Iðunn's Apples

Veritas

† the virgin goddess of truth, dressed in white and hidden out of sight †

Another day passed without a trace of Serena. In the morning, Aquila kept me busy by showing me around the town — it was very small and no one who did not know about Varkolaks and the impending war resided there — but by afternoon, I had seen what could be seen. 

That was when the waiting truly began to nag at me. I knew that Serena wanted me here, for some reason, but I couldn't figure out why. This seemed to be a military base more than anything else. Less than one in ten of the people we had met had been human, but I assumed that there were more Varkolaks hiding inside than humans. 

Aquila was no help in answered this question. "Why do you think she brought me here?" I asked, as the sky darkened and the snow seemed to glow in the last of light. 

He shook his head. "I don't know. You'd be safer... well, anywhere else."

That night, sleep was hard to find. I was used to a busy life, with no more than six hours of sleep a night and constant exhaustion. When I did finally drowse off, it wasn't without nightmares filled with guns and chases haunting me. 

The next day, the snow fell too thickly for me to go out. When I began pacing through the house, Aquila handed me a book wordlessly, and I plopped into the couch with a blanket and a cup of coffee. 

"It's clearing up," Aquila commented what might have been an hour later. "May I?"

I nodded and pulled up my feet, making place for him on the couch.

"You know, you're a rather extraordinary person," he told me. "Not anyone would've had the bravery to do what you did."

I smiled and looked down at the pages of my book. "Thank you." After a moment, I drew in a deep breath and set the book aside. "You're a rather extraordinary person, too," I said, sitting up further.

He looked at me, and he did look surprised. The green of his eyes seemed infused by gold in the afternoon sun. He looked surprised, the way a human would look surprised.

"You know..." I blushed; something about the clearness of emotion in his face unnerved me. "You cling to humanity. It must take strength, I mean. And— And everything you and Karen went through, it must've been a fight."

He let out a low chuckle. "You've been with Serena for too long," he said. "You see, the secret is that we are human. No, we don't age, and we don't die, not unless someone makes us. Serena is under the impression that dying is the human condition, and if you don't die, then you can't be human, because humanity is feeling with the passion of something dying."

I frowned. "Well, you must admit that is one great barrier between us."

"Even Varkolaks don't live forever," he said. "Even mountains are washed away and stars explode and one day, everything in the universe will have died and been reborn. Everything dies, and I feel with the same passion as I did before I changed." He smiled. "When I think of Karen, of the child she carries... I don't remember ever having felt so happy before."

He folded his hands together and faced me. "Serena is a cynic. She has lost so much in her lifetime — too much. She has a lot of things buried and she is very cold, but she isn't frozen all the way through. She loves and she suffers, every day, and one day she will perish, and she is human."

I felt a cold draft at the nape of my neck and pulled my jumper closer around me. For a long moment, I was watching Aquila with his golden-green eyes so full of love, hiding away from the draft and the snow; and then the air shifted around me and my heart was clenched by a cold hand of excitement. My breathing halted. Serena was back.