Niala 11

I left them with more questions than I had answers that night. The energy squirmed beneath my skin. It buzzed and reminded me that the last motes of it were still there; It begged me to unleash. Unfortunately, Gaffriel told me that it stung and felt that way for a while. Though, mine throbbed like less of a sting than it did a humming vibration.

I was bloody, tired, and scared. I didn't have the emotional space to process what had just happened, so I went straight to the showers. Thirty minutes in the heat and escape might make me feel better.

We had communal restroom space and gym-type showers. All of our showers were unisex. Their only worries were us soul binding, and that rarely happened within family. Our kind avoided it. For the most part, we annoyed one another. Their legitimate fear shifted for me. Their split desires to keep me close and leverage me to a stronger flock were second only to something they didn't want the others to know about, why Kiromir had been angry when Gaff might have peeped through my window.

My ikris were different than everyone else's. Their tattooed markings were tribal and crudely spread wings, while my own were sharp slashes of things. Mine were wicked, while theirs seemed uplifting. My ikris were drawn, wings pointing down and folded, and a line between them with a diamond at the end highlighted the strangeness. The diamond ended just above my tailbone. It wasn't my body or wings that Kiromir feared they'd see; it was what that spear represented, my tail. The wings of my tattoos let my real wings spread wide and free. The line with the diamond unleashed something more, and like my wings, it itched to be free.

I kept this secret held tight to myself. Where in my homeland, nobody thought anything of it, not that I could remember. I, like my father, bore a plumed tail. Here, that tail came from the villain in their culture. Kiromir didn't want people to see that and think of me as this evil creature.

I threw my clothes into a pile, grabbed a towel, and stood beneath a torrent of mostly hot water. I scrubbed my hair and body as best as I could; enough blood had spilled on my hands that an ironlike tinge stayed behind. It’d be gone in a few days, but the splotchiness from my scrubbing and stains would be a reminder to all that saw me of blood spilled. Some might be proud, but I didn’t care until I faced the realization that my fire was something so strange and dangerous. I let it free over my hands in the shower and watched as motes of water splashed away from it, split into smaller droplets that formed a mist. The depth they alluded to sang of the old tales about the two seraphim.

The cadence, the void, the emptiness, it is within me. What will people think? What will Gaff think?

The tribes were split black, white, and Wildling. From what I'd read, the Wildlings had no seraphim in their blood. But, judging from the black fire my hands possessed… I had a seraphim in mine. The drawings in the book excited me as a child because of their familiarity. I saw ‘daddy.’ Everyone else saw the monster under the bed. Now it just made me ill.

Am I really Acir, or something worse?

Maybe there were people out there with sharp ikris, Asian features, and tails that were looking for me.

I thought about my voice. I reached for my throat. My speech over my tongue, which must have been Acir, sounded like a song. It didn't sound like a song when I remembered my mother and how we spoke, nor my father. It seemed fitting, but it wasn’t until I heard Anil that I could tell the difference. Gaffriel could sometimes get the song in his voice when he tried. When Gaffriel spoke to himself and practiced, there were notes of it in his throat, quiet as a whisper and broken like a promise. It became one of the reasons I avoided him initially; his voice sounded so sweet, too sweet. I longed to sneak up on him and take the sound from his mouth and into mine. My desperate desire to have those words in me sent graphic images of a kiss through my mind. I wanted to taste his words with sharp teeth and tongues. Just like that, I found the black flame dancing over my lips as I held my fingers to them. When it came away undamaged, I gasped and trembled—it just tingled.

Idiot. You're immune to your own fire. That's like the first thing they ever teach you.

I couldn't stand to sit under the water and stare at my hands any longer. Nothing on my body needed more cleaning. I turned the squeaking knob until the water shut off, then threw a towel around my torso and picked up my clothes to head back to my bunk.

Silence spread through our barracks, the nighttime din. People were out flying, frolicking, or asleep. My footsteps echoed off bare concrete walls as I strolled into my bunk and dropped my clothing into a pile by the door. I had a long day, and I only wanted to let my ikris open to let my wings and tail free. So, I threw on some underwear and slid on a tattered backless shirt. I liked sleeping with my wings out. We weren't supposed to do it, but I did, curled about with my tail under the thinnest blanket. It made me comfortable that way.

I slipped my wings free, shook them, and gave them a glance over to see if there were any stray feathers. I'd halfway scruffed them this morning, but that meant nothing when they got cramped up and the spring shed of winter's down finished. I'd never know what happened to them inside the tattoos, but they were always stiff and crumpled after too long. When they were let out, it didn’t ease my exhaustion and fever. I wondered if my new fires had anything to do with it. Finally, I sank into my bed with a lavish sigh. I could spare five minutes before joining the men.

My tail slipped free, manifesting in a slither so satisfying that my body trembled, and goosebumps rose over my skin. Sometimes it made my eyes water. I curled it to me, took the spade-shaped tip of my tail into my hands, and studied a fan of five pointed feathers along the spade's end. A soft crush of feathers laid over the rest of it, protecting my skin below. It went tingly like I'd lost blood flow to it, and I shook it free with a rustle.

I wished so badly I could fly with it, and that became part of our traveling. Kiromir always went off the path and gave me a day or two in isolated areas, letting me have it free. He didn't want the other kids to see it. He didn't want to cause a stir or separate me even further from them. The rest of the flock remained mainly in some state of ignorance about other tribes existing. It was a fairy tale. I'm sure some of them had ideas, but if I didn't talk about it and nobody acknowledged it, I could pretend to be Wildling.

