The Other Side

According to Silas(’s thoughts), the trial for Royal Guard candidates was sometimes referred to as ‘the Labyrinth.’ Chuva reflected that this was an awfully extravagant name for a bunch of plywood sheets, almost low enough for her to see over the tops of them, assembled into a rough maze in the castle courtyard. She had to get through to the other side under a strict time limit, and as Algernon announced to her just before she began, “There will be plenty of obstacles along the way!” Altogether, the Labyrinth was supposed to determine her speed, strength, stamina, and how fast she could think on her feet.

Chuva felt that she was overqualified for it. She was a demon killer – er, Equalizer killer; a dinky little maze was a child’s playground compared to that.

But when Algernon gave the signal, from his spot on the balcony a few stories above her head, she obligingly took off at a trot. She sensed King Cecil’s eyes tracking her from his place next to Algernon, and she was doing this to give him a good show, if for no other reason.

She went left and left and left and left, only once encountering a dead end and having to backtrack a grand total of four yards. At her next turn, she felt a slight resistance as she moved her foot forward, and realized that she’d sprung a tripwire just before the wall swung outwards towards her face. She took a running leap, planted both hands on the wall, and vaulted herself over without breaking stride.

“She moves fast for someone of her weight!” exclaimed King Cecil, just within earshot. Chuva decided not to take offense at this. The King wasn’t exactly slim and trim himself, and whenever she looked in the mirror, she saw someone both attractive and fit; she’d never thought that her stocky build detracted from either of those things.

Besides, he was right: heavyset people weren’t exactly known for their agility, and she’d never thought of herself as an exception to that rule. She wasn’t agile, she just had a knack for finding the most direct path and taking it, whether that meant jumping over obstacles or plowing right through them.

Speaking of obstacles, there were more simple ones like swinging and collapsing walls, none of which held her up for no more than a heartbeat (or two at the most). She was a little more surprised when, out of nowhere, a uniformed figure lunged out from a dead end that she’d ignored, aiming a sword at her.

She drew her own sword – she’d picked it out of the armory, and its solid heaviness in her hand, plus the way its engravings glittered in the sunlight, still thrilled her – and intercepted the attack with all her strength. After a couple of clanging, metal-on-metal strikes, the figure retreated down another passage that went nowhere. Only as she jogged off did she realize that it was just a Royal Guard soldier, hidden in a spot where they could test her reaction times, who may have been a little frightened by the ferocity of her response.

When other soldiers darted out from the corners, she dealt with them a little more gently, dealing them only a few glancing blows before continuing on her way.

At the end of the maze, her double was waiting for her. The combination of his stance and the outdoor lighting had turned him into a mythical figure, almost a statue: his chin held high, his weird golden sword poised for battle in his hand. She grinned, pointing her sword straight at him and bolting forward at a run.

This time, she was free to be as vicious as she liked; there was no danger of seriously injuring him. He could anticipate all of her moves, no matter how sneaky she tried to be, and she could equally anticipate all of his. As a result, neither of them bothered with tricks or subtlety, sparring in their own unique way, ceding and gaining ground in equal majority.

Their battle was one of contrasts. He was lithe and evasive, she was forceful and brutal; he had a nimbleness to his movements, almost like a dancer, while she was no more graceful than some carnivorous creature rending its prey to shreds; even his sword was slender and light, the antithesis of her thick broad blade. She didn’t know whether the intention was for new recruits to beat him, but she did know that she couldn’t beat him, any more than he could beat her. And he must have known it, too. Their clash was just his way of testing her, of tasting her in his mind, assessing her combat skills now that there wasn’t a city-destroying threat gobbling up his attention.

And in the end, he must have been satisfied.

They came to a halt facing each other, breathing hard, although she felt the exhilaration in her body magnified by his similar sensations. She smiled. He didn’t – at least, not with his mouth – but he didn’t need to in order for her to know that he was pleased.

Finally he said, “I think you’ve earned your place. Welcome to the Royal Guard.”

Silas escorted Chuva to her room, a suite he described as ‘modest’ that still far outclassed every boardinghouse and hostel she’d lived in over the past three years. In her private washroom, she got to take her first real shower in quite a while, the hot water sliding blissfully over her skin. She kept her wings expertly folded against her back as she washed up, giving a little extra attention to her hair, as the first lather of shampoo she applied turned gray in seconds.

Silas had departed by the time she left the washroom, but he’d left clothes for her: the same uniform that he and the rest of the Royal Guards wore, with the lone addition of a mantle to secure her cape. It was comfortable enough, but not having her starstone against her collarbone threw her for a loop, as if some vital organ had gone missing. Not that her starstone was vital, far from it, but she found that she disliked the idea of being without the item that had instigated so many changes in her life. She decided to keep it in her pocket for the time being.

After binding her hair into the low, tight bun that she’d seen several of the other female guards wearing, she set off to search for her double again.

She pinpointed his location to a nearby hallway, as if somehow, his mind was emitting a signal that she was able to track. That was new; other than a few glimpses of his surroundings that passed between them, she’d never known where he was before. Maybe it was a distance thing, just like how she’d needed the starstone to communicate with him when they were on opposite sides of the world, but now that he was close by, she could read his thoughts all on her own. The starstone was a kind of amplifying beacon, but the real power came from them alone.

Well, duh. They were gods, after all.

She found him standing by a tall window, overlooking the spread of Cumula City. He turned around to face her before her footsteps were even audible.

“Those clothes suit you,” he told her approvingly. “You look…”

“…pretty?” she offered, smiling wryly.

“That wasn’t the word that came to mind,” he said, not betraying even a flicker of embarrassment at her attempt to tease. “I was going to say that you look capable. Professional. More or less the sort of woman who fights Equalizers and sets a new record time for running the Labyrinth.”

“Oh, did I set a new record?” she asked, with mocking self-deprecation. “I wasn’t even trying.”

“You were second only to me. No one’s bested my time since I obtained my position as Captain of the Royal Guard.”

“That’s because you didn’t have to fight yourself at the end, you numbskull,” she retorted, grinning, and she pranced over to him.

The tiniest of smiles had wriggled across his face, and unlike before, it seemed to be staying for a while. His mind had a light air to it that reminded her of their childhoods. “I see you’re in a better mood now,” she remarked.

“I suppose that I am,” admitted Silas. “It’s just beginning to sink in, that you’re really here. Before, it was all happening so quickly, I hardly had a chance to believe it. But now…”

She nodded understandingly, having to remind herself that he’d been alone for longer than she had. They were the same age (exactly the same age; they’d been born on the same day) but he had fifty years of consciousness under his belt that she’d been asleep for. And speaking of which…

“There’s a lot I want to hear about, Silas. About the time that I was in stasis. When you were–”

He halted her with a raised hand. “Not now.”

“Why not now?” she demanded. “I’ve been waiting too long already! The sooner, the better!”

“Trust me, I agree, but there are too many people around during the daytime, and the war…is not something that I can speak of with everyone. And I will need to speak of it; sharing memories will not be enough to cover everything. I’ll discuss it privately with you as soon as possible.”

“Which will be when, exactly?”

“Tonight. Eleven-thirty on the highest balcony facing the courtyard.” And he reached into her mind momentarily, sketching out a map so that she’d be able to find the rendezvous point.

Chuva was impatient to start filling in the blanks of her existence, but all she said was, “Fine.” He had a point about privacy, anyway. There were things that she’d like to say to him only when she knew that there was no chance of being overheard. “So…what do we do until then?”

