by Daryl Banner
When his eyes come to focus, he finds the giant cat sitting right next to him.
Rone jerks away the next instant, terrified, and slams his back into a tree. The beast is on her feet and backs away just as fast, her bright, golden eyes wide and wary.
The two square off, staring at one another.
Rone quickly checks his body to be sure, then jerks his alarmed eyes back up to hers. “Y-You didn’t eat me.”
The beast only stares cautiously his way.
Rone glances down at his shirt and discovers anew the purple juice that stains his whole front. He looks back up at the beast, who has taken a moment to stare sourly at the stain herself.
And then Rone puts two and two together. “You’ve eaten of this fruit before. It treated you just as poorly, and now … now you dislike it very much. It scares you.”
The beast doesn’t respond. She only continues to stare, her tail dancing anxiously behind her.
Rone nods slowly, comprehending. “Very well,” he decides. “It seems that while I’m drenched in this poisonous stuff, I’m safe from your teeth.” He considers the other pieces of fruit that have fallen to the ground. “Is it poison? Or … does it just knock me out? How long was I out?” he asks the giant cat suddenly, then shakes his head. “Sorry. Foolish. You’ll have to forgive me. I’ve been out here alone for quite a while.”
Her golden eyes look sad suddenly.
Or perhaps it’s just Rone perceiving them that way.
“You’re alone, too,” he decides. “And you’re very hungry. Just as I am. Yes.” He nods, deciding something. “We need to find ourselves some food. We need to stick together. We deserve to live, don’t we?”
To that, the beast suddenly seems to lose all interest in him, and the purple creature folds her ears and turns away, then trots into the foliage, leaving him.
Rone frowns as she goes, but he doesn’t stop her. How can he possibly stop a force of nature such as her?
Just like that, he is alone again.
And I didn’t even properly name her.
Figuring his shirt to be ruined, Rone takes the effort to pull the rest of it off of him. It’s so tight, as well as wet and sticky from the fruit, that he ends up having to tear half of it off of him before the rest slides off his arm at the sleeve. The shards of metal that make up his glowing necklace rest cold on his chest now. He folds the ripped shirt into something of a pouch, then ties the sleeves together to create a handle. Inside his makeshift cotton sack, he then tosses the remaining fruit from off the ground. No telling if I can’t figure a way to make this edible through fire or distilling it, he reasons, then continues his way deeper into the woods.
Regardless of the effect the fruit had on him, just that one big bite he took was enough to invigorate him greatly. He moves much quicker now, eyes wide open, determined to find a decent source of food. Perhaps a less poisonous fruit might suffice. Or an edible stalk or leaf-root plant. He isn’t too Greens smart, admittedly, but studied enough in school to identify a few safe-to-eat plants. Also, he does happen to be a boy from the ninth, just as known as the eighth and seventh and sixth for their close relationship with the Greens.
Out here, however, he struggles to identify a damned thing. He plucks something from a nearby tree and gives it a sniff, then chews at the end of it, wrinkles his face, and discards the inedible plant. He tries this several times in pursuit of anything he can eat. Nothing tastes good. Nothing chews right. After his experience with the fruit, he worries he might poison himself more permanently. And he can’t exactly phase himself through a poisoning, as far as he knows.
He spends too much time staring down at the fruit in his bag with resentment. If only he could eat it and spend another hour or two passed out from its effects, he would be made quite happy. But even presuming the effects of the fruit aren’t deadly over time, he can’t risk that some other creature of the woods would be less daunted by eating a fruit-covered specimen such as Rone, seeing the fruit less as a poison and more as a tasty marinade.
Rone isn’t willing to bet his life on such a circumstance.
That was one very intelligent beast, and it will only take one dumb one to end my life.
Night falls. The forest around him becomes lit only by the blue-white glow from his chest. With his visibility limited, he sits under a tree and waits for the night to pass as he weighs his options. He even pulls out another chunk of fruit and considers whether sucking some of the juice—as opposed to eating a whole chunk of it—might be okay to do. Regardless, he can’t quite bring himself to take just a lick.
