Page 31 of Crown of Flame
I reach up and graze his rocky chin, noticing a gash on my arm that hurts with movement. His jaw is chiseled and cracked, resembling obsidian.
It’s strange to me how as I touch it, it should feel like burning glass, but it resembles stone, or even hard flesh, in my hands. The effect is almost calming to me.
“You didn’t have to come back for me,” I tell him. “You know I don’t know how to get you home, and you’re here anyway.”
He contemplates the thought.
“I still have faith in you to get me home,” he says. “But leaving you behind felt cruel somehow.”
I stroke his chin, admiring him.
Why did I ever leave him behind?
“That doesn’t sound like the utilitarian Cinis I know.”
He laughs, roaring flames emitting from his mouth.
It still doesn’t burn me. If anything, it feels like a comforting breath of air that soothes my wounds.
“When have I ever been utilitarian?”
“It’s not your fault,” I tell him. “I know where you come from, if you don’t hunt, you die unmourned. So of course most things feel pointless to you. I suppose I have a similar problem. If I run into a dark elf, there’s a good chance they’ll enslave me. It makes it hard to trust.”
He looks off into the horizon. I wish I could see what he was thinking.
“Why did I come back for you?”
He poses the question aloud, almost rhetorically.
“You’ve given me everything I need to understand this world,” he says. “But something keeps pulling me back to you. When I thought about you dying, it actually upset me.”
I gaze up at him, studying him. I feel an urge to interject, but I’m more content to watch this strange being ponder the nature of relationships.
He had no mother. No father. He was birthed into a strange and unforgiving world and then thrust into an even stranger world against his will.
Here, he is little more than a terrifying monster.
“And there’s something more,” he said. “When I was back home, before I was taken, I felt this strange urge. Almost a compulsion. I couldn’t understand it.”
He looks down at me for the first time. “When I’m with you, it’s not so bad.”
“It sounds to me like you were lonely,” I reply.
He shakes his head, and fire spouts off of him.
“It’s something more than that,” he says. “Lately, I look at your body, and I can’t help noticing how nice it is.”
We reach the hovel he built, and I dread that this conversation might come to a natural end and that he’ll never mention it again.
“That material covering your body – there’s something underneath it, right?”
I chuckle awkwardly. “Yes,” I tell him. “I’m able to take off my clothing.”
“I’d like to see that sometime.”
I look up at the open flame where his mouth would be, and I ponder what it would be like to kiss him. I desperately want to, but I can’t reach him while I’m in his arms. Merely trying is too painful.
“Come to think of it, why doesn’t your clothing burn off?” he asks. “I mean, your clothing is made of the same material as those elves’ clothing, right?”