Sheeva stepped into the courtyard and trod lightly on the stone pathway, halting at the base of Altea’s feet. She stared at the weathered things, immersed in thought with hands clasped behind her back. Streams of broken sunlight showered the statue with grace, and despite all the statue’s hardships, Altea’s resilience only added to the magnificence of Sheeva’s favorite place to sit and ponder if she didn’t mind being interrupted by passersby.

  Sheeva was grateful the basin remained intact, and as she ran a hand over the cool stone, the ridges tingled up her arm and into her face, softened by repose. Only a curl of the corner of her mouth showed her inner thoughts, silently thanking the statue for changing the tides of battle and giving them the positive outcome they had.

  Much more damage could have sullied their temple if not for the magical, mystical thing. The fireball, if it had not landed and melted the sacred structure, could have burned the forest to a crisp and pushed away game, or spread to the farmlands on the other side of the mountain, mad-dashing to their small pastures and crops to destroy the strenuous efforts put into farming and nullified the year’s harvest.

  Perhaps, the blizzard would have formed a mudslide that eroded the mountain base and sent the ancient, decorated pillars, watchful ramparts, and their pridefully crafted parapets crashing into the river below. Without support, the temple could have collapsed in on itself and crushed everyone hiding for safety inside had they not already been cowering in the tunnels to the emergency chambers tucked deeper in the mountain.

  The tornado that Zakaraia had summoned could have easily ripped the temple off of its foundation and launched it in any random direction. A shiver crawled down her back as she wondered whether or not the tornado could have torn through to the inner chambers, but Sheeva shrugged it off as she reminded herself it had not and that the people were safe and unharmed, if not a little wary and shaken.

  Many of them could not look her in the face upon passing in the hallways or upon her and Tazaro’s entry into the dining halls. The only people to acknowledge them were Ezrah, his wife Nora, and their two teenaged daughters, Kallie and Olna. All four of them greeted them with open arms and crushing bearog hugs that made Sheeva and Tazaro wince from the pressure forced on their recovering shoulders. The family assured them they would vouch for them as well as they could. Sheeva wholly believed, grateful for their courage to face and assuage the likely angry, confused, and frightened mob.

  Sheeva lifted her eyes to meet Altea’s, blinking as she forgot the poor woman only had half a face now. She studied its burned state and chuckled softly. Barely visible beneath the shade of scorched stone rested the Fu-Manchu mustache Kalas and Ven gave her a couple of months ago.

  “Thank you, Lady Altea. I hope that the two of you are reunited. Your efforts will not be in vain. Help…” She hesitated briefly, feeling silly with herself for talking to a statue. “Please help Algis to protect this place while Tazaro and I are away, and we will give everything we have to prevent Zakaraia from ever threatening our home again.” She finished, feeling motivated as her hairs stood on end with her self-inspired call-to-action.

  Sheeva wheeled about sharply with an embarrassed, blurted “Oh!” of surprise as an "Ahem" sounded out behind her, catching herself on the basin and clutching a hand to her chest as her heart nearly leaped out of her throat. Laughing at herself and her nerves, she righted herself, catching a glimpse of her reddened face as she crossed her arms and cleared her throat.

  “Good to see you, too, Bartholomew.” She greeted with a quickly composed smile.

  The ten-foot-tall, broad-shouldered, blue-scaled ta’hal offered no amused cackle or comment towards her jump-scare and instead stepped into the light of the courtyard with his head and shoulders drooped in shame. His tail dragged behind him, scales clinking and tail-blade singing with a hum as he shuffled his clawed feet along the stepping stones and grass to stop a couple of feet in front of her.

  Sheeva fought a frown at him; it wasn’t like him to sulk, recalling how he preferred to “wallow in self-pity alone.” Perhaps he’d only said it to withhold valuable information as he tended to do.

  “Tazaro said you wanted to talk to me.” He mumbled, teal irises shying away from red by tucking away in the corners of narrowed eyelids. The plus-sign pupils, sharpened at their ends rather than beveled like hers, shrunk in response to the sun’s gentle rays as they brightened his face, revealing the scowl he held.

  “Yes. I wanted to offer my thanks.” She stated softly.