As I scruffed the feathers of my tail, I heard a short knock, a gasp, a scuffle, and a thud of bodies hitting the floor outside my door. My door hadn't closed all the way again. I hadn't noticed the latch had been busted. Gaff had broken it a while back, I think, trying to wake me up from a nightmare. I looked up just in time to see two bodies wrestling to the ground beyond the crack of my door. My stomach sank in my gut.

Did they see?

"Hello?" I stood, withdrawing my wings and tail so fast that I stumbled from the sheer force. I fought to grab a clean pair of shorts and threw them on.

"You decent?" Kiromir's angered tones from the area outside my door.

"Yeah?" A bright red crept over my cheeks.

"Open the door all the way." His footsteps faltered and struggled. Then, my stomach sank deeper.

Anyone but him… No…

"What the fuck," Gaffriel's said. Tears stung. The hot warmth of them pooled in the corners of my eyes.

"Gaff!?" I panted as I threw open my door, and Kiromir stood there with a stern look and Gaff's struggling form headlocked under his arm.

"Ni…what the fuck?" Gaff breathed, struggling in Kiromir's grasp.

No no no no… nei nei nei… Besha, please.

"Ada, Viyan utok val?" I asked, wondering if Gaffriel had seen me. Of course, if he hadn't seen and we spoke fast enough, Gaff wouldn't be likely to understand. ‘Ada, did he see me?’

"Ea," he said with a sharp nod, and I turned hurt eyes to Gaff. He looked at me so strangely. ‘Yeah.’

"Tie—En utok'r." Gaffriel put the words together, and a blip of something lit in my heart at hearing just a mote of something in him. ‘I—I saw.” He mixed up the word for ‘I.’ Even now, in all this, the urge to taste those words plucked a string in my heart.

"Come on in," I said as I moved away from the door to let them invade my private space. I moved to sit on my bed, watching as Kiromir roughly let Gaffriel loose to stumble in. Kiromir blocked the door, and Gaffriel looked ready to bolt. The door snapped shut as Kiromir leaned to it. He crossed his arms over his chest. Watching Gaff so terrified of it, of me, like this made my heart clench tight and hard in my chest.

"You're not Wildling, not even close," Gaffriel said with absolute clarity that sliced through what little connection I had left with the flock. If I had been a boat, his words would have cut my moor. What little tether I had sent me adrift on turbulent seas.

Understatement of the year. Everyone 'knew,' but nobody really had that iron clarity. Nobody said it out loud.

"No." My admission brought tears. It always made my heart feel warm to know that Gaff didn't see me differently. He never asked, never talked about it. He saw different features, but just another Wildling.

"What are you?" He asked, giving me an alien look. Gaff had never looked at me that way. There were so many different things about me, and I worked hard to hide them. I couldn't change my face and hair, but I could hide my tail and limit the other things I did.

"Still figuring it out." My voice barely squeaked in my throat.

Hurt washed over his face. "Why didn't you tell me?"

I thought, "Because I never wanted to see you look at me the way you're looking at me now."

"I told her to keep it down, and she didn't really know," Kiromir said, but we all knew it wasn't the whole truth. So, I hid the tail, knowing it wasn't right.

"But if she's not Wildling… Her soul… How would she?" Gaffriel asked. There was so much pain in him. Did he think I didn't have a soul just because of this? I couldn't stop the tears from flowing.

"Easy Gaff… She's probably got something else to show you, too," Kiromir said as he gave me a flick of a glance. I didn't want to pull my fires free just yet. If anyone deserved to see them first, it was Gaff. Kiromir knew I owed him that much, that I had promised him my first melding so many times. Gaff wanted to chase my fires so bad. I was supposed to chase his first, too, but I hadn't been ready for him yet last migration.

"I got my fires tonight." My body sank into itself. Since he already knew, I let my wings and tail free to droop. It didn't feel any better with them out.

Gaffriel looked at me with hope, a ray of something in his eyes, and my expression told him not to get his hopes up.

"Kiromir…" Gaffriel faced him, not me. He didn't want the answer from me. No, he couldn't even look at me too long. Whatever emotion lay within him had his cheeks red and splotchy.

"It's something we've not seen before," Kiromir said hesitantly as he pointed Gaffriel to look at me. I didn't think Gaffriel could look any more betrayed than he did. I averted my eyes as I hesitantly summoned my fire over one hand. It swept down my forearm and lit in flickering black licks that swam threateningly over my palm and wrist. It guttered, and I couldn't control it fully. He stared at them with parted lips, his mouth forming a distraught 'o' shape.

"What does it do?" Gaff asked. He leaned in closer. Curious, my friend licked his dry lips and stared from it to me, and I couldn't stop staring at the blackness of my fire. The void flickered in his bright hazel eyes. But he had more questions; I could tell.

"It shreds and cuts everything it touches," I said as the emptiness of those words echoed in my mind.

Gaffriel stared at me for a wavering moment, a tense and distraught expression morphing his face into something sour.

“I’m sorry.” My voice came in a breathy whisper. Gaffriel’s aura subconsciously leaked from him. His emotions peaked, and a palpable sadness pushed at my senses.

With my hand alight, my heart burdened by my own guilt and the teasing sense of his aura, I barely had time to react. But instinct took over for me.

“NO!” Kiromir shouted before I registered what had happened. Gaffriel’s hand was on fire, bolstered with his own light. I feared I would hurt him, but I didn’t stop it! I had to know, too. I hated myself so much for not drawing back. Instinct consumed me as I tilted my hand for him to grasp. I made the final move, but he took charge and grasped.

My eyes went wide, then I shut them and turned my head away. Tears trailed my cheeks as I waited for my best friend to scream. Instinctively my flames flared, and in slow motion horror, Kiromir watched as my fire touched his.

What have I just done?