Sanity's Edge

Chapter 7

    Through my unopened eyelids I could sense the sun beginning to rise through the trees. How far had I run? Was it far enough? Was it worth it? Had I run this far just to die here? Was I dying? That might not be such a bad thing. A dead body couldn’t carry a child… I took a deep, ragged breath and felt my battered ribs creak with the effort. Could this be it, then? The soil beneath me was beginning to feel moist. Was I really still bleeding? If the sun was rising, it must have been nearly ten hours. I hoped Zesshei couldn’t track me down by following the blood. If he found me before I died…
    Just as the thought formed in my mind, I heard the rustling of footsteps along the forest floor. I hardly had the strength to let my terror take grip of me. There was nothing I could do, now… perhaps in his anger he would make the final blow and kill me before he had the chance to resume his experiment. Please, please not again! Don’t let him do it again! Then I felt the touch of two warm, furry arms lifting me up off the ground and the brush of a cape against my ear and foot. I gasped involuntarily in terror and pain, too weak even to clench my teeth and stiffen myself to protect my tattered body.
    To my surprise, I heard no reprimands and felt no roughness. Instead, I felt myself being gingerly lifted and carried away as my carrier murmured, “Oh dear God…” in an unfamiliar voice, much softer than that I had grown accustomed to. What was happening? Was this him? I didn’t know whether to be more terrified or less. Please don’t let it happen again…

    Some time later, I felt my body shift slightly, a twinge of pain shooting through my back as I heard a door unlatch and creak open. Then I heard a shuffling, muffled by my delirious mind, and some fragments of a conversation.
    “Heya Kauv! Oh… w-what…”
    “Oh goodness…”
    “What’d you do, you dimwit?!”
    “Oh, shush…”
    “…go get my first aid…”
    “…she ok?”
    “Who is she?”
    “Calm down… help me out… not in good condition…”
    “…bleeding!”
    “Really now?”
    “…gonna die?”
    “…course not.”
    “I’ll give… cookies!”
    “Oh goodness, Petri, I don’t think… eat those right now… think she… concussion…”
    “No cookies?”
    “Nope…”
    A pause.
    “Kauv, I dunno…”
    “’Course she will!”
    “Scooty, what the heck am I supposed to…”
    “Poor girl…”
    “I think we oughta… bath, first…”
    “I can… she’ll be more comfy if it’s not a guy giving her a bath.”
    “You have… point…”
    “So’s Aly gon’ give… a bath…?”
    “Yes, I think that sounds… good idea…”

