KoblScribl

Air tore into his lungs with a sharp gasp. His hand flew to his chest, claws catching on coat, fur, muscle – nothing broken, nothing open, nothing where the puncture should have been. His heart hammered enough to hurt. The pain hadn’t left him. He could still taste the blood in his mouth, still feel it filling his chest, thick and hot, leaking out of the hole that had punched through him. He had been standing over Saffra when it happened. Or trying to. Trying to be something between her and the thing coming for them. “Run,” she had told him, as her golden eyes dimmed. As if he could do that.

He coughed, trying to empty lungs that were already empty, and didn’t stop coughing fitfully for a long moment. His white tail stood rigid behind him, poised for danger that was no longer there. Finally, after a moment of deeper breaths, he lowered his head and hesitantly opened his eyes, expecting to see a gory opening in his chest where his hand still gripped the edge of his coat. At seeing nothing but clothes slightly puffed out by his raised fur, he let out a shaky sigh.

“I-I’m back… again,” he whispered, the words floating through the air and grounding him. He was back. He was alive. Tears welled up in the corner of his eyes and he couldn’t help but let them trail down the sides of his face. His knees rose to his chest and his arms wrapped around them in a hug, as sobs wracked his body. “What… what did I do to deserve this?” he asked the empty room, not expecting a response but wanting one all the same.

He wasn’t sure how long he stayed in that position, but with a final hiccup, he finally raised his head and looked at his surroundings. Right… he thought, the Anchor shrine outside Altala, that was the last one I…

The shrine he was in was old – anyone could tell that. But it felt different from when he was here last, caught between quiet stillness and a low hum of power. The Anchor stood alone at the center of the hexagonal room, bound in red ribbons that stretched to the corners like lines of tension in a web. The stone itself was dark and dull until viewed from the edge of the eye, where the swirling carvings seemed to catch a low ember-light that vanished when looked at directly. As he stood from the foot of the dais and stepped away, the air warmed by degrees. The chill belonged to the monolith alone, radiating from it with the patient certainty of deep stone.

Despite the grandeur, this place did not feel holy to him. No, it felt held. As if the room was built around the exact point where the world once tried to move, and someone had told it: “No.”

The locals tended places like this with ribbons and offerings. He knew what they were really for, and hated that he needed them. He turned to look back one more time, the mongoose’s white tail still bristled behind him, and dragged his sleeve across his face harder than he needed to before striding out of this chapel of stillness.

“Yo, Veyr!”

He raised his head from where he had been solemnly watching the ground pass beneath him, heading to the camp he had set up shortly outside the Anchor. His body relaxed as he laid eyes on the gryphon he had watched die less than an hour ago. She stood on three legs, her fourth raised in greeting as he approached.

Veyr’s gaze snapped over her, too fast to be subtle, searching for wounds the world had already taken back.

Saffra’s wings were folded clean against her sides, every russet feather lying where it should. Her crest was high, her golden eyes bright, her tawny haunches steady beneath her, talons resting against the stone instead of scrabbling for purchase through blood. She looked exactly as she had before everything went wrong – beautiful, dangerous, amused by him, and alive in a way that made his chest hurt worse than the puncture had.

There was no wound. No blood. No memory of dying.

“Down boy. Do you check everyone out so explicitly after praying at an Anchor like that?” Her sultry, smoky voice washed over him and made him relax again, before he was able to parse the contents of the sentence.

He forced a fake smirk to his muzzle, trying to mask his concern with bravado. “Well, stuffy places like that generally make me want to look to drown my sorrows in some kind of vice, but tradition is tradition, you know.”

She let out a chirping giggle, but the gleam in her eyes betrayed her intention. She was fully focused on Veyr, and he felt like an ant beneath a magnifying glass as she inspected him in turn. “Tradition is overrated anyway,” she waved off his comment. “It’s just chains wrapped up in lace.”

Veyr smirked, nodding along. He remembered having that conversation with her last time. “Yeah, you’re not wrong. Still, even if it’s mostly useless, sometimes it just gives me comfort to follow them.”

She kept a piercing gaze on him, before rolling her eyes and plopping down onto the ground and patting the ground beside her. “Come, sit. I don’t know how you look more tired after praying in silence, but you do.”

He rubbed the back of his head as he muttered, “Yeah, don’t know how that works either, but praying takes it out of me.” Nonetheless, he obediently went over and sat beside the gryphon, leaning against her midsection as she raised a wing to wrap around him. They sat in silence for a while, until he finally adjusted himself, turning on his side to look at Saffra’s face. She was curled up around him, beak resting on her folded talons. Her gaze stayed on him too long, lidded but sharp. Whatever she saw, it made the teasing line of her beak soften by a fraction.

She watched calmly as Veyr reached out to examine a few of the charms on her chest harness. He grabbed one specific feather charm, and rotated it around in his wiry fingers. “You know, it’s rude to touch someone else’s belongings like that,” Saffra joked, but stopped giggling when she noticed how tense he was. “Veyr. Something’s bothering you. I know we haven’t known each other for long –” she paused as a look of hurt flashed across his face.

Veyr sighed as he released the charm, looking directly at the gryphon. “Saffra, have you ever given anyone a Kaku’an before?”

The gryphon tensed, and he could feel the muscles of her lower body bulge as her tail flicked irritably. Her eyes were slits. “Where…” she hissed, “did you hear that word?”

Veyr blinked. The truth pressed against his teeth, but refused to exit. “I… was friends with a gryphon. Some time ago. She gave me one.” It was the closest he could get to the truth.

Saffra’s piercing gaze remained on him, before finally settling. “No. I haven’t given one to anybody yet. Did this gryphon friend of yours tell you the meaning behind it?”

Veyr nodded, still looking at the beaded ornament that hung from her. “It means that you found someone to fly with that wouldn’t take the wind from beneath your wings.”

“That’s the surface of it, yes.” Her talon rose to the charm at her chest, touching the feather like she was checking that it was still there. “Kaku’an are older than that. Older than roost-bonds, older than half the pretty little rules gryphons like to pretend were always sacred.”

Her gaze flicked to him, sharp enough to cut. “In the root stories, it’s a piece of the soul. One feather, plucked when you come of age and worn by your own talon until you find someone worthy of carrying it. Carrying. Not keeping.”

She looked back to the charm, voice lower now. “Someone you’d fly beside in whatever way you both wished. Lover, partner, oathmate, storm-shadow – doesn’t matter. The point is that they would never take the wind from under your wings.”

A humorless little click left her beak. “So yes. Marriage proposal without the marriage, if you want the ugly short version.”

Veyr’s eyes widened. Saffra hadn’t told him that last time – not the full of it, not what it meant to hand someone a piece of yourself and trust them not to make a cage out of it. He looked at the feather hanging from her chest, and for the first time, truly understood the shape of what he had lost. He wondered if having this conversation now meant she would take longer to decide than before. If she would ever choose him that way again.

“So,” she continued, giving him a critical gaze. “Where is it?”

He looked at her for a long time, not even needing to attempt to fake the emotion in his voice to match his story as he told her, “I’ve lost it. And I’m not sure I’ll ever find it again.”