A Shell of Fetus (Working title)

2- Trust

Nizar twisted his lips after squeezing a berry in his mouth.

'Is this what you call a fruit?' he snapped, tossing the platter of fruits as its grip struck a servant in the groin.

'Don't dare, any of you!' he bellowed at the other servants, who at first thought to take a step, but then froze at their place like a boulder.

'The foremost reason why I don't drink with you, lord,' Shomrar gestured without expression, though the winds of dawn was fumbling his brassy hair onto his pale face.

Lord oughta rot this dueller, Nizar cursed under his breath. Not only did Shomrar deprived him of humour, but also packed his senses fuming with envy at his equanimity. The man seemed attired in his amalgamated robe of hide and silver every darn time Nizar could remember. For once, Nizar had even tried to sneak into his bedroom to see if the cold guardian wore the same thing even in his sleep. Though, I don't recall seeing him bathing ever.

Nizar shook his head, more to brush that absurd image than anything. 'You don't drink with me because you can't drink with me.' His eyes then gazed the empty cup fondling in Shomrar's fingers. 'Least not in public,' he murmured as he poured some wine.

'Well, pisses to your public. Loads of them,' Shomrar snorted and downed the wine in a single gulp. He placed the cup down on the round table and rose up from the chair. His robe let out muffled jingles as he began walking around the angled balcony. The humid air of night turned itself into the cooler waft of early morning. That is until the night comes back to flood their blankets back with the sweat. Spending his youth in Haei had turned Nizar's life into a labyrinth when it came to enduring the climate of his own home. For now, the fiery globe raised himself from the murky sands before it would dive into the bottom of the sky. To calm the heat and the scorch. Imagine that.

Regardless, it was a vibrant time. If only this damned man won't shut up...

'You want me to smooch your knob and tuck you in bed?' Nizar asked the fallen young servant wheezing with pain, who rose his head in befuddlement. 'Sir?'

'Out at once!' he roared, and then gave a shrugged chuckle. All the servants bowed and left. The fallen man limped his way to the exit.

'Tell me one thing, you must,' Nizar jumped and asked his friend and guardian, who stood at the edge of the balcony facing the seeping sun with his eyes closed. 'Don't I deserve some celebration for this ingenious victory?'

'Your father has died, should you have forgotten between all the feasts and breasts,' Shomrar pushed himself away from Nizar, his mouth turning with contempt. 'Besides, that victory was hardly well accomplished.'

'What's the matter with you, Shom?' Nizar pulled Shomrar away by the arm. His eyes were swollen with drunken rage. 'You sound like I stabbed my father in his sleep.'

'Oh, you have not,' Shomrar said, throwing away Nizar's hand without a struggle. 'But his soul, Nizar, you have absolutely torn it apart.'

'Bah! You darn trench-lickers!' Nizar retorted as he swirled around to find himself the exit. 'You folks are better off buried deep in those pretty graves with your gods.'

'Perhaps,' Shomrar nodded with a sigh. 'But what godly attributes you find yourself enlightened with after banishing your sister?'

Nizar grunted, 'She's no sister of mine.'

'Even if she wasn't, she has been with your father way before than you or your mother. Daughter or not, but Emperor Kulraz always thought of Maya as a memento, as a souvenir of victory!'

Souvenir... Nizar muttered, pushing his thoughts against the surging ire that the word brought him. That word was engraved in his mind in the most agonising way possible.

'She had been with your father to places since she was an infant, places that you couldn't even get a glance of.' Shomrar continued, trouble building in his voice. 'To voyages, conquests and even in his gatherings with other domains of Troika. Never had he lost a war whenever she went with him. Ket not only grew, but flourished like saplings in the greenest of ponds.'

He grabbed Nizar's face with his palms and pushed it to his side. 'Maybe we can find her, get her back-

'Fear of death is what I can see in your eyes!' Nizar roared and kicked at the table. He drank the remainder of drink and also threw the cup on the ground. 'Besides, she could have been strangled in her sleep at a finger's click but I had let her go without a scratch, didn't I!'

Few distant yelps came from downstairs, yet no one dared to sneak up on them. 'He was my father, darn it! Yet he treated me no better than rulers tend to treat their own blood mongrels!'

Shomrar shook his head. 'You know better yourself, Nizar.'

'His bill of inclination, he had it written down and handed to me a week ago. And that clearly stated he wanted that scarred bitch to rule Ket, not his own son!'

'And yet he handed it to you,' Shomrar interrupted. Cool gusts of wind made his hair dance behind his head in a faint melody. 'Because he trusted you.'

'Trust!' Nizar uttered as he floored down on his chair, his teeth clenching on his quivering lips. There was a tone of melancholy in his drunken breath that he could not shake off without a cough. He squeezed his eyes with his shivering fingers. 'That trust gave my mother what she didn't deserved. Made me into a man I wasn't meant to.'

Shomrar clenched his eyelids, hoping the winds would take him somewhere else. To a new place, perhaps, or a new life.

He sighed and turned towards the hollow doorway. 'Get a rest if you can,' he whispered in Nizar's ears, and then disappeared away from an emerging morning. Nizar sat still, letting his splutters to chip in on the morning's silence.