28. Chapter 28
twenty-eight
Hue
My toe catches on the lip of Jin’s tent, making me stumble just inside. “Shit.” I smooth over the lip that I’d peeled up with the bottom of my foot before heading the rest of the way in. “Don’t try to say I broke that. It was messed up before—"
My words cut off at the scene before me.
The bundle of Sor’en’s flowers hit the ground with a featherlight thud. “Jin.”
Jin is lying on his bed in the corner of the room, a bundle of black flowers placed over his face.
My footsteps are weighted and sluggish as I cross the tent to him.
“Jin… hey,” I choke out, my heart pounding so hard it hurts my chest, but slower than it should.
Like my blood is thicker than it was seconds ago. Like maybe there’s even less of it.
No. No. No. No. No.
My entire body is trembling as I fall to my knees beside his bed, shaking the bed harder than I should. “Jin’rayal, dramatics really don’t suit you. Knock it off.” My voice sounds weird, far away, like I’m listening to it through somebody else's ears. “Jin’rayal!”
I finally work up the courage to touch him, and for a minute, his cold, leathery skin is dark fur, a tail hanging limp from a bed. I stand up, shaking him harder, watching in horror as his head lolls limply to the side, displacing the flowers, a sob bursting free from my throat. “Jin! Jin, please!”
I shove the flowers the rest of the way off his worn, boned face, trying to get his attention, to see any sign of life as my sobs grow louder, deeper, more unhinged.
I don’t know the exact moment I start screaming or necessarily why.
I can't pinpoint the moment in time when another Xyrelith, one I don’t know well, pulls me away from the older man, from my friend.
I sob, fighting his hold. “Let go! Let fucking go of me!” I scream, shoving and slapping at the male. While he holds tighter with one arm, clearing the space above my head with the other, trying to calm me. I just hit him harder.
He ignores it just as the Balla’mar rushes into the tent, his long robes catching on the stupid lip. “Go get her, mate,” he orders the other male, and more are coming, gathering around the opening as I sob, big gasping sobs so hard your throat feels like it’ll bleed.
My hands are shaking as I mumble out apologies, fixing the flowers I threw off my friend.
“I’m sorry, Jin,” I sob.
The Balla’mar’s hand finds my back in what should be a soothing gesture. I flinch instead, shaking him off like he’s diseased. Something I’ve never felt the need to do before.
He schools his shock quickly, but something odd in my chest is going haywire, my thoughts scrambling around in my brain. Just as Sor’en enters the tent, I stand shoving the Balla’mar. “What is wrong with you? Get out! You shouldn’t see him like this.”
The male barely reacts, staring at my mate as if I’ve lost my mind.
Sor’en finds me next, his hands too much on my skin, so I shake them off too, casting my incensed wet eyes around the spectating group. Their calm, unmoved faces like a blade to my gut. “What is fucking wrong with you people? Why don’t you care?”
“Shhh,” Sor’en soothes me again, ordering everyone out. “Of course we care, my soulveil. Please, please calm yourself, my mate.”
Lyr’ael enters next, and for once, I’m not happy to see her. Sor’en holds me as I thrash in his arms, sobbing. “He has passed, human sister. It is a good thing. His soul was thinning as he lingered.”
“It is not good!” I scream, fighting my mate's hold. To get where, I don’t know. “He’s gone!”
She strokes my cheeks, desperately wiping away my tears. “Please calm Hue, he was suffering in this plane. He is with you always. He chose you as his.”
I shake my head and, like flipping a switch, the fight leaves me. The anger that has made my life bearable since I was small leaves me. My legs give out just as Sor’en pulls me to his chest, letting my tears soak his neck. “Please,” I gasp. “Please, Sor’en, don’t leave him alone.”
“I would never.”
I sob wildly into his neck before he grips my chin, forcing me to face him. “Look at me, Hue.”
I do or try to through my tears.
“I will take care of him for you.”
Another sob leaves my throat, but I nod, casting another look at the old male lying prone on the bed, wishing I had stayed a little longer yesterday.
Wishing I had come earlier, said more, lingered past my welcome.
Wishing I had been bigger and stronger, that I had been able to fight them as they launched Sofaxi out of the airlock like space trash.
He keeps his grip on my face. “You must honor him with this. This was his choice, and he needs you to honor it with balance.”
“I-I don’t know how,” I whimper, trying so hard to stifle my sobs.
“You say goodbye, Draya’la. You mustn’t cling to those trying to move on. It will confuse his spirit. He chose you as his ya’shmal. He chose to stay with you, but he is still too close to this plane. He cannot hesitate as he crosses into the veil. It is your job as his chosen to guide him now.”
I shake my head. “I can’t do that, I don’t understand.”
