Among recent years, the Changed, as they were called, have been studied. They are, to my assumptions, anomalies; byproducts of a thaumaturgic process that had gone wrong, a process which had breached containment and released an inferior, ineffective metamorphosis upon what appeared to be the whole world.
-Torshan Malavaya, The Changed: An Anomaly
***
Kyra shouldn't have nearly missed Laidu's arrival, but she nearly did. Then again, she was nursing a headache when he arrived.
It was like a migraine, warping her vision, except migraines didn't make her see visions. Kyra had experienced migraines before, mostly due to a tense neck, but she hadn't had the strange effects, the symbols, before. Fortunately, this headache wasn't nearly as severe as her previous migraines.
She didn't think it was natural. She had a few reasons to believe this, but the main reason was what kept her and Karik'ar and Skaria and Thaen and Indra warm. The tiny little thaumaturgy plate.
Any time she looked at it, the world blurred. The thing glowed red, emitting heat that staved off the chill of the mountain, but it made her head pound with thoughts that weren't hers, with ideas and memories that weren't hers. But those limits were quickly conquered and suppressed by something worse, something that grew and festered in her heart.
Worry gnawed at her. All she knew about Laidu was that he had been hurt. That was what Karik'ar told her. That was what sent her into a panic, and that panic had slowed, matured into a deep seated anxiety, the kind that upset the stomach and made her thoughts turn in an endless cycle revolving around Laidu.
What would she do without him? Would she be able to continue on? He was an amazing person, a man who seemed at times the ultimate ideal of virtues, yet at other times, a man who needed someone there for him, someone there to comfort him. He was strong, brave, selfless, but other times, he was afraid, nervous, and depressed.
He didn't look like it, but he was arguably the most human person Kyra knew.
All the other men she knew, the men her father had more than once suggested to her, either had none of the virtues that Laidu possessed, or lacked the sincerity of him. They were either boorish, crude, and selfish, or they were fake, counterfeit, and hollow. The way they talked about Kyra's friends made her skin crawl. Those were the crude, virtueless ones. The fake ones made her want to hit them, want to scream at how their words fell hollow, made her want to lash out and tell them to stop insulting her with feigned interest.
She was enamored by his virtue, addicted to his authenticity. He was something new to her, something real, something beautiful. Kyra never would have described Laidu as beautiful when she had first met him, but now she saw him differently.
His scales weren't hard and uncomfortable to the touch, but they shone like gold, glistened like gems. His snout, really a broad nose, was cute, and it made his square jaw stand out more. Kyra wanted to trail her fingers across his jaw. And his eyes, oh his eyes. They were deep amber, and in their depths lurked Laidu's spirit, and Kyra wanted to stare into his eyes until she saw it. She wanted to see Laidu again.
And all she knew was that he was hurt. Wherever he was, he had been in pain. Karik'ar had said it stopped, but nothing more. He said he felt nothing. Either that meant Laidu was fine, or he wasn't feeling anything.
Mountains were dangerous, weren't they? There were mudslides, rainstorms, and boulders. What if they had hurt Laidu? She could see it now, his mangled form bent underneath a boulder, his white horns the only thing visible as he struggled to breathe as mud just kept pouring over him, as the rain smothered him and upset his footing, as he fell off the edge of the cliff, his hands grasping for air as his face twisted into a scream.
As she thought of these more and more, the images became concrete, their grim predictions became absolute certainties. Her breath quickened, her heart beat faster, and her head throbbed. She wanted him, wanted Laidu by her side, if only to know that he was safe, but she feared, she feared so much she knew that he wouldn't be there.
Thaen sat up, ramrod stiff. "I...I smell something. A person." He rose, adjusted the cloak, and stepped past KYra. Her heart began to beat faster, panic. What was it? There was something stirring in her heart, something small, but powerful. A faint glimmer, faint, of hope. Who was it? Could it be Laidu? It had to be!
But what if it was a stranger? Another traveler? What if he came, bearing terrible news? She could picture it now, the ragged man talking about the strange, scaled corpse he found. Or worse, what if he mistook Laidu for a monster? What if he accidentally killed Laidu?