“We train you, of course. Just because you’ve passed the trial doesn’t mean that you’re a full-fledged member of the Royal Guard yet.” He turned partially back towards the view of the city; she couldn’t tell whether or not he was still looking at her. “Your technical title will be ‘Enforcer.’ In practice, this effectively makes you my second-in-command, a position that you cannot be trusted with until you are intimately familiar with the workings of the kingdom. We haven’t had an Enforcer on the Guard since the early days of King Dromedor’s reign. Your predecessor…well, let’s just say that there are some who felt that he cursed the position.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Did he die?”

“Certainly not. He was caught pilfering the King’s bedroom. Which,” he added hastily, “is not something that I am even remotely concerned about with you.”

“Glad to hear it.” And all things considered, she would rather be filling a thief’s shoes than a dead man’s. “Okay, so, the kingdom. Tell me about it.”

Silas adopted a lecturer-like tone of voice. “Cumula City was established on the spot where mortals are said to have first spoken with the gods. Its heritage remains based on magic and divine communication to this day, despite the fact that such things are no longer viable, and the gods favored it with divine protection that lasted for a number of decades after their demise. It was still protected when I arrived here, meaning that for the past eleven years, I’ve mainly been monitoring the populace for signs of unrest, dissolving violent protests, and arresting a few criminals deemed too dangerous for the ordinary police to approach. I’m afraid that your employment will probably be a bit more strenuous.”

Chuva wrinkled her nose. “You’re expecting these demon attacks to become a regular thing?”

“Yes and no. That is to say, they will occur much more frequently than they ever have, although, given that only two Equalizers have made it to Atlas Isle since the start of the numbing, that isn’t saying very much. But this city has strong defenses and a sizable guard force…no, I am more concerned about how the citizens will react when life in the City of Gods becomes decidedly less divine.”

“There’s no way anyone uses the G-word to describe this place anymore,” she responded, but his point was well taken. She thought of the intensely unpleasant Noto City and its desperate populace, knowing that Silas was feeling her think about it. All she said aloud was, “Lots of places have managed to survive, though. Even with no more trading and the blight and the demons – or Equalizers, whatever they are. People can still live.”

“Mm.” She imagined Silas’s eyes sliding towards her from behind his mask. “You say you’ve been out in the world for a while, Chuva, so tell me: how many cities this size have managed to avoid degradation?”

She snorted to disguise the unease prickling in her chest. “Cities this size? I’m pretty sure that this is the biggest city in the world. And yeah, I know what you’re saying, that it’s mostly the smaller towns that keep going, but some cities are okay too. Like, Merona City up north is doing pretty well, and Zeng City isn’t so bad either…”

He tilted his face towards her, maybe trying to measure how much of her contradiction was truth and how much was artificial optimism, then dipped his chin in concession. “I suppose that as long as we aren’t numbed out yet, there is still some hope.”

“That’s the first thing I’ve heard come out of your mouth so far that actually sounds like something I’d expect you to say,” she commented.

The subtle implication – or accusation? – of her subtext made small ripples in his mind, which she just barely felt coming off of him. However, he chose not to address it right now, since it was probably one of those topics that was more suited for their meeting tonight.

Instead, he turned back to the window and stated, “I normally don’t offer myself as a tour guide for new recruits, but since you are to be my Enforcer, I can make an exception for you.”

Chuva snorted. “Oh, yeah, it’s totally just because I’m your Enforcer, and not because I’m your double.”

“A simple yes or no answer would suffice, you know. You don’t have to make a dramatic production out of it.”

Just like that, they were back to banter, and she shed her lingering inhibitions like a layer of dead skin. Perhaps he wasn’t as different as she’d initially feared; maybe her arrival had thrown him off kilter, or she’d just kept touching on sensitive subject matters. He wasn’t exactly the same as the Silas she’d grown up with, of course, but anyone could change over the course of fifty-four years. She certainly had.

“It’s always good to see a city with a native,” she answered languidly, brushing one gloved hand down his sleeve. “I just wish that instead of walking, we could fly.”

It might have been possible to cover all of Cumula City on foot, if they’d had the entire day, but it was early evening by now, and Silas stuck to the neighborhoods that were in close proximity to the castle. Between the sights that Chuva took in with her own eyes, and the knowledge of the area that he allowed to percolate slowly from his brain to hers, she felt as if she were receiving a summary of the city in bite-sized, easy-to-digest chunks of information.

She saw small open-air marketplaces, with vendors offering wares that ranged from local produce to previously magical artifacts that might or might not have had a few sparks left in them still, and she saw opulent enclosed shops where aristocrats shopped for clothing or jewelry or even personal chariots. She saw a vista of elegant houses set into a cluster of hills, all stone exteriors and sloping roofs and gratuitous turrets, and she saw century-old cottages in need of repair with weary parents attempting to usher their children indoors. She saw restaurants with softly lit interiors and plush seating, and she saw street chefs with carts wafting scents that were alternately mouth-watering and repulsive (one of these chefs insisted on giving her and Silas some complimentary kebabs for supper), and she saw homeless encampments where people roasted scrawny fish over open fire-pits. As someone who’d been living on the poverty line for three years, she would’ve given some change to the tramps, but she hadn’t bothered to bring any money with her.

After a lifetime of hearsay about how Cumula City was a blessed utopia, seeing that there were still slums and homeless people surprised her at first, and Silas seemed bemused by her reaction. “Surely you know that there’s no such thing as perfection,” he told her. “Every city has its impoverished sections.”

“I guess I did know that,” she conceded. “But it’s one thing to know the truth; actually seeing it is different. Still, you’re doing better than some of the other places I’ve been to lately. They didn’t just have slums – the entire place was slums.”

In the end, she came to the conclusion that Cumula City was no utopia, but it was a pretty close representation of what other cities must have been like back before the numbing. This knowledge made her feel that she could more easily fit in here while also mildly disturbing her; if this place ran like any other city, then it could also decay like any other city. And now it was her job to try and prevent that from happening.

When the sunset ended and dusk began to threaten, Silas seemed to take it as a cue to start leading the way back to the castle. Chuva was glad of it. “Dawn and dusk always feel weird to me,” she remarked. “Almost like they hurt my eyes. Do you ever feel that way?”

He nodded and spoke in her head: Perhaps it is because I am Darkness, and you are the Light. We thrive in one condition or the other – we don’t do as well in the in-between spaces.

As they walked side by side, continuously connected even when there were no words passing between them, she assured herself that she at least wouldn’t have to protect this city alone. And as nice as this was, she’d even less alone after tonight, when she’d finally get the chance to tell her double all of the things that she really wanted to say.

At eleven twenty-nine, Chuva was rounding the last few stairs of the spiral that led to the highest balcony facing the courtyard. Silas was already waiting for her; his presence twined around her like an invisible hand pulling her towards him, and she wasn’t sure if the anticipation prickling on her skin came more from her, or from him.

Upon their return from town, Silas had been called away to some sort of meeting that she wasn’t yet experienced enough to join, and another Royal Guard had spent quite some time explaining to her all of the castle’s defenses. She had dutifully listened to the descriptions of battle formations, proper evacuation procedures, and operation methods for the cannons and catapults, but she’d found her mind wandering as the night progressed. It was eleven o’clock before she was dismissed, and she’d spent the next twenty minutes pacing the halls, until the time finally arrived for her to depart.

At eleven-thirty exactly, she stepped onto the balcony.

The air was pleasantly cool, with just a hint of a breeze emanating from the direction of the ocean; her god-senses detected the faintest trace of salt in it. The silver stars splattered across the sky were echoed by the electric lights of Cumula City, spread out so far below that they were no larger than freckles on the face of the earth. And while her eyes still acknowledged that she was in the dark, she could still pick out far more details in the darkness than any mere mortal could, so that the night lost its threatening unknown atmosphere and became simply a beautiful alternative to the day.