He leaves a swipe of oil over my cheek, and something unknots in my chest at the prospect of him numbing me, at sleeping instead of his. “You can, and you will.”
“You didn’t make me tired. I want to sleep.”
He huddles me closer. “I will not numb this for you. I will not undermine your ability to endure it.”
“It hurts,” I sniffle. “It hurts so bad.”
Lyr’ael gathers my hair out of my face. Not cringing when she finds it sticky and wet. “It is meant to, human Hue. We miss them, but we accept that it was their soul's plan. We cannot fault the world for what is already said to come.”
My raw eyes land on Lyr’ael behind Sor’en as her hand falls above my head, clearing it. I nod, my entire body just beyond the point of exhaustion. “When?” I breathe out.
“Now, my gift, we must prepare him now.”
I shake my head, another pang of misery budding in my chest, before Sor’en forces me to stand, cutting my swelling sob in half. “I am not good at saying goodbye.”
“Then do not say it for yourself, say it for him.”
I glance at the male on the bed, my chest heaving and feet unsteady. “I don’t know what to do.”
He rises to his full height. I hadn’t even realized he’d knelt. “You stay beside him until he is lowered to the dirt.”
He guides me to the bed, my legs wobbly, my eyes anywhere but on Jin, before Sor’en presses a soft kiss to my head. “You cannot avoid death, my mate. The goddesses will force your hand.”
I sit after that, my eyes on the still chilly hand as I grip it tightly in my own shaking, warm palms. I hold Jin’s hand, not to keep Sor’en away as he begins to prepare his body for burial, but because I don’t want to be the reason someone else I love gets lost. My eyes cross the room numbly until they reach another corner, the corner where Jin buried my pee flowers.
I frown at the new flower budding there, one that hadn’t been there yesterday.
It's small, just a bud, but it's bright, and it's there.
Sor’en pulls the flowers from the elderly male’s face before following my eyes. “Ah,” he chuckles, and I try not to be upset about his lack of distress. “He must’ve had Me’alma test her pregnancy.”
I stare at Sor’en.
“The same toxin that is excreted by younglings in the womb to prepare the mother's body is washed through her urine. It is an outdated way to check, but it makes for good theatrics. It is the only toxin known to make budlings glow that brightly.”
My head drifts back to the male on the bed, my expression blank as my hand drifts over the subtle swelling of my stomach.
My steps are lumbering, and my legs feel like they contain water where the bones should be as the sky opens up around us, pelting everyone in shimmering rain.
“It is a good omen, you know. To rain on the day of your passing. The goddesses have opened the skies for your friend,” Sor’en offers softly. “It means he was most cherished under their eyes.”
I glance up, closing my eyes as the rain pitter patters onto my face.
Breathing through lungs filled with static.
I stay like that for a moment before glancing behind us to the craft holding Jin’s body, now wrapped in that same veil-like material that seems to knit this world together.
His flowers, which had turned out to be the ones I picked for Sor’en yesterday, are now blessed by me and laid back on his face outside the shroud.
“This is about your mother, her tooth on your neck.”
I head snaps to my mate. “I didn’t tell you about that.”
“You told Melion. I am within him as he is within me. It is the same thing.”
“I have not laid her to rest as I should’ve,” I whisper, but somehow he hears me all the same.
“Goodbye rarely looks the way we think it should. It does not change that they are gone.”
I glance over at him before turning my attention back to the hundreds of Xyreliths waiting in the fields, a location I chose close to our home.
It seems that is where you should plant family, close to your dwelling.
So they may nurture the soil closest to the ones they loved.
Jin will go across from Sor’en’s mom and dad, a younger brother I hadn’t known he had, and the botanist before him.
“After we release him to the dirt, we will enter a veil of silence for the rest of the day, my mate.”
I just nod.
The rest of the day passes in a blur. I keep my eyes on Jin until the dirt covers him entirely, then I watch my mate as he shovels the garden.
His long, lean bulk flexing and twisting in practiced heaves.
I listen to the murmured prayers from his tongue, on his labored breath.
I can’t decipher the meaning of his prayer.
I don’t speak the language, but they balm something within me.
It doesn’t make it hurt less, but perhaps it’s a little less terrifying.
Maybe there’s a little less guilt associated with the death.
It feels good to do the right thing. To see it through in a way I never have before.
A closure I likely never will.
When we get back home, as he said, we don’t speak.
My mate feeds and washes me, my eyes lingering on my swelling stomach, wondering if he knows.
How to even tell him. By the time I’m dried and clean, Sor’en having protected my hair from dryer, I’m lying in bed and wrapped in his arms. As he promised, he didn’t put me to sleep.
The only oil smoothed over my skin was the tingling one that I love so much.
I spread it over my belly before a blanket of shadow covers us both, Melion snuggling deeper into me than he ever has before.