“What for?”
“Ay, dios mio. If you haven’t figured that one out by now, I really don’t even--”
Lucia was cut off by Chaaya’s mouth on hers, swallowing the rest of her words.
In the time that had passed since her arrival, Lucia had begun to worry that she’d idealized Solas’ effect on her. She knew her perception had blurred in her shift to another body, her memories clouded by time and change. Perhaps she had misremembered the rewards of corporeality, holding tightly to the memories of Toivo and Demyan’s love affair to drive her onward in this new and uncertain life.
This was different; different, but also so achingly familiar that she felt the burn of teardrops behind her closed eyelids. Lucia felt like she was dreaming one of those frustrating, wonderful dreams of stars and water, of the warmth of bodies--the dreams where she would wake up confused to be alone. Kissing Solas now, the Shadow wrapped in a body of soft, sweeping curves and muscle like warm stone, she knew her memories had been faithful, after all.
Lucia was overwhelmed by the simple sensations of it--the tingling of her lower lip, caught lightly between Chaaya’s teeth; the soft press of their breasts through tactical fabric and cotton; the salty taste of skin. Chaaya’s tongue teased at the edges of her lips, and Lucia opened her mouth to admit it, her own tongue twining around Chaaya’s like the invisible vines of light and darkness that Lucia felt weaving through the tent.
Lucia toyed with the shadows, taking short flights into Chaaya’s mind, darting about in the darkness like a firebird. Every time, Chaaya’s body tensed, her kisses became more frantic, her fingers dug into the flesh of Lucia’s arms and back. There was a moan, a rustle of fabric, and Chaaya grabbed her wrists and pulled her down against the sleeping bag. The brief loss of balance shocked Lucia, and she opened her eyes momentarily, blinking at the bits and pieces of Chaaya’s body illuminated by the tumbling flashlight before Chaaya’s mouth was upon her once more. Lucia whimpered and pushed herself up against the chest crushed to her own.
Chaaya broke the kiss to laugh, low and almost inaudible, like all the versions that had come before. Lucia steadied herself, breathing hard, one hand clutching a fistful of Chaaya’s shirt and the other tangled in her thick hair. She stared into the stranger’s face, searching for all the little tells that revealed the presence of her beloved.
“You remember Kalevia? Kaija and Vesa? The lake?”
“Mostly.”
“You came to find me.”
“You told me not to forget.” Chaaya took hold of Lucia’s braid and ran it through her hands. She lay there for a time, clearly lost in thought, until Lucia grew restless and nipped at the base of her neck, and then they were kissing again, rolling over each other on the lumpy floor of the tent.
Lucia gave herself over to the dark void at the center of Chaaya, letting herself be pulled in by the hunger and sadness built up in their years apart. She flowed through Chaaya’s veins and drew deep breaths through Chaaya’s lungs, reassuring her that the world could not break either of them, no matter how hard it tried.
She watched the maidens as they crept single file through the jungle, wearing shadow-striped uniforms and rifles on their backs.
Lucia had forgotten how much their memories would bleed into each other when they did this. She wondered how much she had already shown Chaaya. Perhaps the woman already knew how Lucia had trained with the Anti-Narcotics Company, her isolation as one of a few women, her sickness at the corruption of the police and the brutish paramilitary squadrons with whom they shared an uneasy alliance. She didn’t want to explain all of it now, and instead returned to Chaaya’s memory--the girl soldiers with serious faces.
“Who were they?” she asked.
“We were tigers,” Chaaya said. “I trained them to hunt.”
“And you left them?”
“Zophiel, no.” Chaaya’s gaze was steady and emotionless, but Lucia could feel her heart still breaking. “They’re dead.”
“I’m sorry,” was all Lucia could say, meaning only I understand.
Chaaya looked away, her face barely hinting at bitterness. “There’s a ceasefire now; the separatists have stopped hostilities. My own brand of menace isn’t particularly needed at the moment.” She shrugged, her eyes focused on a point beyond Lucia’s shoulder, still caught on the memories of battle. “We were terrifying, Zophiel. So pure and young and cruel.”
Lucia rolled off of Chaaya as she felt the woman’s arousal fade. For a long moment, Chaaya lay with an arm thrown across her eyes.
“I should be used to this by now,” Chaaya muttered at last.
“I don’t think it ever gets easier.” Lucia stretched out, gradually easing her limbs around Chaaya until she was holding her gently--melding just enough to thaw the cold that had crept into their spirits. “What did that girl back in Kalevia say? ‘Life here will never be perfect. It will never be easy.’”
Lucia closed her eyes and nuzzled into Chaaya’s shoulder, content to just exist. She could hear the sound of Chaaya’s breath close by her ear, the insects and bird calls in the forest outside.
