“You’re staring at me again,” Kian teased, just above a whisper, and this time Adrissu grinned at him, relishing in the flush that crept up the human’s face at his unabashed focus.
“There is nothing more worthy of my attention,” he replied. Kian muttered something indistinct and turned away, but the blush remained on his cheeks and the tops of his ears for a long while afterward.
Though they could not quite settle into a comfortable routine, they had a semblance of one after that day. Most weeks, Kian would visit Adrissu’s home when there were no classes in session. Sometimes he visited more than once a week; occasionally he made no visit at all, most often when he had exams.
His visits were mostly for them to study and research the ritual, but Adrissu relished in the time they had together no matter how impersonal. The longer their visits went on, at least, the less guarded Kian became.It would be two years before Kian graduated. It felt like an interminably long time to wait, and yet no time at all. What were two years in the face of an eternity together?
The more they uncovered about transmuting flesh, though, the less certain Adrissu was that Kian’s goal could come to fruition. During the winter break of Kian’s third year at the school, when Kian was staying with him for two weeks until the next term, Adrissu decided that he had waited long enough to bring up his own thoughts, and he would broach the topic of what was sure to be a better solution.
“In your memories of the past,” Adrissu started carefully, glancing over at the human with what he hoped was a casual expression, “Do you have any recollection of the soul-transference ritual you witnessed?”
Kian blinked owlishly at him from where his nose had been buried in yet another book, processing the question. He liked to talk about what he remembered of his past lives with Adrissu; but Adrissu had noticed that when he was the one to bring it up, for a split second, Kian often seemed confused and surprised, having to collect his thoughts for a moment before responding. He had kept his memories secret for so long, Adrissu thought, that to hear someone else talk about them was startling.
“Um, I think so,” Kian finally replied. “Why?”
“I know your goal is to ultimately use transmutation to achieve a form that aligns with your inner sense of self,” Adrissu continued. “But the more we study transmutation, the less promising the idea seems to me. I know it is important to you that you’re able to do this yourself, but...”
Kian’s eyes had narrowed, his frustration obvious, but Adrissu hesitated for only a moment before continuing resolutely.
“The soul transference ritual I developed would be a surefire method of resolving this issue,” he said. “I had created it hoping to put your soul into the body of a dragon, so that we would never be parted again. But if this is too much of a commitment for you, we could instead find a suitable human body to place your soul within, as well.”
It felt illicit even as he said it, but it would solve many of the problems they were facing. Kian would have his correct body without any risk of the transmutation magic not functioning, and he would no longer be the student that was entirely off-limits to Adrissu. It would be a neat, simple solution to it all, but part of him knew Kian would balk.
And, indeed, Kian’s frown only deepened.
“What about the other guy?” he asked, the corners of his mouth twisting.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, we would have to take the body of someone else for this to work, right? What would happen to him, his soul?”
Adrissu blinked, uncertain. “Does it matter? We could place it back into your original body or simply get rid of it.”
“Get rid of it?” Kian exclaimed. “That would be killing someone!”
“It would not be the first,” Adrissu protested.
“Yeah, well, that elf deserved it,” Kian sighed, looking uncomfortable, as whatever memories he had of Lorsan surfaced. “We’re talking about finding some random guy off the street and killing him for no reason.”
“Then perhaps we could find someone who, as you said,deservesit,” Adrissu countered.
“Yeah, then I’d have to live looking like someone who might be on the run, or have some kind of criminal background, or something else that would get me into trouble,” he said.
“We could get someone from a different part of the world who would have never set foot in Polimnos.”
“This is sounding way more complicated than it would be worth,” Kian sighed, shaking his head. “I don’t think it’s a good idea, Adrissu.”
“Then take the body of a dragon,” Adrissu pressed. “Then you can have whatever human form you want. Look however you want, the same way I do.”
Kian had no retort to that. He stared at Adrissu for a long moment, the air between them still and silent, the human’s expression unreadable. Finally, his eyes flickered away from Adrissu’s as a deep, tired sigh escaped him, sounding far more world-weary than any human of his relative youth should.
“Maybe,” he said softly, then seemed to flinch at his own words. “I don’t know, Adrissu. I don’t know if I want to... have these kinds of memories for all of time.”
“I don’t understand,” Adrissu said, his voice softer now, too. When Kian glanced back over at him, his eyes were glassy and on the verge of tears, taking Adrissu by surprise.
“I guess I just sort of want all this... all this pain to be something I won’t carry with me next time,” Kian said, gesturing at himself. “The way I only remember bits and pieces of my—my past lives. Maybe next time I won’t remember all the shitty things that happened to me in this life. Or at the very least, it won’t hurt as much to have those memories.”
“Kian,” Adrissu said, his chest aching with sympathy. “That’s possible, but there’s no way to guarantee what memories make it to the next life and what remains. But time dulls all things, especially when you’re counting in decades and centuries. When you...” He gulped, feeling suddenly vulnerable. He had not been so emotionally open with anyone since Braern. BraernwasKian, yet at the same time, he was someone entirely new. “When you died, the first time, as Ruan. I did not think I would survive it, sometimes, even though I knew you would come back to me, eventually. It was by far the greatest I had ever suffered in my life. But it’s been, what, nearly three hundred years since then? When I reflect on it, I do remember the pain, but it’s distant and dull. It’s only the memory of pain now.”
