Prism

[DotCom]

Rora made herself stand very still while the Aavan snapped down at her, and even moreso while he loomed over her. She was confident -- or mostly confident -- he wouldn't harm her. But she could also tell he was trying to scare her, and refused to let her otherwise considerable fear show on her face. This close, it was difficult not to see that hard, armor-like scales, the weaponized tail, the teeth, the claws, the muscles bulging beneath a mass several times her size.

When at last he stalked away, leaving her to stew only her own anger and frustration, she felt a trill of relief go through her so strong it left her light-headed. Or perhaps that was the thirst. Or lack of sleep. And when had she last eaten? She'd felt the Aavan's hunger just before he moved away, and knew he was far worse off than she in that department, but she was a Cerebra, and a citizen of the city. She had not been starving for weeks on end. Perhaps she was spoiled. Perhaps she had made a mistake in allowing her pride to chase the Aavan away. It was as much instinct as anything else. An Empath as sensitive as she was did not have many close friends. Not when someone else's bad dream left her with night terrors for weeks. And yet she'd spent nearly two whole days with this Aavan so far and felt only...what? Confusion? Exhaustion? Pain?

Well, it made little difference now. He was gone, and with it, her relative stability. Panic bubbled deep in her chest, and she pushed it down. No matter what the Aavan had said, she was not so helpless as she might appear. The animals -- the ones who didn't want to kill her -- would know what to eat, where to sleep. It would take time, and it would test her in every way, but she was sure she could find her way back to the city.

Defiant on the forged certainty, and purposely evicting all traces of the Aavan from her mind, she tripped away her leggings and boots, all but worn through by the journey through the forest. Cerebrae clothing was soft and beautiful, but not made for the ragged Wilds. She kept her pale tunic on, though, the silky garment falling near to her knees. She could feel nothing around her that would betray her privacy, but she had been wrong before. Twice now.

Boots and leggings aside, she took a breath and lowered herself to the edge of the cold stream. She'd only a few toes in when a violent shiver rocked up her spine, but she welcomed the bracing coolness. The river was large and wide, and further out, the current was treacherous and the water deep. But here on the edge, there was only soft earth beneath her, and cold water to ease away the aches of the days past.

Drawing her knees to her chest, she cupped her hands and drank until her belly ached and her head throbbed from the coldness of the water. Refreshed, she reclined slightly, dark hair haloing around her on the glass-like surface of the water. She was still not ready to sleep, and the water was too cold to allow for that comfort, but with her head half submerged, she could hear only the river and its quiet thoughts swirling around her. Without the Aavan there, the pain was nearly gone, and she had nothing to fear from his teeth or claws. She would rest until her strength returned and then find her way to the city. Rora smiled, content for a moment.

She closed her eyes, burying her feet deep in the sludge at the riverbed to anchor herself to the edge of the water, confident in her ability to stay awake.

It was the third time she would be wrong.

 

[Kaisaan]

Blood, hot and life-giving, filled his mouth and the Aavan gave a deep, guttural growl of pure satisfaction and bliss. It had been six long years since he'd had fresh meat, since he'd tasted the blood going down his throat and the sudden clear-headedness it brought as his body flooded with sudden energy. He wasn't so young that he didn't know that such a thing was false and the euphoria would fade, but it was a nice feeling anyway and he started to tear into the body of the Nesni he'd taken down, a creature much like an Earth elk, but twice as large and with two heads and a scorpion-like tail.

The meat settled into his stomach quite happily, his entire body grateful for it. This carcass was not enough to fill him, but it was a definite start and far more than Risa had been giving him - and FRESH - and Mori knew it would give him the strength he needed to start getting back on his feet. He didn't rush his feeding, but was finished soon enough anyway. It had taken him about an hour to find the Nesni and about an hour more to patiently hunt it down as getting stung by that tail would have been very bad news for him. In total, perhaps three hours had passed since he'd left the Cerebra and now at the thought of her he felt worry he'd not expected.

Pale violet eyes looked through the treetops to see that the last sun was the only one in the sky. It would be dark in an hour and he was nearly two hours away from Rora. He'd not really meant to go that far...

Mori didn't question the urge that made him pick up speed in his walking as he headed back the way he'd come. He only knew that some inner sense was telling him he'd made a mistake, a bad one and it concerned that spoiled, pain in the arse Cerebra who'd done the crazy, impossible thing of helping him escape from that hell she called her city. Stars, there were so many freaking twists and turns of emotions in that one sentence. Was he to want her near or far away?

And why did that question seem to matter so very much?

He didn't have the answer to that, nor as to why he was suddenly running once more, the worry having grown.

He'd left her alone. He'd left her, easy prey, in a treacherous jungle even for a predator.

Mori knew he might as well have sentenced her to death and somehow that thought, that one thought, sent an inexplicable streak of raw fear through his mind and his heart both.

It was dark by the time he came back to the river and the Aavan's eyes quickly sought out the Cerebra, his nose already telling him she was here. He found her in the water and for a moment panic touched the edges of his mind, wondering if she'd drowned, but no she did not smell of death, was still breathing. But oh how she shivered! Mori cursed as he came closer, seeing her eyes were closed and he knew he had minutes, if that, to get her to warmth. At this point she wouldn't wake at all without it. The cold of the night was making HIM sluggish and he wasn't wet to the bone. "Little idiot." was the growled whisper of both anger brought on by fear and harsh worry as his tail came around to pick up her body as if it was nothing more than a rag doll. He placed her on his back then, resisting the instant urge to shake that came over him at the water against his skin brought and her weight as well, foreign even if it was minuscule.

