Before Beasts, There Was Time

Book 10

By LoweFantasy

1

The moment they were up they came to him. He didn't have to ask if they knew.

They waited outside the fireplace where he sat staring at the stones and ash while not eating or drinking and only moving to pull more wood into the fire about him. Ayah even tried to stay as close as possible, but only ended up singeing the ends of her wings. Every so often she'd begin a slow sort of song that couldn't have been produced by any human throat or any instrument he could pick out, and a sort of dreamy sleep would come over him without all the unconscious blackness, just the knowledge that Ray, Tyson, and her were near. He thought he wept once, but if he did they were tears of fire and vanished as soon as they appeared.

Other people passed through to gawk. They all had the same heavy, country accent. They asked questions, but only Ayah responded, and usually with the request to stay back. She allowed fingers to brush her wings and tail, despite the tense hissing of her overprotective brother nearby. Tyson and Ray only crowded in to Kai protectively, probably burning themselves in the process. Their tails got awfully close anyways. Tyson even yipped and jumped away at one point.

Then it was night and they slept. Someone had brought down the bear rug for them. Kai blinked out of a daze to force himself to recall if the three had drunk or eaten at all that day, and once satisfied that they had, curled back up on the ash and coals for the deep sleep that Ayah's peaceful song had denied him.

And opened his eyes to snow. White as far as the eye could see. White sky. White air. White earth.

Don't take that nap.

He walked, his steps heavy with the snow piled high to his knees. Why hadn't he brought snow shoes, he didn't know. Probably because he hadn't a chance to prepare for anything so far.

Blizzard winds pulled his wings from his back, leaving them streaming behind him along with his tail. He hugged his bare arms. And yet, he didn't feel cold. Just heavy. So heavy. If only he could just stop and hunch up in that snow, get low so the wind would stop pulling on his wings. Any minute now it would take him along with them.

No. If you can't feel the cold, it means you're at the worst stage of hypothermia. You stop, you'll die.

Just as Kai started to tell his brain to shut up, a flash of red caught his eye.

Standing there, as though he had been besides him the whole time, was Tala as Kai had never had the chance to see him. His fur had dried out and fluffy, proud sharp ears of red fur and hair stood upright from his head. Red fur ran along his back to a puffy tail that wagged against the wind, as though not feeling it at all. He wore a white sweater that hugged his slender figure that Tala had so hated when the rest of them at the Abbey bulked up so well and he didn't. He had a casual pair of jeans. He looked comfy. He looked warm.

He flashed Kai a sharp toothed smirk.

"That's right, birdie, don't you dare stop walking."

Kai scowled. "That's easy for you to say. You're a freaking ice wolf now. I'll have you know I fell into a volcano and came out not only fine, but whipping lava about like vines, could you do that?"

"Oo, you controlled the lava too? You never told me that."

And suddenly Kai remembered. Tala had walked himself to death.

But Tala was right here. Had that been a dream? It had to have been. What a horrible dream to have. But, then, how had he gotten here?

The smile on Tala's face fell away. "What's the look for?"

Kai said nothing, drinking in the sight of his old comrade, all fluffy and exotic in his new reborn state.

"Do you like it?" Kai asked.

"Like what?"

"How you've changed."

Tala glanced down at himself, wagged his tail, twitched his ears (which moved his entire hair style with them), then stuffed his hands in his pockets and gave Kai a curious look. "No, really, why the look?"

Kai sighed. The silent blizzard stole it away into the white world. His scarlet feathers ran along with it, sweeping about Tala's own red fur.

"I had a nightmare," he whispered. "Where you died trying to save us. You had just come out of that egg thing and were just as exhausted as all of us had been when we changed, and hungry, and weak. You had to walk ten miles through windy, subzero, frozen tundra. All by yourself. And…and I couldn't stop you. Because of, well…" Kai shrugged at his weary, half naked, frozen self, with the blizzard tearing out his red feathers in great handfuls. Even as Kai watched, he wondered why he hadn't run out of feathers yet, or why he couldn't see the bald surface of his fleshy wings. Somewhere in the tearing red he saw a long, elegant tail feather slither away into the white.

"Because you're Lord Volcano and froze up," finished Tala, a sad half-smile softened his iceberg eyes. "Hey Kai, remember back in the beginning when we were still new to the Abbey? Just a bunch of orphans who'd been pulled off the street? They were already weeding out the weak ones, and those kids just vanished. It was that night I left my dorm to come to yours, and you told me I had that freaky ass howl look on my face like in "The Scream" painting, right?"

Kai felt his mouth twitch. "No lie, that's my poster look for you now."

Tala rolled his eyes. "No dignity with you. But remember what you did?"

Kai frowned. "Something really dumb."

"It wasn't dumb. You took that scarf, the only thing you had left from your mom, and wrapped me up like a worm in a cocoon. All white and warm. Just like that ice you wrapped me up in down in the ship." The iceberg eyes shone. "And I felt the same then too."

Unbidden, Kai felt his throat start to ache. "I took you out of that cabin to die."

"You took me out of that cabin to save me. You didn't see it, but I was screaming then too, doing the "Scream" face you like to tack to me because you're a sick bastard like that. I was going to take that nap. Why do you think I was out in the snow when you found me? Making snowmen?"

Water poured from Kai's eyes, and it hardened as the blizzard took hold of it. "Shut up."

"Of course I'd run into your scarf, be it made of freaky sci-fi ice or…whatever cheap crap the actual thing is made of. I was weak, I was going to vanish like the others into the snow because I was weak and too damn scrawny and afraid. But Kai, you saved me. You gave me what warmth you have. I'm here because of you." Tala was crying now. Their Abbey captains would have been appalled. Though unlike Kai's tears, Tala's didn't freeze. They gleamed out against all the whiteness like liquid diamond. "I can't tell you how happy I'd be if I could do the same for you, even if I had to die to do so."

"That's not the same as wrapping a stupid scarf around you as a kid and you know it," Kai snapped.

"You idiot, that moment was just, as you say it, 'the poster child' of what you've done for me since then. During the day when we couldn't show weakness, you let me hold on to the end of that stupid scarf because you couldn't stand me pawing at your hand constantly, and it's a good thing you didn't. They would have hammered us even more than they did. Then, at night, if I had a nightmare and came to you, you'd wrap me up in it again. Frick, I was a damn teenager by the time you stopped, and that's because I stopped coming. You're such a softy block of butter, you know that?"

Kai put an arm up to hide his weepy eyes. "And you're a cry baby with the potty humor of a ten year old who get's nightmares of the boogie man. Trying to put on that cold cyborg act, what a laugh."

"Trying to put on that tough lone-wolf act when you're just a freaking shy little school girl who holds on to his mommy's old scarf, now that's a laugh."

"Shut up."

"No, you shut up." Tala pulled down Kai's arm, and between them the blizzard did not blow, nor did it tear off anymore feathers. "Tell your bad dream to shove it where it don't shine, and don't you dare stop walking. Don't you dare take that nap. Because there's others who need you just as I did, and if you do, they might as well nap alongside you."

And then the world turned black and Kai felt his body again, not knee deep in snow and ready to collapse, but curled in a nest of ash, coals, and burning logs. The flames had died to a simmer, but he could still feel the heat like a warm blanket, and the wetness on his face.

Author's Note: Totally bawled while writing this.