20

He took a light nap as the girls on hand measured and sewed up the clothes about him to accommodate for his wings. It didn't cease to surprise him how much he could sleep at a drop of a hat. So much for insomnia. Just go run for your life around the world a few times, insta cure right there.

Ayah slunk in sometime while he slept, with that unnatural ability to move completely silent if she wanted to, and he woke up with her snuggled against his leg.

"Why do you like doing that?" he asked in Russian, which was quickly becoming their language of choice when talking between them.

"Hm?"

"Cuddling with my leg or whatever part of me. Doesn't it make you feel like a dog?"

He saw her bottom lip curl in a pout. "I like cuddling with whatever part of you. I just thought it would impede your breathing if I pushed you on the floor and used you as a bed. You make a nice bed."

His mouth twitched. "Ah. So this is a mercy."

"Oh yeah." She rubbed the side of her face on the smooth, cotton of his new pants. He felt her heat against his calf and repressed a shiver.

Outside, he could still hear rain.

"What do you think of all this?" he asked, looking nowhere in particular.

"More specific, love."

"Of the northern lights showing up down here. The solar flare. Earthquakes." Though he was grateful to all the chaos, as it further lessened the chance of them being found in this remote village. Certainly seemed enough for the others, as they had been sleeping on and off as well, especially Max and Tyson.

She was quiet for some time. Then, as though wary of saying something untrue, she said, "Well, I guess it makes sense. The creators of the earth are back and have been hurt several times, not to mention you've all had to use your element a lot. That's going to set off certain imbalances. After all, it's not like the Earth is dead. She's probably upset."

That certainly gave him food for thought. Planet Earth, with feelings, like some Native American goddess.

"Think she could do a little more to protect us, then?" he asked.

Ayah looked up to give him a baleful look that instantly made him feel unexplainably guilty.

"What?"

"Can you control everything your body does?" she said flatly. "Control the minute movements of all the bacteria living on your skin?"

"We're Earth's bacteria?"

"Something like that. There's good and bad bacteria, good and bad people, and size wise," she sniffed. "Besides, I think it's amazing what she's already managed to do for us. For one," she turned her face back to nuzzling, allowing him a breath. "We're finally safe, even if for a short time."

A ground rumbling blast of thunder seemed to belay those words. Kai felt it up to his chest. He couldn't help but wonder how Ray would react to lightning and thunder.

He felt bad for it later, but he and Ayah more or less found a corner to curl up in and dozed the rest of the way, waking up intermittingly to eat or just because consciousness demanded it. As the day went on, they gathered more of their teammates, wrapped in quilts like burritos and snuggled about the two. Even the String Cheese wandered in, but he made it a point to sleep on the opposite side of the room to the nap pile.

Sometime after dark, Kai woke suddenly, instantly wide awake. Movements about him told him two others of his teammates had woken up as well. A dim flash of lightning showed Ray's broad shoulders and Tyson's mess of mussed hair.

He reached out towards his feet for Max and met cold, damp blankets. He couldn't hear breathing over the soft rain.

As though along the same thought, Tyson and Ray turned towards Max, and their fingers brushed against Kai's arm.

"His heartbeat is so fast," murmured Ray.

Kai found Max's head and moved his wrist against his mouth. The dampness told him Max's face was covered in sweat, despite how cold he had become.

A bare wisp of luke warm air brushed against his wrist.

"He's in shock," said Kai, barely able to say the words above a whisper due to the sudden constriction of panic about his chest.

"Why? He was fine earlier. Bit of a fever, but when has he not had one? Why's this happening now?"

Ray said nothing, brushing past Kai to feel Max's breath as well.

"Sometimes, if the infection is allowed to get into the bloodstream," but Kai wasn't sure he was saying these things aloud. "It can release too much toxins for the body to handle and it goes into shock trying to fend it off."

"But shock—people always talk like that's a bad thing, but he's—he was doing fine earlier."

"That's because it is bad," said Ray, as flat as black slate. "Max is dying."

An empty space of time, like a cavernous mouth to an abyss, opened wide. Darkness clenched close, making it hard to breathe.

"B-b-but he—he had anti-biotics," said Tyson, voice high with disbelief. "We got him the medicine and kept him bandaged—"

"All that diving into the sea probably worsened it," said Kai.

"So feeding us is killing him? We have to find a doctor—"

"He needs a hospital," Kai could feel Ray shake his head as he said this, his voice shaking. "And I don't know if there's anything our doctor can do at this point."

A softness rose besides him, reaching out, palely lit even in the near-dark lighting.

"Give him here," said Ayah.

"But you said you can't do anything beyond skin deep—" started Tyson.

"I have to try."

"I'll get the doctor." Ray leapt up and ran.

Kai put his hand to her shoulder and squeezed. "Don't go too far. Don't do what you did with Eiden."

"I'll do what I must."

"No. You'll just die along with him."

She shed him harshly and bowed close, humming. Her pitch changed, lowered, than so high he could barely hear, then to something like white noise behind the crackling of a fire.

Safety. Ha. It always had to be something.