    I felt myself being moved again, but this time I felt safer. They were just trying to help me. I allowed myself to breathe a bit easier as my carrier transported me up a stairway of some sort. I heard the click of a door opening again, and I felt myself being gently deposited upon the ground. I managed to pry open my eyes just enough that, for just a moment, I caught a glimpse of my “savior” as he exited the bathroom I was laying in, closing the door behind him. He was a yellow-furred drakwal, another unique species to our region that looked a bit like a fusion of a wallaby and some sort of dragon, clad mostly in black apart from a baggy, cheesecloth shirt that looked as if it belonged on an underpaid troupe actor. Part of me felt I ought to be grateful towards him, but something about him made me strangely wary…
    “Oh, you’re conscious! That makes this much easier,” I glanced up to identify the source of the sing-songy voice coming from above me. Smiling down at me in a rather maternal fashion was a gentle-looking black and white dragon with a furry white belly and wispy feathered ears and wings. I quickly identified her to be the Aly they had spoken of, and I was suddenly overtaken by a feeling of immense relief to finally be in the presence of such a trustworthy creature. Oh, how wonderful it would feel to let the gentle little dragon give me a nice, warm bath and wash away all the disgustingly caked-in blood from my fur. I felt so dirty…
    “I’ll run you some water, okay? We’ll have all that blood rinsed off in no time. Now while we wait for that to run, why don’t we see about getting those icky clothes off of you… can you sit up for me? Here, I’ll help you. Tell me if it hurts… there we go. Now lift your arms up as best you can… Oh, you poor dear! You’re just covered in these cuts, aren’t you? Tchtch… We’ll take care of that. It’s okay. Now, are you able to stand up? Let’s get that skirt off for you. The tub’s about full enough for you to get in. There we go, now just step in there and you can sit down again. Oh! It’s ok, I’ve got you! Now sit down… caaareful, sweetheart, don’t slip… There we are, now doesn’t that feel good?”
    I sank into the half-full tub, letting the flow from the faucet create a gentle ripple in the water that soothed my tired, sore body, lapping softly at the stinging cuts that covered my upper body. I closed my eyes and let out a soft sigh, less ragged than the ones before, because the warmth of the bath felt soothing to my injured ribs. I lay there placidly in the comforting water as Aly gently dabbed at my tattered body with a soft washrag, removing all the clotted blood that had made me feel so disgusting. I was in a trance. I couldn’t recall the last time something had felt that good.
    At one point, while Aly rubbed at my painfully dirty back with her comforting rag, I decided to pry open one of my tired eyes and peer down into the water I was sitting in. The water was red with blood, and more red drops, noticeably thicker in consistency that the water itself, dripped steadily in from my dampened hair and chin. I quickly snapped my eye shut again and gulped, grimacing for a second and letting myself drift back into my state of bliss at the wonderful bath I was receiving…
    After I finished my bath, Aly helped hold up my unsteady body as she gently rubbed my fur dry with a soft towel, making the best effort she could to keep from reopening any of my myriad cuts and slashes.
    I was so weak that I could hardly sit up even with her help, but with a bit of patience, we finally managed to dry my sopping fur and dress me in a spare set of the drakwal’s (whose name I discovered to be Kauv) strange clothing. My own clothes were too soiled for me to wear, but I was reassured that the two residents by the names of Petri and Lupio would go out shopping for some new clothes for me to wear. For the time being, though, the only thing covering my upper body was a thin layer of Kauv’s cheesecloth, due to a distinct shortage of female residents in what appeared to be an otherwise rather crowed household. This made me a bit uneasy, and I made a point of keeping a blanket wrapped quite thoroughly around my shoulders for the remainder of the time between when Aly lead me out of the bathroom and into a bedroom that had been prepared for me and when Lupio and Petri returned with clothing for me some hours later.
    In the meantime, the fellow by the name of Scooty, who turned out to be a shapeshifting dragon of sorts and appeared to be relatively near my own age, perhaps a bit younger, came in with a box of medical supplies and helped Aly to take care of my various injuries, slathering virtually every inch of me in a stingy antiseptic and bandaging some of the more grievous of the cuts on my arms and shoulders. Scooty pulled out a pair a scissors and trimmed at my hair a bit in some of the places where the blood was so caked in that even the bath couldn’t remove it all. It wasn’t an especially pretty haircut, with uneven strands and shortened clumps every which way you looked, but it couldn’t be any worse than clots of blood where the shaggy areas now were, and I figured a proper haircut wouldn’t do much to improve my appearance at the present moment, anyways. Scooty said they couldn’t do a lot for my head injury aside from just let me rest a lot and keep a close eye on it… he had a nasty suspicion that I had a concussion, which he seemed to have confirmed after trying to force a bit of soup down my throat and watching as I vomited it back up no less than 10 minutes later.
    After Scooty left, Aly wrapped her long, soft-scaled arms around me and let me lean my frail body against her, pulling me into a soft, warm hug and whispering comforting words into my ear until I began to quietly cry into her furry neck, barely able to sustain the tears running from my eyes and into the soft pillow of my comforter, let alone keep my breathing stable with all the stabbing pains that shot through my fragile form with each muted sob. She rocked me slowly to and fro, lightly stroking my back to comfort me as I cried. She never asked a thing, just sat with me, holding me close to her warm chest and coaxing on the tears I so desperately needed to cry.
    Finally, after a good long cuddle with Aly, I drifted off into a restful sleep in the bed that my hosts had so kindly provided for me. The blankets felt warm and safe around my torn body, and one last stroke from Aly’s soft, comforting hand across my forehead left me to float away into a deep and peaceful sleep, infused with such exhaustion, relief, and delirium that I doubted a train wreck could have woken me before I was ready to awaken.