She rose to follow him, and her hands were shaking as she trailed Thaen. They traveled down the stairs, through a dark passageway, walking through what might have once been a cloister before mud and earth filled through the arches. Thaen turned into a more open room, where weathered statues kept a silent, solitary vigil. He stopped, and Kyra saw them.
There, stepping out of the rain, stood two creatures. Mud and filth dripped off of their forms, pooling at their indistinct feet. One was big, the other an inch below Kyra's height, and they advanced, almost menacingly.
"Gah, I'm never going to get all the mud out of my hair!" the smaller one said in Indra's voice. It spat and uttered a string of curses. "Got some of this in my mouth!"
The towering one began to shift and warp, the mud bubbling and hissing. It dried, hardened, cracked, and claws ripped it off. "Don't open your mouth, then," Laidu said with a chuckle as he peeled dirt off of his frame.
At the sight of him, dirty but alive, Kyra exhaled, and her heart slowed. The images in her head evaporated, and relief crashed over her like the thunder crashed over the mountain. He was alive. And she remembered what she was going to do. A big hug. But that could wait until he was clean. "Hello, Kyra, Thaen," he said, before some of the unhardened mud over his horn dripped over his eye. "Hold on. I'll help get Indra clean, and then we can talk, alright?" She nodded hollowly, still reeling from the shock of seeing him.
"Oh, how are you going to do that?" Indra asked. She had managed to smear most of the mud off her face. "I don't see a bath anywhere near here."
"It's deeper in. But since there's no furnace, I'll heat the water for you." He put a mud-covered hand on Indra's arm, and led her down another door.
Thaen paused, and then he turned. "Your heart was beating madly until he spoke." He looked up into Kyra's eyes. "You care about him as much as I do." Her heart flipped. Did he know? Did he guess about her feelings? What would Thaen think? He was a good friend, but he might not continue to be a friend if he found out. After all, it was strange and bizarre for her to like someone like Laidu, right? "I know, he's a good brother, isn't he?"
Kyra breathed a sigh of relief. "Yeah, yeah he is." Thankfully, Thaen was clueless. Well-intentioned, but clueless.
They walked back to the camp. "So?" Skaria asked. Karik'ar looked up, breathing heavy. Apparently, they had just been sparring.
"Mud monsters," Kyra said, "which turned out to be Indra and Laidu."
"Indra got dirty," Skaria said with a chuckle. "I would have paid to see that."
"Ever seen a housecat get wet?" Kyra asked. "Same miserable, nigh-murderous expression on her face. Apparently Laidu's heating up a bath for her."
"Oh, is he now?" Skaria asked. "Probably not all he's heating up for her."
Kyra's face flushed, but Thaen scoffed. "Laidu? He wouldn't do anything like that!" Thaen sat on his bedroll and stretched his neck.
Kyra sighed. "I'm going to go take a walk around the ruin." With that, she stalked down the hallway she had come from and turned a different way.
It was slightly warmer, this passage. Like the last cloister she had gone through, the arches had filled in with dirt and rubble, providing natural, rounded ramps interrupted by columns, but there was the faint feeling of steam. The passage was slowly getting choked with vapor.
She didn't believe Skaria's words, not at all, but there was a part of her that wondered, a part of her that doubted Laidu. Indra was pretty, with her dark hair and pale skin. If she let Laidu seduce her... she wouldn't blame him. It would still hurt, but it would be understandable.
She turned into a larger room and averted her eyes. All she saw was a flash of flesh and dark hair, Indra reclining in a fountain, most of her obscured by steam. Her eyes were closed, hopefully. Kyra simply looked away.
She stepped out of the fountain, walking around a cloister that was open to the sky. Rain poured down, and Kyra stepped on the raised flagstones of the path, before walking down a small flight of stairs.
She saw him and gave a little gasp. There he was, in the middle of the courtyard, back to her, washing his scales and wringing his clothes free of mud. Darker, soiled water streamed off his body and collected around his bare ankles. For a second, only a second, she let herself stare.
He had broad shoulders, a strong back, and arms corded with muscle. Scars crisscrossed his back, interrupting the well-ordered scales, and water traced its way down the ridges of the scars. There were a few scars on his legs, but the majority of the scar tissue was concentrated on his back, with a few raised ridges that descended down to his rear.
