Scavengers of the Deadlands

Chapter Two: Abigail Makes a New Fiend

 “So who’s he then?” Connie leaned over her shoulder, staring at the picture Abigail had set carefully on the chest beside her bed. “Is that your boyfriend?”

 Abigail blushed, ears pressing back with embarrassment. “Yes,” she said. “We’re Promised.”

 “He’s cute,” Connie grinned, running one stubby finger down the framed picture. “Promised eh? Have you, you know, done it yet?”

  Her ears burning with embarrassment, Abigail could not answer but merely shook her head. Connie looked faintly disappointed.

 “When’s he coming to visit you then?”

 “For the Midwinter festival,” she said. “If he can. He’s training to be an Architect.”

 “Well, aren’t you the lucky one then? Oh I had my share of admirers back in the rainforest, but here noone looks at me twice. What’s his name?”

 “Nathaniel,” Abigail replied. She studied the picture. Nathaniel and she had known each other all their lives, and been promised since they were little more then kits. His face was as familiar to her as her own, brown eyes glittering from the black mask that surrounded them, his tousled mop of short dark hair, from which peeked tufted white ears. It was a painting of him in his most typical, and casual pose, leaning against a tree branch and running one hand through his hair. She missed him already and one hand strayed automatically to the pendent about her neck. He had given it to her just before she left, a half-heart. He held the other half. Carved into it were his initials, and she traced them. N. C.

 “Shiny,” Connie replied. “I look forward to meeting him. I can’t believe you haven’t shagged him yet.”

 Abigail shrugged. “Have you? With anyone I mean?”

 The question elicited a snigger. “Oh, I should be so lucky. In my clan paying tribute to Elysia in that way is forbidden until you’re of age.”

 “What age?”

 “Seventeen,” she replied. “So I’ve still got two years to go. How ‘bout you Nim? Have you done it yet?”

 Niamh was very quietly curled up on her bed, reading her book again by the light of a fyreflit lantern. The tiny birds fluttered around in the wicker lamp, their glowing feathers shedding a dappled, flickering light. “Yes,” she said, very quietly.

The Colugo could not disguise the flicker of surprise that crossed her face. “Really?” She asked. “What was it like? What was he like?”

“It was okay, I suppose,” Niamh replied with a vague shrug. “It hurt. I don’t really want to talk about him.” And with that she turned over, effectively turning her back into a barrier against the conversation.

“What, wouldn’t you know it?” Connie said. “It’s always the quiet ones.”

There came a banging on the door. “Stop yapping and lights out,” grumbled the Dorm Warden so loudly that she must have woken half the dorm.

“Oh poot,” Connie muttered. “Well, good night girls. Tomorrow we have our first class. Maybe they’ll teach us how to make fireballs.”

“Highly unlikely,” Niamh muttered from the depths of her blankets. “You have to be born with that talent.” She rolled from her bed and took her lantern over to the window, opening a small door so that the two captive birds could dart out. Their glowing forms flickered and darted through the sky like minute shooting stars, until the darkness swallowed them up.

Abigail clambered into the sleeping nest beneath Connie and curled up under the heavy woollen blanket. The mattress was harder then she was used to, but sleep quickly claimed her. It had been a long day.