by Marc Secchia
How she burned! “I’m here, Nyahi.”
She subsided, panting, a shapeless blob upon the ground. The lavender flames vanished, but his hut blazed uncontrollably. There would be no putting out that fire. “I can’t. I just can’t, and I’m so sorry –”
“Is that all you’ve got?” he reproved gently. “Still standing. Unharmed.”
WRRRAGGHHARRRR!!!
He shot halfway around the Island upon a reality-defying train of pure lavender savagery, bending twenty-five ways he knew in real life would have minced his bones and squeezed them out of his ears, and to his shock, at some point en route he was quite convinced he heard the Jewels of Instashi giggling in his belly. Fine. He was the mad one. After a wind-whipping, whirlwind tour of some other plane of existence, Nyahi dumped him in the blue dirt beside the blazing structure of his former home.
“Still standing now, soldier?” she snarled horribly.
Asturbar gazed into the snarling visage of a Dragoness. Sulphurous smoke coiled about him as she panted heavily. Courage! Face the … no, this was no foe. Somewhere locked inside that beast was a girl patently scared out of her mind, ablaze with uncontrollable magic. A conduit. When she was afraid, she exploded like a volcano splitting its seams. Anything might happen.
Now, with a throbbing roar a fearsome, many-headed distortion of a Dragon confronted him, snorting fire from at least fifty nostrils, blazing fire eyes, seething thickets of talons scuttling at high speed around its body. It stood a hundred feet tall and at least twice as wide, and its breath singed his eyebrows. Chaos reigned. The creature drew a huge breath and feinted threateningly; it swelled with the prodigious intake of its breath, and growled until his teeth rattled in his jaw. It was one Dragon. Ten. A coruscating storm of magic. The Dragon-form returned, thundering such a pyre of flame toward the heavens, some of the foliage four hundred feet away caught fire.
He sucked in a breath of his own. Pointing deliberately at the probable region of her heart, he roared, “Nyahi, enough! Come here.”
What? The result was not entirely as he had expected.
Whoosh! She was back to womanly form, and how! Asturbar – well, he stared. He was unapologetically guilty of a hapless and protracted dint of ogling, because she was … fabulous, and a million leagues beyond that, certainly beyond his every power of description to capture in this instant. Her eyebrows peaked as she gazed back without understanding, asking the question, ‘What?’
At horribly indecent length, he managed to choke out, “Smoking volcanoes, Nyahi … you’re stark naked. And magnificent!”
The girl covered herself with a cry of outrage. “How dare you?”
“I’ve no sane idea, actually.”
“Have the decency to look away, you … you … where’s my dress?”
“Burned.”
“Then shut your eyes, you horrid male!”
His heart was trying its best to burst out of his chest with crowbars and hammer-blows of alarm, but Asturbar heard himself drawl, “As I said, I’ve seen worse. Much worse. But I’ve never, ever, not upon a thousand Isles, seen lovelier. You outshine them all, girl.”
Her lower lip trembled; then, her face crumpled. “No? No … oh … but, you can’t. No …”
He staggered forward upon legs that had lost all feeling, and surrounded her again with his arms. Alright, he might have been slightly miffed that she was two inches taller than he, and silvery blue to boot, but what did that matter? She was warm and stunning and – inhuman? Alien?
“Nyahi, do you even know what you are?”
“I need to speak first,” she murmured into his shoulder. “How … I don’t understand how you accomplished this, Boots. How you’ve handled me so fearlessly. You’re so strong, so much more than merely Azingloriax. I’ve never met a man like you before.”
Every beat of her heart. Every scent. Her intoxicating nearness. Asturbar wanted nothing more than to spend an eternity drinking in all that was Nyahi, but he knew he must hear her, too.
He said, “What’s on your heart? Speak.”
She tilted her head to gaze at him, but did not leave the circle of his arms. He wanted to shelter her; to protect her from herself. He wanted to start kissing her, and never stop. He ached to be with her, to laugh and cry and cuddle together. His heart felt far too full to keep throbbing under the weight of the emotions pooling there.