He hears a howl in the distance that turns his blood to ice.
That is not my Sweet Girl.
The howl is followed by another. And then another. And then yet another—all from different directions. Rone’s eyes search the dark, terrified. His ears drink in the unmistakable sounds of heavy paws—several sets of them—racing across the forest floor. There is a ferocious, vocal growl accompanied with the snapping of teeth.
Then he hears his beast.
She’s in trouble.
Rone is on his feet at once, his t-shirt bag in one hand, his knife drawn in the other. There is no way he can know for sure, but his instinct is significantly sharper in the darkness, as his time in the cave taught him, and he is nothing without blindly trusting it.
Quickly, he darts between the trees, nearly ignoring the pang of agony with his every other step when his bad foot takes his weight. He hurries toward the sound.
At once, the noises stop.
Rone stops, too, alarmed, listening, eyes wide open.
The next instant, a hairy, grey animal leaps at him with jaws parted and wet teeth bared.
Without even meaning to, Rone’s dagger is in front of him, and the throat of the animal falls into his blade before its jaws reach him. One sick, squeaky yelp issues from the animal—something between a dog and a frightening creature of his worst nightmares—before it drops to the ground, silent and still, taking his dagger with it.
Rone lifts his eyes, shaking, to observe his surroundings. Five other sets of animal eyes meet his, wet and glistening in the subtle, pale light emitting from Rone’s chest. Just as quickly as Rone found them, all the eyes vanish as the sounds of padding paws dissipate into the darkness, then gone completely.
Rone stares down at his feet. The animal died quickly, though he can’t with any confidence say whether it died painlessly.
Then another creature comes forth from the darkness.
Rone looks up to find her standing there, her golden, knowing eyes upon him.
It only now occurs to him that he’s no longer wearing the shirt. The stains on that shirt were the only thing keeping me from being eaten by her. She might have lost all her loyalty—if it can be called that at all—and is reconsidering whether to make a feast out of him.
The next instant, the giant cat drops her gaze down to the dead animal at his feet. She licks her lips and snaps her jaws once.
Comprehension—and great relief—dawns on him. “Yes. Yes. Of course.” Rone pulls his dagger from the animal’s neck, then steps away. “Go ahead. Go right ahead. It’s all yours to—”
She doesn’t wait for him to finish his sentence, which she likely can’t understand anyway. The beast descends upon the animal with the desperation of one who has not eaten in days. She chomps upon the animal’s neck first, ripping away the skin and sinking her teeth—now blood red and dusted in animal hair—into the tender parts.
Rone watches in envy. He so wishes he had a way to enjoy the meat of that animal in the way his new feline friend is doing so. All I need is a great big oven, he reasons. I’ve the knife to skin the creature and cut a chunk of meat here and there. Rone salivates as he watches the feline feast away, dreaming of a thousand juicy, seasoned steaks.
And she is not abashed in the least by his presence. She doesn’t acknowledge him at all, in fact, as she indulges herself.
After a moment of wonder, watching, sudd
enly an idea occurs to him. He brings his knife up to one of the metal shards hanging around his neck and, after a moment’s hesitation, lets the blade drag along its edge. Nothing. He tries again, this time holding the shard firmly so as to create a better base for friction.
Then: sparks.
The feline looks up at once, her eating halted.
Rone smiles at her. “No worries, Sweet Girl. I’ve only just found a way to enjoy a bit of this animal myself.” He considers her. “Well, provided you’re generous enough to leave me a small portion.”
She studies him dubiously for two seconds more, then returns to her feast as if she was never interrupted.
Rone smirks, then crouches down and searches the forest floor for something dry. He gathers up a pile—with mild difficulty—of dry sticks, twigs, and leaves. The nature of natural fire was a thing he always found interesting, especially being next to the ward known for its flames and forges and metalwork, so he has at least a pinch of confidence as he gets to work scraping more sparks from his Lifted shards using the sharp edge of his dagger.
