The TwiceBorn

Kissing The Damned

"One of the greatest mistakes we make is to idolize the artist rather than the art; the messenger rather than the message."--― Charles F. Glassman

"I have returned, Alora The Twiceborn."

Alora wasn't sure if the sound of the goblin's voice was real or simply a part of her on-going dreamscape. She'd been struggling to use the weight of the waterskins as a haphazard account of the time that had passed, but they had seemed to empty almost immediately.

How long had she been without water?

She didn't know. She felt like she was being burned alive and the times when she was vaguely aware of the heat of her skin, she'd thought about brushfires and Lochedge and mounds of smoldering ashes, none of it connected yet all intertwined and it made her head ache miserably until she would drift off into an uneasy doze.

But this felt...real. She could smell the familiar odor of Blixen's sticky fur and sense that there was something else there with him. Something with a boneyard smell, something that reeked of earth and burning, of maniacal laughter and blindness and a sense of familiarity wrapped itself around her like an old quilt spun on the loom of insanity. Blixen had found the noncholo. But nothing was for free.

What would she have to give in exchange ?

She didn't care. She wanted only to be able to stand and leave and slide down the dark shaft of all her fevered dreams, and what she found that was not yet broken...tear it apart with her bare hands if she had to. Find all of it and turn it into nothing but ashes in the wind.

Show them your worth, child

Cold leaded fingers moved over her chest and loosened the ties of her jerkin.

"You must be bled. To remove the infection."

It was a voice not used to speaking; it cracked and stumbled over the words as though they were foreign to its tongue and Alora opened her eyes to see the noncholo Blixen had gone to seek out. Dressed in rags and the stink of death, it moved slow yet deliberate as its bloodless fingers loosened her clothing and exposed the mark of the Unfaded to the cool evening breeze.

He was the mender, the one who kept company with those that had been beaten and burned by the righteous, the one that kept the belief alive that Brede could not stand before such evil. He revived, and mended, and fixed then sat back in some dark corner to watch how well his handiwork held up against the light.

She watched as it brought one dirt-clotted, ragged, fingernail to his lips and sucked on it, the rotted meat of its tongue swirling about its edges. A hateful grin thinned its lips before the nail was removed from its mouth and dropped to her skin. A sense of cold, then fire as her mark was cut open and she smelled the stink of her own blood. It was alive with infection, the smell of it thick and soured.

The heavy heat of it started to run down her side, tickling her ribs, then she felt the scrape of the noncholo's tongue as it moved over her skin. She felt hot and delirious yet dangerously grounded, the only thing alive in a never-ending nightmare. The feel of its scabrous tongue on her skin was maddening and the swift thought of, "its eating the infection" caused her to try and kick against the stolid juxun grass and push herself away. One cold hand slid casually around her neck and tightened. The noncholo was strong, Alora sensed that it was using the slightest of pressure against her yet she was locked against the ground. A hair's breadth more and she would not be able to breathe.