The coast wasn't as cultivated as the interior of Phiiva. Human establishments were rare, and the stable land was dominated by trees, dense, arched like a hook and growing any-which-way. It was impossible to travel more than two miles without tripping over ancient, gnarly roots.
Yet there the machine stood, towering in the background. Its reflective skin blended in with the green, white and tan of the trees. Meanwhile the seven companions spread out, sick of each other.
One thing remained on the forefront of Sanci's mind: she had three pulses. The two in her lower abdomen were finally independent of her and of one another. She learned that there were two of them, because the one nearest her hips was constantly moving, while the one towards her navel mostly stayed still.
She stayed in the shade near Cou's feet, her bight nacre eyes fixed on Ashenzsi. Any day now, the creatures within her were going to come out. She could only think of what she was willing to do, what sacrifices she may have to make in order to stop something hideous from roaming the world.
She thought about what to say, what to ask. If Ashenzsi would be willing to see to her birth, and help dispose of the —
A rustling noise snatched her attention.
She turned in the direction of the noise. It was deliberate, she soon learned, because although she didn't notice him at first, there was a white-skinned kyusoa crouched in the branches of one of the trees. He was painted a motley of green, black and tan, and would've been invisible, were it not for coiling his tail around and shaking a small branch.
"Maeha!" the white kyusoa said, his voice barely lifting above the breeze.
She took one last look at Ashenzsi and the rest of them spread out along the marbled carbon-quartz sands of the coast, then withdrew into the trees. She followed him on the ground, while he worked his way from one tree to the next, careful not to disturb the canopy.
He dropped down when the trees were thick enough that they couldn't see the coast, nor the skinny legs of the towering machine.He flattened onto his belly, a gesture of submission. "Yours is the distinct scent, Maeha, what are you doing with those domesticated ones?"
A long time had passed since she'd heard the word 'Mother' out of anyone's mouth. They all seemed to remember what Tyiha they came from. Though she didn't know him personally, he was still her descendant.
"We are running from the uunani," she said.
He cocked his head at her. "But you have uunani with you? Chyih, doesn't make sense."
"There are worse ones where we've come from. They are sick with Aelyth."
"Tsche? That's true?"
"You worthless koja!" A tyiha's voice cut through the air. "I take you to hunt and instead you sit and talk with —" Then she caught wind of Sanci's scent, and the tyiha also flattened to the dirt. "M-maeha!"
"Where are you from?" Sanci asked.
"Ma'oin," the tyiha said.
"You will lead me there," Sanci said, her tone flat, serious. Not once did she think of looking back, or telling the others.
Immediately the two kyusoas rose on all fours, and together they went west.
Phiiva was unique with its riveting jungle and abrupt cliffs. It seemed they could only roam but so far before a sudden cliff forced them to change direction. With the broad-trunked ancient trees so thickly overgrown, obscuring the sky and restricting visual depth, it was easy to go tumbling off a steep drop.
Thankfully the two kyusoas with her were familiar with the back-way into Ma'oin.
See, the societies of the Kyusoa were carefully thought out. Even before human interaction it was simply a pleasurable aspect of overall design to have few entrances and many, many hidden exits.
At the foot of a knoll just as easily overlooked as any other mound in the jungle, behind the thick, gnarled roots that claimed it, was a small opening. There wasn't any visible marker to set it apart, the shallow-looking indentation. After the two of them patrolled their immediate surroundings, they motioned for Sanci to duck in.
It was a narrow passage, and she was forced to crawl along her belly. She paused often to catch her breath, the air being uncomfortably stagnant. Soon enough the passage widened, and she stopped because the way was blocked. But with a push, the pot slid forward, and they crawled out onto the first floor of a storage area hollowed out of a cliff.
Once the three of them were through, the koja slid the pot back into place, a rather inconspicuous-looking thing surrounded by a floor full of identical pots. He went to the far end of the room, where the great vines covered the entrance, and he pushed one out, motioning for Sanci to come.
