Aftermath

The problem with being me is that I write and write and write and then one day I wake up and want absolutely nothing to do with words, not even signing my name. And it drives me mad because I am a story teller so while I want nothing to do with the written word... the characters have been filling the time. Usually the not writing lasts for as long as the writing lasted for, so a year of writing means a year of not writing. Cringeworthy to say the least but thankfully not the case this time around.

This specific bit arose when Una asked the same question as Sunao. I started writing this a week ago, a few words here, a few there. Poking Raya is more fun than poking Mik...

Read, Review and Enjoy.





For three days Una did not call Durth. On the third day the troupe pulled to a stop just outside of a huge forest, a place where the troupe had obviously stopped before. The others got comfortable all too quickly, the children ran off to play, giggling all the while as the parents lounged. No one was concerned when the children disappeared into the forest.

The young man that came to tell Durth he was wanted at Una’s fire was the same one Una had ‘chosen’ to keep him company that first night. After delivering the message, the young man went into the forest, seemingly following the children.

Durth made his way to Una’s fire. Una stood with his hat on, cane in hand, a young man at his side. The other couldn’t have been more than fifteen. Shaggy black hair framed the tanned face and made bright green eyes pop out. The young man came only to Una’s shoulders, though the immortal was taller than the average person. Not wide, but long in the leg, the young man looked to be built for agility.

“Durth, this is Ayan.”

“Hello, Ayan,” Durth said.

The young man looked to his right for a long moment before he met Durth’s eyes, “Hello, Durth. That sounds like earth.”

“Should be simple for you to remember, Ayan,” Una murmured with familiarity and gentleness, “Ayan has been raised virgin. Which means no fighting or blood or bad things around him, he can come off as a bit of an airhead, much like yourself.”

“I am not an airhead,” Durth growled, to which Ayan flinched and shifted back two steps.

Una ignored Ayan’s reaction, “we are going to be taking Ayan with us over the next year, so that he may learn the ways of the world and finally become a man according to his village’s customs.”

Something rumbled through the ground under Durth’s feet. Hunger and a predatory flickering, it made Durth stiffen. Ayan blinked several times before his eyes went wide, like a deer caught in the headlights fo a large truck. Una seemed not to have noticed the rumble in the ground but the immortal’s nostrils flared. Fear and cautious curiosity.

On the air? What the hells?

“Why did you call me?” Durth asked Una.

“Aya-” Una’s head dropped, the man pinched the bridge of his nose, “Ayan will be staying with me, thus you will have to interact with him. I wanted the two of you to meet now, so that you were on even ground.”

“Even. Ground.” Ayan didn’t sound convinced as he looked Durth up and down, “there is nothing even about this ground.”

Una made a sound at the back of his throat, drawing the attention of both young men, “he’s trained a bit with a Whisper as well. Do you know what a Whisper is, Durth?”

“I remember seeing him on the television,” Durth responded, “that Sidhe fellow who got shot and ruled the Sidhe nation.”

“He trained with a people Whisper, not the Sidhe one,” Una responded too quickly, “But do you know what a Whisper can do?” Durth shook his head to the question, “they can see into your mind, alter your perception, even, if you are open to it being changed. The talented and powerful ones can create living illusions, living dreams, can entwine you in your own nightmares and kill you with them.”

“Oh… which of those can he do?” Durth jabbed a finger at Ayan.

“Likely all of it. Once taught in the ways of Whisper, a person who is capable of learning even the most basic skill catches onto the rest very quickly. Aya-” again, Una pinched the bridge of his nose, “he’s learned to use his powers from a Whisper, which, given a Whisper’s unique perspective on life means that he knows how to use the same skills a Whisper uses.”

“I don’t understand why it would matter,” Durth shrugged, “but I suppose I can say alright and so what?”

Ayan’s eyes narrowed, the young man’s eyes locked with Durth’s, “I know why you are here and what you intend to do.”

Now that, that was creepy. Durth imagined shutting every door and window in his mind, tried to put up an imaginary wall and prayed to the gods it worked and that Ayan’s little lip twitch was not a smirk. The more a man tried to cover his tracks, the more reason there was to follow the man, that was what Raya had taught him while they had run from Past’s territory. The good trackers knew how to follow an obvious trail as well as the path of someone who had tried to cover their tracks. Because the ones who covered their tracks were smarter than the average run away and needed to be brought in more than anyone else.