  His eyes narrowed even more, and he crossed his arms, shielding his chest with scaled arms that loosely showcased the muscles beneath them. His lips formed an even more pronounced pout as he turned his head, then snarled, lips curling to reveal yellowed fangs. Even his pointed ears flattened back against his head, and she watched his leathery wings shift and tuck closer to his back.

  “Thanks for what? That bastard got away!” He growled fiercely.

  Sheeva almost huffed, then held it back and let out a calming sigh, pitying the prideful being. Still, she could relate, considering the dozens of times she’d come close to catching Llyud only to have him slip through her fingers from trickery, exhaustion, or some other ridiculous scenario.

  “It has nothing to do with Zakaraia. I have a lot to thank you for, Bartholomew. You got me out of that orphanage and sent me here. You risked your…‘life’ for me in honor of your friend. In honor of my...father. I...I said it before, and at the time, I didn’t know who to say it to, but– She paused, feeling a swell of warmth, pride, and appreciation. “Thank you for helping to give me a chance to live the life I have now. I truly believe I wouldn’t be here now if it weren’t for you…my friend.”

  Through blurry vision threatened by tears, she watched his eyes widen with shock as he jerked his head back to look at her. His mouth dropped, closing and opening as he struggled to find words. The clawed hands fell to his sides as his arms relaxed, further showing his stunned state by the dip of his wings and the fall of his tail to the ground. The rough clink of the blade on stone rose into the air.

  She had to admit, she never imagined ta’hal tears having color to them, but as pools of topaz formed in the corners of his eyes and threatened to slide down scaly, fur-lined cheeks, Sheeva found a serene beauty in the aspect.

  “Sheeva, what? I–if this is a joke, it’s cruel, even for you!” He grunted, desperately attempting to deflect something.

  Sheeva shook her head slowly and hoped she was taller, wanting to grasp his cheeks and force him to look her in the eye so she could instill the truthfulness of her convictions. She settled for a hand on his arms instead.

  “It’s no joke. I, I don’t understand what you and Zakaraia have against each other. All I know is that it has something to do with the betrayal of my father leading to his death. And...while I may never meet him, I would like to think he appreciates you taking the torch in protecting me since he cannot.” She mused, offering him a kind smile. “I think he would say thank you to you, too. Don’t you?”

  The statement brought the outwardly callous and sardonic being to his knees, hunched over to weep into clawed hands. Sheeva felt he was at a stature she could decently console him in. She stepped forward to encase him in an awkward hug.

  His skin was cold beneath her warm hands. The five, layered scales on his shoulders reminded her of pauldrons on armor, and as she ran her hand with the grain of them, they felt smooth, much like a reptile’s or a beetle’s protective casing. Her left hand stroked his hair, silky and thick like hers, while her right moved down along his shoulder to hold him to her, finding the fur that peeked between the spaces of upright scales to be soft like a kitten’s.

  She looked down at the top of his head as she felt him shift as though to return the gesture, then hesitate, dropping his arms again.

  “You can hug me back, you know.” She assured.

  The scales beneath her hand lay flat to interlace themselves in a protective sheath. She likened the physical reaction similar to goosebumps on them in response to a surge of adrenaline.

  “I told you; I don’t have that tender touch you Sferrans do. I could crush you.” He growled. She felt the ripple of it in the throat and chest pressed against her stomach.

  Sheeva hummed in disagreement.

  “Hm. I have faith you won’t.” She argued, scratching the top of his head to encourage him.

  He stilled for a few seconds but slowly raised his hands. As the sharp, deadly points of his claws prodded into her back, Sheeva still felt the flare of nerves. When the claws flattened with the press of his scaly palms to squeeze her ever-so-gently, as though she were a newborn baby, she let out her tense breath. His shoulders relaxed even more, and his wings dipped lower to the ground as he let out a gravelly sigh.

  “I...had forgotten how a hug feels,” Bartholomew admitted. Sheeva, feeling remorseful on his behalf, held him tighter.

  “That’s a damn shame, Bartholomew.”

  His lips curled, and she felt the rigidity of his fangs as the curling grin revealed them. She hummed a satisfied sigh, confident that her thanks had been well received, then smiled as a curiosity arose within. Holding back a snicker, she scratched the ta’hal behind his long, pointy ear, watching his tail for movement.

