Chapter Twenty-Six #2
Kyarin tilts his head up to look at him. ‘You could venture south,’ he reminds him. It is where darkness promised not to go, so the humans can grow their food without frost killing it off.
Vaire shakes his head. ‘Then I’ll be away from you.’
Kyarin’s moonshadow eyes blink. He lifts Vaire’s hand from around his waist and smooths it flat with his thumbs, brings it to his lips and molds a kiss to each pad of his fingertips. ‘Then stay.’ He turns the hand around and lays kisses on his knuckles. ‘My shelter.’
Vaire folds his fingers over Kyarin’s and holds them to his heart.
Ice envelops him to sleep. Its melting wakes him. A presence compels him upright and he looks at Kyarin standing in the sparse shade of the tree across from him, shoulder resting on the trunk.
‘Waking me already?’ Vaire asks with a smile, sinking back down into the moss. ‘Then you missed me so desperately?’
Kyarin drops to his hands and knees over him, his own smile curving up the sides of his mouth. ‘Desperately,’ he reiterates, landing a breathless kiss to Vaire’s lips. His long black hair drapes a curtain around their faces.
Vaire hooks a heel against Kyarin’s back, loops his arms around his shoulders, but does not yet pull him close.
Kyarin lowers himself close anyway, nestling his nose against Vaire’s neck, into the hair curling there.
Vaire breathes him in too, the crisp scent of snow still lingering in the shift of his strands.
Soon it will be the soft chill of summer shade.
‘What have you been doing without me?’
‘Waiting,’ Kyarin exhales.
‘And?’
‘Wanting.’
Vaire laughs, the sound like early spring, sweet and new and tender. Kyarin swallows some of it.
‘Did you not visit the others?’
‘The humans do not like when I do.’
‘They will miss you.’ Vaire can feel the tug in his own soul, the stretching. It never reached a breaking point, they never let it. It was too painful.
‘“Miss” is too human a word,’ Kyarin says. ‘It is not quite that.’
‘I suppose not.’
‘But this is.’ Kyarin’s thumb grazes across his cheek, their noses so close that even in the dark curtain of hair, Vaire can see the dim color of his eyes.
Then Kyarin pushes himself up to cast his gaze down at the flowers that have sprouted up around Vaire, framing him in soft petals of white and yellow and blue.
‘You’re excited to see me too, then,’ he remarks, the curve of his lips spreading to a cheeky, pleased grin.
Vaire laughs and cinches his arms tight around Kyarin’s shoulders, pulling him down and letting frost shroud the flowers.
It is not where we belong.
Vaire tugs Kyarin another step towards the village. ‘It will be okay,’ he reassures. ‘There is plenty of shadow amongst the torches.’
‘That is not my concern,’ Kyarin tells him. Vaire drops his arm and listens. ‘Their gods will not appreciate us mingling with them. They’re too protective of them.’
‘When did you care what the human gods think?’ Vaire asks, amused.
‘I do not care what they think. I care what they do. They’ve gotten more volatile.’
‘It is not as though we will hurt them,’ Vaire says. ‘I only want to see them up close. Please.”
Kyarin’s resigned smile does not wipe away his troubled expression, but he acquiesces.
The pathways bustle with humans of every size—which Vaire has ascertained mostly accorded with their age—and even some of the animals they’d begun keeping mill amongst them.
But the humans look different from usual.
They had taken the skins and bones of wild animals and donned them, feigning menacing appearances.
But there is that boisterous joviality in the air that Vaire had witnessed from afar many a time, and it is intoxicating to be amongst it for once.
The humans talk and laugh and drink their concoctions, eat their carefully prepared foods.
They jump out of hiding spots to startle each other, or scurry away to hiding spots to be alone together.
Small humans play invented activities, and they walk by groups of larger humans also playing silly mortal recreations, usually with differently carved pieces of bone.
Kyarin stays in step beside Vaire, casting more cautious glances than Vaire’s swivel-headed excitement.
They stop by the side of one of the humans’ many structures, as it is the last by the edge of a large field.
Vaire can tell from the stalks that it is a field that had been growing the humans’ plants.
But now it lay razed, and instead of waist-high grasses swaying in a breeze, the center of the field has a large fire blazing.
Even more humans gather around it, hands clapping or producing strange sounds from their constructed tools, or moving their bodies in that mesmerizing way they all do together.
A human with a sloshing liquid in hand wanders past them and stops, looking at them askance.
“How did you paint yourself in such a ways?” it asks Kyarin.
