I feel a rumble in response, and I know I am having an effect on him too. He likes disciplining me as much as I like him disciplining me.
“Get a room,” Miko says. “But don’t. Because we’re going to manifest a feast, and you have to be there. Bring the human. If the others are weird about it, let them be weird about it.”
Freak carries me after Miko, and the three of us travel through a city that frankly makes me feel seasick again because when we move, or when their legs move, it really seems more like the city rolls around them, kind of like we’re on an unseen treadmill and everything else is what moves and shifts around us.
There are no plants here. There’s nothing that I would call alive. I don’t see anything growing. I don’t see anything moving. No butterflies. No birds. Just the geometrically carved moving marble structures and a brilliant blue sky.
I don’t want to be rude, but I don’t like this place. It’s sterile. It’s not a place for things like me. That’s why my presence is a scandal.
“I know it seems strange,” he says. “It looks different to me than it does to you…”
“Stop reading my mind,” I complain.
“Sorry,” he says. “It’s just I can feel your alienation. And I want you to know that it is normal. We won’t be here for that long.”
“Oh? We’re not staying in the geometric marble hellscape?”
That was rude of me, but I’d really like to be somewhere that the walls feel like they really exist. I want to be somewhere there’s ladybirds, or at least a bug or two. I guess the station didn’t have plants or bugs on it either that I saw, but it felt more alive than this place. This feels like a place that only exists in theory, and I don’t think I can survive in theory.
As the day wears on, it is impossible to tell how much time is passing. The sun doesn’t seem to exist, and the sky does not change. The clouds do not drift. I realize, with a start, that there is no breeze. The sky may as well be painted on.
Every new realization I encounter makes me feel slightly more uncomfortable. Freak is the only part of this whole thing that makes me feel real. I snuggle as close to him as I can, I close my eyes, and I feel his touch, his steady three-dimensional existence. The warmth of his body and the slight motions of it remind me I still exist, even if the place I am in doesn’t.
* * *
Freak
We are treated to a welcome feast, and of course my pet has questions. I thought she might settle once she got fed, but even though I keep her in my arms and offer her food from my hand, she manages to ask them.
“Is this your family?”
“We do not have families the way you are accustomed to thinking about them, but yes,” I tell her. “These are the ones I love.”
“They’re pretty,” she says. “Is everyone in your species ridiculously hot?”
“I don’t know,” I laugh. “Maybe? To your eyes, probably. You have a way of seeing the best in the world.”
“I do?”
She seems surprised.
“Yes, pet,” I chuckle. “You see me for much of what I am, I think, but I am sure you adorn me with more, besides.”
She blushes, recognizing it for the compliment it is to both of us. I love this little creature. I have known her for less than one of her days, but there is a connection between us that those of my species would recognize as fate. This was always intended to happen. She was made for me, and I was made for her.
She snuggles up against my chest and closes her eyes. She is tired. This realm has that effect on a lot of creatures who are not from here. We won’t be able to stay long. That works for me, for I do not want to stay long. I need to return to the front lines.
“Tasin, you’re supposed to be speaking with us. We’ve missed you.”Alara chides me, sending her voice into my mind. Once upon a time, Alara was the daughter of the matriarch. Now she is the matriarch.
It was not always certain that she would take the command position. For a long time, it was considered that I might besuitable to command the home realm. But I spent too much time in the worlds of the real, and somewhere between my being captured and now, she assumed the role. One could be bitter about such a thing, but of course, if she has command, then it can be assumed she was always destined to have it. There are no accidents in our cosmology.
Her disapproval would have concerned me at one point, but I have just suffered a series of lengthy indignities and pains that has made me much less patient and far less interested in bowing to hierarchy of any kind.
“You can speak to me while I tend to my pet,”I respond.“She is still new to me. And this is a world she is not safe in, so forgive me if I do not take my eyes off her.”
I feel the pout.
Alara approaches us, a smile frozen on her face. It is designed to make my pet comfortable. I can tell by the way she stiffens against my chest that it is not having that effect at all. My pet is intimidated. Well, she should be. Alara is powerful. She has an ability to twist the fibers of reality in ways few of our kind can. Some say she might be the most powerful matriarch we have ever had.
