Immediately, Hoshiya and I dropped our positions of engagement, quickly slapping our hands back together at our waists in what qualified as reverence, bowing our heads deeply. Gormos, with difficulty, removed himself from between our legs. I nudged him forward subtly with my toe, silently bestowing upon him the position of ambassador with the task to find out what exactly this Aisha wanted.
"I hear you people talking about Sacred Cave," the Aisha said with a smile, relieving Gormos of his mission to uncover the Aisha's purpose. Being unfamiliar with Aisha body language (I had treated a few in the past, but Aishas mostly stuck to medicinal services administered by their species, as their government had socialized healthcare), I couldn't determine whether or not the smile the Aisha wore was sincere or sinister. For the time being, I had to take it at face value. "You Nyswans, right? Not used to Aisha City, right?"
"Correct," Hoshiya answered, her voice solemn and steady.
"Well, you no have to wait around. I take you. I am taxi driver, I take you around Aisha City." The Aisha walked forward and took Gormos' paw, beginning to pull him in a direction opposite of the way we came. Gormos shot a helpless look back to us as he was pulled away half against his own will by the Aisha. Hoshiya and I exchanged looks, and then shared a shrug.
"We need to get there anyway, right?" Hoshiya muttered. I agreed with a tilt of my head. Silently, we followed after, trying our best to give the appearance of floating just a few inches above the ground as genuine Nyswans did.
The taxi itself was nothing special: standard canary-yellow hover craft, shaped a bit like a sedan with the nubs of hover engines in place of wheels. Its side doors displayed rates by minutes and miles, the leather interior smelled faintly of spices and the plastic barrier dividing the front seats from the back was starred with points of impact. Though we tried to squeeze all three into the back seat, the Aisha cabbie insisted Gormos sit up in shotgun. The Aisha had taken an unusual and somewhat unsettling fondness to Gormos, keeping its hand constantly on Gormos'. The Aisha even situated Gormos' hand forcibly upon the gear shift so it could stay in constant contact with him. As we took off from where the Aisha had parked its craft, the Aisha began addressing Gormos in rapid-fire Aishatalk, causing Gormos to sink down several inches in his seat.
From the back seat, Hoshiya and I stifled snickers.
The taxi shot out of the landing terminal with reckless speed; the light of impending twilight hit my eyes with a marked harshness, and I pulled the hood further down my forehead to act as a visor. Once my eyes had adjusted, though, I couldn't keep them from wandering out the window. If Aisha City had been overwhelming from a mere stationary window, it became utterly comprehensible from its skyroads. I pressed my face unabashedly against the window to get a better look at the endless activity below. A metal and neon canyon yawned beneath us, roads at different levels appearing to criss-cross without a single crash, so perfectly in harmony with one another. On balconies, I could see singular figures move about, appearing more like representations of life than actual living beings.
Hoshiya, less easily mystified by being up high (after all, she'd lived most of her younger years at astonishing altitudes), intervened on the Aisha and Gormos' conversation, which had become more like a one-way barrage of words with Gormos nodding and swallowing. "So what's your name?" Hoshiya asked. Her direct question makes me inwardly cringe, and turn my attention away from the window—a legitimate Nyswan was all about proposing questions with elaborate, flowery language. Hoshiya's layman's diction wouldn't do.
Nevertheless, the Aisha answered without surprise. "I called Jerdana. You call me Jerry for short, right?" Despite the obvious masculine connotation of the nickname Jerry, I was getting the sense that our little blue friend was in fact female—especially from the way she repeatedly sized up Gormos.
"And how long is it going to take us to get to the Sacred Cave?" Hoshiya asked, sitting forward in her seat impatiently. I grabbed her by the back of the robe and quickly pulled her backwards so she maintained a sufficient distance. Nyswans also disdained close proximity to another being, something Hoshiya couldn't seem to avoid.
"Not long, not long at all," Jerry crooned, and temporarily released Gormos' hand from its stranglehold to fiddle with the knob of the radio. Jerry browsed through a sea of static, landing sporatically upon islands of decipherable sound, only to turn the dial back to a blanket of white noise. Finally, she settled on a station that was more scratchy feedback than actual sound, and began humming along to a completely imaginary tune.
Miserably, I sunk down in my seat, pulling the hood of my cloak as far as I could over my ears. Not even the gorgeous vision outside my window could compensate for the torture through which Jerry the somewhat psychotic taxi driver was putting my ears.
