6. Pie
Pie
The nights after meeting Pearl were the best Driz had known. She woke each sunset with excitement replacing the heaviness of stone. She had something to look forward to. Something to do.
She returned to Salt Bluff each evening, though she did not get as close. She didn’t see Pearl, but she watched the small figures of other humans coming and going and drank up the smatter of voices and laughter before the stillness of night took the town.
Most people lived in the town itself, with a few houses on the fringes of the large, flat salt fields. A road, skirted by a metal track, led between the mines and the fields, like a shed snakeskin.
Built into the upper part of the bluffs, the salt mines were a series of gaping tunnels covered by half-open huts.
Driz had curiously poked her head inside one, making it only a few paces into the earth.
She disliked the sensation of being so enclosed and not having the sky above her.
But she did find the rusted head of a broken shovel, which she kept.
She paced excitedly on the ridge, thinking of what she would say. She hadn’t had time to prepare when they met before, and she wasn’t certain she did a very good job.
“Hello,” Driz rehearsed, and a mouse squeaked and scurried away, its little heart beating too fast. “Sorry,” Driz called after it. “I was not speaking to you.” But the mouse was already gone.
“Did you heal?” Driz asked a tumbleweed shivering in the night breeze, pretending it was Pearl.
Driz frowned. No, that wasn’t quite right. It was good she was practicing.
On the second night, she flew to a place she simultaneously loved and hated.
Another building had collapsed since she’d visited last. The town hadn’t survived the war or the years after, nearly all the paint faded from the rotting boards and slumping eaves.
The northern half of town was still partially standing, but whatever had been south was entirely obliterated.
Driz shivered as she landed in the barren central street, the remnants of blight shining on the cursed earth.
A god had died here.
They must have been a minor one, because the blight was only half the size of the town, not entire valleys as she’d seen other places.
During the Sundering War, the old and the new gods had clashed, not caring who was crushed in their battle for control.
The new had won. But then the new had turned on one another, vying for power, until they were all nearly gone, and the last were killed by the rising human empire, who used the power of their fallen enemies against them.
The age of gods was dead, leaving all their forgotten creations to scatter and feast off the broken world.
Driz held her wings higher off the ground and edged along the surviving structures, pausing and entering the largest.
Inside held all manner of fascinating items, though most weren’t movable, so she hadn’t taken them for her trove.
She walked up the groaning wooden steps to the floor laid with colorful, chipped tile set in a dizzying, beautiful pattern.
Behind a long bar, she’d arranged the broken bits of pretty glass and bottles on the shelves.
When Driz had found this place as a youngling, she’d discovered a few intact and opened them, but they hadn’t smelled good, so she poured them out and kept the bottles.
She picked up a stool, set it upright at the counter, and carefully eased her weight onto it.
It too groaned, so she only perched, using her own legs more than the stool’s.
Gazing around herself, she imagined the space filled with voices and music and life.
She hummed, trying to remember the shape of the tune from Salt Bluff the other night, her own voice the only sound.
A mirror had lined the wall once, and a large, cloudy piece clung there still. Driz gazed at her reflection. She’d been fascinated by this too when she first discovered it. She’d grown so much, and yet nothing had happened. So many seasons blending on and on. And on and on.
“You spoke to a human,” Driz told her younger self, almost seeing her in the mirror. “And you will again. Tomorrow.”
She stood, moving closer. Her eager reflection did too. “Her name is Pearl, and she has the most wonderful hair, the color of bleached bone.”
Driz’s own hair was a tangled mess. She ran her claws through it, separating the strands that always tried to bind around one another. The warped smile in the mirror faded. Pearl was lovely. Perhaps the most lovely creature Driz had ever seen. But Driz was not.
She knew she had frightened Pearl. She’d heard her heartbeat and her breaths and had watched her eyes.
Driz would do her best to stay calm and not spook her again.
She spent the third day in the ravine where she would meet Pearl. She crept inside it at dawn, not willing to risk missing the meeting, and found a nice place to tuck, nestling back into the rock to conceal herself more.
For the third day in a row, and for the first time she could recall, as the sun’s arrival on the horizon stiffened her body to match the walls around her, Driz slept with a smile on her lips. When she woke, she would see Pearl again.
The stone sleep was a strange, calming place.
She wasn’t aware of her surroundings, but she also wasn’t entirely gone.
