Chapter 24: Chapter 24 – Of Books and Beauty

I woke to reality with jarring abruptness as a hand caught about my own, pulling me upward. A millisecond later an arm wrapped behind my back to steady me, and Thors’ scent—already holding me fast in its sway—enveloped my awareness completely.

Bleary-eyed, I blinked up at the skyborn as he drew me away from the ledge’s outermost edge.

“You may want to try knocking next time,” he said.

“I—I…” horror washed over me as I realized what’d happened, a fire blazing in my core at Thors’ sudden proximity. “I was sleep walking?”

“Oh! Were you?”

“I must have been. I’m so sorry.”

It took a huge amount of effort to speak in full sentences. I could hardly focus on anything but the heat radiating off Thors’ body, the size and broadness of his figure, the scent of him, the—

Stop it.

But I just couldn’t seem to. The almost overpowering urge to kiss him overcame me—or at least, the human side of me. But the kobold side…she wanted to nip, nuzzle, bite, touch…

Well, ok. The human side of me wanted that too. Just not quite as hungrily.

Thors’ tail lashed once.

“You want to bite me, don’t you? You may.”

I blinked, swaying a bit on the spot.

“Um, what?”

Another tail swoosh. And another.

“Don’t worry, I won’t bite you back. It might help you to get it out…just that one marking urge…but try for an unarmored spot, else you may break your teeth.”

“I…um…” Damnit, where’s Keshry when I need her?

“N-no, thank you? I’d better get back to bed. Thanks for catching me. I’m so, so sorry about this.”

Pulling his arm from around my back, Thors curled both hands gently about each of my shoulders and stepped back—assessing my stance before releasing his hold on me.

He backed toward the wall, and I took a step toward him. Stopped.

Don’t be creepy.

“There is no need to apologize,” replied the Jasper. “Do you need help getting back down?”

“No, thank you,” I repeated, skittering sideways and covering my nose even as my own voice screamed in my head at me to jump him, jump him, jump him! “Goodnight!”

I practically shouted the last few words, turning from Thors to scurry away and down the ladder.

So. Fucking. Embarrassing.

I didn’t trust myself to go back to sleep after that. It was still quite dark outside, though there was a strip of teal light glowing up from the horizon, bleeding into the black of the night. The river-fed lake was a thing of incredible beauty in the darkness, now glowing in shades of purple and blue with a scattering of green. The lanterns in the room had gone out while I slept, and I wasn’t sure how to relight them. So I poured a bit of mana into the overhead sigils instead, until the chamber was awash in their gentle glow.

It was as good a time as any to go through the rest of my trunk.

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Tying the scarf back around my face to help me stay on task, I flung open the lacquered lid and dug in. Pulling each article of clothing from it piece-by-piece and laying them out, I found not a single thing that didn’t seem perfectly tailored to my own tastes. Like me, Zia appeared to have favored pieces with pleasing and varied textures in shades of black, gray, and white.

I laid out the books next. There were some tomes of history, and another regarding the different clans, their own historical backgrounds, and their individual customs and etiquette. But the most intriguing of all were the final three I unearthed. The first was a massive volume entitled The Art and Applications of Sigilcraft. The second was an encyclopedia of all known fusible gems, their subtypes and associated abilities.

The third was tiny, about the size of my palm. Its cover was plain and black, and inside of it were…markings. Not quite glyphs, not quite sigils.

As I frowned down at them, confused, translations appeared—though I knew for a fact that the names I was seeing were not a direct reading of the symbols. Rather, it went the other way around. The strange symbols did not spell out names, but instead directly represented the people the names belonged to.

And one of the first was Seri’s.

The puzzle of it nagged at me even as the siren-song of all the other books fought for my attention. But I still had a bunch of artifacts to investigate and mysterious, silk-bundled items to unwrap. So, I plucked up the first of the unknown objects—a leather strap with a smooth, disc-like stone attached to it. Focusing on the gem-studded sigil at its center, bright moonlight, I guessed that it was some kind of headlamp.

The next item vaguely resembled a small, fat pickle and bore a sigil which translated very roughly to bee’s wings. Confused and vaguely concerned, I set that one aside and picked up the next, and then the next. Going through the rest of the unwrapped items and guessing at their function by their sigils, I laid them out one-by-one amongst the clothing.

Then I moved on to the bundles, most of which contained jewelry. Again, the colors and styles were exactly of the sort I’d have chosen for myself—most of them embedded with crystals and strung with beads which captured as many different hues of pastel color as possible. But none of the gemstones in those pieces pinged my insight ability, nor did I recognize them. As they weren’t any type of the main eight, I assumed their worth must be purely aesthetic.

The item within the second-to-last bundle looked like a large, dark abalone shell—only the line of openings toward the bottom end were filled in with silver. When I flipped it over, I gasped.

It took me a moment to realize that I was holding a mirror. That it was my own face staring back at me.

I blinked, and the beautiful creature in the glass blinked her own big, petal-shaped eyes. Eyes that seemed to glow a cold, especially pale hue of pink. One of my favorite colors. The face…my face…was foxlike, aside from the glossy scales that lined the top of my head from my dainty pointed snout to the bases of my big, fluffy ears. And I had already known about the tiny horns. But I had not known before that they had a slight transluscence to them, and a faint, flecked iridescence which echoed that of my scales.

I’m not sure how long I sat there and stared at myself, and I’m not sure I’d admit to it if I did. It wasn’t just that I was mesmerized by my own appearance. Enchanted by the very feeling of looking at my reflection and actually loving what I saw. I was also trying, and struggling, to form a connection between this wholly unfamiliar face and my own sense of self.

Because there was no point in being so damned beautiful if I couldn’t internalize it enough to actually feel that way.

Yeah, easier said than done.

In any case, it was a good distraction from everything else, and it kept me occupied until the sun began to creep up between the toothy black peaks beyond the caldera. Snapping myself out of it at last, I wrapped the mirror back up. My inventory complete, I decided I’d best repack all of my things—save of course the outfit I planned to change into later.

And as I went to put the first stack of clothes back in, I saw inside the trunk and realized I’d forgotten the final bundle completely. Left it unwrapped and untouched at the bottom. I was only just reaching for it when there was a knock at the door. Scenting Keshry, I cursed under my breath, shut the trunk and hurried to answer.

“I am so sorry, Ashri-an,” she said at once, wide eyes a little watery as she peered up at me. “I fell so deep into my dreaming that I did not hear what happened last night. I have failed in my promise.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that.” I suppressed a wince, waving a hand as I tried to brush it off like I wasn’t absolutely mortified. I’d been hoping the others hadn’t found out about my little nighttime excursion. Stupid of me.

“Everyone needs to sleep at some point.”

But Keshry just scrunched her nose and jerked her head sideways as if a fly had landed on her snout.

“There is food again,” she said, before turning and trotting away.

Following her out, I stopped short as I looked up toward the rock where they always left our tray. Surely enough, it was there…well stocked with aromatic offerings.

And Erek was there, too.

Not bothering with the food at all, he peered straight out at me, head held somewhat high for once. His fine, angular features were set in lines of grim determination. The tip of his tail twitched.

“I must speak to you, Zia. In private.”

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