Hunger

Part I - Chapter 1 - Silence - Part 2

The shadows had lengthened and the sun had moved three turns of the glass before Iya dared to remove her disguise.  Iya pulled a string around her neck and folded her treecloak neatly back into place before climbing quietly to the ground.  She immediately regretted her impatience.

Silence’s dark shape leaned like a shadow against a bluebirch not three paces away.  He was nearly twice her height.  His vibrant green eyes met hers and neither moved.  Iya noted that although he gave the appearance of leaning, his body was as tight as hers—coiled and ready to spring into action.  Both were so still that neither even appeared to breathe.  Iya read no malice in his gaze, but by no means did she trust him. 

He deceived me!  The irony was not lost on Iya.  The purpose of today’s excursion was so she could study him, and now, here he was, right in front of her.  Regardless, Iya was furious with herself for being taken unawares, yet she kept any hint of her inner anger well hidden. 

His eyes were green emeralds set in the weathered and tan, yet strangely smooth, features of his face.  His facial hair was cropped close and styled so that a thin line of beard traveled along his masculine jaw.  A meticulous moustache lined his upper lip and his beard crept delicately up on either side of his mouth to meet it.  Beneath his bottom lip, a crop of facial hair gathered and spread to join the lines of the beard and moustache into one contiguous piece. 

He is younger than I expected, Iya thought.  Although Iya knew little of men, she could see there was no grey in his hair, and his face bore no wrinkles.

Iya had never seen such a piercing gaze, yet she refused to succumb to the urge to flee that his proximity created in her.  His eyes were dead and empty whilst his body was full of potential violence.  Iya knew the potential violence wasn’t a result of emotion or anger—it was the depth of his lethality.

She knew he was seeing everything about her that she was observing about him, from his posture to his expression.  

We are alike, she realized with mild surprise.  Was that why she was so curious about him?  It certainly wasn’t because she wanted the company of humans.  Humans had always treated her one of two ways:  revulsion or malevolence.  When men saw her, they were always terrified and tried to flee or kill her.  Iya knew why, too.

Before Iya, these woods did not exist.  Before Iya, men had never seen a bluebirch. Before Iya was born with skin as blue as the Beryl Mountains, and hair so black that night was pale in comparison, the world was not as it is. 

Yet the most startling aspect of Iya’s appearance were her eyes. Almost too large for her face, they were entrancing.  The inner iris was lavender, yet the outer iris was a deep indigo, and starbursts of a lighter blue flecked throughout.  Iya had never met a man-being who had looked into her eyes and not moved to flee, attack, or simply become frozen in fear.  Silence did none of these things.

For the better part of a turn of the glass, Silence and Iya waged a silent, tumultuous war.  In half a heartbeat, it all changed.  One moment Silence was as rigid as Iya, and the next he made a subtle change of posture and appeared to relax.  Iya was so taut, so ready to end this stalemate and spring into action or flight, that when he changed his posture she dove to her right and drew her stone dagger from its sheath in her vambrace. 

She slid to a stop, eyes feral, lips curled in a silent snarl.  Iya gripped her dagger in a reverse hold so the blade was flush against her forearm.  By no means was this a rudimentary weapon.  The blade reached from her wrist to her elbow, and was sharper than any metal she knew of.  It never dulled nor broke, no matter what Iya pitted the dagger against.  The dagger’s edge did not shine, but rather seemed to absorb light.  The weapon was simple at a glance, but Iya sensed that Silence saw it for what it was—Little Death.