Eternity

Revealed

There was a weird feeling in the air, the feeling you get when something big has happened and there are going to be serious consequences if you don’t tell anyone. I knew that I would be found out anyway, in the end. Better to tell someone and get it over with. I glided away, loving this new life. Almost as much as I hated it.

Silensunus was sharpening her knife when I entered. She didn’t look up, yet I knew that she had heard me. Her senses were so acute, she must have. I considered the fact that, although my entry had been comparatively quiet, that amount of noise would have seemed perfectly loud to her.

This chain of thought inside my head hadn’t taken long; maybe half a second. It was interrupted by the small thud of Silensunus inaudibly flicking her wrist, sending her knife flying unerringly into the bull’s-eye of the target painted on the wall of her hut. She nodded in satisfaction, and moved to remove it from where it was embedded and return it to the sheath at her hip. This done, she turned to me.

“What do you wish to ask?” she inquired, “For I have not long. I am meeting with my brother shortly.”

“You have a brother?” I asked, astounded that, if this was the case, she hadn’t mentioned it before.

“Nah,” she replied, returning to her normal way of speaking. She’d sounded odd a minute ago. “Not biologically anyway. We call ourselves brother and sister, because we share the gift of assasinry.”

“Assasinry?”

“It’s a word I made up. It’s easier than saying “a gift of being a good assassin””

“Oh.” I paused, wondering how to ask of my brother.

“You want to know about Tutis, don’t you?” she asked.

“Yes,” I replied, surprised at how easy I was to read, “How is he?”

“Don’t worry,” she said gently, “I’m sure he’ll be fine, though he is still asleep. And don’t look so surprised! I worked it out because you’re easy to read, and of course, I'm psychic.”

“Oh.” I replied

We were silent for a while. Silensunus drew another knife, and began sharpening it. The screech of the stone against the knife echoed around the silent hut.

“I went to your house,” she said, breaking the silence, “I did what you asked. Your father wasn’t upset about your disappearance. But when he woke up, he was terrified. He started yelling. It took me a while to understand. It’s a while since I spoke human language. The words are... unfamiliar. He was shouting that your spirits – yours and your brother’s, that is – had come to haunt him.”

“What do you mean, the words were unfamiliar? You’re speaking it now, aren’t you?”

There was a pause.

“Aren’t you?” I persisted.

“I had forgotten,” began Silensunus quietly, “What it is like to be new.”

“Wha-“ I began, but Silensunus cut me off.

“I was created a long time ago,” she continued, “A quick bite to the neck, and I was a silens. Because that is how a silens is created. We pass on our condition through a bite. But that is the only time we generally bite, as we need no nutrition.”

“We are venomous. And our venom is deadly poison. They call it the Change Sleep. Really, those couple of days are nothing like sleeping. No, in those days you are dead. That is the amount of time that it takes for the other parts of the venom to work, and for you to be changed. In that time, other things about you change. Your various physical attributes, such as appearance, strength and speed. Our venom, whilst it is deadly, is also the perfect healer. If it is left to work, it will heal almost anything. Once you wake, you will never get ill, and you will never die of natural causes. You can be killed, but it is very difficult.”