Ma'oin, at a glance, wasn't what she expected. It was like a large fortified city between the cliffs that protected the north and western sides, and the ocean to the south. Its main entrance was east, narrowed by the great wall that was as tall as the cliffs were high and about fifty feet thick.
She stood, taking it all in, until the koja grabbed her wrist.
"Maeha, perhaps you would like to meet the offspring of your daughter?" he asked.
"Which one?" Sanci had more daughters than she could shake a stick at, and about an equal number of sons.
"Ah." He didn't know how to answer. "Go and wait by the Ceremonial Place and we will see if she will come to you."
She nodded. It wasn't that hard to find the Ceremonial Place. It was deep in the south of the city: a argantuan fire pit, and around it was an adobe foundation, a hardened circular floor some 400 feet in radius.
She leaned on the wall of one of the north-side buildings, and soon enough the Tsamiiq came to her.
Now the Kyusoakin weren't without hierarchy. There was a dictatorial couple, a mated pair, whom saw to all significant matters of the society. The Tsamiiq was the Matriarch, the undisputed one.
She caught Sanci's attention because she came alone, dressed in a robe, fangs and small shells knotted at the ends of her brown tresses. "The Mother of my mother is most definitely welcome with me," she said, opening her arms.
The two embraced, then sat in the sand that rimmed the broad adobe ring.
"I only want to ask, what brings you here?"
"I am pregnant," Sanci sighed, "and my body will not hold them much longer. A week at best, a day at the very least. I can't be for sure."
"You need us to assist you?"
Sanci hesitated to answer. Over 16,000 years had passed since she had last given birth. Out of 354 attempted births, 222 were successful. She trusted that her body hadn't forgotten what to do, and how to go about doing it, even despite the long years since she begot the Kyusoakin species.
Then she nodded. "I am pregnant by an Uunan." The moment the words departed her lips, the Tsamiiq nearly fell over backwards.
"U-uunan…?"
"If they are unfit I want them burned." Her voice was burdened because she didn't want to do it. She hoped they were viable lifeforms.
The Tsamiiq picked up on her reluctance. She wrapped her arms around Sanci, and hugged her tightly. "Maeha, the only comfort I can give you is that if you are carrying the children of us and them, the Alyi must have given these to you. If the way is now opened, there will be no monsters."
"Aunii Chaas," Sanci sniffed, "I hope you words are true."
Eiynvas, the 42nd day in the month of Sorric.
From the adobe ring, the fire seemed to brush its fingers against the belly of the sky. The pit was filled with water, but the kyuosoa dancing around it struck it with enough aelyth that the water, although cool and calm, burst upwards into the air in great flaming spurts.
There was nothing to celebrate, really. Except that the month of Kaienne was coming in 12 days. It was dryer than all other summer months, the mid-year peak. The game of the southern coast migrated northwest and the jungle went dormant for the entire month. But even despite the conditions that came with the sweltering heat, they danced and sang, filling the entire city with music to the height of the cliffs and beyond.
Now was the time to band together.
But in the high c
averns dug out of the cliff, in one of the shallow pits, lukewarm water was drawn. Old memories bombarded Sanci. She breathed deep and closed her eyes.
A pale-skinned figure appeared, fuzzy at first. But as soon as she focused on it, she recognized him. His scent was just like hers, though marginally different. He was nearly a carbon copy of her, save for the modification to make him a viable male. She splayed her ears, because she remembered Tsuboha. How absent his hollow gaze was, fixed on the space between them, apathetic to their existence.
These yet to be born weren't his. He had nothing to do with where she was now, and what she was doing. She hadn't seen or heard from him in over 16,000 years, and for all she knew he was dead.
Her body tensed, and the tendrils of her vulva tightened, as if refusing to let them out while she thought about him.
Then thoughs of Rollond crept into her mind.