No. Focus. Warmth.

Mori's wings moved up then like one might hunch their shoulders, keeping her from falling to either side as he quickly made his way through the jungle, searching carefully, but hurriedly for another heat cavern, letting his nose guide him as it usually did. The faint wisps of steam hit him about ten minutes later and the Aavan surged forward to the crack in the earth. He gave a growl of frustration before starting to claw rapidly at the soil, digging an entrance, growing more and more acutely aware of the chilled body upon his back getting colder. Finally the hole was big enough for his smaller form to slip through and he lifted Rora from his back again before shifting down. There was no hesitation as he picked the small female up in his arms then and half slithered his way into the cavern on his back before landing on his feet at the small drop.

Heat swept over him then, over Rora and Mori quickly moved her to a magma pool, knowing very well that growing warm again was probably going to hurt. But he'd keep her there until she was out of danger.

 

[DotCom]

The dreams that came to her were not the ones she'd expected when promising herself that she would never sleep again. Or at least, not entirely. Nor were they sensical, or even linear. In fact, the many brief, strange, and sometimes frightening dreams she did have in the short hours during which that Aavan was hunting had only one thing in common: Mori. And he was always that, despite neither of them ever having said the name in the visions. She merely felt it -- what she saw, where she saw it the Aavan was Mori.

What did that mean?

She saw these dreams like bits of the schooling vids all newborn Cerebrae watched: here, a few moments of a terrible storm, rain, thunder, lightning...and Mori in the center of it all, somehow at once beautiful and terrifying; there, a great, bleak plain that she recognized as the desert wastes despite never having so much as seen an image before. She felt in Mori a great many things. Joy and peace and fear and hate. Hurt. The latter of which sent her scrambling for someway to find relief, as if she could not bear to see him in pain, as if she hadn't so many times already.

These other images slowly faded into snippets of Risa's house, and the pool she'd been found in nearly two days ago now. Someone was crying -- Mori was growling, thrashing, dying. Risa was screaming. And Rora? Was she merely the spectator in this monstrous show, bound to neither of the beings whose emotions she felt so keenly? She could not believe it, and perhaps it was this dark realization, the panic that woke her.

More like, it was the pain.

She opened her eyes to a field of orange and was powerless, for a moment, to imagine what it was. She blinked once, the moment feeling far too long, and then realized that even her thoughts were sluggish. Where was she? How had she gotten there? She could barely remember where she'd been prior, let alone her name, and over all of it, the quiet crackle of pain. What started as a mild tingling feeling at the base of each and every nerve ending quickly swelled to burning and then pain near unbearable.

Without thinking -- she couldn't think -- she jerked away from the orange, her limbs responding sluggishly, making her feel graceless and uncoordinated, something she might have been embarrassed about if only she could coax her brain into thought.

No, that wasn't true. For all she could barely form words, there was one thought echoing at the edge of a nightmare, repeating in her head like a heartbeat:

Mori. Mori. Mori.

 

[Kaisaan]

Mori immediately knew when she woke. It wasn't even that he was watching her - and he was - but rather the sense of it, an instant knowing that actually made him a bit nervous. He wasn't supposed to be feeling her this way. He'd not bonded to her, not even a temporary connection. Then again, maybe it had something to do with her being an Empath? Maybe she was connecting to him in some way and that's all he was feeling. That might be it. He would know if he was bonding to someone. He always knew. Right, it was just because she was an Empath, nothing more.

And he didn't need to have a connection to her or vice-versa to know that she was now experiencing that predictable pain of circulation starting back up in her limbs. The Aavan was still holding her and for good reason now as he kept her from moving any further away from the heat she desperately needed and just didn't realize, and his hands slowly, surprisingly gentle, rubbed at her arms and palm, helping the blood flow faster. He knew that it would heighten the pain for a moment but it would also help it fade away faster. He did the same with her legs and as her body started to truly warm, he found himself humming in a rumbling, growling way under his breath, a song his mother had once sung to him when he was sick or injured. It was to soothe and without thinking about it, that was what the Aavan had started to try and do for Rora.

It was as he was thinking about putting her down, though, not entirely fond of the idea of her waking fully and growing venomous toward him all over again, that it seemed a whisper of a thought came to his mind again, like it had done at the Auction.

His name.

Pale violet eyes looked down with a puzzled frown, a thoughtful frown at the rainbow-painted face, still barely lucid. Why was she thinking about him? Was she thinking about him or...had he just imagined he heard that? Should he ask when she woke? ...no. And at this rate, he knew she might not wake fully for a while. Her skin was still clammy, clothes still damp and Mori knew very well it was greatly likely that she was sick or would become so.

The thought made him extremely uneasy.

 

[DotCom]

The Telekinetics and the Pushers had a trick, something that fell beneath their power classes if they were talented, called astral projection. It worked rather like a dream, or an out-of-body experience. Some part of their souls or their psyches, or whatever it was, some immaterial part, could go away from the body. Siya had once said Rora ought to be able to do it, too, as Empath specialized in putting themselves in another's shoes, so to speak. But Rora had never gotten the hang of it.

Even so, as she half-slept, curled in that small, warm cavern, in the arms of an Aavan who was maybe trying to kill her, Rora felt herself watching from a distance. She sat, crossed legged and ephemeral on the far side of the magma caves, where the Aavan could not see her, even if she could be seen, and watched curiously.

