Flux

13

Errend stood behind Derek's old chevy, willing himself to blend in with the shadows cast from support pillars and the other parked vehicles. He watched Aiya and Derek embrace, feeling a strange mixture of emotions pass through him.

He made sure to let them pass, not allowing himself to hold or dwell on any of them. But he was surprised to find jealously as one of the emotions. He had never thought that possible. Could he even truly love?

He was so confused. He'd been taught that letting himself feel emotions for longer than the milliseconds it took for them to wash over him and dissipate would lead to disaster. Yet what had happened on the train last night defied all he had been led to believe.

Aiya had found him on the brink of losing control. His anger had taken over, and he'd been unable to stop it. When she had said his name, voice full of worry, confusion and fear, it had torn at his insides.

He had refused to turn around to see the look of disbelief and terror on her face. He knew his body must have been crackling with energy, and even if she hadn't been able to see it with the naked eye, she definitely would have been able to feel it.

Yet like so many times before, she had surprised him. The woman was a nut case at best, but her heart was bigger than any humans he had ever met.

Turning from the embracing couple, Errend rubbed his face and closed his eyes as his thoughts remembered the impossible.

On an instinctual level, she had to have known he was dangerous at that moment. Catastrophically dangerous. But it hadn't stopped her from coming to him, placing a timid hand on his white knuckles and kneeling to stare intensely up into his eyes, asking, "How can I help?"

Errend's composure almost faltered in the dim light as he remembered her eyes, almost glowing ice-blue gazing so compassionately into his.

Something had passed between them at that moment. Some unsaid understanding, as if her luminescent eyes read the emotions of his suppressed soul.

Without words, without hesitation, she stood and pulled his head to her chest, wrapping her arms protectively around his head and shoulders.

Feeling and hearing her heartbeat, a steady and calming rhythm, and smelling the faint smell that was Aiya mixed with her favourite coconut oil and peppermint to ward off bugs, soothed him in a strange and almost magical way.

As the anger drained from him, he felt one, then two, then a steady flow of tears run down his face. The energy he had gathered fizzled into nothing as his anger turned to heartbroken sobs, and for the first time since his parents had abandoned him at the Holy House, Errend let himself cry with abandon.

He had woken many hours later as the sky had begun to lighten to find his head resting in Aiya's lap, her hand on his hair, as she leaned against the wall of the train under a window beside the table from the night before. Her head was propped against a chair, and surprisingly she dozed.

When he tried to quietly pull away to rise, she woke. Her eyes seemed a little darker this morning. A little deeper blue as she looked at him, a hauntedness was lingering there.

Errend knew then that nothing would ever be the same between them. He waited for the questions, the accusations about his hiding information, anything really, but she just stared at him. He briefly wondered if this was how people felt around him, looking at a blank face expecting something but getting nothing.

He hadn't meant to keep any secrets. He had tried to explain the day they encountered the Skullets. It just hadn't worked out. Then his time had run out.

When he finally did rise, she still didn't say anything. So Errend quietly said, "Thank you, Aiya, " and had left her sitting on the floor of the dining car staring at nothing but looking like she had seen everything.