Lucia knew she had to fight again in a few hours--to live or die as a symbol of a conflict. Had she not become so familiar with the beauty that hid in the hearts of humans, she would have given them up as a lost cause and disappeared from the earth millennia ago.
We can’t kill them, but we make them kill each other. We all have that blood on our hands.
“Hush,” she said aloud to Chaaya. “It will be morning soon.”
If I lose you again...
“I’ll find my way back,” Lucia whispered. “We’ll always find each other. Promise.”
Chaaya’s arms tightened around her.
After a long stretch of quiet, Lucia asked, “Do you want to take a walk?”
Chaaya groaned. “I’ve been walking for three days. My blisters are still mending.”
“Just a little ways. I want to watch the sun come up.”
Whether it was the joy of reunion, or the acknowledgment that the proposal had the ring of a last request, Chaaya ceased to argue; she followed Lucia out of the tent and into the blue fog of the morning jungle. They walked in silence, any noise of their passage covered up by the cacophony in the treetops, the ground baking beneath their boots. Here and there indigo sky showed through the canopy, barely distinguishable from the dark leaves--but when Lucia saw a larger patch of sky ahead of them and heard the sound of running water, she grabbed hold of Chaaya’s arm.
“Wait. There’s a drop-off here.”
They picked their way carefully through the undergrowth--Chaaya let out a hiss as a large millipede glided across her hand--until they emerged onto a bare stretch of ground bordering a precipice. Lucia caught sight of the waterfall farther down the cliff face, a thin ribbon of white that tumbled down into the forest below. On her hike to the camp from the helicopter drop, Lucia had glimpsed it through the trees, and since then, the image had fixed in her head. She had come back to it often over the past few days; it soothed her, somehow.
Chaaya stood speechless for a minute before turning to Lucia with her old Solas smirk.
“Quite the view.”
“I wanted you to see it. I haven’t wanted to show you something this badly since before...” Lucia trailed off, but the memory hung heavily between them.
“We need to find out what they were,” Chaaya said, her expression dark. She didn’t have to add the agents who killed us.
“They were...different, weren’t they? Like us, but they felt driven by something else...” Lucia took a breath. “As if they were after some sort of reset.”
“It was uncalled for.”
Lucia frowned, her mind wandering back to the two black-clad figures bringing ruin to her snowy doorstep. There were always aspects of her own nature she didn’t understand, but now Lucia was starting to wonder if this was something she didn’t know, or something that could change with the world around them--a new paradigm.
&
nbsp; “They were a pair, Light and Shadow. They called themselves progress,” Lucia said quietly. “And they killed us, but not...”
“Each other,” Chaaya finished with a sigh. “They were working together.”
Lucia fell into silence for a moment. As she mulled over the implications, she watched the slight crease in Chaaya’s forehead slowly soften.
“Something to try to figure out, I guess.”
Lucia paused before beginning to speak, slowly thinking the words through as they left her mouth.
“I wonder if you’ve noticed how the world changes while you’re away. I know that every time I’ve died, I’ve had to readjust on my return--the subtle shifts, the new ways humans think and fight.” Lucia gripped her arms. “And this time, between Kalevia and now... I feel like maybe it’s not just war anymore, and there aren’t just isolated instances of an idea that fails or succeeds.”
Lucia spoke faster, gaining confidence as the idea began to gel in her mind. “I’ve seen it coming, Solas--seen it running in the communication lines that tie the world together. And you’re here, halfway across the world, the ties binding you to your mission weak but not broken. The Soviet dream may be no more, but here we are, decades later, born from its echoes.” She touched Chaaya’s arm. “Humans are changing...and so are we.”
Chaaya paused. “We’ve always changed with them,” she pointed out. “The specifics might be different, but not the core of it. Hope and fear are pretty universal.”
“But that’s exactly what I mean. Our nature will stay the same, but our specific form... Maybe we’ll transform ourselves, shifting without dying. Become something more.”
Chaaya let out a small, sharp laugh.
“You’re saying we might be harder to kill next time.”
“Maybe.” Lucia shrugged. “Maybe we try and see what we can do. What we can become.”
“‘The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it,’” Chaaya said.
“Is that Marx? Solas, ever the Communist.”
Lucia leaned her head on Chaaya’s shoulder, content to simply witness the night slowly turn to day. She knew she had to return to her mission, but the instant the first rays of sun struck the water, they cut glowing pathways through the heavy mist. She smiled.
“Look at that,” said Lucia Palomo. “Just look at that.”
End
Short Comic
The Range
Script by Emily Compton
Comic by Angeline Mauri
Bonus Art Gallery
Dusk in Kalevia Page 26