 

Chapter 8

    I woke from my sound sleep to see the peculiarly clad yellow drakwal who I now recognized to be my “rescuer,” or at least that was what he seemed to consider himself, kneeling at my bedside and resting his chin on his hands, peering at me with a look that I couldn’t quite distinguish as either a grin or a frown. Whatever the expression, though, it seemed unfamiliarly sincere… Not that that was much of a reassurance to me.
    His purple eyes sparkled a bit as he lifted his head up a bit, opening his fanged mouth and exclaiming softly in his oddly harmonious voice, emitting a mix of relief and delight, “You’re awake!”
    I lifted my head as much as I could and opened my mouth to reply, but my mind seized away any words I might have found to speak, replacing them instead with a rush of wariness mixed with something else, an odd feeling of warmth that smoldered in my already stinging cheeks. I let my muscles go lax and dropped back to my pillows, panting from the miniscule effort of simply holding myself up.
    “Hey, you ok?” he questioned gently, trying to catch a glimpse of my eyes. I said nothing, so her persisted, “You’re name’s Aqui, right?” He was right… I said nothing, though. “Right?” I sighed, biting my lip in a futile attempt to quell the pain, and gave a weak nod, which seemed to appease him for at least a moment. He nodded, “I’m Kauv.” I couldn’t be bothered to reply, though I knew I ought to.
    The drakwal looked a bit disappointed at my silence. So far no signs of anger showed in his visage, though. I wondered if I should force myself to speak with him a bit before that changed…
    “So, uh… what happened, anyways?” he asked, a hint of concern in his melodic voice. My heart jumped a beat. Of all the things he could ask! Why wouldn’t he, though? I winced as my mind flashed back to a heavy hand making contact with the side of my face, ripping at the skin and knocking me straight across the room and against the nearest wall, a shadow looming over me as I lay bleeding on the cold tile floor. Then I scrambled in my mind for an answer to his question…
    With a sort of despondent resolve, I managed to breathe out my patchworked answer, explaining simply as, “I fell.”
    “No you didn’t,” so much for my lie, “Aqui, you didn’t fall. You don’t get slash marks like that from falling. Look at yourself! Your face, your wrists… Aly says you even have slashes on your back.”
    I mustered up the strength to argue “I fell. You saw me… I fell on the ground, there were rocks were I fell,” I stated with a feeble stubbornness.
    “Rocks don’t do that,” Kauv disputes sternly, washing away my second attempt at a defense, “Claws do that.” I cringed.
    “Well I… my head. You heard what Scooty s-said,” I decided to try a different approach, cupping a hand weakly over the bruise on my head, “I don’t rem-m-ember how it happened…” Kauv raised his eyebrow, so I continued on, “The concussion… m-must’ve…”
    Kauv sighed, shaking his head, but he seemed satisfied for the time being at least. I sighed in relief… my voice was giving in from exhaustion. I didn’t feel like continuing the argument at the moment. I really would have preferred to not continue it ever, actually, but if I could just drop it for a little while I would be satisfied.
    My head throbbed a bit, causing me to wince and clench my teeth, curling up tighter in the warm blanket they had provided for me. Why was I so cold? A wave of sickness washed over me, and I figured I had better get back to sleep before I lost what little water Aly and Scooty had managed to pour into me, so I slackened my body and willed myself to drift away again, too tired and weak to pay any more regard to the creature beside me for the time being.