“Durth?” Raya’s voice cut across the campsite, making Una look up and Durth turn towards the Cousin’s voice. A moment later Raya came around a trailer and stopped in his tracks, eyes locked on Ayan, “by all that is good and gracious.”

“He’s fifteen, Raya,” Una said in a dangerous tone, “and he will be sleeping with me.”

“With you?” Raya and Durth both muttered.

“Ayan is used to sleeping between his fathers thus he needs the comfort of a body beside him. It also happens to be the best way to keep perverts and vagrants from laying a hand on him. Isn’t it, Ayan?”

Ayan looked at Una very slowly, as if caught in another place, “yes, master, it is.”

“You don’t look like you’re used to wandering around by yourself, Ayan,” something in Raya’s voice sent a shudder of fear through Durth’s body, “are you missing a sibling?”

“My older brother, yes,” Ayan said smoothly, “I’ve clung to his side since I was born.”

“Does he have your ravishing looks?”

“No. Ugly as sin.”

“Face only a mother could love?”

“Not even Mother could love it.”

Durth watched as Una’s head snapped up, as Raya shifted his weight and huffed. Obviously something had just happened that Durth had missed. Shifting around mother and Mother, certainly that might mean something, but it was also a saying. Someone could be so ugly that not even Mother herself, who was said to love all the people, could bring herself to love them.

“Stop talking in code,” Durth snarled at Ayan and Raya, “I know I’m missing something and I do not appreciate it.”

“We’ve never met before,” Raya protested, “how could we be speaking in code?”

“Like that would stop you,” Durth growled.

“I should take a nap” Ayan said as Raya squeaked out, “I need to get back to Tah.” And both left abruptly, leaving Durth and Una standing on either side of Una’s little cooking fire. Una sighed, a long, low sound that ended only once all the air was gone from the immortal’s chest.

“What?” Durth asked.

“You are very strange, Durth. At times it seems you remember a past life, other times you say things that other people have said to me, people who are not you and you have never been.” Una shifted his weight from one foot to the other, hands adjusting on the head of his cane. “How do you know that they were speaking in a code? Or what would make you assume that the pair of them, having never met before, could be speaking in a code?”

“Well Raya’s crazy and Ayan was trained as a Whisper.” Durth said as if that explained it all.

“And the rattle bit from the other night?”

“I… don’t know. Maybe I’m a speaker for someone who’s dead.”

“Not possible, there are no speakers of the dead, there is no way for living people to contact those souls who have passed into the underworld. And all souls pass into the underworld, therefore no dead are about for you to talk to.”

“Then what kind of explanation is there? That my soul was shattered and struck other souls, thus pieces of me lived lifetimes while others did not and I’ve recently converged back together? The astronomical impossibility of that is. Well it’s so impossible that it’s impossible to calculate it’s possibility. You’d have to be. To be-”

“Immortal?”

“Yeah. And unless I’m that Vera person, not happening.”

Una laughed, “Vera is alive and well, Durth. But I suppose you are right, it is impossible and the simplest answer is usually the correct one.” the immortal shook his head, “I will figure it out eventually. Perhaps our conversations over the next few weeks will bring something up.”

“Our…” Durth watched Una move around the fire and up to him, “conversations?”

“Yes, I’ve missed your company.”

“You. Want me to sit up with you during travel? I thought,” Durth ducked his head, looking at his feet, “I thought you wouldn’t want anything to do with me after…”

Una stepped close enough for Durth to smell him. A musky, soapy, freshly cleaned scent. The immortal pulled Durth’s face upward, “of course I still want you. It would take more than a few words to change that.”

“Oh.”

“This is where you kiss me,” Una murmured.

“Oh?”

Una leaned in and pressed his lips against Durth’s gently. A chaste little peck that melted Durth’s knees and sent a tingle through the young man’s body. The flick of Una’s tongue over Durth’s lips for the briefest moment made Durth moan.

And that was when it ended. Una pulled way, fingers fluttering over Durth’s jaw line.

“That’s enough for tonight, we don’t want to over excite you,” Una said quietly, “perhaps we can … continue this tomorrow night?”


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