And in the midst of it all was Silas, standing at the edge of the balcony, watching the city with his usual unreadable expression.

“Hey there, stranger,” said Chuva, taking a spot beside him and leaning up against the balustrade. She smiled at him when he turned to face her, but his face remained opaque, and even his thoughts had tangled together too densely for her to easily penetrate. “You seem so…intense. What’re you thinking about?”

“Many things,” he replied, gesturing vaguely. “Mostly about…well, the questions that you’re probably going to ask, and how I can answer them. And about where to even start.”

“You’re not the only one who’s been thinking about that…but I actually have an idea.” She reached up to the place on her neck where her starstone usually rested, only remembering that it wasn’t there when she touched the mantle of her uniform. “Do you remember the promise that we made to each other, not long after we first met?”

He twitched, momentarily flustered, and she had to suppress a giggle at how quickly he’d gone from serious to borderline embarrassed. “W-we made a lot of promises to each other, Chuva…”

“Obviously, but I’m talking about the very first one – well, okay, the first one was just that we’d meet up someday, but we’ve already checked that off the list. But right after that, you promised me that after we met, we would show each other our wings.”

“Oh, yes.” He nodded stiffly. “Of course I remember that. But I do not like to reveal that...that aspect of myself. It would lead to too many questions.”

“Questions from who?” demanded Chuva. “I thought the whole point of coming up here was privacy! And you promised me!”

The gnawing sense that he’d changed drastically and irrevocably began to nibble at her again, but before it could get very far, Silas conceded, “You’re right. And, if nothing else, I consider myself to be a man of my word; I always try to honor my promises.”

She faced him with her hands on her hips and her feet planted apart, eyebrows arched at him expectantly. He held her gaze for nearly thirty seconds before saying, “You first.”

She snorted. “Figures. Looks like when it comes to you, I’ll have to do everything myself.” With that, she reached around, tugging her cape out of the unfamiliar grasp of its mantle, until it finally fell and puddled around her feet…

As her wings extended above her, quivering in the sea breeze, she noted with irritation that they were still a bit sore from her marathon flight across the sea. Still, it felt good to stretch them out, to feel the night air playing against their delicate membranes. Silas took a step back and gazed at her for a long time, his mouth slightly open.

Chuva smirked. “What’s with that face?” she asked teasingly. “I’m pretty sure that I told you what my wings look like a long time ago.”

“You did,” he agreed. “But they are a sight to behold nonetheless. Bat wings…they suit you very well.”

The apparently unselfconscious compliment took her off guard, but she did her best to maintain her unflappable attitude. “Thanks. Now, let’s see yours.”

Silas took several more paces backward, in order to give himself adequate space, and removed his own cape in one fluid movement. Just like that, his wings were simply there, where a minute before there’d been empty space; she’d experienced the same thing firsthand dozens of times, but only now did she realize how disorienting it must have been for people who witnessed it. And his wings –

He’d described them to her, and she’d even imagined them to herself, but the reality far outclassed anything that her mind’s eye could have cooked up. Silas’s wings were not the harsh, powerful, leathery appendages of a dragon in a fantasy painting, but rather the delicate and dappled wings of an extraordinary butterfly. They were primarily blue, the hard and clear blue of an autumn sky, but also dappled with patches of yellow-gold, magenta, and even iridescent silver. And despite being just as large as hers, as well as strong enough to get him off the ground, they still appeared delicate to her eyes.

It was Chuva’s turn to go open-mouthed.

“Oh void, Silas…” she breathed, her wide eyes riveted on him. “I’m a little jealous. I mean, shit, your wings are gorgeous!”

If he was flustered, he did a professional job of hiding it from her. “Thank you. But beauty has never meant much in the middle of a battle. That’s why I think I prefer your wings. They seem much more…formidable.”

“I guess so.” When she really thought about it, it was odd how they could possess traits that were so similar, yet almost completely opposite at the same time; their wings, not unlike their respective fighting styles, represented a clash between gracefulness and functionality. Maybe doubles were just supposed to work that way.

Silas seemed to be a little more open with her now, or at the very least, more genuine. But with him showing her some affection, she was reminded of one of the trickier topics that they’d come up here to discuss: not the war or what she’d missed out on during her stasis, but…

“So,” she said, knowing that he must have been able to feel her thoughts curving off into an awkward direction.

“So,” he echoed.

Silence congealed thickly in the space between them.

When Chuva and Silas first “met” (somewhat stretching the definition of the term, but really, there wasn’t a better word for it) they’d both been nine years old, entering a new and strange phase of their lives, and each had wanted nothing more from the other than a close friend that they could relate to. And for a while, that was exactly what they’d been – but the two of them had been in contact for twelve years before their unexpected separation, a period of time in which they’d both grown into young adults, and, well, many close friendships couldn’t survive puberty without mutating in some way. Especially when you were so close to the other person that the two of you literally had access to each other’s thoughts.

“The last time we spoke about this…” started Chuva hesitantly, but then she shook her head, finding her thoughts too muddled to continue.

“…we had some differences of opinion,” Silas finished for her. “Specifically, I was questioning whether or not it was appropriate for doubles to become…romantically involved.” It was bizarre to hear his flat, stoic voice speak the word romantic.

“Right. And I was telling you that it didn’t matter, because as long as that was something we both wanted, who the void cared that we were doubles?” She shifted her weight from foot to foot, fluttered her wings a bit. “Of course, that was before we knew what being doubles actually meant, besides the telepathy thing…”

Silas had turned back to the view of the city below them, and now he’d poised one fist below his chin, like a heavy-handed sculptor’s portrayal of a man deep in thought. “This did not turn out to be a debate unique to us. Many other pairs of doubles that I knew, if not most of them, decided to add a layer to their relationship. It never particularly mattered one way or the other. They seemed to be happy, so long as it was what they really wanted.” He cleared his throat. “But it has been fifty-four years.”

“In other words,” said Chuva, “neither of us knows what the fuck we really want anymore.”

“Coarse language like that does not befit a Royal Enforcer.”

She shrugged, pushing herself off into the air, only to land on top of the balustrade a moment later. It was language that certainly befit her emotional state right now, and she wasn’t the Royal Enforcer just yet. Her wings spread out on either side of her for balance as she carefully shifted her feet into a toe-to-heel position.

Silas turned back to her, and she felt his unease humming in his mind like a taut wire. “Let’s not mince words,” he stated. “What you really want to know is what your arrival here means for us. But the answers aren’t going to be as clear-cut as you think that they should be.”

“Uh-huh.” She thrust out her arms and took a single step along the railing. “That’s my Silas, all right: always looking for a million shades of meaning. You poetic types, I swear…”

Her gentle teasing did not amuse him this time. “We’ve been together – physically in the same place – for less than a day. Before that, I had no contact with you for fifty-four years. Do you honestly expect me to know exactly how I feel about this – about us – right away? After all of the experiences that we’ve had since then, all of the choices that we’ve made?”

“Choices?” She twirled herself to face him, standing almost on her tiptoes now. “The only choice I’ve made was to travel across the world to find you – and the only experience I’ve had is three years of working at whatever shit-house would take me, counting my pennies, putting everything towards my journey. But I told myself that it’d be worth it, because you’d be there at the end of it. I haven’t been able to belong anywhere since the second I finally woke up, like I missed out on the life I was supposed to live and now I was stuck doing what somebody else was supposed to do, but I knew that once I finally saw you in person for the first time, I’d know that I was exactly where I was always meant to be. Because that’s how you always made me feel, you know? That’s why coming here was so important to me. And, just so you know, I don’t appreciate the way you’ve been acting at certain points today, because you’re honestly starting to make me wonder if you still care about me at all.”