Kyarin turns his gaze from the field to blink languidly at the human, and it balks.
“Those aren’t… those aren’t costumes—what are you?
” It starts stepping away, and the humanness of its behavior gives way to primal expressions Vaire is more used to: backing off, teeth bared, trembling.
“Please don’t be afraid,” Vaire tells it gently, not moving for fear of scaring it further. The human language feels strange in his mouth. “We are what you call wild gods.”
The human looks between them, eyes wide. “The wild gods?” it whispers. “Are you here to curse us?”
It is yet another word the humans have invented that Vaire can’t parse the meaning of.
“We are here to enjoy the excitement,” he says.
“To appreciate your spirited expressions that you call… ‘celebration’.” To show his good will, he summons wildflowers to pop up in the dirt between them, but this only startles the human more.
It drops its liquid, scrambling back another few steps before turning and fleeing. Vaire sighs.
We don’t belong, Kyarin tells Vaire. We should leave.
But before they can, more humans arrive, gathering around them with trepidation and awe.
Vaire grows more flowers, and the little ones gleefully begin plucking them up.
A bigger one steps forward, bending its torso over in a human show of deference before laying a circle of green branches around their necks, stepping back quickly from Kyarin when the leaves on his immediately wither and fall.
But then they are shown to the field, to the fire, and are allowed to join in.
The humans teach them the rhythmic movements they call ‘dancing,’ and Vaire finds it great fun to dance and swivel and spin around the fire with the lot of them.
Kyarin is not interested in that, instead sitting to the side, but it doesn’t deter the little ones from cautiously gathering around him. Despite his reticence, Vaire knows he is pleased to produce frost and flakes of snow in the air for them, to their squealing excitement.
When Vaire leaves the dancing to join, he makes more flowers, and the little ones masterfully weave them together into colorful vines that they decorate Vaire’s antlers with.
The celebration extends into dawn, until exhaustion or stupor downs the few who hadn’t returned to their structures. Kyarin and Vaire return to their own home amongst the trees before light takes over the sky.
They are there not a day when a hawk flies in and Vaire knows it is not of his wilderness. He turns as it morphs into Cadoc, but his excited smile is met with only a dour frown.
‘What did you do to the humans?’ he asks.
Vaire’s smile falls. ‘We did nothing to them. We only wanted to dance and play among them as you and your brethren do.’
‘Their food stores for the winter are completely rotted. They say wild gods joined them, and then this happens. They will starve. They will die.’
‘Why don’t they make more?’ Vaire asks, confused.
‘Because he does not let them!’ Cadoc barks, pointing to Kyarin. ‘They need to prepare for the cold and darkness because nothing will grow! And now all their preparations have been ruined.’
‘They are the ones encroaching to the north,’ Vaire points out. ‘They are choosing Kyarin’s cold and dark.’
‘They were fine until you two came along,’ Cadoc spits. ‘How did this happen?’
‘When two of us are together long enough, these occurrences happen,’ he explains.
‘Then you need to not be together.’
‘We have to; if we do not join together it hurts us.’
‘When you join together, it hurts the humans.’
Vaire considers this. Kyarin watches silently.
‘Very well,’ Vaire finally says, and can feel Kyarin’s heart sink. But Cadoc’s bristling fades. ‘I will ask the others to be cautious where they meet.’
‘You will?’ Cadoc asks.
‘Humans do not deserve to live in terror,’ Vaire agrees. ‘We need to try to live together. Since we are both here, it must be the universe’s wish.’ He turns to Kyarin’s sour disappointment behind him. ‘You said we must heed it.’
‘You are not,’ Kyarin whispers. ‘You are ceding to humans, not the universe.’
‘Is there a difference?’ Vaire asks. Kyarin does not reply. Vaire turns back to Cadoc, whose gaze shifts from daggers for Kyarin to soft resolve for Vaire.
‘Thank you,’ he says. Vaire dips his head. Cadoc remains for another long moment, watching Vaire. Then he morphs into a hawk and flies away.
After visiting all the others, Vaire seeks out Dihen. He does not need to soothe a gnawing void with death’s company, as they are opposites, but unlike darkness and light, Vaire does not hate his antithesis.
He finds Dihen in a small forest cove, their hunched silhouette painted green from sunlight filtering through the canopy.
Curled before their knees is a gangly fawn, its brown fur mottled and dark with birth fluids that had never been cleaned.
Its small head rests in Dihen’s lap, eyes closed and still as Dihen strokes its narrow forehead.
Vaire kneels beside them.