He was lean, his body all hard muscle and scale. She could see the muscle shift underneath the small scales as he wrung out his shirt, his pants drying on a stone railing next to the white cotton undershorts. The sight of him without any clothing was strange.
Kyra turned and quietly left, face burning. She felt like a voyeur, like she had just violated Laidu by spying on him, and he didn't know. It made her feel... oddly dirty.
Why should she want him? Why in the world would she be attracted to Laidu? Was something wrong with her? Something off? She sat down on a bench and sighed, the sound nearly drowned out by the dull roar of the deluge that poured from the heavens.
"Something wrong, Kyra?" Indra asked. Kyra started; she hadn't realized that she had sat by the fountain. "Don't worry, you can turn. There's a nice carving here that acts like a screen."
Kyra turned, looking through the latticework of weathered serpents and fish, the carved scales worn away by the years. She saw Indra's bare shoulders, dark hair, and blue eyes.
She looked different here, hair not kept in her headscarf or in the dark tresses she kept. Her eyes didn't seem as brilliant blue, but Kyra guessed that was the lack of kohl Indra wore. Her skin didn't seem as pale as before; did she powder it? It wasn't the pure ivory or porcelain of the traditional Caeldari woman. Close, but it had a liveliness to it, a faint flush to the skin.
"Well," Kyra said, "I mean, it's nothing really."
"Nothing?" Indra asked, arching an eyebrow. "It doesn't appear to be 'nothing,' Kyra. 'Nothing' doesn't make you appear to have an existential crisis half the time. 'Nothing' doesn't induce brooding spells. Whatever weighs on your mind, Kyra, it is hardly nothing." She paused. "Tell me."
"No, no, it's fine, I'm fine," Kyra said.
"Kyra, you're not. You need to get something off your chest." Indra sighed. "Tell me. I've heard plenty a nasty secret. Yours is hardly the worst thing I ever heard."
Worst thing? All that made Kyra think of was That Night, but she had promised herself that no one would know of That Night. It would die with her, that secret.
But she decided she would tell one thing. "You're going to think I'm a freak," Kyra warned.
"Kyra," Indra said, "I've heard plenty of messed-up, disturbing confessions. You're probably not nearly that warped and twisted up inside." She wasn't loud, and Kyra had to strain to hear. "Just tell."
"Well," the young woman said to Indra, "I... I think I'm in love with Laidu." She stared at Indra, looking for a reaction in the face of her companion.
Was that a smile? Indra's face kept passive, kept calm and collected. "So...?"
"He's a nicer person than many I know," Indra said.
"But look at him! He's got horns! He's covered in scales!" Kyra said.
"And you're worried that you're... you're what?" Indra asked. "I don't really see an issue."
"Why would I be attracted to that?" Kyra asked. "Am I... disturbed or something?" she asked.
Indra sighed. "No. It's completely natural. He's a man, you're a woman. Men are attracted to the feminine qualities of woman, and women are attracted to the masculine qualities of man. It's nature. Of course, there are outliers, but you're not one of them."
She paused. "Laidu has many masculine qualities, both physical and mental." Indra thought for a moment. "Pretend you are a cow, for the sake of this illustration."
Kyra chuckled. "You're not calling me a cow, though, right?" Indra gave her a flat stare. "Alright then, I'm pretending I'm a cow."
"A cow that has a preference for brown-colored males." Kyra frowned, but took that into account. "Now, say you're grazing in the pasture, and it's springtime. And while you're looking around for some nice grass, you're looking for a mate too.
"Now, you see most of the bulls in the pasture. Some are immature calves. But the rest, the viable mating population, they're old, shaggy, and half-blind. Hardly an ideal mate. They sit around, eat grass, and get mates simply because they're the only males in the pasture. There simply no other option.
"Now, say the farmer gets a new bull. He's not old, not weak, and not half-blind. He's young and in his prime. He's got a nice, sleek coat. He's strong and well-muscled, well fed. But there's one problem. He's covered in black fur.
"But what do you do? You're still attracted to him. You ignore the black fur, and you take him as a mate. And eventually, you start to like the black fur. It's different, exotic."
"So," Kyra said, "you're saying the reason I like the scales is that I like the other aspects of him, and they just...sort of went with the other, nicer things?"
"Precisely," Indra said. "If you're worried it's some sort of affliction of the mind, don't."
