Tale from the Deepwater

Chapter 63

Instead of answering, he just touched the red pearl softly with his finger.

"You had lost it. Keep it with you wherever you go."

She felt it on her neck, and the cold texture of something else as well. Instead of some stem or thread, it was now hanging by a thin, shiny, chain hanging down her neck. It was almost as white as her skin and blended seamlessly with her neck. She tried to get up to have a closer look, but a twinge of pain shot through her left shoulder, and up across her wings. She tried to shift, worried about her inability to move without pain.

"Keep laying down. You will be able to move later," he said decisively, and looking at those glowing red eyes, she found herself unable to defy.

"It hurts. Can I die of fire?" she mumbled, more to herself.

"It will not kill you. It is not in your nature to perish completely," he answered still.

"And yours? Does fire hurt you? Or something else perhaps?"

He didn't answer. Even when he talked, there wasn't anything she could ask so that he would let her know much about himself. Maybe, there was nothing like that, she thought regarding the question she had asked. Or it was that she wished that there wasn't. Even now, when she felt pain, she didn't feel discomfort or fear. Maybe it was because he was here.

When they were silent, she tried to recall what had happened. Her memory was a little muddled, or it was the sequence of the events that confused her. No, it was the oddity of events itself that she couldn't comprehend entirely, and hence she thought it must have been her memory of it that was disturbed. She didn't know that fire was so dangerous, and painful before. Yet, she wasn't going to touch it directly once she felt the growing heat as she approached. But as she had tried to draw back, something else had happened.

"The burning wooden thing," she started, and then went silent, trying to remember the exact sequence.

"It was a boat," he informed her.

"A boat," she spoke, storing the name in her memory.

"I flew near it when I saw it burning. But then, I was going away when I started feeling some pain from the fire even at some distance. But then the boat lifted and the flame touched my wing. There was something in the water there. I didn't see what it was. But I sensed there was something there."