by M. O. McLeod
15.
Lineage
Both girls crouched naked in front of one another, trying to block out the wind with their bodies.
Kurma squinted at the redhead with her human eyes. The girl was rather pretty, with freckles, dirt smudges on her narrow nose, and thin, pink lips.
“What’s your name?” asked Kurma. “I’ve been calling you redhead for about an hour.”
“Rimselda, but everyone calls me Rimy.”
“Who is everyone? Do you have a family?”
“No, not a family. More like distant cousins.” Rimselda laughed uncomfortably. She didn’t have a family anymore since she’d run away from Dublin Estates. The family she had left back in the Estates was worse than her enemies. She had friends, though—friends who had looked out for her and who were probably wondering where she was at the moment.
“What’s your name?” she asked Kurma.
“Karmenia, but everyone calls me Kurma for short,” she said softly. “My brothers couldn’t pronounce my name when we were young, and it kind of stuck.” Kurma didn’t want to think about her baby brothers at the moment. “You’re probably wondering why you’re on a high-rise, naked and cold.”
Rimselda nodded her head and looked lost. She scanned the rooftop and remembered trying to make a run for the door, but then a monster had stopped her. It had talons for hands and a scaly face with a severe nose; its lips were bright orange as if painted on, and there were huge wings. She tried to shake the image off.
“Well, I don’t know how to tell you this,” Kurma started.
“Wait.” Rimselda repositioned herself. She felt she would need to be sitting for this.
Kurma continued. “I think I’m a rare species. In fact I’m the only one of my kind. I’m half human, half Raptor. I can hear things at great distances, I can smell things, I can see faraway objects clearly, and I can fly—probably the most important part of being a Raptor.”
Rimselda took in everything Kurma said, and it went in one ear and out the other.
“I’ve done an extraordinary thing for you, though at the moment it may come as a shock. In retrospect I’ve found it can be very lonesome at the top, and by some rare chance I have passed my lineage on to you,” Kurma lied. It hadn’t been by chance that she’d touched Rimselda but by accident; however, she didn’t think Rimselda needed to know that part. “I don’t know you, true, but I will get to know you, and you will get to know me. We can become like a team.” The last part was true: she did want a team, a friend who wouldn’t try to stab her in the back or have her own agenda, like Kurma’s friend Eliza had. The only person who had an agenda here was Kurma, and that was how she liked it.