The febrile hazard of her nature threw his feelings into incredibly sharp relief. Dying seemed both an immediate possibility and the last issue in the Island-World he cared about.
“Those eyes,” she whispered.
“Eh?”
“Grey as a winter’s storm, yet they smile at me. How’s that possible?”
“Ah …” he shrugged helplessly. “Struggling for an intelligent rejoinder here, ma’am – Nyahi. Sorry. Back to the topic?”
She whispered, “I came here today because I heard you climb down three times during this last week but you didn’t approach, you were just walking in circles, I think, talking to yourself, and I longed to tell you that what you see, that this girl … is the real me – not the monster, and not this insane magic that consumes me. But I couldn’t. I didn’t have the courage. I was afraid.” Huge breath. Eyes glistening as she searched his face, his gaze, for the response Asturbar knew must be written there like an open scroll. She said, “I wanted to plead with you, and beg you upon my knees, and make you see that … well, what you said was so beautiful, and I can only hope that you meant every word … because I feel the same way about you, too, but I just couldn’t do that to you. It’s impossible. And too quick. Crazy-quick – don’t you think? I hardly know you. This is crazy!”
“I do see. Would another of your wild rides help or hinder matters?”
Her eyes flashed angrily. Nyahi snorted, “Hush. You talk a lot for a soldier, do you know that?”
He talked? Asturbar’s chuckling shook them both, belly to belly. How enormous his arms and torso seemed compared to hers; she seemed so delicate, he incongruously feared crushing her. He should be the one wary of being flattened by that monster within! Did she not think an Azingloriax was strange, a misshapen freak of a man? Apparently not, for as her eyes flicked speedily about the muscular compass of his arms and the massively mounded shoulder muscles above, a bloom of rose appeared in her cheeks. She approved!
He croaked, “Well, uh, then …”
“I’m here. I came to you,” she repeated, dropping her gaze, as if uncertainty crept within even as her feelings became plain. “I didn’t know until right now that I could ask this of anyone in this whole Island-World, but I want to say this: You’re a risk-taker. Take a risk on me. Yes, I’m desperately lonely. I’m also a girl who’s perilous and frightened and uncontainable, but in my heart there’s no monster, just a soul yearning to love and be loved, and by some miracle beyond belief you seem to be the manner of man who is capable … please, oh please, would you still consider … taking that risk? I never want to burn you again.”
Did she not understand he had made that decision already? Could she neither see it in his eyes, nor feel it in his embrace? He placed a finger upon her lips. “You talk a lot, for a woman.”
“Well, I … I am a woman!”
“I noticed.”
“You scurrilous, skirt-sniffing skarramugeon-lizard! Oh.” This was as his lips brushed the plane of her cheek. “Oh, that’s … wait, I might …”
His kiss nibbled boldly down toward the corner of her mouth, at which point Nyahi seemed to forget how to speak. Now he was kissing a tentacle. No, a flaming green flower. Asturbar adjusted his arms to allow her new form space, but did not let her go. Never again.
The flower said, “I was about to say, I might just combust.”
“I rather hope so.”
In a few seconds Nyahi managed to return to her Human form, and this time, she was the one doing the blushing, for he clasped her tenderly with one hand engulfing the indentation of her lower back and the other twined into her
sable hair. His fingers caressed the nape of her neck. Then, he kissed her full on the mouth, and after a breathless few seconds murmured, “I have to confess, you do taste as divine as you look, and … uh-oh.”
The heat radiating from her body escalated rapidly. Flames smouldered between them!
WHOOOSSHH – KABOOM!!
Asturbar landed flat on his back, congratulating himself despite his aching head. He had never imagined literally setting off fireworks in a woman, but there she went, in rushing torrents and flares and suns-spits of iridescent lavender sparks ricocheting off an Island here and twirling jubilantly around the dark vine of an Island-binder there, before she rocketed back and landed squarely upon his stomach, back in all her pyretic glory. Shweeee-bang! Human again.
“Oof,” he teased.
The girl quirked an eyebrow at him.