There was the one time she had gotten in the tub with him. Regardless of how the two of them didn't quite fit together in that amount of space, he sloshed around with her until it worked.
How he never gripped her hard, always gentle when he pulled. He moved with her until the two of them were comfortable. He leaned against her stomach while she curled around him, nestling between her hips and her breast.
The water bubbled and rolled. He gave her a look she'd never seen before, with glossy, liquid eyes, the depth of which flashed with a gleam of some kind of emotion.
In hindsight, she regretted distancing herself from him.
Something within her flesh shifted down. A sharp spike of heat pierced through her, and she gasped, wanting to cry. Though she wasn't sure why.
Yet in that same memory, when he drew near and pursed his lips to hers, a similar spike of heat took her. It was strange to her at first, kissing and the way his tongue deftly explored within her. But it was mutual when she finally let go and did like him.
She wondered how it felt to him.
Something bumped against her thigh, then floated up underneath her tail. She glanced over her shoulder. It was a boy. A tiny boy, in fact, because his entire body fit in the palm of her hand, his head barely reaching the claw of her middle finger.
Seconds later there was another bump. But this one floated towards her stomach. The second one was also a boy, a palm-full, about the same size as the first.
She rubbed the blood off of them, and scooped them up to her bosom. The first boy had bright honey blond hair and beaming, pinkish-violet eyes that glistened like amethysts. He was thin compared to his sibling, and his body appeared long, even for his tiny size. While he looked at his mother, he had a near existential expression on his face.
"You are Lucein," she said, prodding his nose.
He stuck her finger in his mouth, and soon realized that's not where food comes from.
Now the other one was stocky by comparison to Lucein. He had chocolate brown hair, and bold gray eyes like brushed steel. As he examined his mother, he glanced sideways to observe Lucein, who was nursing. Only after he watched his twin did he turn his attention back to Sanci.
She offered him her finger, and he squeezed it. "You are Gnyovante," she said, because his grip was unusually strong for an infant. She pulled him to her bosom and carefully stepped out of the shallow pool.
An intense joy passed through her over having birthed the two of them. Not that she harbored disdain for the children she had previously. Simply, this time was different, and she took them home.
Chovas, the 15th day in the month of Melstaafh;
During the season of Withering in the 692nd year
A year and eleven months passed since the birth of the twins.
The other children whooped and chirred. They lay their ears back and made little growls at Lucein, grinning as they snarled. He jumped for one of the nijuans, narrowly missing the boy by an arm's reach, and fell face-first into the sand.
One of the nijuans tripped over Lucein, and tumbled head-first into a rock. At the slightest whine, the nijuan's father came and swept him up, pinched his lips and shushed him.
Lucein, when he rolled over and brushed the sand off his face, watched the koja as he coddled his son. He wrinkled his brow while he got up, little wiry thing that he was, standing only two feet tall. "I'm sorry," he said, making his voice as big as he could without screaming.
The koja shook his head. "Nai'ii, not your fault," he said. Then he took his boy home.
The other nijuans could tell Lucein felt badly, despite it being an accident. They swarmed playfully with one another, gravitating away from him. Eventually he strode over and sat by Gnyovante.
For a time the two were quiet. Until finally, he wondered if his twin shared the same thought: "Do you wonder where we came from?"
"What do you mean?" Gnyovante asked.
"Well, they are one kind." Lucein pointed at the nijuans playing. "But we're not like them."
"You want to know why we're different."
Lucein paused to gather his thoughts. Even their names were different than the rest of the kids. For a moment, the gears in his small mind were hard at work. "Yes," he said, his face brightening with a broad grin.
"What if mum thinks you're too young to ask that?"
"I'm a year and eleven months! How old do I have to be?"
Gnyovante shrugged. "I don't know."
"I don't either!" Lucein hopped up and ran towards the only place he knew as home, his twin following a ways behind.
