Sunset of the Wandering Souls

Chapter 14

Pili and I stared at the letter, at the unusual writing neither of us could read, but felt familiar to me. I didn't want to wake Innin, he would need the rest if he were to ever get over his cold. He looked peaceful curled up on his side asleep, in a place where I wasn't giving him a deal of trouble. I turned my attention back to the letter, not wanting to dwell on something he'd already dispelled for me. I traced the symbols with an unbloodied, bandaged fingertip hoping it would spark something in my memory. Hoping I'd be able to read the alphabet I was sure I had learned some time in the past. When boring holes into the paper didn't reveal anything new to me, I folded the letter back up, placing it by the bed Innin was sleeping in.

There wasn't much we could do with Innin asleep and snow still falling outside. So we stayed in, not wanting to irritate our injuries further by traversing the storm, keeping warm at the hearth instead. I sat with my head resting on my knees, trying my best not to pick at my fingers through the bandages. Pili talked about whatever popped into his head. Whether it was stories about his family, or about the places he wanted to go before the year was up. I liked listening to him speak, it kept my mind from racing with all the anxieties I had already spilled to him. He asked me anyway if I was still alright, and if I were worried about Innin.

I looked at my hands, blood still slowly seeping into the bandages. It wasn't that I was worried about Innin, I was sure he'd be fine, or more so than he was now after sleeping, but there was something still eating at me. I dwelled on it as I tried to find what was gnawing in the back of my mind. I pressed my hands to my temples as pain bloomed through my head. I closed my eyes against the light of the fire, keeping my focus on whatever it was I had lost. I was able to pull up a lost memory once before, I was confident I could do it once more. "Don't force it, Ezollen," Pili said softly, placing a hand on my knee. In what felt a single moment, the haziness of that memory was lost to me.

I placed my forehead on my knees, on Pili's hand for just a simple second before he pulled it away. Him pulling it away hurt, but that all dissolved when he placed it on top of my head. He stroked my hair to comfort me, it only made me feel a sad bout of hope. What if he came to the conclusion he didn't see me as anything but a friend? What if he came to realize it wasn't normal for a man to see another man as anything but a friend? Innin all but told me it wasn't right to see other men like that. "Pili," I said into my knees. He stopped moving his hand long enough to hear what I had to say. "Do you think I'll ever get my memories back?" It wasn't at all what I had wanted to say, but it was the one thing that kept me from going back to picking at my fingers, from my tail scraping itself against the floor.

"They'll come back," he said, his hand playing with strands of my hair. "Would it matter if they didn't, though?" I picked my head up to look at him, to ask him what he meant. He answered immediately, almost frighteningly so. "Sometimes...knowing your past doesn't do any good, Ezollen."

"How am I to run a country without my memories?" I asked, glancing at the flames. "I don't even remember how to address my mother." I stared at the fire, at how it licked the air seemingly uncontrolled, yet tame. I didn't hear Pili's response, pain filling my head once more. I'd seen a blaze like this, something that shouldn't have had the amount of discipline it exhibited. It was purposeful, its territory predetermined. An ember flicked out in my direction, and I startled back, remembering the feeling of an all-consuming flame. My hands hit the wall, bits of pain from pressing the wounds against the flat surface, my tail falling between my legs.

It was my fault the fire started, it was my fault the fire tried to swallow Innin. If I had stayed in the palace like everyone told me to, if I hadn't made it my life's mission to defy him and my mother, maybe everything would have turned out alright. Innin wouldn't have run into the burning storehouse to save me, the heir, the Crown Prince who hadn't spoken a word since...I couldn't quite remember what left me speechless for so long. I wasn't able to tell him who had lured me to the storehouse, who had started the fire, I couldn't even warn him that there was gunpowder in the building. I clung to him as he shielded me with body and wings from the explosion, and as he found the strength to continue on, I swore he muttered like a mantra that he'd kill whoever it was who had set the fire.

I scuttled away when Pili reached an arm out to me, falling on the ground, only to see the flecks of blood from my palms on the wall and cause another memory to surface. I grasped at my tail, wishing that memory had stayed gone. It seemed to coat the entire room, I didn't know how three wounds could cause so much blood to trickle out. I saw it. I saw it all through the crack in the door, holding Argak close to me to keep from making a sound. I saw the woman who did it, I closed my eyes against the flood of red, telling myself it wasn't real, it was all a bad dream. I couldn't force myself out of the closet, scared to see the scene laid out before me. I had only wanted to play a game with Innin, I didn't wish to see a murder. But I found the courage to crawl out of the closet, to kneel at my father's side to try and wake him. He wouldn't be able to breathe with his face in the puddle; he looked so odd with his horns sawed down to the base. Death was not something my tiny mind had been able to comprehend.

Innin had found me, pants and shirt sleeves soaked in with my father's blood. He washed the blood from me, changed my clothes, and told no one to enter that room until he said so. I had come to realize something terrible was wrong, more and more when he allowed me to eat as many sweets as I wanted in the middle of the day. He asked me, head tilted low, and hands clasped behind his neck, if I had seen what happened, if I had seen who'd done it. Everything I had wanted to say to him, that it was a woman with long ears and a knife, stuck in my throat watching it all over again in my memory.

"...len? Ezollen?" Pili's face came into focus, his hands on my shoulders, moving to cup my cheeks. "Ezollen, what...what happened? Are you alright? Should I go wake Innin?"

"I'm...I'm alright," I said, taking a breath and orientating myself back in the present. "I'm a little...shaken, otherwise." I released the grip on my tail as he lowered a hand to mine.

"You look terrified, Ezollen," he brushed the hair sticking to my forehead away, "are you sure you're fine?" I nodded, knowing if I tried to lie my voice would break. It didn't feel fair to unpack my being witness to a murder, to an attempt on my life, on him. I could handle it myself, I only didn't expect those memories to come back so fast, so forceful. I only needed time to calm myself, to push them deep down in my psyche until they really were a bad dream. Until there was no point in remembering them ever again.