Of Amber and Shattered Scales

.001 - in which a mask is removed

The eyes were hot.

No, no don't get me wrong. The eyes weren't physically attractive. They were literally hot. Temperature-wise. In fact, they were ablaze.

The orange irises of the teardrop-shaped eyes burned with the flames of passion. The flames that were devouring anything in their path. That were devouring me. They were eating at me, licking my skin till it was black charcoal, mutilating my face, pushing me into oblivion, death, nothingness -

My eyes fluttered open, and I was thrown into the real world.

It was just a dream, I assured myself. Just a dream.

But it felt so real. Not the way a dream feels real, no. It didn't feel real because it was as detailed as real life. Rather, it felt familiar, like I had seen it before. Maybe it was because I had seen it before. The same eyes, those electric amber eyes haunted me in my every sleeping moment. And some of my waking ones too.

Could it be real? I thought.

I had heard of psychics before - our village, Zal'Arab was famous for psychics. However, psychics saw many things. They saw the future, the past, the present. They saw everything. That was why they were so respected - respected even more than some of the Zala'h, who were our priests.

I didn't see a lot of things like the psychics did. Night after night, I saw only one thing - those eyes that I knew were real. My dreams weren't psychic, but I knew they weren't normal.

And that scared me. I was enough of an outcast as it was, being an orphan and a street-child. I didn't need these dreams making me different in another way.

"Karah!" Elsho called. "It's time for work! Get your lazy ass out of there or Mama will roast you like the Zala'h's chicken!"

Elsho was my best friend, ally and confidante. He had found me when he was seven. I was five. It was my first year without a home, and I wouldn't have made it through the cold season without him. We decided to form a team to get more money. More people would throw money at us if they saw my face, because I was small and cute, and Elsho was a great bargainer, so he made whatever money we did get last.

After three years of us begging for scraps and scavenging what little we could, Mama took us under her wing. Don't get me wrong. Mama didn't take us in due to kindness or pity for us poor children. Her business needed kids who could get into places they shouldn't be, and we fit the bill.

"KARAH!" Elsho roared, irritated by the fact that I wasn't responding. "Mama's gonna have you by the ear!" For a fifteen-year-old, he sure was pretty scared of Mama.

But then, I was thirteen, and scared by a dream.

I shrieked back, "COMING! For the love of the holy goddess Sab'rah, stop shouting at me!" and pulled myself off the ground. Dusting stray grains of sand off my burlap coverall, I pulled on my moccasins, careful not to step on the sand barefoot. Even though it was barely dawn, the sand was still hotter than a cooking plate. Elsho stepped on the sand for too long once. He couldn't work for the next two days because of the blisters on his foot. I didn't want that happening to me, especially not now when business was down. Mama'd have me by more than the ear if I injured myself when there was work to be done.

Once my moccasins were laced on, I headed to under the alderwood tree, where Mama, Elsho, and I always met before heading our separate ways.

"You two head over to Mesh'allah's stall," Mama says to Elsho and I, "and I'll head to the baker's."

The conversation may have seemed innocent enough, but it was far from innocent. Our job, in itself, was far from innocent.

See, to the outsider's eye, Zal'Arab was a quaint little town, with quaint little marketstalls and and quaint little people. All the locals, though, knew that the truth couldn't have been more different. Since there were so many marketstalls, there was too much competition for anybody to get ahead in the business without resorting to some form of cheating or sabotage.