by Loki Renard
I was born out of darkness and now I prepare to return to it. I find myself anticipating the peace which might come without the burdens of existence. Soon I shall sing and dance with the ancestors who wait to embrace me, their hand prints forming a welcoming fan above me, reaching toward me. If only I could reach back, we might touch, and this would be over.
Vulcan
I follow the sound coming through the cave channels, a soft, mournful, rasping whimper. It sounds like a wounded animal, something which needs to be put out of its misery. I am hungry, so perhaps we might help each other out, me and this wounded animal which will no doubt be in possession of precious fats, proteins, and amino acids.
I am not that hungry. Scythkin do not need to eat as often as humans and other creatures on this planet who begin to suffer after a matter of days. But I am bored, and I do like to hunt. A few missing small creatures should not overly affect the timeline, and if it is dying anyway then there is no harm in turning it into food.
As I get closer, I become more certain that this is a dying animal. There is a sound which only emerges from the terminally wounded and without help. Those who are hurt and calling for help have a desperate edge to their tone, a volume and a will to survive. But the whimpers I hear now are so soft they barely count as sounds. These are not intended to communicate anything, they are just the escaping whimpers of a voice soon to be heard no more.
I turn a corner in the winding tunnel and I stop, not sure of what I am seeing.
There is a plank of wood propped up on two rocks, and there is a body on it. A female with a flash of fiery hair. I growl in recognition. This is the woman of the song, the one who enchanted me across the fields and made me feel for a moment as though I was not so far away from home.
What have they done to her?
There is so much rope, and it is tied so tightly she cannot move so much as a finger. She has been restrained and left alone in this cave which routinely fills with gases toxic to humans, but that is not the worst of her predicament. If anything, the gas would be a mercy. They have left her without food or water. They have left her to die.
I immediately forget everything Krave said to me about not interfering in the timeline. I will not allow this precious creature to die this brutal death. I run to her to find that she has not just been tied up. She was stripped first, and beaten, her body covered in bruises. They have painted over the bruises, but hidden nothing. The same hands which pressed themselves to the cave’s roof have been laid over her body. It looks as though she was carried up by these painted savage people who understand just enough of humanity to be inhumane.
Slashing through her bonds, I lift her from the soiled plank. I look around, but I cannot see any soft place to sit her down. She curls up, her limbs finally free to take the position every human takes inside the womb, her arms and legs curled against the cruel world.
I have never comforted anybody, but I find myself making soft crooning sounds. They are not as calming or as beautiful as her song, but they are all I can give her. She is just so small and so vulnerable. She should be cherished and protected, but these animals who call themselves human have done their best to destroy her.
Guilt runs heavy through my veins. I should have kept watch over her. Instead I removed myself from the village, thinking I was putting the people there in danger, unable to trust myself to stay away from her.
She is trembling in my arms, and I am growing more and more furious by the minute. I’ve never wanted to save anyone for any reason. I’ve never wanted to be a hero - but she makes me need to be one. This tender, delicate little human has been treated worse than I would treat my worst enemy, and for no reason I can see other than the fact that she is different from the others.
She is not even that different. It is not as though she has an extra head, or her legs are made of fire. She is a red headed beauty who likes to sing. She should be celebrated, but instead she has been demonized. I wish they could meet me, a real demon, and try to put their painted hands on me. I would rip them off and feed them back to them. This cave would be painted with their entrails, not their hands.
Humans are scum. I never liked them as a species. No matter how much my kind may worship them, I see the worst aspects of scythkin in humans. They have none of our strength, and all of our avarice. They breed as we breed, without regard for the land around them, and they destroy all life in their path. They cannot appreciate beauty, not really. They think they do, but the moment they sense it, the seek to defile and destroy it.
She is the most beautiful among them. She is pure of spirit. Even I can see that. But she was outcast before this happened to her, and now she has been thoroughly broken. I cut through the bonds that hold her, but do I know what to do next? How can I tend a human?
Water.
All things need water. She is dry. So dry that she cannot make any sound other than a soft rasping rattle. Her gaze focuses on my face, but only for a moment. I do not have time to revel in hatred. She needs me to take care of her.
Leaving her in the cave, I run down the slope toward the spring which bubbles from the lower reaches. Reaching the spring, I realize that I have no vessel for the water. I have to run back to the girl and see if there is anything in the cave which might be of use. Seeing her lying there, so still and frail as I take a skull from the piles of bones lining the walls, and rush down to the flow makes me want to rampage through the village and slay every human in it in revenge. But I cannot hurt these humans. They might be important in some way I cannot understand.
The skull in my hand reminds me of their frailty. A human mind once occupied this hollowed bone, but now it is empty. I am holding a whole world of experience snuffed out and turned to dust by the passage of time. I wonder what sin this person committed. Did they sing? Dance? Did they dare to argue with the authority of their chief? It doesn’t matter anymore. Though I seem to stand near the beginning of human history, I am still too late to discover an innocent species. This kind devour their own for the smallest of infractions, and yet find forgiveness for the worst of crimes.