He reached for what bit of Max he could, peeling him out of his blanket to get his wings around him. The chill of his skin made the abyss in his gut groan, even as he coaxed up fire from it and into his blood to warm him.

Moments later, Ray and the curled over, obnoxious old man came, holding lanterns in their hands that stung Kai's eyes. He reluctantly pulled aside his wing for the other to see him, and Ayah took a breath from her humming. Kai didn't miss her more than light leaning against him.

It could have been an eternity in which the old man prodded and listened to Max's soft breathing and fluttering heart. His blond hair had matted against his head with cold sweat.

Then, he turned back to Ray.

"You say phoenix boy heals in fire?"

This surprised them all. "But he's been diving in the sea, if it would've healed—"

"Sea is mostly not water," said the old man thinly, as though thinking them rather dumb. "Mostly dissolved salt and minerals and fish pee and god knows what. Get him up, I'll start a bath. Pheonix boy, I'll need your help warming it up."

The bath he mentioned consisted of a large metal basin, the kind used to feed livestock. Ray and Tyson, who had quickly followed along, jumped to sanitizing and cleaning out the thing, scrubbing like crazy. Meanwhile, the old man had Kai bring in buckets of buckets of seemingly endless rainwater. Apparently, rainwater was considered purer than any other they could get from the well so the village collected it on mass when the rainy season came.

Once satisfied that it was clean enough, the elder directed them to pull the basin over a fire pit of stone used more for cooking and warming the house and merely pointed at the bottom. Kai pulled out a handful of feathers and blew. Ready hot, golden flames erupted into life. He didn't stop there, but breathed onto the bath water until it steamed.

Ayah had held Max the whole time, humming and singing against the side of his head, like a mother to a sickly child.

"Enough," the old man snapped a hand to Kai's chest. "We're not trying to boil him." He put a hand to the water, frowning. "Little on the hot side, but should do. Get him scrubbed down first before putting him in."

Ray and Tyson took Max's limp body from Ayah's arms and proceeded to strip him, neither saying a word as they scrubbed and rinsed Max's body over the stone floor. Ayah kept her hands to her face, white and pale as ever.

Max's burnt arm was red, blotched with pale flesh, and slimy with discolored discharge.

Once satisfied, the old man had them put Max into the water. Tyson held Max's head above the water.

"Come on, buddy. You can get through this. You gotta."

After feeling his heartbeat and breathing, the old man seemed to heavily consider something before putting a hand on Tyson's wrist.

"Let him drop."

"What?! He'll drown! He's not a fish!"

"Didn't you say he was reborn in the water? Fell in, came out turtle? No air there. No, let him down."

"We won't let him drown," said Kai, reaching into the only luke warm water to him to hold Max's unconscious head as well, looking hard into Tyson's eyes. "Just for a bit. A little bit."

Tyson's shivering, shining dark eyes jumped from one to the other, desperate to find what comfort there was in Kai's gaze, then gave a slow nod. Together, they lowered Max's head into the water, like some weird baptism.

For a breath of time, Kai stared down at the pale, thin, yet somehow wider body of his friend. His expression was serene for what was happening, warped by the bubbles rising from his mouth.

Then he and Tyson all but yanked his head out, with enough panicked strength to probably pull his entire body out. Water splashed against the side of the tub.

The old man felt out Max's vitals again. He nodded.

"Breathing's deeper," he said. "Again."

A nightmare of baptisms proceeded as Tyson and Kai dunked Max in over and over, both too afraid to let go of the blond's head even though one of them could have lifted him just fine. Ray watched on with pupil's slitted to slim needles and Ayah clung to the side of the tub, humming and weeping and getting soaked from what water splashed up.

Somewhere in all that, Eiden wandered in. The next thing Kai knew, he was kneeling next to his sister, murmuring at a rapid pace that strange language only those two seemed to know.

After a moment of silence between them, he reached to his side and yanked out his own handful of feathers.

Instantly, Ray was on him, snatching his wrist. "What do you think you're doing?"

Eiden gave him an irritated glare and muttered in his broken, clumsy Russian, "I help."

"But bleeding him?"

"His feathers do more than cut," said Ayah. "They're receptacles of light—"

"Meaning?"

"They're full of energy. He's putting energy into the water, just like Kai is putting energy into the water via heat and me with sound." She squinted into the water through her tears. "Healing requires energy, and his body isn't making enough."

Reluctantly, and still looking ready to punch the scrawny light denizen, Ray let go of his hand and the gleaming, crystalline feathers lighted upon the water. They floated for only a second before dissolving like spun sugar.

The old man tapped Tyson's arm. "Again."

They dunked him.

Kai's feathered fire never went out, never needed feeding, and kept the rain water warm. Ayah eventually passed out in her brother's arms, having used as much strength as she could despite anyone's warnings.

Kai fell into something like a waking nightmare, where he dunked and puffed heat onto water while Tyson shook like a reed in the wind besides him.

Eons later, the old man called a halt to the dunking that would have drowned anyone else and had them rest Max's head against a folded up towel on the edge.

"Now we wait," he said, unable to suppress a yawn.

Tyson didn't like that, but his bloodshot eyes didn't leave Max, nor did his mouth open to protest.