Many times, the twigs or leaves smoke under the kiss of sparks, but quickly fizzles out. The rain has long since gone away, but perhaps there is still too much wetness in the air. He tries again seven more times after gathering even more dry items with which he can burn. He even tears off loose threads and bits from his shirt and jeans to add to his pile.
The next time he makes smoke from spark, it turns into fire.
The feline backs away from her feast, her eyes aglow with the view of Rone’s fire. He picks up another stick and pokes at it, then feeds the orange, white, and yellow tongues with whatever he can to keep it alive. The feline watches, eyes wide and unblinking. Rone wonders if she has ever seen fire before.
“May I?” he asks rather politely, pointing his dagger at a leg of the animal.
The beast doesn’t move.
Rone, figuring himself to remain on the safe side, phases all of himself but his one dagger-wielding hand, the dagger itself, and his feet. He brings the dagger to the animal’s grey, hairy leg.
The beast lets out one warning hiss.
“Now, now, Sweet Girl,” Rone says at once as he begins to cut. “You must learn to share if we’re going to be friends.”
Ignoring her threatening hisses and licking and snapping of her bloodied jaws, Rone continues to saw off just one measly leg of the animal. It’s no easy effort and it takes a lot longer than Rone was counting on.
In time, the leg breaks free. Rone takes it to his flame a few paces away, then gets to work cutting away the skin. The beast, after a moment of gazing at him with mild curiosity, then gives up her territorial claim and approaches the carcass, resuming her feast.
Once all the skin and hair is pulled away, Rone then lays the leg of meat directly on the fire. He watches it with wide, eager eyes as the fire licks and cracks and spits around the meat. The leg is rather thick, which makes him worry that he’ll need to cook it for a longer time than he’s willing to wait.
After a while, Rone finally uses sticks to draw the leg from the fire, wincing as his fingers for a second get too close to the flames. The leg sits upon a bed of leaves as it cools, its outside black as coal. I hope I didn’t char the damn thing to its core. But once he risks sinking his teeth into the meat, he finds it is cooked perfectly despite the bitter, burnt taste upon its outside.
Or perhaps he is so fucking starved, anything would taste like a Lifted delicacy right now.
It’s now that he gives another glance over at the beast. She has either eaten her fill, or has paused to observe Rone’s curious, human actions. Sweet Girl, he considers, mulling over the name. Your fur is purple, like lavender, but of a deeper hue. Perhaps I ought to name you Ambera after the former Royal Legacist, the one the Mad King killed.
“Ambera, Sweet Girl,” he murmurs out loud, trying the name. “Aye, how do you like that one? Ambera? Yes …? No …?”
One of the beast’s ears twitches with irritation, which may be both a sign of her dismissal of the name or her acceptance of it.
That’s when he notices it. “Your ear.” His eyes shrink with pity. “They got to you. Those mad dogs. One took off with your other ear. Those … Those toothy fuckers.”
The beast either doesn’t notice her missing ear or pays the sting of its loss no mind. For all Rone knows, the beast may have the ability to grow back her missing parts. He’s heard of lizards and bugs and other creatures able to do that very thing.
“Ear … Ear-y. Eerie.” Rone chuckles. “Can I call you Eerie? It is not meant as an insult. Really, at times, we are all eerie. I was rather eerie as fuck in that dark cave for however long.” Rone takes a big, hearty bite of his meat. His eyes roll back with delight. This is the best thing I have ever tasted. “I’ll not finish this enormous thing for days. I could eat it for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and middle-night meal.”
The beast’s one remaining ear twitches again, and then she rests her head upon her paws and closes her great, golden eyes.
Rone watches her, chewing merrily, then lets on a smile.
And for this tender moment on this curious night, the pair of them are one and the same, just as Rone felt the first moment they encountered each other in the wild. We really are kin.
Hours turn into many more days. Many more days turn into weeks, and the weeks give away to months spent in the wilds of the forests and the tall grasses and the occasional clearings of hot sands between them.