Twenty minutes of this nonsense elapsed, and I was fully convinced we were going nowhere. I could no longer maintain the signature patience and placidity of Nyswan (or even the magical meditation that Hoshiya seemed to be performing to help her through the ride). "So, you do plan on eventually stopping somewhere, right? Maybe like a diner or something? Because we had a pretty long ride in that space ship, and I'm ridiculously hungry."
"We getting there very soon, very soon," Jerry assured evenly, and turned towards Gormos with a nod. "Open glove compartment, there is map in there for friend to inspect." For the first time, she spoke to him in Intergalactic Common rather than Aishaspeak. If I hadn't been so fatigued and exasperated by the prolonged and nerve-grating ride, this would've set off multiple alarms in my head. As it stood, though, I was just thankful that I could finally lay my eyes on some solid directions. I pulled my hands down my face briefly in relief, and opened my eyes to what should've been a heavily-folded map of Aisha City.
Instead I found the barrel of a laser gun, aimed precisely between my eyes.
Hoshiya gave a loud shout, and reactively lashed out at the laser gun, attempting to neutralize Jerry's hand which held the weapon. Jerry, having obviously handled a gun in such a fashion before, easily eluded Hoshiya's defensive maneuver. With that, Jerry cracked Hoshiya hard across the forehead with the barrel, sending the Faerie falling back against her door and rendering her momentarily dazed. All of this happened so swiftly that I didn't even have an opportunity to grab the gun myself before it was directed back at my face.
With an expert's hand, Jerry used the gun's muzzle to flip back the hood of my cloak, uncovering my face. Jerry glanced back at me with what I presumed to be a smug smile. Her other hand steered the car with an instinct only developed after years of practice and familiarity with the road; it was apparent this wasn't the first time Jerry had pulled this stunt.
"You two fugitives, right?" Jerry asked, although by the easy smile pasted on her face and the gun pointed at my head it was clear she already had her answer. "Taxi driving, it no make much money. Got to make money other way. There is very nice bounty on two of you. But one is missing, right?"
"Nuh—" I began, the threat to my life compelling me towards truth. Hoshiya had other plans, and cut me off with a jab of her heel to my ribs. She took over where I left off.
"Yeah," she agreed, and removed her hood calmly. She made no sudden movements, and wasn't clandestinely spinning her wrist with a defensive charm. "The big cat guy—he got away. Ditched us passing the Andromeda galaxy with his ship. We were out of luck for a while, until we came across this mute here." She gave a deviant grin, one meant to deliberately incense Jerry. "He's our hostage."
Jerry gave a little noise of disapproval, her placid smile pursing into one of irritation. She took a moment to speak to Gormos in the machine-gun rattle jibberish of Aishaspeak, clearly reassuring him. Gormos nodded rapidly, giving Hoshiya a quizzical and bewildered look. I shared the expression, completely unsure of where Hoshiya expected to take this fabrication. With Jerry's head turned away from Hoshiya and me, I felt safe enough to mouth a silent "what the betty?" towards Hoshiya. Hoshiya smirked, and indicated towards her hands with a little dip of her head. I let my eyes steal a glance of her midsection. Her hands had disappeared from in front of her and were slowly working at something behind her back, delicately enough to go undetected.
The blue bounty hunter reverted back to Intergalactic Common Tongue and used the rear view mirror to address us. "Well, he no more your hostage. I free him now. You two my hostages, right?"
"Wrong," Hoshiya replied, and with her single utterance managed to unlatch the door lock and thrust the door open with her back. The rush of air depressurized the cabin, and a roaring wind filled my ears, seeming to overwhelm my eyes as well. I could feel a cold hand wrap around my wrist, and the bright burst of a laser sear past my ear, and if I inhaled I could smell the acrid scent of burning leather. It vanished in an instant as the taxi banked sharply right of its own accord, tossing Hoshiya and I out of the back seat and through the opened door.
Admiring heights from the safety of secure footing is one thing—freefalling without a parachute backup is completely another. Hoshiya and I tumbled chaotically through the open air, the sheer speed of our fall ripping the robes from our bodies to reveal our normal clothes beneath. Air assaulting my face stretched my cheeks back against my teeth, and the current of air instantly evaporated any speck of saliva in my mouth, reducing my girlish scream to a throaty whisper. Hundreds of flights cruised past us in what seemed like seconds, and I could only stare at the ground growing larger below us, expanding like the mouth of a carnivorous beast.