The Cerebra had only just barely awoken and seemed just aware of immediate sensations -- first cold, then pain, and then the latter outweighing the greater as the shivering began to slow. The warmth flushed her skin beneath her strange coloring, and Rora saw her tense, frown, whimper, as she tried weakly to buck away from the thing causing her pain, and instinct even for a city-born Cerebra.

And the Aavan -- Mori, the name came again, Rora knowing not from where -- held her all the closer, halting her escape. The Cerebra in his arms fought weakly against him until his hands found hers, chaffing stinging warmth back into them. She whimpered again, this time not pulling away so much as burrowing deeper into the arms that held her. Another instinct that made Rora want to slap the Cerebra.

Fool. He is not safety! There is not salvation there! He means to kill you!

And he did, even if his actions were strange. Rora knew it. The Aavan knew it. The only person who did not seem to understand was the fitful Cerebra, burrowing once again deeper into the Aavan's arms, whimpering softly at the back of her throat, turning her face to bury it in his chest, as though he was not the one causing her pain in the first place.

Then, as she watched, the Cerebra began to settle again, whimpers quieting in favor of unlabored breaths. Slowly, slowly color began to return to her face, as though she still shivered slightly, the look of pain and fear was gone from her visage. She shuddered and again burrowed deeper into the Aavan's arms, content for a moment...until waking herself with a cough a moment later.

The Rora that had been sitting at the edge of the cave vanished abruptly and grateful, embarrassed by the display of weakness from her more solid counterpart.

---

When Rora opened her eyes again, only half her conscious brain was aware of it, and so she stared, utterly bewildered, up into two pale pools of violet, the only things to stand out in the relative darkness surrounding her. She felt odd, floaty, as if her head was very far from her shoulders. She knew something was wrong, though she couldn't even begin to put a name to it. Simpler to let the darkness claim her again. Another small shudder went through her body as she began to drift again before a cold heaviness in her chest made her cough. Wincing, she blinked and open her eyes.

The odd, floating pools of violet were still there, and she said without thinking the same, singular thought that had been plaguing her mind since the pain had started:

"Mori."

 

[Kaisaan]

He'd not known what to think when she'd started to whimper, to curl into him further and Mori had simply held her a little tighter, instinctively understanding that desire to find safety, to find comfort. He'd searched for it for six years without finding it and he couldn't let Rora do the same in vain if he could guarantee she found it, even this once. So he let her stay close and he continued to hum softly to her. He watched her closely when she shivered, watched the color came back into her face and relief washed through him, staying even when she coughed. Yes, she was sick now, but chances were she wouldn't die from it now that her body was responding normally to the warm up and the Aavan gave a small sigh.

It was just in time for the Cerebra in his arms to wake and he looked down at her without a word, wondering just how she'd react to being where she was. He hadn't meant anything by it except to warm her faster, but what if she didn't see it like that? She was a Cerebra and he an Aavan. Just two days ago he'd been a pet, a slave in her sister's clutches and she had been the enemy, a strange enemy, but still an enemy.

And now he was worrying over her being sick, about whether she'd yell at him, about what she might think?

Why did he suddenly feel so utterly confused by this turn of events...and yet so accepting of it, too as if he didn't have much of a choice in the matter?

Mori frowned just a bit, watching as Rora seemed to slip toward sleep again, but the cough woke her not a moment later and he stared back down at her, feeling that cloying concern come right back, a leech he could not hope to dislodge from his mind, his heart. He didn't even know how to begin to get rid of such a strange emotion or how it had gotten there in the first place. Maybe it was just some payment for her setting him free? Did he simply feel like he owed her?

The thoughts, every single one of them, fled at the one word she uttered and for a moment Mori simply blinked down at her, clueless as to why his own name would cause such a sense of..of...happiness in him. Was it simply because he'd not heard it in six years? No...no that did not seem right. It was like...like that one word, from HER, was fulfilling a longing he'd not realized he'd had and the Aavan smiled just a little. His hand instinctively rose, brushing her damp hair away from her face and he set his palm on her head, a comforting gesture.

"Shh, Rora. I'm not going anywhere, little rainbow. Just sleep."

He hoped she did. It would be the best remedy for her and in the morning he'd go collect water - and her leggings and shoes - and search out some food and perhaps a few herbs that might help her. But for now, warmth and heat were what was best.

 

[DotCom]

His words came to her slowly, as if through a very long tunnel, full of water or tar or sludge or something thick, viscous liquid that distorted her hearing and made her head feel heavy. Like treacle. Or pudding.

The sudden, abstracts made her giggle, which in turn made her cough, and the cough quickly grew into a deeper cough that left her breathless, eyes water, chest aching, and if only she could focus on anything but those twin pools of violet, she might be able to do something about it.

Also, the twin pools had a name, and a voice, and they made her feel safe, even when she shouldn't.

Strange.

She shivered again, unable to find the answers she was seeking. Her head ached, and while the cold had unhooked its claws, it still seemed to stroke the back of her neck, sending tiny bumps all down the length of her arms. There was something important she was supposed to be doing or saying. Twin-Pools had spoken to her, such kind and familiar words, despite the strangeness of the situation. She wanted to do something to say thank you, but she couldn't make her tongue work, couldn't even form words, save for that one -- Mori. The world had been turned on its head, and she clutched to the name like a drowning man to a lifeboat.