Chuva cut herself off, her own voice beginning to sound strange to her ears. She realized that her face was flushed slightly. She’d gone on enraged rants before, and she wasn’t usually afraid to raise her voice, but this time, she hadn’t really been yelling because she wasn’t exactly angry. Indignant, yes, but also anxious and…well…afraid. Over the years, she’d crafted a million different imaginary versions of her reunion with Silas, some that were laughably idealistic, others in which every possible thing went wrong. But not a single one of those fantasies matched what had happened today.

With her own mind in such a jumble, she didn’t even bother to try and figure out what Silas was thinking.

Long seconds passed before he turned his head back towards her, his mouth slightly softened. “I am sorry, Chuva. It was never my intention to make you feel devalued. And I hope you know how much it means to me that you’re here.” His wings trembled perhaps a little more than the breeze could account for; he didn’t seem to notice. “In all honesty, I’ve simply been overwhelmed. I want to be happy, but at the same time, I cannot help thinking about how different things are now from how we used to think they’d be.”

“I guess I can understand that,” muttered Chuva. “And it’s not like I want you to feel guilty or anything. It’s just that…” She inhaled deeply. “Maybe I’m a little overwhelmed, too.”

She dropped down to sit on the balustrade, facing the balcony with her wings hanging in the open air. When Silas moved his arm closer to her, she thought for a moment that he was going to take her hand, but apparently even that simple act of touching was too much for him to handle right now.

He said quietly, “It doesn’t surprise me that you’re adapting to this better than I am.”

“Why? Because I’ve only been away for three years, while you’ve been away for fifty?”

“Partially, but even without that, you always used to have a better idea of where you were going than I did. You were the one who wrote the story of our lives. Half the time, I didn’t even need to form my own goals, because I could just follow your lead.”

Chuva forced out a halfhearted laugh. “You, follow my lead? And here I thought I was the one following you halfway around the planet.”

He met her gaze with a little smile that melted her heart like an ice cube in an oven. “We’ve been following each other. That’s part of what being doubles is all about.”

For a brief moment, all of her concerns about him dissipated, driven out by a surge of love as intense as anything she’d felt when they were children. She touched back down to the balcony, reaching out to cup her fingers around the edge of his jaw. He stiffened slightly against her hand – more with his mind than with any actual muscles – but did not pull away.

“You know, doubles or not, I’m still having trouble figuring out what you’re thinking,” she murmured. “You seem a bit…closed off.”

“Yes?” he said, as neutral as ever.

“Yes.” Her finger drifted upwards, brushing against the edge of his mask. “And I still don’t know what the point of this stupid thing is.”

He jerked slightly, as if fighting the impulse to push her away. “My mask?”

“Yes, your mask. What’s it for?”

“For protection.” Was it just her, or had his voice suddenly gone even more monotone than before? “That is the function of a mask.”

“No shit. But I don’t see how that tiny thing could possibly be protecting you.”

“It is. You’ll simply have to take my word for it.” Abruptly, he spun around and began striding back towards the spot where he’d left his cape, leaving her startled and disoriented with her hand hovering awkwardly in the air. But before he cut himself off from her again, she detected a trickle of fear leaking from his mind to hers…and something else. Not an emotion, but more like – a smell.

That mask is magic.

Chuva folded her arms across her chest. “Don’t you think it’s weird that you’re willing to show me your wings, but not, you know, your face?”

“It has nothing to do with showing my face,” he responded without turning around. He draped his cape across his wings to vanish them, then set to work readjusting his mantle.

“Oh, yeah? You’re sure that you’re not hiding some battle scar that you think is too horrific to show off?”

“The way that I look doesn’t matter to me.”

“Maybe it matters to me.”

“I don’t see why it should.”

He still hadn’t even turned back to look at her. Frustrated that she’d made him pull away with what should have been just an offhand comment, she stomped over to retrieve her own cape; her longtime wish that they could go flying together clearly wasn’t going to be granted tonight.

As she redressed, though, Chuva found that it was impossible for her to cultivate any anger towards him; she was a champion of holding grudges against those who had offended her, but this was her double, not some random mortal who’d leave no impact on the greater course of her life. Even though she was frustrated that he kept taking one step forward and two steps back, she wasn’t physically capable of hating him.

There’s a lot that you do not understand yet, Chuva, he intoned in her mind.

Giving her head a brisk shake, she stomped back over towards him, her cape now flaring out behind her. “Then make me understand,” she replied aloud. “Help me out. Our kind of mind-reading only goes so far!”

I am trying. But telling you certain things is…difficult.

Chuva came up behind him and allowed her hand to rest on his shoulder. “You trust me, Silas, don’t you?”

“Of course,” he answered quietly, sounding much less certain than she would have liked.

“And you know that I’m only trying to help you.” She pulled herself up to her tiptoes, so that their eyes would be level if he only turned around. “Right?”

“Yes. But, Chuva…” He trailed off, his thoughts jumbling together and piling against the edge of their shared consciousness, until the only cohesive signal she could pick up from him was his desire for clarity.

“Then let me help you,” she insisted. Her fingers traveled upwards, as deft and soft and light as feathers against his face, tracing his neck and then his chin – and she could feel him wondering what she was doing, but the question hovered for a moment behind his lips, and in that moment of hesitation –

She reached up and pulled off his mask.

Silas gasped audibly and snapped backwards into a rapid retreat, his movements so jerky and abrupt that she instinctively stumbled back a few steps, as well. Her arms, still holding up the mask, appeared to be frozen with shock, but what had surprised her so much was the intensity of his reaction. It certainly wasn’t his face, because he…

He’d finally turned around, and he looked fine; there was not a single major deformity that she could see. He had a narrow face, a straight slash of a nose, slightly upturned eyes; yellow irises that, like hers, seemed to subtly glow with their own inner light. His skin, which was slightly darker than hers, sported a few prominent scars – one bisected his eyebrow, another followed the curve of his cheekbone – but that was nothing that she wouldn’t have expected from a participant in the Thirty Years’ War. He was an ordinary-looking man whose expressiveness much more closely matched her original expectations of Silas.

But the result of her unmasking him was neither ordinary nor expected.

“What…did…you…do…!” he hissed, his voice breathy, yet seething. His hands came up and clawed at the air wildly as he lurched towards her.

“I…!” At that moment, his emotions battered into her, and she winced, pain flitting through her skull at the onslaught. It was like having waves of both hot and cold water crashing over her head at the same time, addling her senses even as they drowned her: terror followed rage followed anxiety followed mortification followed deeply-buried-but-persistent joy, the levels rising over her head, then blending into meaninglessness. It was long seconds before she realized that Silas was advancing on her, and in her hurry to scramble away, her foot skidded on a stone tile and sent her sprawling back on her elbows. The mask landed a few feet away with a harsh metal clang.

Before Chuva could even get back on her feet, his hand clenched around her wrist, wrenching so that she was forced to look into his face. An almost insane desperation stretched out his features, widening his eyes and dilating his pupils, adding exaggerated creases around the corners of his mouth. “Why did you do that?!” he bellowed at her.

She should have broken his grip – normally it wouldn’t have been that hard, but all of the sharp signals that he was flinging out at her made it difficult for her to focus her strength. “Silas—”

“Do you understand what you’ve done?! DO you?!”

“Silas, let go of me–!”