  Sure enough, the thing began to swish back and forth, skimming the stepping stones and grass with the bladed tail. An instant, loud, vibrating purr rumbled his chest, and she stopped as he hunkered down, flattening his ears back and pressing his forehead against her abdomen to hide what she hoped was a bashful grin.

  “I’m not a damn ketze!” He growled, then purred again as she moved both hands to scratch behind his ears, causing the purr to resume and tail to swish even more rapidly.

  “You certainly purr like one,” She teased with a snicker. “I do believe you’re enjoying this.” She crooned before giving him a break from her assault and returning her hands to rest on his shoulders.

  The water rippled into the uncracked basin from the marble pitcher Altea held and broke their silence as Sheeva gathered her thoughts, staring at the dark-brown hair on the top of his head.

  “Bartholomew?” She called to him. He raised his head and wiped at the topaz streams lining his blue cheeks, minty-blue eyes now calm and pacified. She took a moment to appreciate finally being close enough to really take in a ta’hal’s stature, though a voice in the back of her head reminded her that not all ta’hal looked like winged, gargoylish ketze.

  “Well? Out with it. One would think you’re summing the courage to ask me to marry you.” He growled, though much less arrogantly as usual. The heavy undertone of playfulness and gratitude made Sheeva smile and chuckle. Her smile faded, and she sighed.

  “Would you tell me what happened between you, Zakaraia, and my father?” She asked. Her voice was small, and she doubted whether it had carried to his ears before she watched them flick forward. He bowed his head, took a deep breath, and nodded slowly.

  “Yes, I suppose I owe you an explanation now.” He sat back on his haunches and dropped his hands to his knees, took another deep breath, and stood into his towering form. Sheeva watched him walk toward the blue wisteria tree and crouch to crawl underneath. He moved beneath the swaying, flowering branches on all fours, sighing as he plopped down and seemed to snuggle into a comfortable spot against the trunk.

  As she neared to sit by his side, she watched him pluck a fallen flower from the ground and examine it, almost as if in a new, wondrous, curious light, eyes lifting slightly in serenity.

  “Suppose I shall start from the beginning. When I was alive, my name was Arseniy Lorovsky. My parents must have had great expectations for me. Arseniy was Tarrakkian for ‘virile’ or ‘strong’. Might still be, I’m not sure, but, uh,” He gave a scoff and a mildly derisive chuckle at himself. “I grew up to disappoint; I was an arrogant, lonely bastard who ran with the wrong crew for many, many years. Called ourselves Vorony. Ravens. They were a violent bunch, always getting into fights with other people, and...After the death of too many of our own, I wanted out. I stole away, bought a boat ticket to Vivroa, and started over in the emerald mines in the bitter colds of the tundra.”

  “Eeked out a day-to-day living and met a beautiful woman with whom I’d eventually woo and call my wife.” He tipped his head and plucked at the petals of the flower. “Gods, I, I can barely recall her face, now, but I know she was wonderful. One of those people with a heart that could forgive anything, even my violent past." He paused, and looked around, the pull of a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

  "I like to think she’d like this place.” He murmured sadly, tossing the shredded remains of the petals aside. They floated to the ground, and he picked up another.

  “You...cannot remember the face of the woman you loved?” She asked sadly. He frowned, sighed, then flicked the flower away. It swung in the wind and fell at his feet.

  “After a while as a ta’hal, you...tend to forget things. More when you’re just a disembodied soul floating around in a crystal for eighteen friggin’ years with nothing to stimulate you.” He grumbled. He crossed his arms, rested them on his knees, and then leaned forward to set his chin on his scaly forearms. “So, no. I don’t remember her face. Or my son’s. Or...or even mine. Suppose this ugly mug is as close as I’ll get.” He mumbled, motioning to his face with a circled index claw.

  “It’s not a mug; it’s a face.” Sheeva joked with a comforting smile. Bartholomew snorted and sputtered his lips at her quick wit and shot her a fangy smirk.

  “Ha.” He deadpanned with a complimentary eye-roll.