"Thanks. But... don't tell him," Kyra said.
"Of course not." Indra said. "I mean, I can understand why you'd be attracted to him. Most of the men at Saefel Caeld are rather spineless and ...doughy. And I'd imagine Laidu has nice scales, as scales go."
"If you're trying to set me at ease," Kyra said, "it's not working."
"Not that. There's a theory of beauty and attraction that's known as the Adaptive Approximal Theory, saying that one may grow to find other races attractive, even when they possess non-human characteristics, by seeing which characteristics are considered healthy and beautiful in that race. I think you're an interesting case study, as you haven't lived within a culture of a race of people like Laidu, you just know one of his kind. If he even has a kind."
"Huh," Kyra said. "Do you think of everything in the context of some experiment or another?"
"Sometimes." She stopped as a sizzling sound managed to drift through the rain, soft and weak, but still audible. Kyra rose. She knew that sound. It was Laidu drying out his clothes, pressing them against himself, heating them up, searing them and boiling the moisture out.
"I'll talk later," Kyra said, before rising and walking back through the path she had taken to Laidu. She had to fight the urge to run down the flagstones, to run into Laidu's warm embrace.
He was on the other end of the railing, and through the slots between the weathered pillars she saw his legs, the platelike scales that covered the tops of his thighs starting to be hidden by the cotton underbreeches. He looked up. "Oh, hello Kyra," he said. His face, for but a second, had a faint smile. It brought a small pang of guilt to her heart. "Is something wrong?" She was silent. "Are you alright?"
She didn't say anything. All Kyra did was wrap Laidu in a tight, unrelenting embrace. She wanted to drink in everything, remember everything. She wanted to remember the smell of him, of the rain, the chill of the mountain air, the feel of his scales, the shifting muscles underneath. She squeezed him, wrapping her arms around his trunk. "I'm glad you're back," she said, cheek against his chest. She could feel his torso expand as he breathed, hear the breath enter his body. She wanted to stay there.
"Well, it's good to be back," Laidu said, almost hesitantly. "Um... not to sound ungrateful, but do you mind letting go so I can put my pants on?"
Kyra started and pushed off him. "Sorry," she said, cheeks heating up. "I just... well, I wanted to say I'm sorry for avoiding you, giving you the cold shoulder."
Laidu had stuffed one pant leg into his trousers and was trying to get his second leg in when he stopped. "Hold on. You were doing that?" He breathed a sigh of relief. "Good. I thought I was just being paranoid. What did I do?" he asked.
"Oh, nothing." The look in his amber eyes made her uncomfortable. "It wasn't you. It wasn't anything you did." He arched an eyebrow as he tied the drawstring of his trousers shut. "I...you're going to think this is silly." Her heart beat faster. She could tell him now. But she was afraid. What would he think? She couldn't tell him about her feelings. But she could leave that part out.
"Well, in Caeld," she said, "especially in the circles I am in..." She couldn't let him know about who she was, who her father was. She wanted him as friend, not a sycophant or a parasitic "friend" who was there just to leech off of her wealth. "...your choice in friends is kind of important. Socially, I mean. Associate with this man, talk with that woman, and you'll have a dozen rumors before lunchtime."
"Ah." Laidu nodded as he stuffed one arm in his jacket, making the muscles in his chest ripple and shift in a very distracting manner. She continued onward.
"It's stupid. I was worried that if I remained friends with you, I'd lose friends back home. But I want to be your friend. I like you." He smiled faintly at that, but there was something in his eyes that made him feel like it wasn't genuine. "And I started realizing that if my friends would be willing to disown me if I remained friendly with you, then they're hardly worth my time."
"Look," Laidu said, "if you want me to distance myself from you, I can. You don't have to gt rid of your old life to-"
"That's just it. I've been trying to keep a hold of my old life," Kyra said. "I've been trying to tell myself that after this little adventure, everything is going to settle down and I'll go back to living as I used to. I kept holding on to my old life, my old expectations without realizing that they had died. They had died a long time ago, it seems. When I got abducted, my old life ended. I can't go back and be the same. And I don't want to."
She turned and stared Laidu in the eye. "When I get home, I want to change some things. If I can't change these things, I want you to take me away."