“Is this what you wanted?! Did you come back just to do this to me, you–”

“SILAS!”

His shouts collapsed into a muffled choking noise. He stood over her, watching her – her chest heaving, her fists clenched, every muscle prepared for a fight that she didn’t want to start – and little by little, the lunacy began to dribble out of his expression. Perhaps he simply didn’t have enough energy to sustain the outburst, but something in his eyes made her think that seeing her in such a defenseless position, completely uncomprehending of what she’d done to cause this, was what had finally broken through his fit.

He dropped her wrist and staggered backwards, his face blanching under the moonlight, then sank to his knees.

“Silas…?” asked Chuva hesitantly as she sat up. She received no response, and his head was angled in such a way that she couldn’t quite make out his face…so it was only when he pressed his hands against his eyes that she realized he had begun to silently weep.

Her first instinct was to reach over and hold him – over the years, they’d been in many situations where they’d had to comfort each other from afar, and she had longed every time to offer some sort of reassuring touch – but she quickly thought better of it. Every attempt she’d made to help him had backfired horrifically so far. Even so, she couldn’t just sit here numbly, a useless onlooker in his moment of vulnerability. So, after a long, uncertain pause, she inched over and grabbed hold of his abandoned mask.

Staring into the silver-sculpted features, which no longer looked so imposing without a living face behind them, Chuva mumbled one of the spells that she’d learned from Magi Corona so long ago. As the words passed her lips, a subtle but definite pulse of energy rippled outwards from the item in her hands, vibrating as it traveled up her arms. She shivered slightly; whatever kind of magic was infused in this item, it was deeply powerful and made her very, very uncomfortable. “What the void is this thing?” she muttered.

“I-it’s…it’s made to conceal.” Silas’s voice, although soft and shuddery, practically made her leap out of her skin; she hadn’t been expecting him to answer her. “But it w-was never intended to hide things from the world. Only from me…”

He peered at her, and the slight luminosity of his yellow irises, so much like her own, caused the tears on his face to twinkle briefly. A large part of her was loath to press him for any details, especially when she saw what crying had done to his face; he might have ordinarily looked as if he were in his late twenties or early thirties (as she did; gods clearly did not age normally, although she had yet to figure out exactly how their kind of thing was affected by time’s passage) but with moisture dribbling down his cheeks, she might have been transported back to their teenage years or even earlier. Still, she couldn’t keep herself from asking, “What do you mean…?”

A swallow moved visibly down Silas’s throat, and he straightened up slightly, addressing his words to the cold silver stars rather than to her.

“I fought in the Thirty Years’ War, Chuva. Think of what that means: Thirty Years’ War. Three entire decades of fighting Equalizers, trying to save as many people as we could, trying to stop the numbing from spreading…and after all that time, we failed. And I was there from the very beginning, remember, so I didn’t miss a second of our slow downward spiral.

“I-I never really even wanted to be a soldier. I used to see myself becoming a poet, a raconteur…even a bard wouldn’t have been so bad. But then I grew my wings – and I met you. And as we spoke to each other, figuring out that we had magical abilities, you told me all those stories about knights fighting monsters and – then the very first reports of Equalizer attacks started to come in, and – and I knew that I was never meant to be a poet. It was as if the gods, before they vanished, had chosen us to save the world in their stead…”

Chuva knew all of this, of course; that was when they’d been about fourteen or fifteen, long before they figured out what their abilities were actually indicative of, and their working theory had been that they were some sort of chosen ones. She recalled being perversely thrilled by the prospect of fighting in the name of the gods – this had also been right around the time that her fondness for princess stories had started wearing a little thin, mutating into warrior princess stories before she gradually gave them up altogether – while Silas had been a little more reluctant. But she’d also shoved him through his doubts, towards the progress that she knew they’d had to make…

Or had it been, simply, the progress that she had wanted him to make? Seeing him like this now made her seriously wonder.

“I wasn’t too afraid,” he continued. “Not yet. Not until you disappeared. The prospect of facing the world, let alone a war, without your confidence and energy was terrifying. But when the Global Safeguard Army came to my town for recruitment, I didn’t hesitate to join them. I knew that it was what you would have wanted. And perhaps your silence did not mean that you were dead…perhaps you would join up as well, and we would be reunited…”

Her entire head seemed to become scorched with shame. That was the plan that she’d come up with after the news had reached them about the GSA forming: they’d both join up and finally get to meet in person. Not a single one of her other plans to get to him had ever come close to fruition, but that one had seemed so easy, so certain. To hear that he’d done his part while she had effectively abandoned him…

“The GSA was where I met the other gods.”

If nothing else, that statement allowed her to block her heart from wallowing in the mires of self-pity. Finally, she’d get the confirmation of something that she had always known, but had never received physical proof of: there are others like Silas in the world. Others like me.

Or at least, there were…

Silas looked over his shoulder, locking eyes with her, and she shivered briefly as his mind synchronized with hers. This time, he was communicating not with a conversation, not with emotions – but with images. Memories.

She saw the other gods, scattered throughout the ranks of the Global Safeguard Army. Just like her and Silas, they wore enchanted garments in order to disguise physical abnormalities, although none of them seemed to have wings; she fleetingly witnessed people with extra arms, extra eyes, tails or fur or feathers, and even some who lacked certain limbs or facial features. Most of them concealed their deformities with a practiced ease, just as she had with her cape.

These were people who had grown up all across the world, in every sort of culture and fiscal situation imaginable, but who shared a few key differences: all had experienced a transformation before their tenth birthdays, had subsequently discovered that they possessed magical abilities, and eventually came to the conclusion that they were destined to fight the demon scourge. They’d all joined the GSA for their own reasons. And…they all had doubles. Scattered among Silas’s memories, Chuva could distinguish the pairs, touching hands in the midst of threadbare refugee camps or battling Equalizers like two halves of a whole. Which, of course, was exactly what they were.

They all had doubles, except, of course, for Silas. He told them about her, about the attack on her village – or at least, what he’d gathered from her last few frantic communications – and they promised to keep an eye out for her, but as the years trudged by, more and more of the other gods simply assumed that she was dead. And by then, they’d learned that they were indeed gods, and not merely some prophesized and privileged children guided together by fate. But as Chuva knew from personal experience, knowing that you were a god birthed more mysteries than it ended. If Silas had gained any insight about what being a god truly meant, he chose not to share it with her at this point.

“I was alone,” he stated, tugging her senses back into the real world. “But being lonely was the least of my difficulties. At least I had the companionship of my fellow soldiers – many of whom I became good friends with – but the other gods achieved something that I never did. They figured out which gods they were, and thus were able to access their demigod forms.”

Chuva echoed, “Demigod…?”

“Forms,” he completed. “It’s what we called the temporary state of…essentially, of being able to access more of your divine core. It was a useful asset when fighting Equalizers…albeit not quite useful enough in the end…but in order to do it, you had to know who you were.” He shifted, his cape moving aside to reveal more of his defeated posture. “Sometimes they would call out their domain in order to transform. As in: ’I am Darkness!’”

“And I am the Light,” she murmured, although of course the words weren’t magical in and of themselves, and did nothing to change her when she spoke them.

“I did, after a while, figure out that I was either Light or Darkness, but that was not enough for me to attain a demigod form. I have always thought that there was some sort of reservoir of power that came with a double, one that you had to tap into in order to find your divinity. After all, that was how the gods worked: each could only function with the aid of their opposite.”

She shook her head, dazed, wondering if what she was feeling now was a mimicry of what she’d put him through earlier today. “Silas…I’m glad you’re telling me this – I mean, not glad, it’s just something that I needed to hear – but...what does any of this have to do with your mask?”

