Realignment

“Carolyn, stop!” Oden calls into the night, looking desperately around for his fleeing girlfriend, peering into the shadows of the Retreat hopelessly. Channeling, he lights floating flames, but she’s nowhere in sight.

And then, suddenly, there she is. Kari drops straight down from the sky, landing lightly a few feet in front of him, chains and sword belt rattling. “You don’t get to call me that, Daniel. That’s a personal thing. You and me, not so much personal anymore.”

“Kari,” he attempts, but she stops him.

“No. You’ve been giving me s**t ever since Nostlack, and you know what? Even before that. This whole us thing, it’s been nothing but an extended fight and occasionally a fun night. Nothing more special. Nothing more important.”

“That’s not true.”

“It is! Elseways you wouldn’t have shouted me down at the meeting, like that! You don’t care a thing for me, except as far as you can take me to bed!”

“I didn’t know that was you!” Oden channels a tiny amount of power, vaporizing the tears forming at the corners of his wide eyes.

“Exactly.” Kari turns to leave, shaking her head. “If you were the kind of person who cared what I thought, you might even have agreed with me. Seems obvious that we’re not going to see eye-to-eye. And with what’s coming? That’s gonna get one of us killed.”

Oden growls and lunges, gripping Kari’s elbow and pulling her around to face him again. “I want to figure this out! We can uffff-“ he’s cut off as Kari pulls her odd, cylindrical sword and whacks him across the arm, then in the stomach, finally pressing his chest with the flat tip until he’s smashed against a hut wall.

“Don’t you put your hands on me, Oden. We can’t do anything. We can go our separate ways. I’m leaving with Aelia. I expect you to stay here, since that’s what seemed so important to you at the meeting.” She presses a little more with the pole-like sword, sneering. “Burn the Seraphs to your heart’s content. You’ve chosen that massacre over me. You’d best know it.”

And with a barely audible sound of effort, she bounds away, leaping several house-sized huts at once.

Oden falls to his knees, panting. He can’t seem to catch his breath.

* * *

Sebastean sits alone with his thoughts, high above the crashing seas of Whitewall. The cliff where he’s built his sanctuary rises three hundred feet from the beach, even curving outward slightly, so that if one sits on the edge, there’s nothing but crystal clear, monster-infested ocean far, far below.

Sebastean, as he’s recently discovered, is capable of flight in a pinch, and so the perilous vista serves only to calm him, where it would terrify most. Tonight, he needs calming.

How could Aelia be leaving, going to help the stupid Seraphs instead of her friends here? How many Halfmooners are going to die because she’s irritated at his methods?

And she’s taking Evan! Evan, who shows so much potential, who could be the most powerful warrior out of all of them, if he would only assert himself! Naturally, Sebastean hasn’t elaborated this to Evan, preferring to share what he’s discovered psychically only after the kid has shown his true colors. He’s still too unstable.

Sebastean doesn’t hear the footsteps approaching until they’re almost atop him, which is unsettling. When he sees who they belong to, he’s even more unsettled.

“Syrhe,” he murmurs. “Come to babble to me the error of my ways?”

Syrhe Malhien remains standing, a few feet back, Halfmoon’s only Seraph man and therefore understandably wary of Sebastean’s reach. Tall, pale, and broad-shouldered, he would be intimidating if not for his mild manner. Snowy hair, chopped into a frenzied, very-human looking mess, falls into worried chromatic black eyes.

“Came to apologise. And explain.”

Sebastean’s eyebrows rise. “I wasn’t expecting that. Okay, I’m off-balance now. What’s up?”

“I know I’ve always been nervous around you, always tried to justify my people’s ways to you, always tried to take the high road and be a man of faith. But I’ve been seeing some things that bother me greatly and I’m confused.”

“Like what?”

“Like that face you wear, when you’re not fighting. I didn’t know you could do that.”

Sebastean channels briefly, seconds later appearing to be a full-blooded Seraph. White hair and eyebrows, small square teeth, strong cheekbones and a pointed chin leave him barely recognizable, but it’s undoubtedly what Sebastean would have looked like had his father been Seraphic.

And then, as quickly, he’s a Pteros. Slightly small nose, a lush array of black, flexible spines instead of hair, and downturned, white eyes with yellow-green irises. Even his teeth change, becoming the pointed rows of a reptile. In a slightly altered voice, he chuckles. “I can be whatever I want to be.”

“Then why…?”

“Why look like the menace of the world? Because that’s how they see me. And because when you wear the face of an outcast, the people who care for you are the people you can trust.”

His features shift back into his own, but into the olive-skinned, sandy-haired version. Probably his natural colors, if genetics are to be trusted here. “You know nobody loves you just because you look like them, because you don’t look like anybody. You know that women haven’t been told to find a “nice whatever boy,” because you don’t have a category, so if they like you, it’s because of you.”

Syrhe nods sadly. “I’ve had my doubts about that, to be honest. Sometimes I think Krissa only wants me because I’m the only winged boy for miles.”

“Nah, you’re okay. She wants you for you, you’re a good guy.”

“For a Seraph?”

Sebastean considers him for a moment. “For anyone. There are humans and Pteros who wouldn’t agree with me, believe it or not. Apparently humans come in a whole lot of colors, and routinely kill each other over being the wrong shade.”

“That’s stupid.”

“Very. But there you go. I admit my own dislike for the entire Seraph species, and you come up here just to talk to me. You’ve made me feel kind of stupid, just now.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be. I needed something good to happen today. Couple of people take off… and you turn out to be on my side. Balance.”