There were other things, many other things, for her to deal with. Some small part of her fought against the Aavan once more without thinking about it, but a greater part of her was exhausted, and this part won over in the end. The questions -- where was she? What happened? Who was Twin-Pools and where was Mori? Or perhaps Where was Twin-Pools and what was Mori? -- settled at the back of her mind, thick and heavy as mud, and she let them. She coughed again, whimpering a little this time as her vision began to flicker. Her chest ached, her head throbbed, the warmth bit harder than the cold. And she felt surely, inexplicably safe.

The name that had become her anchor drew up and around her like a blanket. She wanted to say it again, wanted Twin-Pools to know -- but she drifted off before she could form the words, and the name slipped away into the ether.

 

[Kaisaan]

Mori slept on and off most the night curled around the smaller form of the female. It wasn't anything intimate, merely an instinctive action to keep her warm, to keep her safe and each time he woke, it was to her coughing or to check on her state. When morning came, the Aavan disengaged slowly from her form, carefully moving the Cerebra a bit further from the magma. The horrifying thought that she'd roll and -

Right. Further away was definitely better.

Having made her as safe as he could, Mori took one last glance back, the strange desire to do so rather overwhelming before he moved to the hole he'd created and took a bit of a jump, grabbing the edge of the entrance and pulling himself through and up into the world above. The jungle greeted him with its usual sounds and he took careful stock of what was around him before deeming it safe to leave the heat cavern. His form shifted up, knowing it was safer to be bigger and the black Aavan started on his mission. It didn't take long to get back to the river and find Rora's clothes. He curled her shoes into her pants and then placed them in the slight hollow between his wings and neck, more than fine to carry them that way as he found a sturdy cup-leaf and filled it with water. The thing immediately went rigid as was its biological nature when wet and he curled his tail around it, holding the water carefully as he started back toward the cavern.

His nose caught the scent of fruit along the way, just as he'd done on the way to the river and it was a simple matter for Mori to rise on his hide legs and have his fangs snap around the branch the food was on, snapping it off with a resounding crack that made the animals around him go still for a moment, silence falling before it started back up again as he continued to move on. Getting to the hole in the earth, being gone for a half-hour at most, the Aavan slowly, carefully lowered his tail into the hole and set the cup-leaf down, his mouth dropping the branch in the dirt as he shifted down and proceeded to pick the fruit he wanted off from the tree limb.

It was a rather simple matter to drop back into the cavern then and Mori flicked his black hair back away from his face with a simple movement before putting the fruit and clothes down close to Rora and then going back for the water. When he settled by her finally, his pale violet eyes searched over her sleeping face, wondering just how fast Cerebrae healed. He hadn't asked, hadn't considered it important to know.

Fate was humorous sometimes.

Mori sighed, his knees drawn up as he rested his chin on them, simply watching the female, wondering what it was about her that made it so very difficult for him to leave her, to forget her like he did so many others of her kind. And he still didn't know why she was here. If he'd truly killed Risa - had he really done that? - then why...WHY had she let him go? He didn't understand.

 

[DotCom]

The sickness drained the energy from her body, leaving her nightmares less nightmarish, and more sickly sweet and garishly bright, hyper-colored versions of the real world, people and places she knew distorted into unrecognizable shapes.

None of them were the Aavan.

She woke better for having slept, her head clearer, her thoughts coming quicker, but her chest ached and she couldn't stop coughing. It was a brief coughing fit that finally broke through the exhaustion, each warring until finally she had to wake up and sit up and --

Wait. Where was she?

She wasn't sure what she had been expecting, but this was not it. Slow, careful thought, so as not to panic, recalled the event at Risa's and fleeing into the forest, watching over the wounded Aavan, and...him rescuing her from something, a cat-lizard of some sort. He'd found her the river he'd promised, and they'd fought and he'd left. That was the last she remembered. So, how was she here, bare-legged, hair damp, skin pallid?

She was just about to get up and look around when she realized there was a now-familiar consciousness on the edge of hers, waiting patiently, thoughts inscrutable.

She blinked and her green eyes met the Aavan's pale violet over the magma pit between them. There was a moment's silence, and then she spoke.

"I -- " she wasn't at all sure of what she was going to say, and didn't have to be. The single word turned into a short coughing fit that left her light-headed and shuddering and wondering what it was the Aavan had saved her from this time -- because he had, she knew. She didn't know how she knew it, only that she did, and she ought to be thanking him again.

Instead she swallowed hard, wincing slightly, and said, voice hoarse, "Where are we?"

 

[Kaisaan]

He didn't move to help her.

He wanted to, strange as that desire still was, but she'd told him she didn't want it last time and while he could ignore it while she was unconscious and in desperate need of help, he wasn't inclined to being snapped at again and so he kept distance. Besides, he was not blind nor stupid and he'd more than noted that she was scared of him. Maybe she'd sought comfort last night, but from her one question just now, she hadn't been lucid enough to even remember that. No, she was scared of him, flinched when he was near and didn't want him close to her. Mori understood all of those emotions intimately and none of her people had respected them.

He wouldn't do as they'd done.

The Aavan stayed as he was, chin still on his knees, his black hair brushing his eyes, looking a great deal younger than he often did this way and he answered Rora's question, his own voice quiet and deep. "A heat cavern. I found you in the river. Your clothes are there if you want them, and food and water."