In response, he emitted a strained sound, either a sob or a hysterical laugh; she couldn’t tell which.

“What it has to do with my mask, Chuva, is that I spent thirty years watching innocent cities die, watching innocent people die, and watching my friends die, and when there was no sign of you after decades had passed, it felt like I was watching you die. And I was falling apart. I was afflicted with melancholia and paranoia; I couldn’t sleep; I could barely manage to eat; I was frozen, almost as if I were becoming numbed out, which of course gave me yet another thing to be terrified over. And finally, I could not stand it any longer. I had always wanted to help the world, whether with a pen or with a sword, but I knew that I couldn’t help anyone in that state of paralysis…but then I thought, if an enchanted cape could suppress wings, or an enchanted pair of glasses could suppress extra eyes, then perhaps…”

She recalled his comments about protection and concealment, and the meaning of his implication slowly crawled across her flesh.

“Silas…” she started slowly. “Are you saying that the purpose of that mask is to suppress your emotions?”

His raw psyche flinched away from her revulsion, but he answered in a forced even tone, “That’s a bit oversimplified. I did not make the mask – I never got as much magic education as you did, though even if I had, anything having to do with mind manipulation is extremely complex – but I found a shama who was able to produce...the desired effect. I still have emotions, to an extent, but as long as I am wearing that mask, they have very little effect on me. Fear does not paralyze me, nor does grief–”

“Or happiness,” she interrupted. Her stomach was still turning. No wonder he’d failed to celebrate during their reunion…

“Yes. Well. Everything has its price. Besides, happiness can lead to danger just as much as sadness can. That’s why I began to wear the mask all of the time. It was simply easier…and then, after a while, I found that any strong emotion was too much for me to deal with on my own. Whenever I removed my mask, I was engulfed, overwhelmed…but you saw exactly what that can do.”

Chuva was still holding said mask in her lap, and now she resisted the urge to fling it away like a spider crawling up her leg, reviling it for all that it had done to her double. But at the same time…he’d taken such drastic measures because of her absence. So was she truly at fault?

No, that was ludicrous – it was survivor’s guilt talking, and nothing more. After all, she hadn’t intentionally chosen to desert him. It had all been because of that damn demon and her shit-stupid starstone –

From somewhere on the castle grounds or nearby, a clock tower boomed out its hourly message: RONG, RONG, RONG, RONG, RONG, RONG, RONG…twelve deep chimes, signaling that a new day had begun.

The two gods on the balcony had fallen silent. What else was there to say? Chuva could think of half a dozen options, from embracing Silas and swearing that she would never leave him again, to lecturing him about how he could have chosen therapy, or medicine, or anything that was healthier than the complete excision of the possibility of feeling. But nothing seemed appropriate; nothing she could have said would have helped.

So she stood up and, without looking at him, held out the mask for him to take.

A moment later, its weight was lifted from her hand, and his presence all but vanished from her mind.

“It’s quite late,” he said as he rose to his feet, now speaking once more in the neutral voice he’d been using all day. “You must be exhausted.”

“Yes,” she answered truthfully.

“We should both try and get some sleep. You have another busy day ahead of you tomorrow. Do you know the way back to your room, or–”

“Yes, and I can get there myself,” she interjected, half curt and half shaken.

She strode through the dark corridors, alone except for the occasional posted guard, but they registered as company in her mind no more than the columns and the framed paintings did. She had hoped that a walk might clear her head, if only a little, but she found that it was too difficult to focus on anything. Vague, unformed dread had settled across her like a layer of demon blood after a particularly messy battle.

She hadn’t found her double after all. The Silas that she had loved was gone, obliterated during the Thirty Years’ War, only to be resurrected as the cold and masked Sir Silver. He’d described his emotions as being muted, not vanished…but what was he still capable of feeling? Joy, not exactly. Grief, certainly not. Love…?

Chuva told herself that she was overdramatizing things, something that often happened late at night when she was overtired. But knowing that it would probably look a little better in the morning didn’t keep her from lingering near the edge of panic right now – nor did it mean that the situation with Silas wasn’t a serious problem that would need to be addressed. Twelve hours ago, she’d been thrumming with the anticipation of finding him at last; eight hours ago, they had laid eyes on each other for the first time, marking the moment that she had officially completed her lifelong goal; and forty-five minutes ago, she’d been impatiently awaiting their private meeting, at least half convinced that it would bring them together in the way that she’d always wanted them to be.

And now? Romance, or lack thereof, was the least of her worries, because the numbing was about to come to Atlas Isle and Silas had become something that honestly made her sick to think about. Somehow, the worst part was how optimistic she’d been that once she found him, her life would be perfect – I mean, what did I think? That if I was with him, the numbing wouldn’t be able to touch us? That the whole void-damned world would be saved because a couple of useless gods got together again?

She didn’t know what to think, she didn’t know what to feel. She had come all this way to get exactly what she wanted and now understood that she didn’t even know what the fuck she really did want. She could have stayed up all night agonizing about it, but that wasn’t really her style, so instead she just undressed, pulled a pillow over her head, and went to sleep.

“That’s nothing. Wait until you see what I can do!”

Chuva, who was on her way to Little Shrine Square, stopped in her tracks and glanced in the direction that the voice had come from. The pitch of those words suggested that they had not been spoken by an adult, and sure enough, a group of four or five kids had gathered at the end of the lane. Annoyance started to simmer within her; the sun had nearly set, and she came out at this time of day specifically to get away from other people, especially other children. Even when they were only a couple of years younger than her, as these ones appeared to be, she felt so detached from kids like them that they might as well have existed on a lower, much less impressive plane of existence.

Even so, she moved slightly closer to them, as if to confirm that whatever they were doing was too insignificant to bother with. One kid had come to the forefront of the group and was doing some kid of jerky, uncoordinated dance while his peers looked on; a second glance revealed that he was bouncing around a hacky sack, performing stunts by whacking the thing with various unlikely body parts. Chuva snorted. He really thought that his little performance was ‘impressive’? He looked like an earthworm writhing after it had been cut in two, crossed with a fish that had flopped itself out of the water.

When the hacky sack finally dropped, his obviously undiscerning peers applauded, and the sound transformed her sneer into a scowl. She was striding over almost before she knew it – if they wanted to see tricks, then she’d give them something to really clap about!

“Not bad,” she remarked innocently as she approached the group. “I mean, for a beginner.”

The boy frowned at her and propped his hands on his hips. “Beginner?” he echoed indignantly. “I ain’t no beginner! I’ve been hacky-sacking for almost three whole weeks!”

“Hey,” interjected a girl standing near him, “I’ve seen you around town before. You’re the cape girl!”

Instantly, Chuva felt something in the back of her mind clench, making her self-conscious about a particular accessory like she hadn’t been thirty seconds ago. These little kids were oblivious enough to heap praise onto some boy who could do nothing more than flail around, but upon looking at her, someone with actual gifts, all they saw was ‘the cape girl.’ She’d used to think that being treated as an abnormality wouldn’t be so bad, as long as she knew how talented she really was…but if nobody ever acknowledged her skills, then was she really talented at all? It was like that stupid trick question about a tree falling in the forest with no one around to hear it, except that this particular tree had been falling over and over for a couple years, and was about ready to pull up its roots and drag itself in front of an audience so that it would finally know whether or not it made a sound.

She chose to answer with a curt, “Yeah, I’m the cape girl. But I’m way more than just that. I’ll prove it to you!”

