The Call of Nys #5 (Waverly Stump and The 7 Realms)

15 - W A V E R L Y

The stranger disappeared from sight and the moment he was gone, her memory of him returned, as well as everything else.

She mumbled his name, reaching out as if he stood there and she could touch him. In her mind, she thought the version of Judson she just saw was one much older, though it all seemed to her like an indistinct dream. The image of his face was beginning to blur out of her head.

Intrusion in the form of soft, crunching noises made her veer and found a stranger walking in steps that were far from careful. It sounded like mindful tiptoeing, but the fellow did not appear to be attempting stealth. It was simply the manner with which he walked.

However, that was the least unwonted thing about him. He was a sight that equally made her jaw drop and her chest tighten with fright; tall as an Elf – if not two times taller – broad shouldered and stocky like an Outcast, yet his features did not entail any commonness of both races. His neck was an unnaturally long slope that rested on translucent, alabaster skin. On his head was a flurry of slick hair as dark as onyx. His fingers, which were seven on each hand and disgustingly long, were like bronze. The stranger resembled an admixture of metals and other earthly minerals; some parts of his skin showed scales of agate in various tints of color and shimmering around his belt were other kinds of semiprecious stones that she doubted to have ever beheld or known in her life.

Most captivating of all were his eyes – small yet prominent. They seemed to have captured ghostly shadows inside them so that when she looked she thought she saw a million shapes moving in repeated circles. Upon his forthcoming, his eyes were the first things she took note of. A strange pull came from them and had drawn her to stare in their direction even before he came up to stand before her.

For an abstract period, she gawked at the fremd being. He did likewise, but in a cooler way than she. His blinks came softer as if his eyelids were terrified of shattering upon contact, his lips set in a thin line.

When he heaved a sigh, snow rippled across the whole landscape. Then came his voice, as tactile as a calamitous caress and coaxed ripples in her blood. "Ye wearisome being of flesh and blood, why does thou glaum so?"

Waverly fought to gain access to her lungs. Her voice was lost to fear. And so, she glaumed on. In her mind, she suspected the curious being to be Isadorios himself.

"Soothly, I am he whom ye sought." He confirmed, creaking his neck toward a strange birdlike angle. "It strikes thee as a wonder upon thy mind why I unveil myself. It be so, wearisome being, that unless I show myself to thee, thou wouldst wander this abode unto whensoever earth may draw her final breath and the last of thy essence cease to exist, and would not find me."

She felt inclined to nod in agreement and discovered that her limbs had gone stiff from lack of movement.

His eyes lowered on her and a faint scowl lifted his face. "Beclad thyself not in any comely attire becoming of thee as the fair opposite of men?"

Waverly's eyebrow managed to lift in question before she realized that he spoke of her indecent, tattered dress. Out of embarrassment, she glanced down at herself. Just as she did, the hem of the dress elongated and fell to her feet, like heavy draperies being let down, transforming into a dark brown, sleeved material with the feel of velvet. Inside the dress, she felt shielded from the piercing cold.

"Many thanks." She croaked at last.

Isadorios lifted his chin, allowing her a clearer glimpse into his disquieting eyes. "Thou hast reason, forthwith, to approach thy business which brought thee to me."

"I—"

All of a sudden, his face curved into a frown and something strange happened. From the back of his neck sprung a rainbow-like tail much like the ocellated one of a peafowl. These were shorter, yet just as iridescent and spotted. To anyone else, it could have been a sort of fancy collar, but Waverly saw each prominent ridge protrude right out of his skin. All in all, he became a most complicated, unnatural sight. She dared not think it nonetheless.