Mori reached to the side then, watching his fingers as they swirled slowly in the magma, enjoying the heat. His body didn't hurt so much anymore. It wasn't up to full strength yet, but it certainly didn't burn with every move or throb constantly when he was still. It was more like aches now, small bursts of true pain when he moved too fast or in a certain way. His hunger was sated, thirst the same and there was nothing for him to fear.

All in all, it would probably be the most stable Rora would have ever felt him.

Violet eyes looked up again, a bit wary but interested nevertheless, slightly concerned still. "How do you feel?"

 

[DotCom]

She'd started slightly when he'd spoken, and more so when he put his hand back into the magma pit, half lurching to her feet to stop him before she realized it didn't hurt. She settled, somewhere between sheepish and tired -- and then looked up abruptly at his question...or rather the emotions that went along with it.

She was doubting her abilities again. She must have been sicker than she thought, because the Aavan's concern was not fueled by pride or the idea of a lost snack, and the wariness was not the bated expectation that she would run again, though the latter may have just been he thought her too weak and stupid to get far on her own. But the concern felt sincere, if confused, and he'd come back for her before, after leaving when she'd snapped at him. Come back just in time to save her life, and all this before warming her up, finding food and water and --

Whatever else she'd been going to say or think or do or ask was immediately shoved aside by the sudden realization that she was hungry, and it was her own hunger for once, not the Aavan's. She didn't recognize the fruit he'd found for her, and was indeed not even sure she was up to eating yet. But she was hungry now, nearly light-headed with it, and decided she'd take the chance.

Unless...unless it was poisoned or drugged, like the fare Risa had given him. She turned her gaze back to the Aavan, green eyes narrowed in suspicion. He'd shown he was smart enough to speak. Was such a creature capable of spite as well.

She settled on the small container of water, lifting it with a shaking hand and doing her utmost to appear casual drinking it, and not desperate. No. He may have saved her, but it was too early to appear dependent upon him.

"I'm fine," she said shortly at his second question. Then, as if she was doing him a favor, "And yourself?"

 

[Kaisaan]

Mori watched her carefully as she drank and he nearly shook his head at her pride, but thought better of it. He'd been the same way in captivity...but he'd had reason. He just couldn't figure out why she was acting as if SHE were a prisoner. She could leave whenever she wished. She'd chosen to come so why treat him as if...as he were her captor? As if he was going to harm her at every turn when he'd actually done a great deal to show he didn't desire her to come to harm? He didn't understand her and was doubtful he actually wanted to no matter what the strange pushing in his mind told him.

The Aavan felt a mixture of relief and yet a flinch in his spirit at her words, her tone and when she continued along the same line of attitude, he did draw back quite literally, shrinking back even though there was an entire magma pool between them, not wide, but still a barrier. He didn't know why that had hurt so much and for a long moment he struggled to find a response, feeling like she'd torn something from him as cruelly as Risa had torn the Nuathal away.

Something he hadn't realized he'd acquired during the night, when she'd called him by his name. He couldn't name it, but it pained him to lose it again so quickly and for a moment when his pale violet eyes met her green, there was nothing but a completely lost expression there before Mori forced himself to stabilize again, pushing the emotion down to that dormant place he'd learned to put everything else. He was used to pain, to rejection and cold indifference. He should not have expected anything less from Rora.

He would know better next time. Moments of weakness on her part did not mean anything to her. What she did when she was not fully conscious of herself meant nothing. He would remember that.

"I'm going home."

The words came out of their own accord and once they had, Mori knew them to be true. It wasn't an answer she would understand, but it was crystal clear to him. He was going home, to his own kin where this pain would not happen anymore, where he would find the care and love his spirit longed for so intensely that it nearly caused his chest to ache at times. He was going home and then...then he'd be fine.

 

[DotCom]

She'd long since finished the water and was now staring greedily, and not-at-all subtlety at the fruit he'd brought her, half out of desperation, half out of a firm keenness to avoid his scrutinizing gaze, when he spoke. It was a simple phrase, rather obvious, in fact, given the little she knew of the Aavan, and this one in particular. She should have expected it, only...

...only why was he taking her with him? Was she a hostage to be held for ransom? Or did he plan to spirit her away, make her punishment for her people's crimes against the Aavan long-lasting? Would she spend the rest of her life in a cage among the Aavan, half-starving and denied contact until she forgot how to speak? It seemed...cruel for the Aavan, and yet what had she expected?

He'd killed Risa, after all.

"And?" she said when she could speak again without sounding frightened. "What are you going to do with me?" She could feel his uncertainty and confusion almost as keenly as she felt his own. Deciding, she assumed, what her final punishment would be. Had he really saved her just to leave her in the forest that might claim her life in a matter of hours? How far could she get on her own? How much farther had he taken them? IF she drew close enough to the city, sentient thought would guide her the rest of the way, but...

...but her body ached, and while her head felt clearer, she still felt sluggish. She was loathe to leave the warmth the small cavern offered, even with the clothes he'd brought back.

It took her a moment she'd been the one to sneak him out of the city, to open the door to freedom. And now their positions were switched, he leading her through a land ready to kill, her dependent on his knowledge and strength. The vulnerability stung, making her feel weak and useless, and then angry.

There was a strange half memory, then, of someone holding her, keeping her safe, and warm...a lullaby...a name...

Another hacking cough stole the air from her lungs and she looked back to the Aavan, defiant.

"Why did you pull me out of the water?"

 

[Kaisaan]

What WAS he going to do with her?

