Vivien and the Scoria

Chapter 7: A Day of Broken Expectations

A Day of Broken Expectations

1st night hour

Vivien's House

Mount Api

4th Year of Lord Tante's rule

I must have blanked out after that. I don't remember moving from beside Lacey's body, but somehow I ended up in one of the cave systems beneath Mount Api. The caves had been formed by lava flows, long ago, and had been used over the years to store goods for the winter months, and for children to play hide and seek. I had run through these caves many times in the past with Will, Rin, and Rosa, and I knew just about all of the entrances to get into and out of the cave system.

I came into consciousness curled up in a ball in what had once been my favourite hiding place. I was too big to fit in the tight crevice now, but I must have tried in my desperation that I cannot remember. My face was streaked with tears, and my hands were covered blood - Lacey's blood. There was little light here in the cave system. Natural light filtered in from holes in the roof, but those were few and far between. That was another reason why Api children frequented these caves as children - it was good practise for learning to control our elemental gift of fire control.

Without thinking about it, I changed my focus from normal eyesight to faer sight. If anyone had been looking at me in that moment, my eyes would have begun to glow bright yellow. To me, all that I noticed was a shift from being able to see almost nothing to being able to see everything.

Going almost from memory, I tracked my way out of the cave system to the entrance/exit a street over from my house. It was dusk, judging by the colour of the sky and the large amount of people that were flocking the streets. Dusk and the few hours just afterwards were a time of life and festivities on Mount Api, as we were the only mountain to have light after the sun set for the day. Night markets were held once a week, and every night, one of the shops stayed open late, offering good food and entertainment to anyone who could pay a coin.

This distraction allowed me to make my way from the cave system entrance to my house without anyone commenting on the bloodstained state of my hands. Once inside, I closed the door with a heel and went straight to the wash basin to get off as much blood as I could. As I scrubbed, I tried to remember what had happened between discovering that Lacey had been the Fellan's victim and waking up in the cave system. Nothing. I couldn't remember a thing. I usually could remember far more than I ever wanted to, but not this time.

The last of Lacey's blood filled the basin, and my hands were now red from all the scrubbing. No matter how hard I tried, I could still see her blood all over my hands, even when I knew, logically, that I was all gone. Finally, I withdrew my hands from the bloodstained basin and wiped them dry on the front of my tunic. It was then that I noticed that my hands hadn't been the only things covered in blood - my tunic and breeches were stained as well. Whoever had seen me in the street must have thought that I was a monster, if they had been paying attention.

I pulled my tunic off over my head, but left on my bindings. At least they weren't covered in blood. And it wasn't like anyone was here to see me almost naked. Next my breeches came off, leaving me standing in my bindings and the shorts that I always wore under my breeches. My bloodstained clothes were thrown into the pile of other dirty clothes in a corner by the wash basin, and I flopped down on my bed, both mentally and physically exhausted.

My eyes closed for a minute as my muscles began to relax, my mind drifting back over the last few days. A faint whisper echoed through the air before I could think back very far, and I opened my eyes a fraction to find a pale white figure floating over me in by bed. I shrieked and rolled out of the bed onto the floor, pulling my daggers from their discarded sheath on the floor near the base of my bed. The pale figure rose up as I moved, and as I crouched on the floor with my daggers in my hands, the figure moved as if to sit on my bed in front of me.

"What the hell?!" I exclaimed under my breath. As I was much closer to the pale figure than I had been to the one that I had followed to Rael, I could see more details about the figure. They were probably female, though I couldn't be certain. They were surprisingly solid, as I couldn't see right through them and they appeared to be making some impression where they sat on my bed. However, they moved slightly as if they were underwater, hair that was as bleached white as the rest of them floating around their head in a halo. They looked like they were trying to speak, but I could not hear a word that they were saying.

"Look, I don't know who you are or what the hell you're doing here, but if you intend to stay you're going to have to answer some questions for me. I can't hear a word you're saying, so nod if you understand me." I firmly told the pale figure, who looked puzzled but nodded in response to my statement regardless. I sighed heavily and stood up, daggers still pointed at the figure, because crouching as I had been was not a comfortable position to hold for long. The figure seemed intent to sit on my bed, so I dragged a chair from near the table to beside the bed so that I could sit.

Before I sat down, I grabbed shoe from near the front door and chucked it at figure. It sailed straight through, and hit the wall on the other side of my bed with a thud. The figure looked vaguely offended that I had just thrown something through them, but also impressed that I had thought to try. This almost completely confirmed a theory I had about the figure, but I decided to ask anyway. "Are you a wraith?" I asked bluntly, and the figure smiled and nodded at me.

This blew my mind. Wraiths existed, everyone knew that, but no-one had seen one for decades. Powerful Wraith Lords and Masters could make them corporal so that ordinary citizens of Pedair could see them, there was no way that Tante had made a Wraith appear corporal to me. It had been established very early on in his rule of Merasa that he was too weak to do that. So why was this Wraith appearing to me now? How was it appearing to me at all?

"Can anyone else see you?" They shook their head no.

"Are there any more of you here that I can see?" Again, the answer was no.

"Was it you that led me to Rael this morning?" This time, they nodded yes.

"Why are you here? Who the hell are you? Why can I see you and no-one else can? What the hell is going on?" I blurted all this out in a rush, my hands that were still holding my daggers flailing around in front of me as I got more and more frustrated and bewildered with the situation. The wraith raised their hands and began to look alarmed, trying to stop me waving my daggers around. I shoved the daggers back into by belt which I had picked up when I moved the chair, and got up to pace around the room. I had far too many questions and far too little answers.

A knock at the door roused me from my thoughts, and I glanced over at the wraith sitting on my bed. "You! Don't move. I'll be back. I have so many questions." The wraith nodded hesitantly, but remained sitting there. That problem could wait a little while. Now I just had to figure out who was knocking on my door and interrupting me.

I wrenched open the front door, ready to give a piece of my mind to whoever was calling on me. Instead of finding one of my Api friends trying to drag me out for a night at the pub, I found the young man that I had not recognised at Twister's shop this morning. He had his hand raised, as if ready to knock on the door again, and after lowering it slightly upon seeing my face, his eyes did a quick sweep of my body.

Immediately, he snapped his eyes back up to my face and his cheeks took on a rosy glow. I frowned and looked down at myself. Was I still covered in Lacey's blood? Shit. I wasn't covered in blood. In fact, I wasn't covered in a lot at all. I was still only wearing my bindings and the shorts I wore under my breeches. "Fuck." I muttered. "Give me a moment." The young man nodded and I stepped back inside and shut the door. My cheeks were flushed red in mortification. The wraith had distracted me so much that I forgotten to get dressed again.

Quickly, I opened the trunk which held all my clothes. It was empty except for the dress that Annabelle had ordered for me months ago. I had never worn it because she died the day before it was delivered. All my other clothes were dirty, either from sweat, dirt, or blood, and were in the pile that I had dumped my bloodstained clothes onto earlier. It was either wear the dress or wear just what I was currently wearing and die of mortification.

"Fuck!" I yelled.