The Sky Demons Part One: Journey

Chapter Twenty-one- Truth

Tigre- Truth

I awoke to the privilege of sleeping in a bed: a comfortable bed with pillows and blankets and everything; then I found myself remembering being a little kid, before the truth of my being a hybrid had come out and things like that had just seemed like a part of everyday life. I sighed quietly to myself. Nightshade shuffled on her cushion bed beside me and lifted her head onto the mattress, resting it by my hand.

“Deep thoughts for so early in the morning.” Her voice whispered in my mind.

“Yeah. I guess you can be reminded of certain things in ways you don’t expect.”

“So, you had siblings. I saw them in your memories.”

“Yes. I don’t know where they might be now though.”

Nightshade was quiet for a moment and then said: “Do you think the shade dwell- Ridere will be fully healed by now?”

I was out of bed in less than a second and rummaging in my bag, chucking its contents everywhere until I had pulled out the only clean change of clothes I had and began switching them for the ones I had slept in. I was still half-asleep but also in such a hurry I couldn’t seem to decide which leg to put into my trousers first, for some reason I thought both at once would be the best option. I did manage it, after I’d fallen on the floor on top of Nightshade of course- to be fair she did take up most of it.

“Tigre?” Nightshade prompted.

“I forgot about Senka and Ridere! We need to see if they’re all right.”

“They were both healed last night; we saw Senka’s wounds close up completely. They’ll probably both be still asleep Tigre, let them rest.”

“Well anyway, we’re up now, we may as well see how they’re doing. Or get breakfast, I’m really hungry.”

I finished getting dressed and headed out into the corridor. There were four bedrooms on each floor and I remembered dropping Senka off in the room opposite mine, I briefly considered knocking on the door to see if she was awake yet but didn’t want to wake her, so instead I went downstairs.

At the ground floor I stepped out into an empty room, Serry had called it the first floor landing last night and it contained only a corridor that led to the spiral staircase upwards. I was beginning to understand the layout of The Hideout. Most ‘houses’ in our world have one large room on each floor to allow for living space in a structure that was thin but tall. The Hideout was a much larger tree, built on the scale of the palace or the main building of a guild: the staircase was at the centre and on the ground floor other rooms radiated out from it; to get from one side of the building to another you’d have to pass through all of the rooms in-between. All the floors above this that I’d seen had a corridor coming out from either side of the staircase and two half-semicircle shaped bedrooms on each side also; these were separated by a bathroom between them that could only be accessed from either side.

I turned right and walked into a room full of noise: it was the kitchen. Across the curving wall were squat, flat cupboards for storing food in and preparing food on, an oven with coal glittering inside its clear front and a long cupboard placed as far away from the oven as possible that looked as if it might be a fridge filled with ice-enchanted Ix-stones. In the centre of the room stood a large table with chairs crowded around it and sitting on those chairs or standing near the table were a number of people, eating, drinking and chatting loudly. I watched them for a while, studying each of these new people.

Aniar and Asher sat side by side with Gensan on Asher’s lap, Aniar was talking quite happily and Asher was smiling, though he didn’t seem to be saying much.