Chapter Twenty-Two The Eclipse
Chapter Twenty-Two
The Eclipse
Her body wilted in my arms.
The weight redistributed, causing her to nearly drop to the floor. I had to hold her from her waist as her head sloped to the side.
The markings on her skin dimmed, and her eyes closed now. Even through her eyelids, I could see the light rings around her irises fade.
Her energy spent quickly, a burn so bright and ferocious. The light inside her was rich and overwhelming, like the feeling of sharp elation. I couldn’t hold a mortal form like that, not without breaking it. It was hard enough shaping myself like a puppet to communicate with her.
She made my skin . . . crawl. More than that, it wanted to flee away from her and consume her all at once. A predicament.
Her soul quieted, her consciousness dulled. Humans do this often, I remembered. They left their bodies for half their lives; their energy was just so strong they couldn’t handle being fully conscious at all hours of the day. Such strong beings in weak bodies. Sleep, they called it.
Gathering the limbs in my arms, I hooked my appendage under her knees, then the other under her shoulders.
It was much harder having form. To take shape in a way that would make sense.
Movement, breathing, expression, tone—it was all so overwhelming.
I supposed if you did it enough, it would become automatic.
Each claw gripped the soft body. This existence was something to get used to.
The more time I spent like this, the easier it was.
Just like how the more time I spent in a human skin, the more easily I could understand them.
Learning to walk in another’s shoes was just that—relearning to walk.
I placed her down on the long cushioned seat, though the deadweight made her fall harder than I’d thought. Carefully, I pulled her by her arms, rotating her so she lay on her back, her head falling to the side. I grabbed her face on either side, shifting it so it was on top of one of the pillows.
Red spots flared where my claws had been when I removed my hands. Scratches along her hips, waist, now her face. Blood began to drip, bruises forming.
Is that from me?
My hands were sharp . . . claw shaped. Not the best for handling humans. I might have to rethink some of my appearance.
I forgot that people were soft in every meaning of the word.
My hand hovered over the nearest wound.
Close, I willed it.
Her markings flared alight again. Glowing, hairlike threads began to stretch, pulling the skin back together to full mend.
She was lucky that she was not entirely of this world, or I was sure she might have been torn apart by something much worse than me in her escapades of the past. Those who came before her, with weaker connections to my world, had been torn from the inside out from attempting to open the doors themselves.
Most couldn’t even comprehend the place I came from, not in places their minds understood—it would slowly degenerate their brains.
Millenia of attempts to create something like her, and now she was here. Cruel fate had it that she was relatively uncooperative, almost too stubborn to bargain with. Ironic, considering how she’d come to be.
With more care this time, I placed my hand on her abdomen.
My thumb brushed against the skin. It felt like .
. . holding something and knowing no one else had ever done so.
Discovering a single anomaly and having it in your grasp.
The feeling of being on the brink of a brilliant idea, and seeing it before your eyes. Those were the things I felt, for now.
She was like a rock weathered by a raging river, smooth but solid.
As I moved my hand, the glow of her markings followed.
Mesmerizing, like watching far-off stars wink and fade.
The sensation of touch was something not experienced often, a pleasure of making yourself worldly.
Having limbs that could feel was something to indulge in.
To take form, I’d built a body, a nervous system, a brain, a throat.
All of those things would gift me senses.
I had forgotten what it was like to feel.
The sleeping Iris moved, pushing my hand away in her twilight state.
Her face was serene yet somehow still had that tautness in her brow. I supposed she schemed in her dreams as well as in her daily mischief.
Around her arms and body, pale patches of pointed shapes.
Even if they looked like superficial, abstract stars, they were maps.
The universe had its own language, and like in her silly book, it appeared as best it could.
Unlike the Peculiars, there was no translation for that language in reality; not in this one, at least. It was past the fourth and fifth dimensions, an abstract thought.
I touched the star on her chest—my name. My real name. She would never be able to say it out loud, but it was the equivalent to a scent, a feeling, a frequency. Distinct yet not tangible.
It had been there since her first breath on this earth, and it would remain far beyond her last. It was a seal so deep it marked the soul.
No indulging. She would never leave if I entertained her whims, to distract her from her venture to my world. How I would resist was a problem for another occurrence.
For now, she was safe with a handful of luck. She could have a night of ease and possibly a day of nothing going wrong. I had to be careful that she wouldn’t spend herself before she’d fulfilled her purpose.