Chapter 4 #2
Aurin swam closer to the boys on the shore, and he half morphed, his head and torso human, his legs still tentacles. He could speak to them like this, and he had promised to show them, after all.
“Hi,” he said, smiling at their happy faces. Then he once again lifted one tentacle out of the water and waved at them.
They ran over, so happy, and so curious. “Is that your hand?”
“Yes,” Aurin replied.
“Can we touch it?”
“Of course.” He held it up for them, and they gently touched his skin, their eyes widening. “Hold your hands still,” Aurin said, and then he ran his tentacles over their hands, feeling and coiling around their fingers, making them squeal and laugh.
Then a black tentacle appeared beside them, and they jumped back, startled. “That’s just Salem,” Aurin said with a laugh, and then he tapped Salem’s tentacle. “Excuse me, mister,” he said, knowing Salem would hear. “Come up here.”
Salem morphed into human, shaking his hair to spray the boys, which of course made them laugh again. “Hello,” he said.
“Can you do the cat?” Voh asked.
Cyd joined in. “Can you? Can you?”
“I don’t know,” Salem said, putting his finger to his chin as if he had to think about it.
Except it wasn’t a finger, it was a tentacle, and then his hand was a dolphin fin, and then it was what looked like a lobster pincer—so that was new—and then it was a swordfish bill?
That kind of looked like a weapon, which the boys loved the most, and then it was his hand again.
“Do it again, do it again,” they cried in unison.
“I cannot,” Salem said. “We are going home today, and I need my energy.”
But then he leapt up out of the water, and when he landed on the bank of the stream, he was a black cat.
Of course the boys thought this was the best party trick ever.
They cheered and squealed and followed him.
Salem jumped up on a fallen log, so the boys followed him along it.
Aurin laughed, morphed into his full human form, and walked out of the water.
He pulled on his pants, picked up Salem’s discarded pants, and followed them back down the path toward the camp.
Salem jumped over logs, ducked under them, then skipped along the path, and the two boys followed his every step.
It made Aurin’s hearts so happy. He still felt like utter garbage; his hangover had only been somewhat mollified by the short swim, but he was so in love with Salem in that moment, nothing else mattered.
He followed a few steps behind them all the way back into camp. The fire was still smouldering embers, and a pot now hung above it. Fyn was scooping out some liquid and pouring it into a wooden cup, and Cern was stood beside him.
He looked decidedly more human now. He was his old self, with his pipe hanging from his lips and his walking stick in hand. He smiled when he saw Salem. “Ah, well enough to morph, I see,” he said.
Salem leapt up onto a log seat and sauntered to the end closest to Cern, where he then sat, tail swishing.
“Yes, I’ll be leaving shortly,” Cern said.
Aurin wasn’t aware Cern could communicate this way with Salem in cat form, but apparently he could, because then Cern looked at Aurin. “Ahh. Yes, yes. You need the water of your cove.”
“I do,” Aurin said.
“More than you realise,” Cern replied in that cryptic way of his, and the wind whipped around them as if it agreed with him.
Before Aurin could think of a reply, Voh was too excited to not interrupt.
“Cern,” he said, eyes as big as saucers.
“We saw them. Aurin was an octopus, and his hand was slimy, and he let us touch it, then Salem was an octopus, and then his hand was a sword and a claw—” He made a chomping motion with his hands.
“—and it was so cool. Then he jumped up, and he was a cat!”
Fyn was eyeing Salem, his usual grin now wider than Aurin had ever seen it. He seemed to feel Aurin looking at him, because he turned his smile toward him. He offered him the cup. “A remedy for the honey mead.”
Aurin lay Salem’s pants on the log and took the cup. “Thank you, Fyn. I haven’t been this hungover in a long time.”
Cern laughed at that. “A night to remember, for sure.” Then he gave Salem a nod. “Be ready to leave soon. I’ll get you both down the mountain.”
Traveling back down the mountain, as it turned out, was via the same route they’d come up it. Though on the way up, Aurin had followed dutifully as Pax had carried Salem over his shoulder, trudging along the forest floor with familiar ease.
Now Aurin followed Cern, with Salem behind him, in human form.
None of the forest seemed familiar, and Aurin felt so turned around, he wasn’t sure which way they’d come or which direction they were heading.
It felt as if they walked forever, the trees and ferns, the roots, and the mist churning around him as if to deliberately confuse him so he could never return.
Coupled with the smell of wet earth, rotting undergrowth, and cloying humidity, it made his hangover so much worse, and he was wondering if perhaps they should have stayed another day... when they suddenly stepped out into the clearing at Cern’s place.
His little leaning hut was a sight for sore eyes. “Oh, thank the gods,” he grumbled, which was funny, considering the company he was in.
Cern laughed, and the trees laughed back, and Aurin felt dizzy all of a sudden. Salem was quick to hold him. “Aurin, are you unwell?”
He steadied himself and gave a slight shake of his head. “Just dehydrated and hungover. I intend to eat far too much of whatever Otis is cooking and then spend a full day at the bottom of the cove, just so you know.”
Salem made a face. “After we speak with Ciaran, that is.”
Aurin sighed. “Oh yes. That.”
“He won’t be mad for long,” Cern said, walking straight to his car. “Hop in. The cove needs you.”
The cove needs us?
Aurin had no clue what that was supposed to mean, and he was in no mental state for cryptic puzzles.
He climbed into Cern’s car, and Salem followed, quickly taking his hand. Aurin let his head fall on Salem’s shoulder, and he closed his eyes.
He woke up in Tenebrae.