I scoop the crystal clear fluid flowing from the earth into the empty skull and carry it quickly back to the girl. She has not moved from the place I put her on the ground. I wish there was somewhere comfortable to lay her, but there is no comfort in this cave of death. There is only the harsh, ashen ground and the remains of other humans since departed.
Propping her up in my lap, I trickle some of the water between her dusty lips. It runs out of her mouth before she swallows reflexively, taking some of that life sustaining liquid down. Humans, like the rest of the life on this planet, are descended from water bound organisms which multiplied until they were able to crawl out of the primordial soup, into which little sparks of consciousness had been slung. The way she looks at this moment, I’m fairly certain she considers that to have been a mistake.
Over the next hours, I restore water to her body slowly and carefully, allowing her to rest. I have never regretted my aggressive physiology until now. I want to be soft for her, but I am just as hard and unyielding as the rest of this cave, possibly more so.
She makes sounds, not her enchanting song, but whimpers and grunts and little incoherent murmurs of pain. I wonder if I did her a favor by rescuing her, or if the sharp edge of my blade might have been kinder. Humans seem born to suffer. They have so few means of avoiding it. Most of them are unable to function for very long outside their social group, and those groups can only exist when they can define an in-group and an out-group. When there are no enemies who can be attacked, the humans inevitably find someone within their own group to play the role - and very rarely is it someone who deserves the accusation. The greatest predators are shielded, while their victims take the blame. Theirs is an inherently corrupt and contemptible species, and I am eager to be taken away from this planet as soon as possible.
The girl stirs in my arms and opens her eyes. They had been closed for a time, the only motion of her body th
at soft swallowing of precious water. When I meet her gaze, I forget about how much I hate humans. The anger and loathing is swept away by the need to care for this one.
She and I are both marooned, but I have the luxury of knowing my tribe is coming for me, while hers has brutally rejected her. She has nobody to take care of her. Nobody to hunt for her. She needs to be part of a group.
“No…” she moans. “Not for me.”
I don’t know what to say, so I say nothing. You’re welcome would be the typical human response when you’ve saved someone’s life, but it doesn’t feel right coming from my lips. What is not for her? Water? Air? Life?
Tres
“Drink,” he says, those eyes burning into mine.
I did not expect to be rescued. I did not think that this creature was real enough to rescue me. I had decided he was nothing more than a figment of my imagination, one of the many day dreams I allowed myself to indulge in which became a little too real one afternoon and led to disaster.
I may still be dreaming now, but the water is real, as is the freedom I have from my ropes. He has taken me from the starving board and he has given me a chance at life.
His face is harsh, and his expression is difficult to read, but I think I see anger in the tension of his jaw, the way the serrated ridges of his brow draw down between the sips he is helping me take. My time to die has come, but my body craves water more strongly than my spirit craves the afterlife.
Every sip I take is blasphemy. Hyrrm cannot claim me while my heart still beats. But I cling to life, like an ant clinging to a leaf floating downstream, and this beast I mated with makes sure that I take a little at a time before laying me back and denying me any more.
“You will be sick,” he says. “I will give you more soon.”
“Who are you?”
He does not answer the question. Instead, he crouches above me, gruff and ferocious, staring out the mouth of the cave with so much fierce intensity I feel sorry for any living thing which catches his molten gaze.
After a small eternity of silence, he lifts my head in his large, clawed hand, and tips a little more skull water between my lips.
“Why was this done to you?” He answers my question with one of his own.
“I was supposed to be given to Hyrrm, but…” I hesitate. “But they saw me with you, and Trelok said I was not worthy. He said I would die here in the starving cave and go to the damned ancestors.”
The beast looks at me, his serrated brow furrowing. “Nothing you have said makes any sense.”
“I am sorry,” I whimper. “It was a punishment.”
“Because you were promised to another man?”
“Because I was promised to Hyrrm. The mountain.”
The beast grunts. “How is a human female promised to a mountain?”
“I would have been sent to him this morning.”
“Sent. How?”
“I would have flown on unseen wings down into the crater and been embraced by his molten arms.”
He digests my words, then spits them out in a much less spiritual statement. “You would have been pushed into a volcano.”
“It is what I was born for. I was destined to be sacrifice. From the moment they pulled me from my dead mother’s womb, I have been prepared to be his. But what I did with you… it made me unworthy. You defiled me.”
“So this is my fault?”
I immediately feel the pang of ingratitude, but he doesn't understand. “You didn’t save me by untying me,” I say. “You just angered Hyrrm. He will claim me in the end.”
“You think a mountain is going to claim you.”
“I don’t think that. I believe it.”
“Then you are a very soft brained little meat machine.”
I draw in a sobbing breath and push the chalice of water away. The clarity of dying has been replaced by the confusion of living. I only know one thing about myself: that I was born for Hyrrm. If that is not true, then nothing is true.