Fish-out-of-water boy seemed dubious, but another one of his friends piped up, “Okay, start proving it, then!” Someone else picked up the hacky sack and offered it to her, apparently expecting her to start her own ridiculous-looking bounce routine…but Chuva had other plans.

Fixing her eyes on the toy, she lifted her hand and began to mutter a series of incomprehensible words, which had a structured rhythm that mimicked language but were composed entirely of nonsense sounds – sort of like the way toddlers babbled when they were first learning how to talk. But the effect of her chanting was far greater than a few patronizing smiles from nearby adults.

After a few seconds, the hacky sack rose from its perplexed holder’s grasp, bobbing uncertainly in the air while Chuva locked on to her target. As soon as she felt that her magic was sufficiently focused, she twirled her finger idly, sending the hacky sack on what was supposed to be a graceful looping trip around the cul-de-sac but instead turned out to be a wildly careening path.

The other kids shrieked and covered their heads while the hacky sack zoomed around them, a disoriented projectile accidentally trying to dive-bomb them. Even Chuva was startled at first; then she clenched her fists and brought them towards her chest, trying to reign in her errant spell. She hadn’t intended for the thing to act so violent, but…okay, it was kind of funny, seeing the younger children scramble around as if they were being hunted by a killer bird instead of a tiny beanbag that wouldn’t be able to do much damage even in the event of a high-speed impact. And the hacky sack, which had been easing off a little, suddenly regressed to its erratic behavior as soon as she started to grin to herself.

A few more seconds and her beleaguered audience fled, still hollering. Their escape was so hilariously uncoordinated that she hardly minded being ditched. Chuva dissolved into a snickering fit, and as her focus wavered and broke, the hacky sack plopped down harmlessly at her feet.

Well. That had been a fun little distraction, but now it was time to get back to what she’d really come out here for. She kicked at the hacky sack with the scuffed toe of her shoe – she was wearing ragged clothes that could get dirty or ripped without her parents noticing, per the norm for her nighttime excursions – then turned to wander away, only to spot the figure of a grown-up lady standing on the other side of the lane, eyeing Chuva reproachfully.

“If I didn’t know any better, Miss Maldonna,” admonished Magi Corona, “I’d say that I just saw you using your magic for a frivolous cause.”

Chuva wrinkled her nose, hunching up her shoulders so far that her cape almost didn’t brush against the ground. “You’re the one who always says that there’s no rules to magic,” she pointed out halfheartedly.

“Magic is a precious, finite resource,” Magi Corona retorted. “There’s less of it available every day, even to someone like you. You might be able to easily access what’s left of the world’s magic, but every time you waste it, that’s a bit of power that another magi somewhere else in the world won’t be able to use for their work.”

That didn’t especially seem like Chuva’s problem, but she held her tongue, not in the mood for a more thorough scolding. She had been taking magic lessons with Magi Corona for quite some time now, and while getting the hang of the various spells and cantrips in her lessons wasn’t exactly easy for her, her problems usually stemmed not from a struggle to call up enough magic but from an excess of power that would spurt out freely, leaving her scrabbling to dial it back. Apparently this had been an uncommon issue even before the silence of the gods began, which confirmed the theory that she was tapped into an abnormal sort of magic – but that didn’t mean that she was instantly good at spells. It just made her harder to control, much to her parents’ and tutors’ chagrin.

“If you really want to be the next magi, you need to show some responsibility,” Magi Corona was saying.

“I know,” said Chuva.

“It’s one thing to get overzealous during your practice sessions, but quite another thing to intentionally squander your skills…”

“I know…”

“And if you’re not going to take this seriously, then I can’t continue to educate you.”

“I know.”

“You know, you know, you know!” Magi Corona huffed, exasperated. “Eleven years old and you already know everything, do you? You can sit here saying ‘I know’ just to shut me up, but that doesn’t mean that you really understand.”

Chuva folded her arms around herself defensively. “You sound just like my mom,” she muttered.

Magi Corona paused, perhaps wondering if her student’s expression was a typical adolescent sulk, or if she had genuinely touched a nerve. Chuva’s mother had grown to be a constant sore spot, a bruise that was always struck by another blow before it had a chance to heal. Perhaps that was true of many parent-child relationships once the child in question reached puberty…but it definitely put more of a strain on things when the child was inarguably different from the parent.

“I’m not trying to be your mother,” said Magi Corona, her voice smoothing out with every syllable. “All I want is to see you become the great magi that I know you can be. You have a lot of potential, and a lot of natural talent, but talent can only get you so far. Hard work and compromise will have to take you the rest of the way.”

Chuva almost said “I know” again, but she stopped herself in time.

Fortunately, Magi Corona seemed content to let the conversation end on that note; unfortunately, she also decided to change the subject. “You’re going out to the woods again, aren’t you?”

There was no point in trying to deny it, but Chuva merely shrugged, which seemed safer to her than nodding. “…you’re not going to tell my parents, are you?”

“No, but I’d advise you to make your trip a quick one. It’s getting dark earlier now, and the woods can be dangerous after sunset…”

She snorted. “Everyone says that, but I’ve never seen any wild animals in the forest at night, usually not even birds.”

“I’m not talking about animals. There have been a few reports of people living in the forest, savage people, robbing and sometimes killing any travelers they come across. A little girl would seem like an easy target to them.”

“Savage people?” repeated Chuva, her eyebrows coming together. “What do you mean? They just live in the woods, instead of in an actual city or town? That seems like a really weird thing to do.”

Magi Corona half-turned away, absently adjusting the tangle of necklaces resting on her bosom. “Strange things happen all the time,” she commented vaguely. “But you’re right, and it may not even be true. Just…be careful.”

Chuva raised her eyes upward; dusk was encroaching at the corners of the sky. She hitched up her cape and hurried away. Between the two interruptions of the night, she’d lost a sizable chunk of time, and Magi Corona’s comment had admittedly made her a little nervous about staying out for too long after dark. After all, if some wild person stole her starstone, she didn’t think she’d even want to go on living.

By the time she’d passed the shrine and started tromping towards the trees that bordered Saint Valdez Point on all sides, she’d started to feel a familiar slow burn in her mind, a guttering candle flame that gradually strengthened to signify that Silas was waking up. It was about seven-thirty in the evening for her, which meant seven-thirty in the morning for him; not too early to wake up for a kid who had school or (in their cases) private tutoring.

’Good morning, Silas,’ she said, though her lips never formed the words. She had long since learned how to communicate with him through purely mental shorthand, mostly as a precautionary measure; her parents would be less likely to find out about him if she wasn’t constantly talking to herself.

Mmmm…evening, Chuva. The time difference was also something that they had gradually grown accustomed to. What’re you up to over there? You feel like you’re on the move.

’Flight practice,’ she replied.

Of course, I should have known. I’m rooting for you as always…!

She smiled faintly as she reached her target: a climbing-tree situated right at the edge of the forest, overlooking the brief grassy space between Little Shrine Square and the woods. There was no other point around the village’s perimeter with as much open ground, and this particular tree was known for being easy to ascend, its branches configured almost like a natural ladder. In other words, it was a perfect place to jump off and try to fly…as long as she did it after sunset, when there were less people around to stare at her.

Chuva was not a bird. She didn’t have any instinctive knowledge of how to operate her wings; there wasn’t even a mama bird to shove her out of the nest and force her to learn out of necessity. So she’d had to start shoving herself off of high places. After nearly four months of jumping from branches, banging up her elbows and knees, snagging her wings on foliage, and various other painful mishaps, she’d had some minor success at gliding and even a few short bursts of sustained flight. She was disappointed that she wouldn’t be able to casually fly across the world and visit Silas whenever she wanted to – at least, not anytime soon – but she knew she’d made at least a little progress, which kept her from completely throwing in the towel.