He couldn't leave her here. She'd shown that she wasn't capable of surviving in the jungle, not without some serious teaching and training and by that point he might as well have just taken her back to her people. But he couldn't go back. He was the only black Aavan, if he was seen, he would be captured again and then he'd be paying for the death of a Cerebrae whether he deserved it or not - and he was still not sure he did. But he couldn't take her to his own people. No, if she ever went back to her own kin, she could lead them right back to the rest of the Wild Aavan and he would not have that on his head.

She'd put them both in quite a situation with her irrational decision to come with him. And now she wanted to act like it was HIS fault?

No. He wasn't going to engage this level of crazy.

His pale eyes narrowed in a hard glare. "I'm not going to DO anything with you. I haven't DONE anything to you in the least. If you'd like, the next village of your people we come upon, you're free to rejoin them. They can take you back home. It's the best I can offer."

He shook his head then and Mori stood, running his fingers back through his tangled black hair, wincing at his hand caught and then giving up for the moment, moving back to the hole in the cavern ceiling, looking out at the daylight outside. He looked back to Rora at her question and the look he gave her clearly asked her if she was stupid. And that was honestly the mood he was in right now. He was tired of these stupid games she was playing. "Because I didn't want you to die. Why else?"

The Aavan didn't expect an answer, didn't really want one and he spoke again as he jumped up and grabbed on to the edge of the hole. "I'm going hunting. If you'd deign to stay here, that would probably be better for your health." He was gone then and Mori didn't plan on coming back for a while. This time he knew she was safe and the more she rested, the sooner she could travel safely without getting sicker.

 

[DotCom]

Rora said nothing as the Aavan once again grew frustrated with her and left, though this time, she supposed, she was in no real danger. Then again, she'd thought the same last time, and that was without a pit of liquid fire not two feet to her left.

The thought made her laugh, somewhat abruptly, tinged with hysteria, and she got unsteadily to her feet to follow the Aavan and squint up at the hole in the vaulted roof. She could get out, if she really wanted to, she guessed. It would take a little climbing and a lot more energy than she had now. But it was cold outside and she hadn't yet fully recovered from her time in the river. The Aavan had left her fruit and clothing. Perhaps a small meal and a longer nap, and she would be ready to leave when she had the chance.

He was right -- she would be unable to find any Cerebrae villages on her own. But if, in their travels, they got close enough, she was confident in her ability to run.

As for the life debt she owed him...well. There was nothing she could do to avoid implications at his hand in Risa's death. But she would try and give him enough time to get away, or perhaps convince the Keepers that he had died. The pursuit was not worth the price of a dead CloudDottir, she was sure of that. Even if Risa was her sister.

Truly, her greatest concern was Sumilah. The Matron was old, even by Cerebrae standards, and had likely been near driven mad by the loss of both daughters in one day. How would she receive Rora when she found out the Empath had no memory -- or no clear memory -- of what had happened? And worse still, no handle on the Aavan who'd done it?

She would be kept under guard, then. Rora would spend night and day with Pushers and Dreamers and the other two living Empaths, all trying to unlock horrible memories that might well push her over the edge anyway...

She didn't want to go back.

The thought was loud and clear and stark and all the more suprising for it. She didn't want to go back. She missed Sumilah, and even Siya and Rogan and the noise of the city, but whatever had happened to Risa had been so traumatic, Rora couldn't recall it. What would happen if she went back? There were times the madness came upon her and she was afraid she'd never return to normalcy. If she went back and broke...she would not be repaired again.

The thought made her feel sick, and in a fit of fear and uncertainty, she grabbed the Aavan's proffered fruit and threw the pieces into the magma pits, watching them sizzle and sink beneath the waves of orange-red.

She had no home, she realized. No family, and no place to go. At one time, it would have been freeing. Now, it just felt damning.

If she hadn't felt so hopeless, she might have climbed out of the cavern and run until one of the cat-lizards found her, and this time, she would not wait for rescue.

As it were, she simply curled up on the floor of the cave beside the hot pits and tried to turn of her mind.

 

[Kaisaan]

----------

Their travel was ponderous - it was true for Mori, a creature who could cover twice the distance the Cerebra could on foot and four times the distance flying but he could not risk taking to the air just yet and he wouldn't think of asking the snippy, prideful, strange Rora to ride on his back. So they walked, mostly in uncomfortable, awkward silence, trying to act as if the other person wasn't there. Four days had seen the female over her cough for the most part and Mori back to full strength if not full fitness. His scales gleamed dark ebony now, his eyes their steady violet again and as the days passed, he felt more and more like his younger self. More and more his wings ached to be used and his spirit to fly past the sky again.

Soon.

He knew it was still about a week to the next Cerebrae village on the opposite end of the desert and near the second jungle as the Aavan walked. As the Cerebra walked...well, probably two weeks...without complications...so three weeks. He'd told her as much at some point and had promptly ignored any response to the news. It wasn't his fault and he wasn't going to take blame for it. He was done taking blame for her predicament, too and more than once they'd snapped at each other over it.

So it was that they'd just stopped speaking unless they had to for some mundane reasons until they came to the edge of the jungle and to the first desert. Nacuas Vict the Nuathal called it - Death's Basket. It was a treacherous place, being so close to the Black Cliffs and there were creatures here that could take even an Aavan as prey. Creatures BIGGER than an Aavan that even the Cerebrae could only keep away from their villages and cities with technology, but could not obliterate.