The excited patter of a certain pair of little feet held one specific meaning. Since before they were able to talk, Lucein would chase his mother around when he hungered for answers.
"Mama!" he said, hopping up and hugging Sanci's shin. He nestled her skin, then smiled up at her. "Do I have a papa?" His face only brightened as he watched her expression go from joy to something like shock.
"What?" she asked, as if she didn't hear him right.
"Do I have a papa," he said, letting her shin go.
She plucked him off the floor and settled him on the counter. A milk pump was on the other side of the sink, and in the basin were balloon-like leather pouches. Some of them were filled. "Of course you have a papa," she said.
"How come we never see him? Is he invisible?"
"Nai'ii, he's perfectly visible. He's just not here."
"Why not?"
"I left him so I could have you."
"Was he mean?"
"He is very nice. But I left because…" If she wasn't careful he'd read into her hesitation. Lucein was stupendously smart. "I needed some fresh air."
"Will we ever meet him?"
"Lucein, I don't know," Sanci said. She handed him a chilled milk pouch, and put him down.
He went to the small table crafted to suit his size, pulled out a chair, and sat across from his twin. The two of them drank and ate.
By the time they finished, nightfall was bleeding into the evening sky, and the two of them retired to the room they shared. Lucein crawled into his twin's ysi, the pod-like kyusoakin bed, pulled the side skirt around himself and was sound asleep in fifteen minutes.
Now that night began the same as all nights, until about the fifteenth hour, that is Dyjian's Midnight, when a loud crack and flash erupted in the east.
The light was unlike anything the world had ever seen, intense and blinding, ripping apart the jungle, melting the stones, burning the air into a swaggering tornado of plasma. Great fingers of lightning lashed from the eye of the twister, cleaving entire masses of land from Phiiva's southeastern coast.
During all this, Sanci jumped to her feet. Her heart thrashed like it would burst through her chest, because her boys were screaming, and she had no clue what was going on in the world outside.
She pulled her boys to her, ducked and huddled against the wall, shielding the two of them with as much of her body as she could. In that moment she only hoped this wasn't an abrupt end to the world.
Then there was something like a boisterous death screech. The twister came to a halt, the ligh
t faded, the quaking sound of part of Phiiva being rent in two subsided.
For the rest of that night Sanci didn't move. She cradled Lucein and Gnyovante, whom, sometime after it all subsided, cried themselves to sleep.
They slept on the floor, huddled against the wall.
Eiynvas, the 30th day in the month of Melstaafh
Fifteen days passed. It should've come as no surprise that the next day arrived like all the ones before it, as well as the following days since.
Lucein tussled with one of the gojis, that is a little kyusoa girl. Although she playfully wrestled with him, he could feel the silent disapproval of the adults, though he didn't understand why. She was older than him, but roughly his size and the two of them agreed to confront one another in mock-combat.
To him, it was only fair to meet his opponent on the battlefield, ready to grapple to the death — or until one of them got knocked off the sand mound, or bored.
Then finally, her mother came and pulled her off the sand heap. He looked up, surprised, but the tyiha was staring beyond him.
A flood of foreign kyusoakin were pouring in through the east gate. The lot of them looked dejected, their tails tucked, heads low, marching in on all fours. It wasn't just them though: four upright creatures came in with them.
Fascination lit up Lucein's face. He was excited to see creatures that were like him: tail-less, human-like. He started marching towards them to better observe their features, but steadily came to a stop when he spotted his mother wading through the crowd.
One of the upright ones was brought in on a drag-bed of branches and sinews. He didn't look happy about it. Then again, as Lucein wove through the towering bodies towards his mother, he learned that this white-haired one was badly wounded.
He didn't catch the exchange between his mother and some others, but he deduced they were keeping the wounded one, because before long, the kyusoa who brought him dragged him towards their netroa.
"Mama," he said, tapping her shin. "What is happening?"
"We're having a guest over for awhile," she said.
"A guest?"