As she carefully began to lift herself from branch to branch, Silas asked, Is something wrong?

’What makes you say that?’

A frequency that was the telepathic equivalent of a shrug passed through their shared consciousness. You just seem a little off, that’s all.

’It’s nothing. Magi Corona found me on my way here, scolded me for not using my magic properly, or whatever. That’s all.’

Why, what were you doing with your magic?

She rolled her eyes at him overdramatically enough that he would surely be able to feel it. ’None of your business.’

Her fists closed around a branch about four feet off the ground, and she alighted there, holding her body straight up for balance’s sake. Any farther up than this, and she’d risk serious injury if she fell; any lower down, and it wouldn’t be much of a flight. Slowly and carefully, placing each foot directly in front of the other with a practiced motion, she moved step by step along the bough.

When she had almost reached the end, she paused, poised like a tightrope walker. The thickest overhanging foliage was behind her now, so she took a moment to sweep off her cape, dropping it back towards the ground without a second thought; as for her starstone, she painstakingly transferred it from the cape to her shirt. She didn’t want to lose contact with Silas during the flight.

Are you ready?, he asked as she straightened up again.

’What, like you don’t already know?’

Chuva’s wings, which seemed to grow larger every time she removed her cape, stiffened furtively above her; she wouldn’t have room to unfold them all the way until she was in the air, and maybe that was part of the reason why she’d had so much trouble flying. But this was what she had to practice with, and she’d have to make the most of it. She took another step along the branch, inhaled deeply, fought the instinct to close her eyes…

And she jumped.

She always tried to take the leap gracefully, but no matter what she did, her swan dives always ended up more like belly flops. There was that one uncanny moment where she was parallel to the ground and dropping like a stone, and then her wings extended to catch the air, jerking her upwards just a little. The sad little heap of her cape was so close that she could make out the wrinkles in it; she gritted her teeth and tried to raise herself, flapping, flapping, flapping…

And this time, her wings actually did propel her higher, inch by laborious inch. A thrilling surge went through her and briefly lent her more energy. This was very difficult, and she was already getting tired, but she wasn’t sinking any closer to the ground – her wings had finally gained enough strength to actually support her body weight.

She flew in a wobbly but straight line. Perhaps it was time to try something new – for example, how could she turn in the air? She’d seen birds do it a million times, had closely observed the way that they sort of angled their whole bodies, but would the same technique work for her? Maybe she could find out while she still felt confident enough to try.

She stuck out her arms to either side – something that she’d caught herself doing several times during flight practice, even though she knew that it had no possibility of helping her fly any better – and forced herself to roll to the left; it felt a bit like doing a somersault underwater, but with a little less resistance. Her wings shuddered at the sudden change in air currents. And after a few seconds of adjustments, she did manage to curve her path, although the turn was wide and crude. When she noticed that she’d lost a bit of height, she decided not to reclaim it, instead gradually allowing herself to descend to the grass.

Chuva touched the ground in a clumsy run, having never figured out a better way to expend her momentum. When she glanced behind her, she noted that she was a couple of hundred yards away from the tree where she’d started. That was still no trans-planetary trip…but it was something, anyway.

All right, Chuva! cheered Silas. Although she hadn’t narrated her flight to him, they’d grown close enough over the past couple of years that each of them could get a detailed reading of the other’s sensations by focusing hard enough. She smiled triumphantly, wondering exactly how her experience felt to him in this moment. Could he detect her pulse throbbing, the almost palpable vibration of blood rushing through her veins, the muscles in her wings and back that were somehow both fatigued and refreshed…?

You’re already so good at this, he added, seeming more awestruck than envious. I haven’t even been able to glide yet, and you just figured out how to do turns!

Her smile became a grin, his praise momentarily burning out the awareness that she still had a lot to learn. His words meant more to her than those of anyone else in her life: her parents, her tutors, even Magi Corona; no one else’s compliments ever managed to send such tangible warmth spreading from her chest all the way up to her face –

’Hey, uh, be right back,’ she thought at him quickly. ’I’m going to pull myself back together, so I’ll blank off for a second.’

Of course.

Chuva jogged over to retrieve her cape, unpinning the starstone from her shirt as she did so. The grin had vanished from her face.

The truth of her condition was becoming too obvious to ignore – and it honestly did feel like a condition, like some kind of perverse mental illness spreading through the crevices of her brain. It was nothing very unusual for an eleven-year-old girl to be dealing with, so maybe her reaction was too overblown for the situation, but she couldn’t help the way she felt: she had a crush on her best friend. She “liked” Silas, or “like-liked” him, as the other kids called it.

She never dared to spell out the reality for herself except in moments of alone time like this. Okay, she was eleven years old now, and a sudden craving for romance was quite common at her age…particularly among girls. But in a way, that was exactly what bothered her about this. She didn’t want to be “common” or “normal” or “just like other girls her age.” Magical children like her should be extraordinary, completely different (and better) than their peers. And sure, she wasn’t drooling over every mildly attractive adolescent in the village like some kids, but whenever she caught herself reading a romance book and imagining herself and Silas in place of the characters, or trying to construct an unrealistically gorgeous rendition of his appearance in her imagination, her skin would heat up with an uncomfortable brew of embarrassment and irritation. Just the thought that she might be going through a standard pubescent phase was revolting to her.

And, okay, another large part of the reason why having a crush sucked so much was because Silas hadn’t said anything about it yet, and she couldn’t figure out why. If he could tell down to the second when she was about to launch herself off of a branch, it shouldn’t have been that hard for him to detect the slow mutation of her feelings for him. And yet…she couldn’t exactly tell what he felt for her, either. When she probed his mind, she found tenderness and affection, hope that they would meet in the future, a desire to see her with his own eyes. In other words, a bunch of separate emotional ingredients that comprised the feeling called love, but she couldn’t distinguish between best-friends-love and romantic love at all.

That was why she’d started reading romance stories in the first place: to receive some education. Or at least, that was what she told herself.

At any rate, if she couldn’t tell whether or not Silas liked her, then he may not have been able to tell that she liked him – and without a reason to suspect that she was being silent on that topic, he probably wouldn’t bring it up anytime soon. Which meant that it was up to her to say something. But this concept of romance was still too unfamiliar for her to talk about, even with someone who knew her so intimately, who could easily peer behind her words and see what she really meant.

And besides, on the off chance that he actually wanted them to be boyfriend and girlfriend, they’d still be all the way across the world from each other. That would suck even more than having a crush in the first place.

Chuva gathered and dispersed these thoughts within the space of a few seconds, which was all the time she spent disconnected from Silas; then her starstone brooch was resting in its usual place against her collarbone, holding her cape in place, imprisoning her body and freeing her mind. Of course, he was waiting for her in his intangible way. He was like an arm or a leg, occasionally going numb depending on what position she was in, but always reassuringly present, so that she never doubted that he was there even when she couldn’t explicitly feel him.

Where were you? he asked, always sensitive if she spent so much as a tenth of a second longer than usual away from him.

’Where were YOU?’ she teased. ’You keep promising that you’re going to come and visit me someday, but you still never show up.’

You know it’s not that easy. Besides, with how quick you’re learning how to fly, maybe you’ll end up visiting me first…!

’Maybe,’ she agreed. She didn’t know which option she preferred: Silas arriving like a knight in shining armor to sweep her off her feet, or her just popping up one day out of nowhere and surprising him. Both were perfectly pleasant fantasies. One of them would come true, she felt certain of that…she’d just have to wait and see which one it would be.