Laidu's eyes widened. "Kyra...you're asking me to abduct you?"
"If worst comes to worst." Kyra frowned. "And it's not really that. Escort me, sure. I'll write a note. Say I coerced you into it. But make no mistake; I've tasted freedom. I am not going to let myself be caged in for my own safety. If I am in danger, so be it. The chance to fall is the price to fly."
Laidu was silent for a long time. "Sure. I mean, I don't feel entirely comfortable, but I'll do it. But before I do that, I'm going to do everything in my power to avoid it. I'll try to make it so you'll not need to." He smiled at her, a warm, genuine smile. And then sniffed. "I smell food."
***
The food was a stew Skaria had managed to piece together, made up of salted meats and some rather limp and stale vegetables. Laidu hadn't cared; he polished off six bowls of the stuff.
It still thundered outside, and the rain kept pouring down, coaxing old aqueducts and channels to life again. The six of them were safe under a roof, but the cold could still get to them.
They had started a fire in an old bronze brazier, and it had gone from a few merrily burning logs to a stew of coals, heating the stew of meat above it. Laidu stared into the fire, breathing regularly, eyelids heavy.
"What are you thinking about?" Kyra asked him.
"Nothing of importance." He was silent; not a pensive silence, but one born out of exhaustion. "I was just contemplating what might happen once I reach Saefel Caeld. Last time I was there, I was jailed."
"Hah!" Skaria laughed. "You? Get jailed? How? You're a bleedin' saint compared to me, and I've never been in the dungeons!"
"Skaria, don't you remember a few years ago? That trial everyone was talking about?" Karik'ar asked.
"Wait, what trial?" Thaen asked.
"Oh, wait," Skaria said. "That was you?" She turned towards Laidu. "You were the Ranger in the trial, right? All we heard was he was some sort of lizard Changed. Not a bloody dragon!"
"That was me," Laidu said.
"What happened?" Thaen asked.
"A farce," Indra said. "False charges, a bribed judge and incompetent lawyers, and they still failed to convict Laidu of any of the hundred crimes he had committed."
Kyra remembered that. Her father had said it as an outrage. Not the unjust false charges; he had acknowledged those were unfair. But in his mind, anyone that let a "degenerate" walk free was enabling more inevitable crimes. It was in their nature, he would say.
"Five thousand, four hundred and seventy two counts of murder, seven hundred and fifty six counts of rape, three hundred and twelve charges of public indecency and corruption of the peace, twenty four counts of public moral corruption, and one count of damage to public property," Laidu said. "The last one was the only one that stuck."
"Why?" Thaen asked.
"He rescued a prostitute from a politician's henchmen after she threatened to expose what he liked to do to the public," Indra said. "A rather hypocritical action. Said politician was part of a Liberationist spin-off party. You know, political control, but they had racial politics too. That's less of a Liberationist core tenet than this party.
"Anyway, said politician bribes, or asked, several of the law clerks to charge Laidu with a few crimes to shut him up. Teach him and others like him their place. They went overboard, didn't communicate with each other, and wrote down that Laidu had murdered five percent of the city's population, approximately, and raped a good portion of the rest."
"Laidu wouldn't do that!" Thaen snapped. "That's just ridiculous."
"I love how you're defending my innocence," Laidu said, "but you've lived with me. You've shared a room with me." He shrugged. "There was a philosopher who theorized, long ago, that the reason some people became Changed and not others was because some people were degenerates. Morally diseased people more akin to animals than man. He, unfortunately, remained popular with some of the elites. So their immediate perception of me was colored by this."
"Was he like that idiot who invented the Codes?" Kyra asked.
"No, different philosopher." Indra rolled her eyes. "Both are considered one of the Great Philosophers, but both are just...terrible. Not just in the moral sense, but in the logical sense."
"Oh." Thaen sat down. "So, what happened at the trial?"
"A fiasco," Indra said. "You had prostitutes brought before the court, testifying that they never slept with Laidu, let alone that he violated them in any way. You had those accusing him of public indecency and moral corruption tripping over their own stories. The worst was when a good four thousand supposed murder victims had to come into court to testify that, as a matter of fact, they were still alive."
Thaen chuckled. "Oh?"