“Actually, you’re as light as feather down,” he half-apologised, before throwing in a suggestive wink. “I’m done with talking, if you are.”
Stooping, she kissed him without reservation.
A long time after the suns rose, Nyahi whispered into his ear, “Are you having another physiological reaction?”
“Oh. I do believe I am.”
That day, it was the very suns that blushed.
* * * *
In the cool of the evening, as they lay drying by the side of the pool, Asturbar heard a few querulous chirrups. Turning his head, he saw seven dragonets in a neat little row. Seven identical smirks appraised him of their collective opinion.
He smirked back. I won the girl. See? She’s gorgeous.
Fatty and Backup Scamp chortled happily, while the green Scamps, whom he had nicknamed Huffy and Puffy for their habit of burping tiny fireballs, slapped wingtips in a clearly congratulatory gesture.
He had not wished to wake her, but Nyahi stirred and asked sleepily, “Who’s talking? I mean, who are you talking to?”
Her blue eyes were huge in the semidarkness, more sapphire than her usual lighter, frosted blue; she brushed back her hair with a self-conscious gesture as his eyes crinkled at her. She promptly fizzed through five or six transformations before ending up in a sort of defensive spiny puffball with lips a foot wide.
Asturbar snatched back his hand. “Ouch.”
“Sorry. I’m just not used to … being with a man.”
“Me neither.”
The puffball pursed her amazing, four-inch thick purple lips, and said, “Oh, you do prefer women? Now you tell me!”
“No – no! Yes!” he spluttered. “You know what I mean. Besides, aren’t you convinced yet? Wow. For future reference, what does it take to convince you?” To his delight, the heart-shaped bush she had now become, shimmered and blushed in violent violet stripes. “I just meant, it’s been a very long time for me too.”
She giggled, “And here I thought all soldiers were inveterate skirt-chasers. Shows that received Isles wisdom isn’t always accurate.”
“Indeed not.”
A tentacle reached out to tweak his left big toe. “So, tell a deprived castaway on a faraway Island, is it true what salacious balladeers claim about the size of a man’s feet?”
“Nyahi!”
“Just wondering,” she suggested innocently. “I mean, yours must be twice the size of any –”
“Go … butterfly yourself – oh!”
“Oh,” shrilled the miniature butterfly-dragonet, lolloping about in the air before landing on Asturbar’s nose. He crossed his eyes comically. Magenta and silver-speckled dragonet-creature with teardrop-shaped wings, anyone? She carolled, “Look! Look at me!”
Despite a sense of unreality at their ever-changing situation, he smiled and gently encouraged his new girlfriend – he hoped – to hop onto his forefinger. She blinked her multifaceted, insectoid eyes significantly at him. “I agree, Nyahi. This definitely means you are able to exert some level of control over your transformations. Anger, huge fiery monster. Battle-rage, you do the rushing transdimensional reality-bending river of insanity effect. And earlier today, might I add, there were the fireworks of overwhelming passion. I liked that one especially –”
With a fast-diminishing squeal of surprise, Nyahi lit up the Islands in her second fireworks display of the day. Asturbar smirked again. He really was being insufferable, but that had just been far too much fun to resist. She soared up there, a river of fluorescent fire as wild and free as the magic that drove her, and for the first time, Asturbar let hope find hearth and home in his soul. It was possible. Control was possible – they had just proven so, twice over. He would not have liked to rely upon her in battle, but it certainly seemed that the power of a Chaos Beast was unquestionable. Her exuberant flight curved over Isle and under waterfall, a spontaneous outpouring that pasted a decidedly absurd smile upon his lips as he watched.
Yet, she always returned to a stable-ish Human form.
Curious. Crucial.
After a few minutes of lighting the skies of his heart, Nyahi plummeted Island-ward rather more precipitately than his nerves could bear. Sensing trouble, Asturbar sprinted toward her landing place and was barely on hand to catch a limp bundle of cords in his arms as she collapsed. The girl flickered into and out of her Human form several times, before settling in his arms with a soft sigh.
“Too much?” he asked, tucking her hair behind her ear.