 

Chapter 9

    I lay awake on my new bed, that night, staring up at the ceiling of the dark room with my blanket tucked protectively around my torso. My mind was still hazy and the pain still prickled at me with it’s perpetual throb, but the medicines Scooty had given me must have started to help, because I was finally able to understand at least a few of my own thoughts again. As I watched a stray fly buzz its way around the ceiling, I let my mind flow through all the thoughts that had been clotting themselves into its every crevice while I had been unable to process them.
    How did I get here? Kauv picked me up… why would he want to do that? I shuddered at the possibilities. Would I ever recover? Part of me hoped I wouldn’t. I half wished that I could just die here, peacefully, before another tragedy had time to strike. But… what about Zee, though? What about… I quickly shut up my thoughts and turned them away in a different direction, gulping back a sob that would surely revive the pain in my head and no doubt disturb the other members of the household who had treated me so far with such kindness. It was time to think about something different.
    Before I had time to gather up my thoughts again, though, the bedroom door creaked open a sliver, then after a slight, pondering hiatus, opened the rest of the way, leaving the silhouette of my caped host standing in my doorway. Taking a step forward into my room, he greeted me, “Can’t sleep, huh?” He strode across the room and set himself down at the foot of my bed, making himself comfortable, “Feeling any better, now?”
    Startled by his almost unwelcome congeniality, I pulled backwards and sat up as much as I could, pulling my bedding tight around myself so as to cover any possible signs of vulnerability. He laughed, “What’re you doing, silly? I’m not going to hurt you. I wouldn’t… whoa, you really are scared,” his tone made a complete turnaround, and he began to speak in a soft, almost somber voice, “What happened to you, Aqui?”
    “I fell,” I repeated my earlier excuse. I had at least a little obstinacy left in me.
    “No, what really happened, Aqui… come on. Someone hurt you. I don’t know who it was, but someone hurt you. Where else would all those claw marks on your face and arms come from? Why else would you be so scared of me? Who did this to you?”
    I sat there, frozen in my pile of bedding, and hunted deep in my mind for an answer to appease him and make him leave. Finally, I resigned myself to the inevitable and murmured, a small whimper in my voice, “It doesn’t matter. Why should I tell you? You’ll just try and find him…”
    “What do you mean? Aqui, why would that be a bad thing!?” Kauv was clearly astonished, “Look what he did to you! Who is this guy? What’s his name? Please!”
    “But then… what will happen to him? If I tell you his name, what would you do?” I argued desperately.
    “Who cares?” Kauv retorted, “Why’re you defending this guy, anyways? Can’t you see what he’s done to you? He beat you, Aqui!”
    “But… but what if he were to… to have a…” I lowered my voice to a shameful whisper, “…a child. What if they took him away… n-not knowing, and they left his… his child. What would happen… to his son?”
    “Aqui…” Kauv lowered his voice to a whisper, “Where’s this son’s mother?” I held my mouth shut, staring pitiably up at him. He stared back at me, deep into my cloudy hazel eyes, and a sort of sympathetic understanding washed over his features. In a soft whisper, he questioned me again, but this time with a different tone, a knowing tone that felt half reassuring and half unnerving to me ears, “This child, did his mother… run away?”
    I said nothing, but the truth was evident.
    “Aqui, what’s his name?”
    I relaxed my grip on the blankets around me a bit, and shifted my gaze downwards, staring despondently down at my blanket-covered lap.
    “Did you get to name him?”
    I gulped and kept my gaze locked on where my feet were situated underneath the blanket.
    Kauv reached a hand out and placed it lightly on my own hand. I jerked my hand away reflexively and held myself stiffly as far back as I could. He pulled his hand back, looking a bit offended, but he continued to glance over me with a sort of saddened understanding. I shot a quick glance back up at him, only for a fraction of a second, and then, once my eyes were once again fixated on my sheltered feet, I murmured as softly as I could manage, my voice barely perceptible, “His name is Zee.”
    “Zee? I like it,” Kauv smiled softly and patted my knee through the layers of bedding covering my lap. I shifted myself away a bit farther, and he sighed, shaking his head sadly at me, “Alright, Aqui, I’m gonna let you get some sleep, now. We’ll figure the rest of this out later, ok?” He pushed himself up off the bed and strode out of the room, closing the door softly behind him. I sighed wearily and slowly coaxed myself back into a laying position so I could try and get myself back to sleep. I really didn’t wish for Kauv to try and figure anything more out, but for the time being, there wasn’t much I could do about his persistence. I just hoped I could stand my ground against his barrage of questions until I was well enough to put up a proper fight against his interrogation.