  “Anyway…” He urged continuation with a wave of dismissal and sat up to lean back against the tree, shuffling a little to get into a comfortable spot. Sheeva wondered if he was unable to retract his wings but held the question for a later time.

  “We had a son together. Raphael Lorovsky. He was a wee boy, but I loved him as much as any new, inexperienced father possibly could.” He stated with a toothy grin and stars in his teal eyes. They fell, and Sheeva’s heart fell with it, dreading what he was going to say next.

  “He fell ill. There was nothing anyone could do, and so I had to watch as he withered away in front of my eyes, little by little, day by day. It was...It’s heartbreaking. I, for as evil as I’m supposed to be, I wouldn’t wish such a thing on any mother or father. Rozaline could handle it. Bear it. Me? I could not. And so, I searched for something. Anything.”

  Sheeva watched his eyes narrow, and his ears lay back again.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  “I found Anansi. He appeared to me as a man dressed to the nines in black. Tall, thin, with a tattoo of an arachnid upon his neck. Carried around a creepy pet spider in an ugly stone cage that I learned later was fed by souls he raked across the coals. He assured me my son would have life, and all I had to do was give him servitude. Seemed simple, and for my son’s life, a fair trade. My son would live, I would serve Anansi, and I would be with my family until my death, feeling that I would live to see old age, would have more children, and grandchildren!” He explained with a grin on his face once more. “So I shook the old sinner’s hand.”

  “My son was as right as rain the next day, as though nothing ever ailed him in the first place. He must have asked me to spin him dizzy a thousand times for play and devoured bowl after bowl of my wife’s leek and potato stew.” He trailed off in recollection of something with a far-off gaze and a smile on his face before muttering to himself: “Mm. I miss that stew.”

  “As you’d expect, the Vorony found me and paraded my wife and son around in front of me before they raped her and slaughtered the both of them. I remember, just barely, seeing my headless body clutching them to its chest when the Vorony beheaded me.”

  Sheeva’s eyes widened, and she reached up a hand to touch her throat.

  “Apparently, indentured servitude to Anansi was not in life but in death. For twenty long years after my death, I wandered the lands collecting souls. He pointed, and I killed without mercy to vent my anger over circumstance. The souls I collected were food for him and his little pet. I considered poisoning them for making me kill people I felt were innocent, but come on! How do you kill something that seems immortal?" He asked. Sheeva held her mouth shut, taking the question as rhetorical.

  "Between harvesting souls for him and getting used to the supernatural changes to my body, I used my time hunting down the Vorony for revenge. In my hard-earned efforts of slaughtering the lot, I discovered Anansi orchestrated the events leading to the Vorony finding and destroying my family. So, I began to scheme against him.”

  Sheeva shuddered as she wondered when she died if she would change into some scaly beast with an ornate stone piece of some kind. If she could choose her precious keepsake, what would it be? To distract herself, she pointed out something Bartholomew failed to mention so far.

  “How did you come to know my father?”

  “Belias?” He asked, brought out of his deep thought. “Belias was also in servitude to Anansi. When he was alive, he wanted to know the secrets of the world, of magic, how to turn water into wine without grapes and iron into gold–all that alchemy hullabaloo.” He sputtered, waving disinterestedly at the topic spurring Belias’s descent into madness. “His Sferran name was Fenrist Baugh. He was a Vivroan, done in by his assistant, and her betrayal of him was also something orchestrated by Anansi.”

  “Hm.” Sheeva hummed, appreciating the tidbit of information. “Did he also have a trinket of stone?” She asked.

  “Yeah. Ironically enough, it was an Erlenmeyer flask. He could whip up a firestorm that puts Zakaraia’s piddly little fireball to shame.”

  Another hand-wave at the mild tangent and Bartholomew continued.

  “We began to plan our defeat of our overbearing overlord, and together with a handful of other poor unfortunate souls, we shattered his precious, disgusting trinket and drove our blades through his heart. With our new freedom, we wandered Sferra freely. Belias and I took it upon ourselves to lighten the ta’hal name, and when that failed, we decided to make our own name. Much more successful–even had a cult following us around for a couple hundred years.” He snickered at something. “Like I said: something of a nonconformist and a bit of a madman.”

