Heir of Cinders [FADING EMBERS #1] - ON HOLD

17.1 - Finders Keepers

Consciousness was, to Sagan, bucket in the hands of an indecisive person, reeled up into the light before being plunged back down into the dark well, over and over in a looping sequence. In the fleeting seconds where his consciousness waned in, he caught a shadow passing over whatever light source glared above his sealed eyelids. His forehead twitched, acknowledging.

A person must have been standing over him, his lethargic mind registered. A person neither tall nor broad enough to completely eclipse the light as he or she bent over him. They traded no words, but Sagan could feel the figure's silent examination.

"There is no reason for you to pretend to be asleep, you know," a woman's voice echoed in his head, vaguely familiar. A small groan rumbled in the orkhus's dry throat, limbs beginning to fidget slightly.

"Just a minute, Mom."

"I'm not your mother, you twit."

Something slick and cold suddenly plopped onto his arm, shocking Sagan out of his languor. His eyelids flew open, only to be met with a sight so hideous that the likes of which he had never seen before. It was a grotesque brown face, wrinkled like a nut, with a jagged crack of a grin that ran from one ear to the other... at least, where the ears would be on an orkhus. Its scalp was smooth as the crystal balls back home right down to the sides of its face, but murky as a defective one.

Oh gods, did that thing just touch me?

Sagan jerked his arm away with a yelp, almost falling off the wooden table he was lying on. The monster responded by screaming bloody murder.

Its shriek was accentuated with a high, girlish trill. The abomination leapt backward, before clawing at its visage with its small hands. With a flick of the wrist, it ripped its disproportionately large face straight off — an act that nearly tore Sagan's own heart out in shock.

Just like that, Sagan felt very stupid.

The face that gave him a momentary scare now dangled limply in a little girl's hand, harmless and perfectly, irrefutably, wooden. A petite oblong face replaced the terrible apparition that had frightened Sagan out of his wits, housing round hazel eyes that glared at him with indignation. Crude clothing made out of plant fibers were slung around her lithe body, leaving her navel exposed. She put her hands on her hips, leading Sagan's sight down to it.

In place of where the legs should be on a bipedal creature, she had a long, thick tubular appendage that coiled around her in an almost serpentine manner. Sagan blinked, once, twice, trying to ascertain what he was seeing. Never in his life had he seen a caecilian stygenian in person — not because of his own ignorance, but because of their isolation.

Without any warning, an onslaught of gibberish gushed out of the girl's lips, at a rate too fast for his mind to even process individual words, even if he would have understood none of it. His face turned vacant, like a dolt, unsure how to respond.

Like an ever-helpful genie, 'Mom' translated for him.

"She's saying that you surprised her with your sudden screaming, and asking you if that's really the way you'd treat your savior after she fished you out of that wreck next to the smoking big black rock surrounded by the Primeval Flames when nobody else even noticed you were there, half-alive. In addition, she also almost mistook you for a giant piece of ancient crocodile manure due to your muddy state and your dull natural coloration, but she took it upon herself to take a closer look to make sure because who knows if it was something important that came from the sky along with the smoking big black rock. Oh and also, you scream like a little girl."

"Would it kill you to pause between those words?" Sagan mumbled to the disembodied voice.

"I was just giving you an accurate representation of what the girl was saying. Even for the standards of her kind, she speaks pretty fast," the invisible woman argued. "And it is worth noting that I, apparently, exist only in your head. If you'd like to retain the facade of sanity in front of people, it's best that you keep our conversations confined in your mind."