Nyahi nodded. “I’m sorry, Boots – well, I think I burned your boots, didn’t I?”
“Nope, they escaped immolation.”
“I don’t suppose it’s cultural or acceptable to invite an unattached man to move into my place?” she giggled faintly. “But if you could … unhhh …”
She fainted.
He whispered to her, “Attached, I’m afraid. Lost all sight or clue of the Isle of Sanity, but very much attached, Nyahi.”
* * * *
Asturbar tucked Nyahi into her own bed, and watched over her as she slept for three days. She woke, ate and drank as if half-starved, stumbled outside to relieve herself, and collapsed on her way back. All he heard was the dull thud of her head against lumber. He would rather it had been his own hardened skull – Azingloriax skeletal structures being comparable in toughness to draconic ones, after all. That metallic hardening and tensile strength did not stop the skin from splitting, but his bones and ligaments could withstand eye-popping extremes of punishment. They were not unbreakable, however, as his now-healed finger proved.
He made himself at home in her place. Practical soldier. Maudlin admirer. He spring-cleaned to military standards, repaired her oven – cracked by one of her beastly magical explosions – raised the roof again in order to repair the walls, and may have been guilty of the odd sigh over the wondrous curl of her long eyelashes, say, or gently curling the thick spray of her ebon hair about his fingertips as she slept unheeding upon the plush bolsters. Not local, those! She sure prettified a place, even when she seemed so wan, drained by the towering overuse of her magic.
Curl the lip. Smash an imaginary armoured train! He felt as keyed-up as if he were just about to stride out upon a battlefield.
Nyahi had a few stores left in her cupboards alongside the kitchen area. Asturbar tried to imagine what it must have been like for a teenage girl to be abandoned out here, provided for in all practical ways except the slightest understanding of her troubles, or a modicum of love. Abandoned. Shovelled off into exile, probably reviled and mistreated to boot. His breath susurrated upon his lips. At fifteen! Sold at around one year of age, he remembered nothing of his earliest childhood. Nyahi must know exactly how much she had been feared.
The craftsmanship of the carpentry was lightweight for transport but nonetheless excellent in every respect, the spice racks and oil pots of the finest quality, like the drawers in her bedroom, and the bed itself. She must have come from a well-to-do family.
‘Stay here, cherished chizakyne. We’ll check up on you in a few years when your magic has settled.’
He tossed his head angrily. Curse their lies!
>
In the evenings by the light of her oil lamp, Asturbar worked on a chair for himself. It needed to be twice the width of Nyahi’s, and probably five times as strong. Which reminded him, he thought, eyeing the bed and its alluring occupant, if they were to share sleeping quarters, that bedframe would need reinforcing. So far he had slept on the floor beside her, because Nyahi had a way of sprawling all over the rush mattress, arms and legs splayed as if she were dreaming of flying. It would be a cosy fit for two given his spatial requirements. Even just trying to fall asleep in the same space while hearing another person’s breathing, soft as it was, had proved challenging – this to a man who could sleep through ten soldiers having a raucous arm-wrestling match three feet from his pillow roll!
She was … different. His battle-bred hyper-awareness seemed to awaken around her.
The day after she thumped her head, the girl seemed to dream a great deal, because she moaned often, thrashed the covers into a fine tangle, and seemed to be running a fever. He helped her drink a little water, and fretted endlessly. Even if it were possible that they could tame her magic into a form capable of flying six hundred unbroken leagues across the Cloudlands to civilisation, how could they ever return? She was too dangerous. Too volatile by far. They would hunt her down like a feral beast and end her life.
Asturbar charged around the rim path that morning, toting a boulder of some eighty stone on his back. Training. Soldiers always trained. They trained and prepared and honed their skills and then trained some more. Could they focus her skills? Train her wild magic?
It might help if they learned what she was.
Or they could grow old together here upon the oasis, like a pair of doddering hermits, and have lumbering children each roughly the size of an armoured vehicle, with perfect blue skin and curling eyelashes, and a predilection for blowing up dwellings at random intervals.