Driz didn’t know how sleeping felt for other creatures, but she supposed it was similar.
She did not dream—she simply was. Somewhere far away where there were no sounds or sights, only a cool emptiness until the sunset drew her back to herself.
She woke, like surfacing from underwater, breaking through to the air but with droplets clinging to her. She shook her limbs awake.
Her heart accelerated and she unfolded from the cliff, stalking into the center of the ravine. No sign of Pearl yet.
Driz waited, listening to the rush of the river. The light slowly faded, casting shadows over Driz’s excitement. What if Pearl didn’t come? What if she had forgotten? What if her injury was serious? What if Pearl had come to see her yesterday, and Driz had somehow missed her?
Footsteps hurried lightly over the earth. Driz’s excitement returned in full force, her wings twitching uncontrollably. She battled her instinct to charge forward and instead backed up a few paces.
Pearl appeared around the shoulder of the land. A long coat swished around her shapely legs encased in dark fabric, a strap holding a knife around her upper thigh. She wore no hat tonight, showing off her light hair that fell over one shoulder, the end of a sack draped over the other.
Her eyes were set close together. A hunter’s gaze. Her features were delicate, though Driz had no idea if humans would consider them so. A dappling of pink and brown color in tiny dots ran over her smooth skin.
Driz devoured the sight of her. She was perfect.
Gray eyes met hers and Driz froze. Pearl’s steps faltered and she stopped a healthy distance away. Too far.
“Hello,” Driz said, tensing as she fought to stay put.
“Hey.” Pearl swung the sack off her shoulder. She hadn’t drawn her gun on Driz this time, but she wore two of them on her hips. “I wasn’t certain you’d be here.”
“Why would I not?”
Pearl opened the sack at her feet, withdrawing several items and tossing them to Driz. A shirt, and a pair of trousers. Driz clutched them, rubbing the fascinating texture of the woven fibers. They were instantly her newest favorite treasures. Because they were from Pearl.
Driz grinned. Pearl stiffened and stepped back two paces, hand going to her hip.
The smile faded. Pearl may have been perfect, but Driz was far from it. She was built to frighten and intimidate. She stepped back too.
“Is your arm well?” Driz asked, as she’d practiced.
Pearl narrowed her pretty gaze, her hand lingering over her holster. “It’s fine. Why d’you wanna know?”
Driz wasn’t sure how to answer, so she didn’t.
They watched each other for a while. Driz had planned to ask her all sorts of questions, but they all seemed too overwhelming.
“You moved the cart and the bodies,” Pearl stated.
“I did.”
“Why?”
Driz now worried that had been the wrong thing to do. “So they did not wash away. Was that wrong?”
“What d’you expect for it?”
Again, the question confused Driz. She hadn’t done it because she wanted something. “I do not expect anything.”
Pearl’s eyes were still narrowed. She glanced around and pulled out a lantern from the bag, and Driz realized it had grown too dark for her to see well.
Pearl fumbled with it until a glowing light emanated from the chamber inside.
She held it up and away from herself and took several steps closer.
Driz was drawn forward too, though it wasn’t the light that charmed her.
Pearl briefly regretted the lamp when it illuminated the goyle’s face, leering from the darkness. The soft, flickering glow highlighted Driz’s features, making them appear exaggerated and even more horrifying. But Pearl would rather see than not.
She kept her hand on the handle of her revolver. It provided little reassurance. Everything in Pearl told her to leave.
“Do you have a family?” Driz asked, her voice rough but not quite so lumbering as when they’d met, as if it had been warmed up with use.
“A mother.”
“What is her name?”
“Oak.”
“Oak,” Driz repeated. “Like a tree.”
“Yeah, I suppose.”
“What is your favorite thing?”
Pearl frowned. “What?”
“Oh.” Driz’s wings twitched, and her face grew even fiercer as she frowned too. “I should have practiced that one better. I mean, do you have a favorite treasure?”
Pearl eyed her warily. Practiced what? And what was her angle? “Why d’you wanna know?”
Driz’s wings twitched again. “I want to know more about you.”
And yet Pearl’s question of why was never truly answered. “Listen, I dunno why you wanna help, but it seems like you do.”
The face nodded, appearing closer. Pearl repressed a shiver and the need to step away.
“Have you ever had pie?”
The face tilted sideways. “No.”