1001 Nights

TALE 3: Creation (2)

"Stop."

Sharazad looked back at him, her malnourished body heaving with pain. "What?"

"They're gone."

Sure enough, the sound of horses and yelling men ceased off into the distance. Sharazad looked forward and gave a sigh of relief. Night couldn't help but notice how scared she had looked—

"Who were they?" He asked.

"Hunters."

"Hunting for what? You?"

She gave a huff of something that sounded like laughter, but felt like anger to him. "Tell me who you are, and maybe i'll think about telling you." She turned to him fully now, her black eyes glazing him over. He knew what she was thinking, there is no way that this man is human.

He wore strange robes and his eyes were a colour verging off of unnatural. His physique was also strangely perfect, as most divine beings were. It was as if everything about him was created to be perfect. To be better than a human.

"I told you."

"Just because you fell out of the sky you think i'll believe you're some god?" Her brows knitted together and her mouth pressed into a tight line. She clenched her fingers against her belt, where he was sure she was holding a knife. "I told you, there are no gods here. Not anymore."

Night looked at her, drinking in the skinny and sickly girl in front of him. She was still beautiful to him, strangely enough because she wasn't perfect. He had never seen a being besides himself, his brother or his mother during his entire lifetime, and they were all perfect and divine.

Blood plagued the corners of her lips and her eyes were weighed downed with bluish-bags underneath them. Bones prodded out of her sharp shoulders and her hair gave the impression hat it once was lively with curls, but now was dead and limp. Her brown skin was verging off of grey, and he could make out cuts and bruises of all sizes and shapes underneath her tattered clothes. She looked human.

Terribly, beautifully, human.

"I can fix those wounds for you." Was all he said after a long silence, pointing to her bleeding ankle. Sharazad looked down as if she hadn't noticed the widening cut that blood-stained her ankle.

"It'll heal."

"It won't." he nodded towards the wound. "It'll get infected, it'll keep bleeding and bleeding, until you can't run from those hunters anymore." He watched as her eyes widened, looking down at her ankle which was now stained red.

"What do you want?" She looked back up at him.

"For what?"

"If I let you heal this, what do you want in return?" Her voice almost sounding desperate. It made Night feel despicable, making a deal with a helpless human. In the clouds, in the home of his Mother nobody ever did things for other things in return. The concept was new to him, it was exactly the way his Mother had warned him how humans operated. 'Humans are selfish.' His Mother had warned him 'They operate off of their own desires with no regard for anything other than themselves'

"A home."

His Mother and quite possibly his brother were probably searching for him now, he needed to blend in, become a human-

Sharazad simply looked at him, as if trying to contemplate if her decision could ruin her life. After what seemed like a century, she brushed her hand against her muddied pants and held it out to him. "Deal."

He looked at her hand strangely.

"Shake it. You're supposed to shake it." She made towards him and grabbed his own hand in hers and firmly shook it. Night looked at the action with no small amount of amusement, Sharazad only scowled at him.