idrus’s scales hardened.

“I’d run away as soon as I could—that’s what I told myself. But I never did. I got a structure. I farmed the land, and I helped give the Earthers food.”

Idrus thought to hold Nala’s shoulder but his fists grew brittle and sharp.

They sat in silence until Nala said, “My king, I cannot go back with you. I cannot go back with you.... I will never go back there. I’ll never trade comfort for my freedom.”

“Comfort?” Idrus could hardly call Nala comfortable. She always seemed miserable.

“You were my comfort. Your way with me. Each time you went through a cycle to appease me. Each time you’d catch me in the courtyard and spread me in the shadows. And each time you played with this hideous stump on my back where a tail should be. It was my comfort.”

The scales on his right hand now sharp, Idrus had little choice but to use his left hand to hold Nala’s shoulder.

He expected the Summoner to ease away but she took hold of Idrus’s hand, holding it in place.

“It can be again,” Idrus insisted. “The storms had everyone worried but now that they’ve gone, we need only wait a while then return.”

“I am not returning,” Nala said again. “I will go home, my king.”

Nearly one cycle had passed since Nala’s left her farm. The condition it was in now, especially with the rain, meant it was an impossible endeavor.

Still the stubborn Summoner meant to try; already she’d taken on a more confident posture.

This was the Nala he’d longed to see. In a lay she was considerate but demanding. Until now, Idrus never understood how much he enjoyed that side of her.

In the roost Nala felt uneasy. In the roost Nala felt in the way. In the roost Nala feared discovery of her tail. Here in the wild she had no one’s judgment to worry her.

Their posture stayed fixed, even as Nala held the hand in place on her shoulder.

Visions of returning without Nala came and went. Sometimes Idrus thought to leave the babes with her. Other times he thought...to stay. And he would have to see about the babes. Should he honestly do away with them, it was best to do so before they had awoken and looked him in the eyes.

Idrus brought his left hand up, cupping Nala’s cheek. The Summoner leaned into it.

“My king...I will miss you with everything in me.” She looked down the slope to the sloth. “The rain has stopped. Perhaps yours gods are pleased.”

“We have no gods,” Idrus told her. “The land feeds us; the land shelters us. We feed each other. We shelter each other. The gods are we.” He wrapped his left arm around Nala’s waist; it had no armor so it would not pierce the Summoner’s skin as the right would. Now was the first time Lryus was thankful for the damage to his arm. Should the argument become heated, his spikes wouldn’t extend. “Nala,” he said. He couldn’t remember ever saying that name alone. “Think of what you say. I’ve risked injury to the new king in my careless efforts to prove to you that we are the ones who rule ourselves. We excel ourselves and we damn ourselves. And you are asking for only that.” He waved his right hand, gesturing to the soft dirt as far as they could see. “It will be seasons before your farm shows some yield. How will you survive?”

Nala gave no answer.

Idrus hated seeing her this defeated. She looked as though she hadn’t realized the work ahead of her. As she was a farmer by trade, she must have known—far more than even a hunting Leveler.

“So return with me,” Idrus pleaded. “With the storms gone, all will be calm. The queen can travel safely as she is now. All will be calm, please. She’s refusing to accept this but she must. The babes’ temperament will change and she can nurse them. Perhaps I hadn’t put out a strong enough effort. I let my temper lead me and not my head.”

Body tensed, Nala stared at the malleable dirt beneath her claws.

“Na’am...” Idrus began again, unwilling to use any other title. “My Na’am...please....”

“And what of the king?” Nala looked back at him. “What of the chrysalis below?”

Thoughts racing, Idrus tried to assure her. “I will change. I will behave properly. Sessel had good advice. I will take another to my nest and ease the pressure from your body if that’s what worries you. I’ve become fixated, it’s true—”

Nala stood. “I don’t want you to have another but me! I don’t want to share you with another. And would you have me sleep on the other side of you while I must listen to you romp with their fully-formed bodies until you pity me enough to crawl on top of me as well?”

Stunned into silence, Idrus watched her.

The days leading to now had been tiring, and they’d been hell for Nala—Idrus could see that now. But returning to the proper way was best.

“It’s is naught but a trivial lay, Na’am. You are my selected. You are my favored and what would it matter if another came to my bed of moss for a time? I would return to you in the end. Don’t you see that?”

Nala turned her back to him. She muttered, “Someone will take you. Someone whole....”

Idrus balled his left hand into a fist for fear of what his right might do.

“Curse this tail! Curse you and curse your cowardice!” As the spikes extended from his exoskeleton, Idrus stood from the stone to give Nala room. Today was the first time he feared he might box this Summoner in the face. “What do you take me for? Blast you, Summoner! Is fear all that you know? What hangs between my legs is not the very thing that defines me and what hangs from your back is not what embodies you!”

Crossing her arms as her skin dulled, Nala said, “I will not return with you, my king. And your queen does not want the babes. You’ve made them with my help. The way I did it was wrong. It was strange, and twisted and uncommon and I will take them with me. It will be good to have the extra hands to run the land. And we can stay there; the strong one with the short tail, the whole one with the weak movements. All three of your unsightly mistakes and be better for it.”

Without another word, Nala made her way down the slope.

Each breath Idrus took tasted stale. He blamed his drying skin on the sun and not his upset. A second later, he sneezed.

“Na’am,” he choked. “Foolish Summoner. At least take out my hearts from my chest before you decide to crush them.”

The clouds rolled in and he looked up at them.

“What am I to do with them all? I have two kings instead of one, and a contrary Na’am who I must constantly prove my favor to. I do not think even a king is powerful enough to endure this.”