The pair of them never separate. Even without the stain of juice upon his body, Eerie does not attack him. She knows we are in this as one, Rone tells himself. She knows I am for her betterment, and I know she is for mine.
It’s in the forests that he finds a cool spring of fresh water that seems to bubble right out of the ground, so clean that he can see his reflection. Eerie and Rone drink from that spring with the company of birds and tiny animals—a squirrel or two, a family of rabbits.
One day, Eerie tackles and makes a meal out of a small animal. To Rone’s surprise, Eerie only eats half of it, then backs away with a half-lidded glower on her face, as if knowing it’s best for her to leave some for Rone, but not being too happy about it.
Rone smiles. “If I could safely pet your sweet head and not risk having my hand become your next snack, I would. I may try it someday anyway.” He takes the legs of the animal, daggers them off, and cooks them over a fire. He splits each of the legs open this time and spreads them out so they cook more evenly and burn less.
Another day, Rone chases fish like a fool in the spring. After several vain attempts, he decides to watch how other animals do it, including Eerie herself, who simply tracks one with her eyes, then leaps into the water with the speed of a lightning bolt. She eats the fish whole, the morsel that it is to her.
Weeks later, Rone catches his very first fish. It was an easy catch, admittedly, as the fish found itself cornered between a rock and the shallows. Rone discovers that, while he enjoys the taste, he very much dislikes picking scales and spindly bones from his teeth. After eating only half the fish, he tosses the rest of it to an eagerly-waiting Eerie, who pounces upon and finishes it in two quick bites.
It’s one evening when the sun is nearly set that Rone and his new best feline friend stop in a clearing and observe something in the distance—something Rone thought he saw a month ago, but until now had not seen so clearly.
The Wall.
“My dear friend Eerie,” he begins, pointing into the distance. “That is my home. That is where I am from. And I know that when I return, no one will believe from where I came.” He observes her. “I wonder if I ought to call you Oblivion. Goodness, if I keep changing your name, you’ll never know what to answer to.” He laughs at himself, which startles Eerie for a second. “Sorry. I must be quite scary. It’s the beard, isn’t it? I’ve never had one my whole life.”
Indeed, the time has sprung about a lot of dark hair on Rone’s normally shaven head and face. He takes a day to
bend over his own reflection in the spring and, ever carefully, moves his dagger over his beard, giving himself a trim. It isn’t the easiest task to accomplish with nothing to slicken his blade but the spring water. His beard is left half-shaven and half in patches. He nicks himself in two places along his chin and neck. His hair is an entirely different narrative of choppy areas, short near the ears, sliced unevenly across the top, and then a guesswork of cuts made to the back where he cannot see.
No matter the outcome, the simple act of grooming his own hair makes him feel more human than he’s felt in months.
Counting the days isn’t an easy thing to keep up with out here, and before long, Rone doesn’t care to anymore. He keeps making trips to the clearing, with or without Eerie, to observe the state of Atlas from afar. He doesn’t imagine he would be able to observe anything from this distance short of a massive explosion.
The only solace he truly knows is that the Mad King is dead, and he is dead by Rone’s own hand. I did Atlas one last service before being banished from it entirely.
And in that sole, irrefutable fact, Rone Tinpassage enjoys a deep sense of accomplishment.
It would be approximately six months after his fall through the floor of Sanctum that both Rone and Eerie would be met with a chance at redeeming their various losses.
Much like the day Rone and Eerie first met, grey covers the tops of their heads like a wool blanket, and then down upon them falls a storm of rain and growling thunder.
Eerie’s tail swishes back and forth with great anticipation. She always gets worked up during the storms, Rone knows, but something is different about her this time. Her golden eyes are focused, darting back and forth between the trees. Her claws are out. Now and then, she bares her teeth, as if ready at any moment to pounce upon an invisible enemy.
Then, with no warning, she charges into the unknown.
“Eerie?” Rone calls out into the storm. She doesn’t stop, racing onward through the trees and the thick, dancing foliage under the wind and the rain. “Eerie!”