Lunar Heart, Shadow Bound ✓ [when the moon lies]

Ch.8.2: Dealing with Deel

Edited: Apr, 27, 2020

Note: Above, Mountain Maiden inspiration. Artist unknown.

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Dunes of the desert grew in size the further away they got from Nuaka. Pretty soon they couldn't just walk over the dunes—they had to climb. Deel with all his bags, of course, needed her help to carry them because otherwise, she would probably end up carrying him.

"Why do you have so much stuff?" She muttered in Kathulan, but Deel said nothing. His Human face had 'I don't know what you said' written all over it. There were also tears in his eyes as if he was already imagining being eaten by a legendary Mountain Maiden. It made her wonder how in the name of the moons he had survived this long. Deel did not fit a survivor's profile. He was quite the opposite.

He was ungrateful, too. When Pinti roughly hulled the tied-up bag on to the top of the dune, Deel scampered up the dune so fast his sweaty face was caked in sand.

"Don't throw it like that!" He rushed to the bag and patted the dust from it. "You need to be more careful, Pinti."

"But nothing's damaged. And I checked, just papers in there." She argued and he scowled. Sighing, she attempted to roll it down the dune and slide after, but Deel yanked the bag from her.

"Don't do it like that!" He complained. "This is my stuff. Take care of it." He was testing her patience. Pinti would have gladly clawed his stupid Human face rendering him unconscious.

I'm going to be bald from stress by the time I'm done with him. She sighed as she took care not to throw his precious bundles of paper.

Heat scorched the skin under her fur and when she lightly combed through the fur on her arm, a thick tuft came off. She was shedding so much that little poofs of blue fur tumbleweeded across the sand dunes behind her where footprints and paw prints dotted the sand side by side.

In the sky she found the thin sliver of yellow and blue light of the Second Ring. It stretched from one end of the horizon to the other. Supposedly, most Halfhumans made their home there.

Pinti knew, like the Second Ring, the First Ring was also just that—a Ring. All rings were shaped like a doughnut—which she also thanked Humans for inventing—and what lay in the middle of the First Ring was still a mystery even to Humans.

Some speculated it was space, others speculated it was a different kind of black hole, and yet others believed it was somehow solid, but whichever it was, there was no way for anyone to get there on foot. Those who tried, never returned. Some religious Humans claimed that was where the afterlife was and they would go on and on about it, but whatever they said, Pinti only believed in one afterlife—those up in the stars.

But that's also just a myth. No one lives up there. She recalled Kalis saying that the idea of an afterlife or even ancestors watching over you in the sky was just created to stop children from crying.

A shadow soon stretched towards them across the orange sand turning it brown. They were coming upon a large dune that seemed to be the tallest in the area.

"Mountain Maiden graveyard on the other side." Deel whimpered. "This is the one. I can't do it. I can't go. I—"

Scowling, she jumped up to the mountain with unsheathed claws. She had climbed many dunes and already knew what to expect—the slippery sand. She had to move faster than the speed she was slipping. Deel's bag on her arm slowed her down a little and it took extra effort to get to the top. Deel cried out from below, but she ignored him. As the sun beat down on her back, she concentrated hard not to slip too much or to pant. She didn't want to become a desert in her throat.