Curling up on myself, I close my eyes and wait for the end to claim me.
“What are you doing, human?” His voice is rough, judgmental, as cutting as the sharp blades which cover his unnatural form.
“Dying.”
“You’re not going to die,” he rumbles above me. I feel his big hands on me, so much larger than any human male’s hands, and with so much more power behind them. He lifts me up and tries to unfold me, but I resist.
“Stop hiding, human,” he growls.
“My name is Tres. I’m not hiding. I’m dying. Like I am supposed to.”
A harsh bark of laughter surprises me. “I have not been on this planet long, Tres, but I already know there are few, if any humans at all with your life force. You are not dying. Not for a very long time.”
I turn my head and look at him through the messy red curtain of my hair. “Why? Why do you care if I live or if I die?”
“I mated you,” he says. “You are mine. And I do not allow what is mine to die.”
“You allowed what was yours to be tied up and left to starve.”
He shifts uncomfortably, an action which I find almost eerily human. “I didn’t know they were going to do that do you.”
“Who are you? What are you?” I repeat the question, my confusion growing. I know there are many things on this land I am yet to see. There are spirits and monsters and all manner of living things which remain hidden to human eyes, but this massive beast does not seem comfortable here. He seems… alien.
Again, he does not answer me. He doesn’t want to talk about himself, but he has to explain what is happening, why he took an interest in me. Why he had to ruin my death.
“You said I am yours. Who are you? Who do I belong to?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“What?”
“Let us not speak. Words complicate things. Drink, human. You will live.”
I purse my lips and curl back into the ball from which I came, wishing I had never been born. My whole life I have only had the end to look forward to, and now this monster has taken that end from me too. I will not drink. I will not eat. I will not survive. I try holding my breath, but all that achieves is making me lightheaded.
Devastated, afraid, cold, and almost alone, I lie on the cave floor and wonder why I had to be cursed with so much sin. My birth was blasphemy, my life was forfeit and now my death is delayed. I could not feel more pity for myself if I tried. My spirit is shattered. Hyrrm would not want me, even if the monster had not claimed me first. I am worthless and broken.
“Stop hiding.”
His voice carries rough command with little sympathy.
I look at him and see those burning eyes searing into me.
“You will LIVE, little human,” he snarls. “You will survive this, and a thousand other terrible things, and your existence will be a triumph.”
“I’m dirt,” I whimper. “Let me go back to ground. Let my bones join back with the world.”
“I will not,” he says, tilting his head forward and looking down at me with an imperious, proud gaze. “You are mine. And you will live.”
I almost believe him. Then I feel the internal tremor of my heart, and I know that he does not understand me, or what I am. He does not know the weakness of my female body, the pointlessness of it. He does not understand that I was made to be used, as all women are, and that the only use I had is now gone.
Tears spring to my eyes. I’m now able to cry thanks to the water he made me drink. I thought I had already cried my last tears when they tied me down, but it seems there are always more tears in life, even when it seems to be over.
“Do not cry,” he growls. “You’re wasting water.”
“I’ll stop crying if you tell me what you are.”
He makes a snarling sound under his breath, but does not fall for my ruse.
When we sang together, I felt connected to him. But now we are close, touching, him tending me with more care than anyone has ever shown me before, and h
e will not say more than a few words to me.
There is something harsh and sad about him all at the same time. I search his face, trying to understand him, but I don't think he likes me looking at him, because he gets up and turns away from me, standing at the mouth of the cave where he is silhouetted against the light.
He could walk away right now, leave me. I am half-afraid he will. And half-afraid he will not. Either way, I know I am still dead. This is just a reprieve. Either Trelok will find me and slay me, or the elements will claim me, or this creature who seems to have handed me life in the skull of the dead will bring about my end. I can feel it in my bones. I have always known I was not made for this world.
I sit back, and I sip the water from the skull and I wait to find out which of the evils will befall me first. I’m not afraid, because fear is only useful when you are trying to live, and I have been so close to death that I have felt the veil between the worlds and I know there is nothing to fear, really. What lies beyond this world is much better than the brutal struggle for existence I endure every day. Even Trelok’s prized wives are forced to bear his babes and make his meals and forage and tend crops and avoid the rough lizards which swim the waters of the river, waiting to take the unwary.
“What is your name, human?”
The question startles me.
“Tres.”
“I am Vulcan,” he says, turning back to me. “And I should not be here. I should not have rescued you from your bonds. It was wrong for me to do that. You are not the only one who will be angry about it. But I could not help myself. You are mine.”
He says those words as if he is declaring it to the whole entire world, as if the declaration is a rebellion against an authority I am not familiar with.
We make a miserable couple, he and I, watching the light wane. I thought he would know what to do with me, would have a plan. But maybe that’s too much to expect. Maybe he’s given me all he can give me already just by cutting the ropes and bringing me water.