  Sheeva half-heartedly smiled in return, busy contemplating the shattering of the stone trinket. She had a feeling it was beyond wanting to destroy the ugly, unsightly thing. Was it tied to the ta’hal’s life force somehow? Did it harbor all the souls they’d collected to aid their eternal life? Did it serve as a form of an hourglass, and would she feel herself melt and shrivel like a raisin in harsh summer sun if she didn’t...feed?

  “Is the stone crown Zakaraia’s trinket?” She asked to distract herself again.

  He gave a haughty “Pfft!”

  “That stupid thing? Yeah.”

  “And, destroying it would render him...mortal?” She asked carefully. Bartholomew took a deep breath in through his nose and held it for a moment.

  “Yes. It is where Zakaraia draws his power, as Anansi did with his cage and Belias would with his flask.”

  Sheeva silenced and played with the webbing of her fingers in reflection of all the information. It sounded an easier feat than it would likely prove to be, and she decided it would take the three of them just to get anywhere close to destroying the stone crown. Not to mention, neither she nor Tazaro could see it, so perhaps it would be up to Bartholomew to land that crushing blow.

  “Tazaro and I will create an opening so that when the time comes, you can shatter that ‘stupid thing.’ We’re searching for his tails after I’m done here. We should be able to use them to stake his heart when the time comes...right?” She asked. Bartholomew lifted his head and looked at her, then nodded gratefully.

  “You guys really are a pair. You catch on quick.” He complimented with a smile.

  She stared at the grass beneath her feet and twirled a blade between her fingers at another question.

  “Who was Zakaraia? What was his Sferran name?”

  “He called himself Valrigard the Blood-Knight.”

  Sheeva sucked in a breath, and her eyes shot wide as she jerked her head to look at him in shock.

  “The tyrant brought down by Evrae the Mighty? From the Song of Evrae?” She asked, amazed. The hero from her favorite childhood storybook was apparently more than just a story–actual truth lie hidden in its pages.

  “You’re surprised?” He asked, narrowing his eyes in thought, then clicked his tongue at himself and nodded. “Oh. Right. All that happened thirteen-hundred years ago.”

  Sheeva blinked, taken aback by the next mind-blowing piece of information.

  “I’m...sorry if this is rude, but when were you...” She trailed off, unsure what to say. Killed? Turned?

  She watched his shoulders rise and fall with an unconcerned shrug.

  “A couple of millennia, now.”

  Sheeva shuddered and began to tremble in the shade of the swaying wisteria branches. She shuffled herself to sit across from him with the sun’s warming rays to her backside, feeling the weight of worry in her gut as she began to wonder what she would do with eternity. Crossing her arms to give herself a small hug, she rested her chin on her forearms. She would fill out many books, she figured, in small hopes of shoving aside the discomfort of not having Tazaro at her side. The more she became aware of the lonesome fact, the more she felt the terse frown on her brow and misery seep into her eyes, and the more she began to curl into herself for comfort.

  “We were talking about how Zakaraia betrayed Belias, weren’t we?” Bartholomew asked, offering Sheeva the reprieve she seemed to need now. Sheeva blinked and nodded.

  “Y-Yes. What did Zakaraia have to do with it all?”

  Bartholomew clicked his tongue and sighed, scratching at the back of his head in thought as though deciding where to start.

  “Anansi favored a select few–those that took pleasure in their kills. Zakaraia, who I just told you, was responsible for slaughtering hundreds of thousands in life. L’ama–short for Lamashtu–would snatch up newborns to feast upon them. Orobas, extremely loyal to Anansi, to a fault; not only did Anansi deceive him as well, but after sealing their deal, Anansi required him to kill his own family to prove his loyalty. Hmph. Stupid bastard.” He grumbled to himself behind a claw over his mouth.

  Sheeva avoided his eyes for a moment, suddenly dwarfed with the vast amount of information. Apparently, there were many more ta’hal out there than they’d anticipated.

  “Belias and I killed Orobas out of pity, mostly. L’ama needed to die; killing and devouring babies is just wrong. Zakaraia had a habit of deceiving us and using others to take the hit while he got away. We finally nailed him in a backwater town on Cruinia...or so we thought. Guess he crafted a fake crown of stone and hid his real one somewhere near–mm, something to be mindful of: make sure it’s the right one.” He interrupted himself, raising a claw to drive his point.