It was at this cusp between humid vegetation and hot sand that Mori hesitated and stopped. It was the first time he'd faltered at anything, but the Aavan did so with very good reason. Even FLYING over this desert Aavan were wary and since the Cerebrae patrolled this area now, he couldn't even fly. No...he had to go on foot across places Aavan did not dare to hunt, to dwell and that familiar fear came back, long proceeding the terror he'd faced in captivity. No, this was entirely a native fear and after scenting the air a few times, Mori moved forward, his body tense, on alert.

It still didn't help when the Truscor struck.

Giant centipede-type creatures nearly twenty-five feet in length with six clawed arms on each side of their body, gaping maws and no eyes, they were terrifying in their stealth, not just in the quiet way they lay underneath the earth in their sand tunnels that they could swim through to chase their prey from underground but in the way they could avoid even the detection of Empaths, of Pushers and Dreamers, even Whisperers. They were the top predators of this planet and had adapted so very well to be so.

Mori barely registered what had hit him as the Truscor came surging up from under the sand, having been lying in wait for some poor creature to emerge from the jungle and the black Aavan barely missed having his stomach gutted as the creature's head hit him and not its mouth. He went flying, landing in a heap in the sand and even as he scrambled to get up, the giant Truscor loomed over him and opened its mouth, an echo-blast making the Aavan roar out in pain even as his body froze, paralyzed.

He couldn't move to escape, to fight. He could only watch, terrified as the sharp rows of teeth came lunging for him.

 

[DotCom]

She didn't think. She simply moved. Later, if there was a later, she would regret it.

It had seemed natural at first. The last four days had been...strange to say the least. Not entirely unpleasant, if she was being honest, but nothing she wanted to repeat without good reason. The pain and confusion radiating from the Aavan had cooled to a simmering irritation, mirroring her own. The two of them stalked along in stubborn silence, too moody to care how strange there situation was. They had happened upon an unspoken truce: the Aavan saw her to the next Cerebrae village, she let him escape.

What happened after...well, she'd worry about that when it came time.

Rora had been having nightmares for days now, little inexplicable snippets of a scene that seemed coldly familiar, made all the worse by the fact that she couldn't remember the horror they depicted. Screaming. Agony. Bitter sadness, anger, and loss. Risa's dead body floating in that pool of water, her face, her voice echoing in Rora's mind.

Freak.

Monster.

Kin-slayer.

She woke every morning and at least thrice a night with the words in her head, never sure whether or not she'd been screaming, but always shaking and always drenched in a cold sweat. If the Aavan noticed, he said nothing, which was just as well, because any time he spoke to her, she found her thoughts that much harder to control.

And so, she'd avoided thinking for several days, moving mechanically forward in the Aavan's wake, simply enjoying the relative silence of the outside world, far from the peaceful civilization the Cerebrae had brought to this untamed land.

She had never seen a desert before, and would have been only awed, if the Aavan's stark terror hadn't overwhelmed her. She realized it had been some time since she'd felt him this agitated and looked over at him to ask, on instinct, what the sea of boiling sand that lay before them was...and why he was so scared of it.

Then she blinked, and a pale, muscle-bound body had replaced the sleek black scales she was expecting.

She didn't think. She felt the snake-creature's mindless rage, and the Aavan's mindless terror, and struck out blindly.

The first pulse ripped the entire monster out of the ground, holding it aloft even as more pairs of jaws than she could count snapped down at the Aavan, as if she were too small for it to even sense.

The next tore trees up from the forest behind her by the root, as cleanly as a newborn plucking a blade of grass.

The snake-beast writhed and screamed, a slow and primal fear beginning to overtake its mind and pollute Rora's.

Again, there was no thought, only action.

Another pulse and the trees had become projectiles, sylvan spears in the hand of a master hunter, driven through the thick flesh of the monster in the air. A fourth saw the whole thing, riddled with trees like a pin cushion, driven into the ground and buried in a cloud of dust.

It was enough, she knew. The creature had died as suddenly as the many trees had impaled its body. But she wasn't thinking, couldn't think. If she could, she might have recognized the same mindless rage that had overtaken her at Risa's courtyard.

A shallow cave at the edge of the forest became so much rubbled, raining stony death down on the creatures corpse. Several of the larger boulders rose and fell and rose again, mashing the attacking monster into a pulp. The forest had gone silent, save for the sound of animals retreating at a foe they could not even see. And Rora stood at the center of it all, her expression blank.

She saw the snake-creature's bloodied, broken body, reduced to a wet, pulpy mass. She saw the edge of the forest, barren and desolate. She saw her own hands, shaking steadily at her sides, as if she hadn't so much as lifted a finger while destroying beyond recognition a creature more than twenty times her size.

She saw Risa's face as --

The memory snapped her out of the mindless rage as cleanly as someone cutting a puppet's strings.

Rora blinked and looked around, quite astonished at the destruction around her. Last she remembered, she'd been staring at a sea of sand, and then --

The Aavan had not moved from where he'd fallen. There was no doubt he had not done this.

And if he was innocent of this crime...who had killed Risa?

 

[Kaisaan]

Mori had seen many things in his life, good and bad, awing and horrifying, but he'd never seen anything like that. Never.

The Aavan had watched the scene unfold, unable to move, to speak, only able to watch with a wide-eyed stare the destruction Rora wrought upon his attacker. And somehow he knew it was because it was his life in danger that she did it. HOW he knew that, he didn't know, but he did and when it was all over, when she was calm once more - though, that was a relative term - he moved slowly, the paralysis wearing off with the death of the Truscor, and stood to his feet. His body ached in a bad way, but he hardly took attention to it, his violet eyes for nothing but the Cerebra several feet from him.

