67. Xander
Chapter 67
Xander
The Last of Her Kind – Peter Gundry
D eep in the mountaintop cavern where I keep my horde, I set Aurelia’s container down on a gilded tray. Then I sit down and watch her, breathing deeply to catch my breath.
She lies so very still in there, my magical sight telling me she’s pulled her power in so close it’s buried under her skin.
How she thought to shift into this form bewilders the mind.
The golden ring, collar , around one of her limbs seems ridiculous. As gently as possible, I open her container and reach in, stroking a finger down the collar and letting my magic open it. A seam appears and I slip it off.
Her skin is cool, and it makes my fingers tingle to touch her.
I also quickly realise that this container is too bloody small, so I set about building her a new home. I have many unique things within my coins, treasures, and jewels, but nothing with which to look after a starfish. Once I’ve made sure she’s hidden, I fly to the nearest town and purchase as many things as I can carry. There’s a shiny new glass tank with a bag of fresh, briny water, sand, and after researching on my phone, I approach the local pet shop to get her the right flora, the right nutrients. I even bring her a couple of gentle clown fish for company. A man on YouTube recommends a UV light for a sick starfish, so I get her that too.
Once my setup is complete, I carefully pull her out of the Tupperware container and set her in the new one, ensuring adequate temperature control. Then I sit down and watch her.
Every day from then on, I sit before her tank.
I’ve learned many things in my research about starfish. They have no ears, but they do have rudimentary eyes. I wave my hands in front of her, press my face close to the glass to see if the tips of her arms might recognise me.
I watch her amputated leg like a hawk. I measure its length daily and write it down in a notebook as well as notes about her colour and condition.
She doesn’t move. She doesn’t change colour. I try to contact her telepathically, but I get nothing back. At the end of the second day, I try to feed her. I bring her fresh crab meat from the sea. I buy some clams and prepare the meat for her, place it under her stationary body and wait to see if she gobbles it up, a twisting sensation in my own stomach as I wait.
If she is to re-grow a whole limb, she needs food.
To my dismay, she doesn’t eat my first offering. I eventually fall asleep next to her tank, and I wake up with a start a few hours later. The food is no longer underneath her.
For the first time in what feels like months, I grin.
The next day, when I measure her amputated limb, it has grown five millimetres. Her colour is slightly deeper blue.
Success! I exhale with relief and write the details in my notebook.
The happiness is short-lived, however, because after a few days, I see no other change in her colouring or size. She eats very small amounts of what I offer and still overall looks unwell. So I start to brainstorm other ideas.
My eye catches on the golden grand piano I keep in the corner. Excitedly, I tune the ancient thing then place Aurelia’s tank on top of it. At first, I play my favourite Beethoven, mostly to calm myself.
With a grimace, I play something girly. Something she and Minnie would likely dance to when no one was looking. Or when everyone was looking. I snort at the memory of the two of them, thinking they were sneaking past me on their way to the Bouncing Bazookas nightclub. I’d let them go because I didn’t really care at the time and couldn’t be bothered trying to stop them. If they were stupid enough to go against Scythe’s orders, they deserved whatever consequences came afterward.
But as I watch Aurelia now, and can’t help but think that there is something devastatingly sad about how she has reduced herself to something so small. So fragile. She is as beautiful now as she always was, and there is a great power in a creature that can re-grow an entire limb, but she is still so vulnerable.
Any other beast could just come and devour her and that would be the end of…her.
I realise that my fingers have trailed off mid-song, stopped playing at the thought of her simply not existing in this world.
Some pain at the centre of me blooms anew and I press my lips together as I watch her. In this time, in this place, the Wild Goddess saw it fit that her care be designated to me.
I strike up the song again, the sounds filling me up, intoxicating me, making me sway. There are only two of us in this place, so far from the rest of the world, listening to this song. I wonder what she’s thinking in whatever is left of that mind of hers. Does she even know that it’s me who has her? Does she think it’s someone else?
The thought angers me, of course. The idea that my efforts could be attributed to some other bastard. She needs to know that it’s me. That I’m the one who’s making sure she gets better.
And yet, if I can claim that , I should also claim that I’m the one who made everything worse.
My fingers shift into a new song, a beautiful, moving one that means something to me. It might mean something to her. Might be enough to pull her back to us at the end of this.