Finally, instead of staring up at the miserable heavens, he stared down the hill at his miserable Summoner. Even now Nala seemed anew. She moved well. Strong. All the atrophy of the time in the roost all but faded. This freedom was her rebirth.

Letting out a sigh, Idrus made his way down. His left hand on Nala’s back, he said, “Come Na’am. I shall see you safely home before I return.”

Fiddling with the harness, Nala took her time answering until she said, “Will you still come to see me now and again?”

For that, Idrus had no answer. With Nala gone, Citel would no doubt return with a desire to breed. Especially once Idrus’s arm healed.

The pain he felt within him compared to nothing he’d ever felt before. It was best to forget its source, to forget this Summoner.

“I will see you safely home,” Idrus said again. “That is all I can do.”

Nala glanced at him before mounting the beast. “Good, because I do not wish for you to come.” Her further complaints faded when the sloth sat.

They were both surprised. It took a moment more for Idrus to realize that the sinking feeling he felt pulling him inside out wasn’t just an extension of his sorrow.

The sloth took one step, disrupting the loose soil even more.

“Dismount, Na’am!” Idrus cried. “Get off it now!”

Idrus hurried to the harness and unhooked the first chrysalis.

Nala refused to get down. “Easy now, Betty. Maybe you can walk out...” she urged the animal forward but the next step made both front legs submerge.

One chrysalis in hand, Idrus drudged around to the other side and tried unsuccessfully to get the second one.

“I cannot one-handed!”

Nala unloosened it for him just as the sloth’s backside drooped lower.

“No...no, you’re the last one.” Nala leaned closer, cooing by the long, floppy ear. “You’re the last thing I’ll have from him. You must remain. Come. Let’s us walk out together.”

Both chrysalises in hand, Idrus stomped through the muck until he reached a stone he could climb on.

In the dirt, Nala and the sloth were moving slowly but they were in motion. With enough time, they could perhaps escape the loose dirt.

Idrus looked down at the babes and regretted the order which he’d taken them. The one in his right hand was light, but the heavier, no doubt the fat one, in his left was a strain. He held on, however, his eyes focused only on Nala who kept petting and soothing the sloth in its laborious journey.

“Perhaps this god you’re so fond of praying to is hearing you today, Na’am,” Idrus said.

One drop fell before him. Another on his right.

He looked up as the clouds rolled in and the rain began.

“Easy,” Nala said but worry was written on her face. She was losing the long battle.

Idrus should have told her to come down, to let the animal sink to its death but deep down he wanted it saved.

It would help Nala in the fields. He might be all Nala would have to talk to when the calmer days returned.

This would be all they’d have together.

Nala’s suggestion to keep the babes was madness. Leveler kings could and would eat anything in their way. The fear that Nala would fall asleep beside the chrysalis and the fatter one would bite her in the throat wasn’t farfetched.

No. This sloth had to live. Idrus looked around for a safe place to put the chrysalises—he’d help Nala by pushing the thing out if he had to.

“Come, you bastard!” Nala exclaimed. “Come! Walk!”

Idrus’s search came up empty. He looked back at Nala again, shocked to see her waist deep in the mud, pulling on the reins with all her might.

Nala froze and in the blink of an eye she was swallowed by the ground.

“Na’am....” Idrus gasped. “Na’am?”

The sloth was the next to go.

Rain thundered down on Idrus. He made a hard choice and climbed up as high as he could. The wet soil wouldn’t keep for long but he propped the chrysalises by a large rock and ran.

Jumping head first was foolish but he did just that, sinking easily into the dirt.

Idrus’ useless left hand hampered his speed. In the black everything stopped.

He could go back up. Swimming in muck was all right in this stage but he couldn’t stay for long. And then he thought of Nala and realized, he didn’t want to go back.

If this was where Nala met her end, he wanted nothing more than to rest there with her. Earthers had a single god, Levelers had none.

Now he decided to call out to the one being that he’d come to die for.

Nala.... You foolish Summoner.

Something caught Idrus’s left hand. He mistook it for a branch or dirt until it squeezed him.

Nala!

He grabbed at it, too, resolving to use his right to dig himself out. The journey to the surface was a fast one and he broke through gasping.

His body filthy and heavy, he swam on. Even when he dragged himself up on the rocks, he didn’t allow his body rest.

Nala came out shortly after, the sloth’s reins stubbornly in her fist.

Idrus took one look at the reins and shook his head. Instead of telling her to throw it away as was his better judgment, he took hold with his right and pulled with all his power.

The sloth didn’t move once it reached the stones with them.

Together they waited.

It cried out once then took sharp breaths.

“It lives,” Nala said, a proud smile in place.

Idrus wasn’t quite as pleased. “Foolish Summoner.... Don’t you know my only gift to you is my favor.”

Nala looked up at him from beneath her matted silver hair. “Thank you, Mana....”

“You call me Mana again,” Idrus observed.

“Yes. I will admit to those feelings at least,” Nala said.

Dragging her close by her left hand, Idrus leaned close until their foreheads met.

“Foolish Summoner. Even a king’s hearts cannot best you.”

They gave the beast a moment to calm.

Nala looked around. “Where are the babes?”

“Up high,” Idrus said. “I found a good perch. Let me get them—”

“No. I will go,” Nala insisted. “You wait here and rest.”

As Nala scaled the stones, Idrus crouched down and rubbed the sloth’s flithy gray fur.

“Good that you live,” Idrus said. “Nala needs help on that blasted farm.”

“Mana! Mana!”

Looking up at Nala’s frame, Idrus waited.

The Summoner said nothing, so he scaled the rocks and hurried up. He looked over Nala’s shoulder expecting something awful, but the chrysalis was good and steady.

Nala stared down toward the river.

It was then that Idrus noticed what the matter was. “Where is the second one?” he asked.