Everything fueling his sour mood: the lame moon, the stupid water, the dumb sand that was thickening between his toes… He could’ve been holding hands with Yayli for Christ’s sake! He looked up to see where he was going and only now, he noticed a thin crack on the visor, right above his temple. Riyad came to a halt.
I’m done running away from you. He turned around with a clenched fist. The air warmed around him and a wave of heat spread from his chest to the tip of his toes. He was not new to frustration, but he was at expressing them. The words he wanted to speak kicked around his throat, refusing to come out, but he knew that once they would come out, he would have a hard time closing his mouth again. The sporadic and fluctuating words would be uncontrollable like a hungry storm.
The dark blue waves sprouted behind Vinh, whose unflinching body continued to stride toward him. The glow of his eyes returned and this time, their fierceness lit his face around them. The moon was no match for the menacing purple. His narrow eyes curved up like an eagle and his long wavy hair was now plastered on his face.
Riyad shook his words out of his body: “Wha— what do you want from me? I—”
“‘What do you want from me?’” Vinh looked around in disbelief as he continues to approach him. “What do I want from you?! You appear out of nowhere to Veleen. You nearly destroy the kids’ house — putting their lives in danger.”
“You kil—”
Vinh cut him off and harshly pointed down. “You drag the carpenter into it and then when I...when I try to peacefully negotiate with you, so you can leave the poor people of Veleen alone, what do you do? You run on their roof, denting their houses, stressing out the civilians, and then hide in a barn like it’s your own! When I try to fix all this, what do you do? You— ” Vinh’s voice shakes as he tries to control his anger. “You Leap to the same, exact spot as before! I could’ve gotten Wiped! I, Could’ve, Gotten, Wiped. Then my idiotic self goes to you once again and tries to conversate and what do you do?! You— you take me through...all these different PIFs and almost make me lose my damn mind!”
Vinh stopped before Riyad. “You are a madman… You literally made me sit in an auditorium and— and— and— watch you sing! Watch, you, sing! I can’t even believe the words that are coming out of my mouth.” Vinh pursed a grin under the scowl. “You were dancing, too…” His voice coarsed. “What do I want from you, you say? What do you want from us?!”
“I don’t understand…” Riyad fumbled for words, “I don’t understand anything that you’re saying. I didn’t do any of those on purpose. I don’t know what a PIF is. I don’t know what Fabric is… I don’t know— I don’t know!”
“All these times, we were trying to figure out what was going on, and turns out, it was a kid behind all this?! We’ve been looking for you for a very long time. Why show up now!”
“I’m tired of this… I’m tired of all this confusion!” Riyad’s voice grew over the waves. “I’m tired of you following me and chasing me everywhere. I’m tired of getting stabbed, thrown around, seeing people die! I’m tired of not getting a single proper answer out of anyone!” The pulsating headache returned and Riyad grinded his teeth to subdue it. “Ughhh,” he howled.
Vinh jerked his arms down and the blades snapped on his forearms. The sight of them caused a sudden glow of heat within Riyad’s chest. He despised how they made him feel so small.
“Agh!” Riyad now clutched the helmet and cowered in pain. Through the slits of his eyes, he saw a sudden blue glow within the helmet.
“What is it? Your next trick?”
Just the voice of Vinh worsened the pain in his head. He looked up at him and saw him stepping back with hesitating feet. The purple in Vinh’s eyes doused.
“GO TO HELL, VINH!” Riyad yelled out.
Their clothes suddenly began to flutter from a sudden gust of wind. It also brought forth a blaring train horn. Riyad and Vinh jerked to the side and saw a circle of light that grew larger and large The water fountained around it. Riyad stumbled backward until he fell back into the sand, eyes glued to the orb of light. He quickly covered his ears as and a train came rushing past him — right where Vinh was standing. The train curved away into the ocean and disappeared in the shadow along with the wind.
Wha— what was that… Did I make that happen? Jesus! It’s just one thing after another! Can I get a goddamn break from all this? Riyad stood on his foot and glared at the ocean. There was no sight of the train. It came out of nowhere and disappeared to nowhere. There was no sight of Vinh, either. Riyad stared around the spot where he was standing and then squinted in the distance ahead.
He stumbled backward again, but he was too late. Vinh came rushing to him with robotic speed and punched his chest
The air gushed out of his mouth as he dropped a couple of feet away from where he was standing.
Vinh was bleeding from his lip and his armor seemed to be full of dents and scratches. He didn’t seem to be in a mood for conversation anymore.
“You!” Vinh pointed at him. “What are you doing here?”
Huh? But as Riyad looked closer, he saw that Vinh wasn’t actually looking at him— rather, right over him. Riyad was about to look over his shoulder before something began going over his head, freezing him. It seemed like bamboo, but it was too shimmery to not be a metal imitation of it. The bamboo kept going over his head until it stopped before Vinh’s chest. The way it moved told Riyad that someone standing behind him and holding the weapon.
“Let me guess,” Vinh said, “You were working with this kid to insinuate all these troubles in Veleen. I knew you aren’t trustworthy the moment I met you and your little...pets.”
“Ugh,” a soft voice tuned behind Riyad with an Indian accent, “do you ever shut up, my love?”
“What are you doing here?”
“To save this poor child from you!”
“A child?” Vinh spat. “Did you not see what he just tried to do? I was going to take him to Raphaëlle, but now I’m starting to believe that he’s too dangerous to stay breathing.”
“What nonsense.” The woman finally revealed herself as she stopped next to Riyad and the sight of her made him crawl a few inches away from both.
To call her a woman would be a lie, but it would be a lie to call her anything else as well. She stood with a pair of deer legs — she even had the hooves, and fur and all. Riyad had a feeling that the rest of her legs under the black dress looked the same as well. The imitation of a deer took a break as Riyad’s eyes ventured upward to a human torso with a fully masked face. Riyad wondered what the purpose of the black, laced mask was since he could see right through its transparency. The mask covered her whole face and it had a face of a deer stitched to it. The strangeness didn’t end there as he continued to look up and met a pair of deer antlers that branched out to the sky. It was one thing to have deer antlers, but it was a completely different situation for them to be almost four feet tall. Then there was the metallic bamboo she was holding that stood a little more than twice her height.
Riyad almost laughed at the thought of being saved by a thing that looked like something from a nightmare.
“You were never good with confrontation, anyway,” she kneeled next to him and Riyad instantly dropped his eyes. “Look at this poor child. Let me take care of this. You can go back home and rest, my dear. I’ll speak to Raphaëlle about it.”
“How about I take care of you?”
“You can take care of them,” she shrugged, and instantly the space around them shimmered and distorted. It was as if space itself was peeled away as clones of the lady emerged into reality. “Clones” would not be a fair description since the only similarity was really the face and the size of the body. One of them was floating in the sky with a pair of dragonfly wings and a blue tail. There was another one that looked quite like the one next to him, except the clone had moose antlers and they were just as comically large as the deer ones.
“Close your eyes,” the lady brought his attention back to her. “This will all be over soon. I’ll make sense of this all.”
Riyad was surprised by the relief he felt from her words. That was all he wanted to hear all this time.
“I’ll make sense of it all.” He laid his eyes closed.
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