  “I dunno what Belias’s intent was in pursuing an attempt at as close to normal Sferran life as he could get, but I guess after about three millennia, he needed something more personal than to simply watch history trickle by. Maybe it was to lay low, to avoid the attentions we’d snared of the higher-ups, who knows? But, the crazy bastard decided he wanted to try.”

  A guilty glint shone in his eyes briefly before he wiped at his face with a hand.

  “Marina was twenty when Belias first laid eyes on her. She was a sweet thing. Happy. Generous. Belias took on a Sferran form and called himself Mathias Gabriel Keplov. She did not take to him at first, finding his speech strange and his behavior awkward. Hah!” He cackled at something with a smirk. “How awkward he was, too! Without his tail and wings to balance him, he stumbled around like a baby deer!” He continued to laugh for a moment, then settled and cleared his throat to collect his composure.

  “Ah, but, eventually Marina took to him, and even after he told her what he was, she still agreed to marry him. They became pregnant with you. At least he got to hold you after you were born.”

  A soft chuckle rose from his throat as an eerie, calm smile bared his fangs.

  “He was happy, you know. I was happy for him. He had a taste of something he didn’t get the chance to in life, so fiercely driven by greed.” He snorted at something, and Sheeva turned to look, interested. Perhaps it was another funny anecdote.

  “It spurred me to attempt a slice-of-life, and I went to work in the fields as his brother, Raphael Keplov. Suppose I wanted to live the life my son couldn’t, or something like that. Pfft.” He waved his hand sheepishly at the aside topic and settled back to continue.

  “Anyway...Zakaraia was not dead like we thought, and he rallied others to snatch Belias up on his way home from work for an ‘attempt on his life’ and our killings of Anansi and others. They got me, too; I was buying groceries. They branded us as traitors and stuck us in a cell.”

  His ears fell with another show of guilt, and his heavy sigh made him slouch forward.

  “I know I told you he was jailed and executed, but that’s not what happened. I...It’s my fault he’s dead. They got him as we were trying to escape.”

  “That’s not your fault,” Sheeva disagreed.

  “I’m the one who encouraged us to try.”

  “Oh.”

  Sheeva began to pluck at a flower now, digging her thumbnails into the soft, sleek petals to tear them to tiny shreds.

  “That’s...still not your fault. I don’t blame you, nor do I imagine Belias would, so you shouldn’t, either.” Sheeva insisted.

  Bartholomew’s ears perked, and he dropped his head, another bashful, thankful smile on his face. He opened his mouth to say something, decided against it, and shook his head slowly. Donning his typical, class-clown facade, he sputtered his lips and waved her insistence off with a brush of a hand.

  “The assault almost killed me, too. I promised myself I’d find Marina and tell her what happened. I have to admit, I was surprised to find you abandoned to an orphanage of all things, and a sketchy one at that. I hoped that you were only there because she’d perished somehow, but when I searched your memory, I knew. Everything she subjected you to.” His voice returned to a hateful growl, and his shoulders shook with anger. “I, I wanted to find her and just–” He stopped talking through gritted teeth, clenched jaw, and narrowed eyes as he choked the air with his giant claws, scales rising and flattening with the surge of rage.

  Sheeva interrupted him before he could get further carried away.

  “Why did you send me here?”

  He turned to look at her, then back at his hands, and as he forced a few calm breaths, he settled to lean back against the tree.

  “Zakaraia had been keeping tabs on Marina and you to torment Belias, as I said. After my narrow escape, I figured I owed it to Belias to keep you and Marina safe. Good call, too, considering he was lying in wait the whole time…” He trailed off and waved a hand. “As for sending you here? I liked the place. Knew it was safe, too, because of Altea. You’d at least be safe from Zakaraia–or so I thought. He found Llyud, manipulated him, and, well, you know the rest from there.”

  Sheeva tucked her knees closer to her chest, feeling an appreciation she found herself unable to voice. As something occurred to her and made no sense, she narrowed her eyes at the thought.