Hoshiya was screaming something, but the wind filled up my ears like cotton. She pointed to her back frantically, and flexed her tiny, insufficient wings demonstratively. My mind was so saturated with fear it couldn't absorb a speck of additional information or execute a single interpretation. Finally, Hoshiya—falling at the same rate as me despite her seemingly useful wings—practically crawled over me through the air, using various aspects of my clothing and anatomy as awkward handholds. Her hand balled into a frustrated fist, she pummeled me between the shoulder blades.
It was like striking a patient just below the kneecap to elicit a kick. My body remembered it was equipped with what were formerly useless sacks of feathers, unable to lift my body and its dense bone marrow from the ground. Yet while my wings failed at that elementary component of flying, they might just be perfectly suitable for gliding and breaking a steep fall. My wings sprang open, and my muscles strained to harness the air to keep slow my fall. The pain was almost intolerable, but faced with a sprained wing versus an ignoble death and a pancake corpse, I picked the former. Hoshiya, having succeeded in preventing my splatter, used her own wings to keep her aloft at my level, tugging upwards on me periodically if she thought I was descending too fast.
My wings slowed my fall sufficiently enough to make what could've been my undoing into an almost pleasant glide down to solid land. Granted, Hoshiya had to help me weave through the different levels of traffic we traveled through (unabashedly freezing vehicles in place and flipping off their drivers), but there was something immensely gratifying about putting my own wings to use—not to mention having the sensation of flying solo. By the time we landed (rather inelegantly—Hoshiya tried to help me with steadying my landing path, but my feet gave out from under me and caused me to tumble on top of her), my wings ached something awful, but the buzz radiating through my body from my first flight cancelled out any actual pain.
Hoshiya slipped out from under me and rolled with gymnastic agility to her feet. I took my time in getting to my feet, wanting to languish a few extra moments in the afterglow of my first flight. I laid back on my outstretched wings, feeling heat blaze off of them from overexertion. The warmth cushioned my back and loosened my muscles, and for a blissful moment I wondered if I had, indeed, died, and was now experiencing some peaceful afterlife.
Hoshiya's face popping into my line of vision reminded me that I was still very much alive. "Everything alright down there?" she asked, her voice only half-concerned.
"I'm fine," I replied with woozy content. My meditative state was interrupted by a sudden cold shot of realization—we had left Gormos behind in a taxi with an armed crazy. I sat up instantly, the heat dispersing away from my skin and leaving me sweating ice. "Holy crap, we totally bailed on Gormos!"
"Don't worry about him," Hoshiya said dismissively, grasping my hand and pulling me to my feet roughly. "He's a big boy, he can take care of himself." I shook my hand out of her grasp, glaring at her accusingly.
"Yeah, he used to be a big boy, until you shrank him to a third his size!" I retorted angrily. "Now you make me abandon my best friend in the middle of nowhere?!" (Even I was slightly surprised at this admission that I considered Gormos close enough to be a 'best friend,' but my anger stopped me from interrupting myself). "Sure, that Jerry character was a nutjob, but for the love of betty, woman, couldn't've you have done something with that magic of yours? Hypnotize the little sucker into driving us to the right place? Oh right, on top of all that, we have no bloody clue where we are!" All sense of well-being had hastily departed my body—now the heat that filled me was not pleasant, but the kind that makes its roots in the throat and spreads branches to the cheeks, all the while flushing skin and sending excessive spit arching from an angry mouth.
Unexpectedly, Hoshiya's knuckles connected with my nose, jerking my head backwards, shattering my equilibrium and sending me back on my behind. She flexed her fingers with a grimace, her face stony. Hot blood—blood boiled by my outrage—ran from my nose to my lips from a ruptured vessel, filling my mouth with metal. "Shut up, Frank," she said softly, the low voice that indicated an unseen storm. "I've got this under control."
Brazenly, I wiped the blood from under my nose, shaking off the excess droplets from my hand. The urge to hit her back was overwhelming, and by the way her eyes kept flashing, she was clearly ready for a fight. Still, I knew my limits—while talented with a scalpel, a hand-to-hand melee was not my field, especially against a rule-breaking former (and perhaps even current) assassin with magic on her side.