"Tsche. Because he's badly hurt, I don't want you all over him, or asking too many questions. I'll be dealing with him."
"What about us? Will we see you?"
"Of course, every day!" She picked him up and carried him with her.
"Mama, who are these beings?"
"They're friends of mine."
"You have friends?"
Sanci nodded. "Good ones."
"Why are they like us?" The answer should've seemed obvious, as his mother brought him home. Still, his understanding of it was only two of the same kind produced something, and to think that his mother wasn't his mother made his eyes water; and to try and wrap his mind around his father being of a different kind — a different species — made his head hurt.
"Mama, why are we like them?" he asked, again. "Mama? Mama!"
Sanci sat him at the table. Gnyovante was already half through his lunch. Lucein exchanged glances with him, and the two watched in absolute silence as the kyusoas brought the man in.
They abandoned the table to poke their heads around the archway of their mother's room, and watched as they lay the white-haired man in her ysi.
He groaned as they pulled the skirts around him, and hissed when Sanci snipped the bandages from around his waist.
He had been run-through by something. The object that was supposed to be lodged in his flesh was already removed, but the stitching was weakened from seepage.
"You're hurt," she said.
"Tell me some-THING I don't — KNOW!" He did well to bite back cries of pain and utter words, because already she was scraping the threads away with her claws.
She glanced back at the curtain draped in the archway. Immediately, Lucein and Gnyovante ducked, but it was too late.
"You two boys finish your meals. I want you outside with the other kids in an hour."
They scurried for the table, sat, snarfed down lunch, and ran out.
Then there was quiet. Sanci cleaned Rollond's blackened skin with a damp cloth, then prepared the needle to re-stitch the wound. It was long and linear. Whatever it was that pierced him must have been large.
"They're yours," she said, expecting to surprise him with the news that he had sons. But that surprise came back on her, because with a familiar, glossy-eyed glance, he said:
"I know."
She perked her ears. "Who told you?" She thought she was going to let Ashenzsi have a piece of her mind.
"No one. But the moment you asked Ashenzsi to assess you, I couldn't help seeing what he saw."
"And you never told me?"
"I wanted you to tell me. I was waiting for that with bated breath, but you wouldn't." His voice wavered.
Vulnerability was especially difficult for Rollond. She knew him well enough to know that he was letting her in, forcing himself to have his guard down, because he wanted to. But it was just as easy to turn this moment into a physical pain reaction and pretend it never happened.
Like the one time in the back rooms of the bar. How he smiled and pulled her close. His words from then rang in her ears:
Stop shutting me out.
"I was afraid," she said, finally. "I had no idea what to expect, from myself, from you, or what the two of them were going to turn out to be. I shouldn't have kept you out, but I felt that I had to, because…"
He arched his brows, and the slightest grin highlighted his face.
"Because…" Well, she just couldn't say it, and her eyes started to sting, getting teary, over the thing she couldn't utter, the feelings she didn't believe in. "I — I'm —"
He winced, softly, as he sat up because she drew close to him. When their lips met it was like breaking a silence that lasted nearly two years.
That familiar rush of heat reverberated all through her being. Her pulse quickened, and there was something else that she hadn't felt in a long time.
True, she had a certain kind of longing for Lucein and Gnyovante, a very warm kind of love, because they were her children. But for Rollond it was different; and when he broke the kiss, she suspected he wanted to hear it.
Yet he put his finger to her lips and hushed her before she could even draw breath to speak.
"I know," he said.
"They're going to want to know who you are to them."
"Don't tell them I'm their father."
"Why?"
"They need to decide who I am for themselves. It's what I wish my father would do, if I met him."
She redressed his wound, and for a little while, curled up beside him. Between his side and his arm, she had peace.
Fragments.
Luorvas, the 50th day in the month of Melstaafh;
Concerning some of the events of the unusual night;
Withering of the 692nd year of the Second Epoch of Dyjian.