Gilded Serpents

Chapter Forty-Five: Time

I was in a dream, yet awake, and I watched scenes before my eyes as if they were a journey away. I was mere passenger, with body as vessel, tossed within woeful abyss itself. My memories of the next moments were fragmented, tiny blinks of existence, but experiences that did not feel like my own.

I remembered being pulled upward by Aixel, tugged first by the arms, but when I did not move, he resorted to throwing me over his shoulder. He was shouting something about Milea but I did not remember his exact words.

Everything around me was calamity. Everything around me was vile and sorrowful and hopeless. I could hear nothing but a sharp ringing noise, muffling all around me and pulling me both further inside of myself, and away from all senses. I watched the ground pass underneath Aixel's running feet, and saw still faces of friends and harpies and people whose names I had only learned in the early morning hours as we stood before the golden fields, waiting for the unknown.

The bitter smell of death and voided magic, burnt and hollow surrounded me, blinding me until I saw no more.

But that was all. That was everything I could recall before I awoke in the warm cot, covered in heavy blankets, with eyes more sore and burning than they had ever been before.

I had experienced loss in my life, but nothing that mattered as much as this.

As much as Ciro.

The stew looked warm, filling, dark red and filled to the wooden bowl's rim with vegetables I did not know the name of. Yet, despite the splendid spices surrounding me, covering me like a blanket, I did not seem to have the strength to lift the spoon to my mouth.

Milea sat beside me at the small wooden table, slowly taking bites, and I felt her eyes burning into me, though I could not look back to meet them. Aixel was in front of me, gorging on the meal, while Doris slept in a small paper box beside his bowl, softly snoring under the tiny tea cloth blanket.

Ciro's seat remained empty to my left.

His halberd leaned against the wall in the corner of the room, glimmering against the firelight where Milea had placed it the night before. Or maybe it was two nights before. Or three. I seemed to have forgotten to keep track.

"Mira, you need to eat."

It was Milea, still staring into the side of my face.

"Just eat," said Aixel through a mouth full of food.

I looked up at him.

He looked different today, I wasn't sure why.

"Don't tell her what to do," retorted Milea, "Also, thank you for finally taking a bath. I thought I was going to lose my appetite."

Aixel gave her a look, then put a loose piece of his long red hair behind his ear.

"You should put it back more often, it's nice to finally see your face," smiled Milea.

Aixel then shot upward, pushing his chair scuttering across the stone floor.

"I'm going to sleep in the catacombs," he said as he threw his spoon back into his now empty bowl.

"There's no dessert in the catacombs."

Aixel slowly put Doris' box back down and slumped into his chair in defeat.

A quiet moment passed as I listened to Milea continue eating her meal and the little Doris snores.

"Why don't you care?"

It was my voice, yet it felt like it didn't come from me. It sounded strange, distorted. I could not remember the last time I had spoken. I looked down at the stew, watching as a matte film began to form at its surface.