He slowly shrunk down, perhaps some instinct telling him that smaller was better...and yet he knew she wouldn't hurt him. He didn't know how he knew it, or how he could be so utterly calm and confident about such a thing, but he understood it nonetheless and the Aavan approached Rora slowly, but not warily. She'd just done something no one Aavan could do as far as he knew. She'd taken down the top predator of the entire planet as if it had been a mere worm to stick a few needles in and grind under her foot...and he didn't fear her in the slightest.

It was a rather odd, odd feeling to have.

No, what he felt was concern, for her as he came forward and slowly stopped before her, the highly irrational urge to reach out and palm her face springing upon him without warning of any sort. His hand twitched, but stayed where it was, knowing a boundary without having to test it and he instead spoke gently, far more so than he had in a few days. "Thank you. Are you all right...truly?" He didn't think she was, not with the way she trembled and the pallor to her face. She looked like she'd seen a spirit or had been confronted with something utterly horrifying...but not this. He could sense that. It wasn't this. It was something else her mind had gone to. He could see it in her eyes, in that faraway, dazed expression. Mori was not entirely sure she'd actually tell him of it, or her state, though.

He'd not know an Empath could do that. That was Telekinetic power....did Cerebrae have more than one gift? Or was Rora different...like he was?

 

[DotCom]

For as fuzzy and far away as everything else sounded -- or perhaps the air truly was that quiet -- she'd have expected the Aavan's words not to have made it through.

She was wrong.

No sooner had he finished asking his question (had she ever even heard it?) then she'd turned on him. There was no intent to destroy there. No rage or bottomless anger, like when she'd killed the worm thing. This was abstract fear, not of the Aavan, but of what he represented.

And a little of herself too.

"N-no," she choked hoarsely, and only then began to realize what she'd pulled off had cost her. She was trembling again, once more unable to get warm. Her head felt floaty, her limbs too heavy, and none of it mattered, because she was still feeding off adrenaline.

"NO," she said again as the Aavan drew closer. "S-stay away, don't touch -- "

Her knees buckled and she stumbled over one of the trees she'd uprooted. It was a short fall, but she landed in something warm and sticky and wet. She lifted her hands to her face, saw red --

-- and then wetness of a different sort entirely. Risa's face, pale, begging, as gallons of water poured in upon her, relentless, unbidden --

-- and screamed, scrambling away from the Aavan and further into her own destruction, seeing death at every turn. The worm was not alone. Hundred of smaller creatures had been killed, and trees, and plants, all of them at her hand, and that she had done it all without the use of her Empathic gift had not even occurred to her.

"No," she breathed hoarsely. "No. No. No. No. Nononononono -- "

Her body throbbed with exhaustion. The Aavan's fear, the thing that had caused her to...enter this strange fugue state was sill palpable at the back of her throat. Risa's face hovered inches in front of hers, chanting:

Freak. Monster. Killer. Murderer.

Rora couldn't breathe, couldn't see, couldn't think. The snake-creatures blood was cooling on her hands, streaked across her pallid face. The forest had fallen at her hand, she was feeling deaths in the hundreds, and Risa...by the Matriarch, Risa.

There was nothing left to do but scream.

 

[Kaisaan]

The first 'no' told him something was very, very wrong, something beyond this, though, that was starting to sink in too, he would imagine. Something that sent a chill up his spine and the hairs on his arms and neck to rise with a sense of warning, of danger that had nothing to do with his own safety but hers. She was moving back then, scrambling to get away from him, but this time Mori knew it wasn't truly him she was trying to get away from. She was trying to get away from herself and his physical form was far more convenient for that. When she fell, as soon as he saw her hand come up, he knew what the reaction would be, could sense it, feel it.

The scream felt like it was trying to tear through him, ripping, clawing at more than his ears and for a moment the Aavan froze at the raw horror and anguish in the sound, in the emotions that swept over him.

And then he was moving. He moved faster than it felt he'd ever moved in his life and he moved toward Rora and not away. She'd said to stay away, to not touch her, but that hardly mattered to him in this moment. What mattered to him was that she was suffering and he needed to fix it, to help her, now. It was an overwhelming shrieking demand in his head, howling along with the scream that just kept going on and on.

Mori's hands came to palm her face, to cradle her head as he put his forehead to hers, not thinking, just reacting, his teeth grit as the screams seemed to wrap around him, trying to drag him down into the same pit of dark despair Rora was descending into. It only made the Aavan plant his will, though, becoming a force it could not tug on, could not topple or strip away and then he reached into it, found that tiny spark of pleading, of frantic searching and he caught it, remembered his own emotions, when he'd felt that way and instantly a connection was formed. Such was the way of his kind and Mori did the only thing he knew to do then.

He poured himself into her....but only two selected parts, only two powerful emotions with his entire will and burning warmth behind them; comfort, pure and simple, a blanket, a shield that started to wrap around that small spark that was RORA and not the darkness threatening to consume her, and the second emotion was hope. A light in the darkness, coaxing and gentle even as it was the fiercest thing in the entire universe. Hope could move galaxies or could brighten the face of the smallest child. It was powerful and it was something Mori could offer.

He didn't let her go. He wouldn't.

He couldn't.