Syrhe sits down carefully, peering over the edge of the cliff. Strange, Sebastean thinks, that a natural flyer would be nervous over heights. “Ventraedan wisdom denounces balance. Says that allowing balance is the same as tolerating evil. That there can be no gray, no black. Only white.” He heaves a sigh. “When I was a child, that sounded very noble to me. It seemed like a divine charge. I didn’t realize at the time that ‘evil’ and ‘different’ are interchangeable terms.”

Sebastean says nothing, preferring to listen. Syrhe looks distinctly uncomfortable.

“You know what I’ve noticed about my religion?”

“What’s that?”

Syhre laughs darkly. “That any tiny fragment of common sense would send the whole thing into a death spiral. If you apply reason and logic to the faith machine, it gunks up right immediately. It’s self-contradictory and self-sustaining. Shouldn’t that clue more people in to the idea that maybe it’s wrong?”

“People, by and large, would rather just listen to the loudest voice, regardless what it’s saying.”

“Well that explains it. I met Dackorec once, did I ever tell you?”

Sebastean looks at him, eyebrow raised. “I don’t think we’ve ever exactly talked, for this long anyway. What was your impression of him?”

Syrhe thinks for a long moment. “He seemed… miserable.”

“Interesting. Elaborate.”

“He was giving a lecture on something or other, miscegnation I think-“

“How ironic.”

“-and for some reason, I felt this sense of… heaviness, coming off him. He’s not a young man, of course, but he just seemed beaten. I know this is crazy, but I felt like he didn’t really believe any of what he was saying. Like he was only reciting the verse because he was expected to.”

“The athiest prophet?”

“Gods, wouldn’t that be something? No, not exactly. What I mean to say is, he seemed to believe that the gods are watching us, judging us… but that none of it matters. His warnings, if you listen carefully, just sounded like complaints. Like it was unfair. Life, even with our faith… was unfair.”

“He’s my grandfather,” Sebastean almost whispers, deep in thought, staring up at the nebulae swirling through the night.

Syrhe looks over at Sebastean, wide-eyed and gaping. “Dai ner vod… that would explain a great deal. Dackorec’s secret shame. I know he… killed your mother, which would mean…”

“His daughter.”

“Unbelievable.”

“No… it’s the truth. The only thing I can believe. All the faith in the world doesn’t unmake his crime. And that’s why I hate their church.”

“Because he’s the leader?”

“Because he thinks that his moldy old scrolls give him the right to mete out death and judgement, on behalf of pretend gods. Because he sought and found the justification for murder in his people’s tribal fantasies. Because he killed my mother for screwing the wrong man.

“And that’s why I’m going to rip his throat out with my bare hands, one day. Too much death has come from his cursed voice. For the people of every race who’ve suffered at his word, I will kill that man if I have to die doing it.”

Syrhe keeps quiet, sitting with Sebastean for awhile in deep thought. The gods seem very far away indeed.

* * *

A knock on wood wakes Aelia from fitful sleep, mostly because there’s no door to knock on. Looking around in the dark, she calls, “Hello?”

“Aelia?”

“Kari,” she gasps, placing a hand to her chest and climbing carefully from the round bed, careful not to disturb Evan, who, it turns out, snores. “Is everything okay?”

“No,” Kari moans, clearly distraught. “I’ve left Oden. We just had a big fight and I told him I was going with you…” she sniffs pathetically. “Um… can I go with you?”

Aelia gathers the smaller woman in her arms, surprised to find her shaking. “Of course, honey. Evan’s coming too. We’ll have a nice quiet time, get away from these jerks.”

Another sniff. “Okay.”

“And maybe we’ll spend some time in Providence, when we’re done checking everything out. It’s nice there, you’ll love it.”

“No boys?”

“No human boys, anyway. And certainly no Oden.”

“That sounds nice… oh, I’m so sorry, you were sleeping, I woke you up-“

Aelia shakes her head emphatically. “No I wasn’t,” she lies, “Listen to Evan snoring. It’s like trying to sleep with a chain saw.” Actually, she finds it sort of relaxing, and in a strange way, masculine.

“Didn’t know you were… what’s Evan like?” Kari sits down on a stool, wiping her eyes on a baggy sleeve. “I’ve never really gotten to know him, and he’s been here how long?”

“A couple months, now. He’s… reserved. Kind of wary. Like he’d always like to say something, but doesn’t. New people usually are, you know?”

“But he’s nice to you?”

“Oh, sure. I feel like he’s nice to everybody, in his own way. Very unusual guy, though. And… between us, there’s something mysteriously sexy about him.” Aelia blushes, obvious on her pale face.

“What does that even mean?”

“You know, I really don’t know. Still, it’s there. I like him, a lot. And the way he talks to me… You know what I think it is? He’s a Fallen. He must have been so lonely, so sad and lost in his old life.”

Kari nods, herself a former earthling. “We all were. Life can be cruel, sometimes. Or sometimes a person just isn’t strong enough to keep their head up.”

“I guess so. But as I was saying… it’s like he was waiting that whole life for someone to treat him with affection, genuinely, and he’s been thinking of the things he’d say to that person the whole time. He speaks in poetry, if you know what I mean.”

“Really? Jeez, usually everything he says seems pretty sardonic to me. Maybe the poetry is just for you, pretty lady.”

“Alright, you’re embarassing me,” Aelia smiles. “Now, have you got somewhere to sleep?”

Kari shakes her head, seemingly about to start crying again. “I was sharing a room with Oden…”

“Alright well, come stay with us. Plenty of room. Evan won’t mind.”

“Are you serious?”

“If he’s anything like other boys, he’ll wake up hours after us anyways. Come on, we’ve got a lot to do tomorrow.”

* * *