"It was revealed later that someone bribed the judge to render Laidu guilty, but the judge couldn't. The evidence was overwhelmingly in his favor. He had to pay a fine for a street lamp he got thrown into, but that was it."
"That was the destruction of public property?"
"Yep," Laidu said. "Third time I ever went to prison."
"What was the first time?" Karik'ar asked.
"I was sixteen," Laidu said. "I left Ten-Zuan to find myself. Wandered into the Qin empire. Turns out, when you live on a mountain, and when half your food consists of vegetables, and the other half is lean meat, you don't see many fat people. Especially if you have to walk everywhere." He chuckled. "I walked into the governor's sitting room, and for the first time, I saw obesity."
Kyra arched an eyebrow. "Was he chubby?"
"Chubby?" Laidu laughed. "He was mostly gut. Was closer to a slug with shrunken legs and arms. I, being the naive sixteen year old, walked up to him and poked him in the stomach, asking 'What is that?' Needless to say, it didn't go well."
Karik'ar laughed. "He's an idiot. To get that out of shape, that is done from negligence." He flexed his arm. "Now, we Kai'Draen can't get like that. Our body turns fat into muscle, somehow. It means we're sore even if we aren't doing anything, but I'd say it's worth avoiding that." He paused. "What about the second time, Laidu?"
He was quiet. "That is something I'd rather not talk about." There was no malice in his words, no anger, but there was a tone to them, a tone that said, without speaking a word, that the topic would not be brought up again.
It became awkwardly quiet around the fire.
"Thaen, take first watch. I'll take second, and Karik'ar will take third." Skaria rose. "Laidu, you and Indra sleep. I don't want to risk you dozing, especially since you tired yourself out getting here."
"And Kyra?" Laidu asked.
"She fell asleep on watch," Skaria said. "I don't trust her to keep me safe."
"Hey!" Kyra said, a bit indignant. "It was only twice!"
"You've only kept watch twice!" Skaria snapped back. "Get some rest. I want to get to town tomorrow. We leave as soon as the rain lets up."
Thaen stretched his arms. "Hey, after first watch," he said to Laidu, "you mind if I share your bedroll for the night? I don't feel like freezing to death."
"Sure, as long as you're not wet," Laidu said. He settled down in his larger-than-normal bedroll. He had yanked his coat off and had stuffed the fabric together to form a makeshift pillow.
Kyra laid down in a sleeping roll next to his, but something stirred in her mind. He looked uncomfortable with that pillow. His horns scraped against the stone floor, propping his head up at an odd angle. An idea struck her, a curious idea that made her feel nervous, but warm. "Hey, you mind if I stay with you?" she asked Laidu. "In your bedroll? I'd rather not freeze in this. And you probably could use my sleeping roll for a pillow. That doesn't look too comfortable."
Laidu smiled. "Sure." He opened up the flap of his bedroll. He paused. "It seems I'm a bit...too casual with a girl sleeping with me."
Kyra chuckled. "Please," she said. "I'm a little harder to get than that." She slid out of her own bedroll and balled it up. "Here you go." She tossed Laidu the fabric, which he tucked under his head. Then, with bare feet burning from the cold, she stepped over to Laidu and settled down next to him.
She laid her head down on his chest, right under his chin. "Is something wrong?" Laidu asked after a moment, after Kyra was silent for a while.
"No, not really." She sighed and moved closer towards him, trying to get as much heat as she could. Or maybe it was that she wanted to be closer to Laidu, to feel him and lay next to him. "It's just that I've been feeling lonely for a while, but not so much anymore." She saw Indra give her a look. The scholar didn't stare or disapprove, she just arched an eyebrow.
"Oh. And I make you feel better?" Laidu asked.
"In a way." She sighed again. How could she explain it without sounding like she was head-over-heels for him? Oh, wait, she was. She had to hide it. "You're a nice friend, and just being close to a good friend keeps the loneliness at bay." She snuggled up against him. "Besides, you're nice and warm. And a lot more comfortable than the hard stone."
"Good. At least I have one use." She could feel the words vibrate inside his chest, hear his breath. He put an arm around her, warming her. She felt the scales of his chest, softer than she would have expected, supple and smooth, warm against her cheek. "Good night."
"Good night, Laidu." And because she was cuddled up next to the man she loved, it would be a good night. A very good night indeed.