 

Chapter 10

    I awoke to the sound of my door clicking open and Kauv prancing in with an embarrassingly immaculate breakfast tray, complete with a small vase containing a few flowers and two dainty silver teacups. A few days had passed since I had first come to their peculiar home, which I had learned was actually an old theater that Kauv had revamped, and I was starting to recover a bit, though I was still by no means in healthy condition. I could hardly manage to prop myself weakly up against a few pillows when Kauv came in.
    I had also gotten to know a few more of the residents of the household and learn a bit about where they all came from. Lupio and Petri, an effeminate blue desert dog of sorts with a pair of butterfly wings and a love of books and a young, angel-winged drakwal who turned out to be Kauv’s younger cousin and was staying there as an “apprentice,” had brought in an assortment of clothes for me the morning of the second day. Much to my delight, Lupio had picked up that I had an affinity for pastel colors and loose clothing. Petri, on the other hand, marched in with a Christmas-cookie patterned sweater and informed me that he had picked it out special just for me. I couldn’t help but chuckle at this and appreciate his kindness, despite the utter uselessness of a sweater in the mid of July. I had quickly picked up that Petri had quite a passion for cookies, as he made a point of coming up to my room each day to ask if my tummy was ready for cookies yet.
    For the moment, though, the baton was back with the most regular of my visitors. Kauv walked in as casually as ever and nonchalantly plunked his beautifully laid-out tray down in the middle of the bed before climbing up himself, taking his usual seat at the foot of the bed. He took a sip of his tea, and then smiled over at me across the makeshift table he had transformed my sleeping place into, “Morning! How’re you? I brought you a bit of oatmeal,” he motioned at the bowl nearest me, “Scooty said you should be able to handle that. And I made you some tea, too. Didn’t add any mint, though, so it wouldn’t be so likely to make you sick. Maybe that’ll help relax you?”
    I didn’t say anything, but I took the bowl of oatmeal in one hand and began to gingerly pick at it with a spoon, occasionally spooning a miniscule portion into my mouth.
    “So, then, about that son of yours,” Kauv broached, a bit tactlessly in my opinion, “What’s he like, this little Zee? How old is he?”
    I figured I might as well appease him. The subject was a painful one, but perhaps talking about it would help to console my battered heart, “He’s around one and a half years old, now,” I mumbled around a tiny mouthful of oatmeal, which despite it’s size seemed to stick to every possible corner of my mouth, “He… doesn’t talk, though, or walk yet…”
    “Oh?”
    “He has something called Angelman’s syndrome. It’s a developmental disorder. He’ll never surpass the mentality of an infant. He’ll always be mute, and his coordination will never be very good…”
    “Aww, poor little guy.”
    “Zesshei thinks it may have something to do with the crossbreed-“ I froze, then closed my statement hastily with a quiet, “Oh.”
    “Zesshei?”
    “I… he…”
    “Is Zee… named after his dad?” Kauv raised an eyebrow sternly at me, demanding the truth.
    “He’s… I mean… I…” I stammered, and then gave in, “Sort of I guess…”
    “Sort of?”
    “Well, he… he wasn’t going to name Zee… I tried to make him, and… so he named him after himself, but later I… I got to name him, when Zesshei let me hold him… b-but Zesshei didn’t know. I couldn’t tell him…”
    “So… Zesshei, eh?”
    I nodded, but I was tearing myself up inside for letting my secret slip. Now what would happen? I couldn’t have him going after Zesshei!
    “So,” Kauv said, suddenly changing the subject as he noticed my distress, “How’s that oatmeal standing with ya?”
    “I give it 15 minutes to actually stay in my stomach…” I mumbled darkly, stirring about the hardly-touched oats with my spoon. I really did feel a bit nauseous..
    “Not so great, huh? Well, you don’t have to eat it all if it’s making you feel sick,” Kauv assured me, “Eat as much as you want.”
    I nodded and set aside my breakfast.