  “Do you think Zakaraia instructed Llyud to release you from your crystal? If Zakaraia went through the trouble to seal you in a crystal, why would he let you go?” She asked.

  Bartholomew thought for a moment, then shrugged and sighed.

  “I’d been wondering that, myself. It’s not like I was aware of who was carrying me at any given time. Anyway, the only answer I can come up with is for more means of torment. Make me attack the first person I saw out of rage and then be further stricken upon realizing what I’ve done, much less attacking Belias’s daughter?” He suggested, eyebrows raised in question.

  “I’m surprised–though I shouldn’t be–that you didn’t say anything sooner. You read Tazaro’s memories. You read mine.” She asked, perching her head upon her hand.

  “You didn’t have the same last name, and it wasn’t until I read you the second time that I realized who you were.”

  Another silence fell, and Sheeva sat back a little to compile and review all the information. So many gaps filled, and now I have many more questions to ask. She thought.

  It would take them all day to trade questions for answers.

  “Hey, you haven’t asked me about my trinket. How rude, Sheeva!” Bartholomew pointed out. Sheeva raised an eyebrow as he sounded a mite insulted about it. Still, she felt a smile creep to her lips and giggled, almost childishly, and rolled her eyes.

  “Fine. What about your stone trinket, Bartholomew?”

  He snorted.

  “Wow, I thought you’d never ask!”

  He proceeded to cackle in his trademark way, light, airy, and rasp, then settled to a more controlled manner. He reached behind him and into his body to retrieve a stone wheel and hesitantly handed it to her. She took it with both hands, surprised when she had to actively brace herself as he relinquished it to her hold. As gently as possible, she set it upright in her lap.

  Upon closer look, writing was carved into the spokes of it in a language unfamiliar to her.

  “Is this...the wheel of a ship?” She asked although she knew better; the structure lacked handles of a mighty vessel’s steering wheel. Bartholomew’s lip curled in amusement.

  “Do I look like a sailor to you?” He asked, gesturing to himself.

  “One could mistake you for a sea-serpent with wings and limbs.” She snickered.

  “Ugh! Vilg oui! Don’t compare me to those slimy things!” He countered, feigning offense with a scowl. “Ah, but, it’s...modeled after a carnival ride called a Ferris wheel. Rozaline and I scraped together what we could to take Raphael on one when he was eight. This was before Anansi and before Raph became...ill. Such a trifle thing, but it made us all purely happy. A simple moment, but somehow… thankfully, somehow, it stayed with me after I turned, and I modeled my keepsake so that I wouldn’t forget who I was before.”

  “Hm. Strange. No one wants to die, but I don’t believe people search for an understanding of what lies in the realm of eternity, either. It must be miserable and...lonely. Forgetting faces, remembering events lost to history.”

  “It gets...tiring after a while,” Bartholomew admitted. He groaned, leaned forward to crawl out of the shade of the tree, and stood, leaning back and spreading his wings in a stretch.

  “When the time comes, I want you to grant me my eternal repose.” He stated, beginning to walk away.

  “Grant you your eternal repose?” She mumbled, confused by the statement. Her eyes widened, and her skin rippled with anger as the true nature of the request dawned on her. Sheeva turned around so sharply, a bruise on her side twinged with pain, but, blown away with shock, she hardly noticed it.

  “Wha–Bartholomew, I can’t do that!” She barked.

  She watched Bartholomew hesitate in the archway to the academic hallway and clasped his hands behind his back. His pauldrons rose and fell with a short, dramatic shrug.

  “Sure you can. You know how to now, don’t you?”

  “But, I–

  –No, no ‘buts.’ It’s my prerogative, isn’t it?” He asked.

  Sheeva watched as he walked on, refusing to acknowledge her protests. As his tall stature disappeared down the hallway, she dropped her head to the grass beneath her palm, and plucked at a few strands, discouraged to give chase and thoughts too jumbled to bother moving.

  As though the battered statue could offer advice or consolation, Sheeva lifted her gaze to it, then sighed as she shook her head, then picked herself up off the ground and headed toward the tower that, thankfully, still stood. It would be a long conversation with Tazaro, assuming Bartholomew’s request would also extend to him.