    “So, then…” he commenced again, “This Zesshei guy, what exactly did he do to you? You said something about crossbreeding earlier…”
    I sighed, almost exasperated, “Why do you keep asking me these things?”
    “Because I want to know? I dunno, I guess I just wanted to learn a bit more about my latest freeloader,” he shrugged, clearly joking, but I couldn’t help but feel a bit taken aback, “I get a lot of you guys around here, you know. It all started when my aunt dumped that cookie-obsessed kid on me and expected me to provide him with the remainder of his education or something. I can’t really complain, though. Freeloaders make for good company. I think I’m up to 5, now, plus the sand dragon and the tomato…” he said it all so flippantly, as if referring to one’s housemates as freeloaders and a tomato as a living being was of the utmost normality.
    “Um… um, excuse, did you say… tomato?”
    “Oh, you haven’t met Alfredo yet? I bought the darned furniture-mauler at some market place a couple years back, and it’s been eating my table legs ever since…” he whistled, “C’mere Alfredo!” As if on cue, a knee-high tomato with large green eyes, sharp fangs, and bulky arms tipped with thick black claws came hopping in making gurgling growling sounds and drooling obscenely wherever it went. “There you are, that’s Alfredo,” he stated nonchalantly before shooing the thing away with a flippant hand gesture, “Go on Alfredo. Go chew on your tomato-bed or something… and not my blasted coffee table, again! Ya hear?!” he yelled after the tomato before turning back to me once more with a gentler, more somber look in his eyes, “Now then, back to what I was saying. Aqui, I care about you, can’t you see that? I just want to know more about you and what happened to you, that’s all. Can’t you tell me at least a little about your past and this Zesshei guy? Just a little? Come on, Aqui, you’re a 14-year-old girl and you have a son. That’s not normal. What happened?”
    I stayed silent again, but this time for more reasons than just my usual exhausted obstinacy. I truly did not know what to say in response to what Kauv had just asked me.
    Kauv took a deep breath, “I have a suspicion, but I pray to God it’s not true…”
    I cocked my head.
    “I caught you saying something about crossbreeding, and heavens above I hope that means this creep had the scientific means to do all that artificially…” Kauv began, shaking his head hopelessly, “but after seeing what all else he’s done to you…”
    I sighed slightly and looked curiously up at him. Perhaps this would be easier if I let him do the talking…
    Kauv leaned forward and inquired in a hushed voice, “Aqui, did he… did he rape you?”
    I opened my mouth, floundering for a reply, but no words came out and I closed it again. I swallowed, biding time for my mind to form a satisfactory answer, and then, when no more brilliant replies came to mind, I gave a subdued little nod and averted my eyes from his.
    “Aqui…” he whispered, trying to catch a glimpse of my face, “Aqui, don’t do that, it’s ok,” he reached a hand out to try and catch my chin with his fingers, then lifted my head ever so gently and stared sternly into my eyes, “Listen, it’s not your fault. You’re acting like I accused you.”
    I pulled my ears back and hunched my shoulders forward a bit to display to him my distaste at being touched, but I didn’t pull away like I had done before.
    Kauv stared down at me with an indescribable pity sparkling in his deep violet eyes. Finally, after a minute or so, he slipped his hand away from my chin and dutifully went about gathering everything up into orderly stacks on the breakfast tray he had brought with him. Standing up, he flashed a good-natured half-smile in my direction and bobbed his head respectfully, “I’ll let you get back to resting, now. Don’t wanna keep that concussion from healing. Have a good morning, Aqui!” With that, he turned around, carrying the tray of dishes with him, and walked towards the door. Before he left entirely, though, he peered back around at me and gave me an awkward, subdued grin, “By the way, I notice that oatmeal stayed in your stomach. I think it’s been 15 minutes, now.”