126 - Are You All Right?

Ky lunged toward the hole, as Werfas vanished, slid to a precarious stop on the edge just as the water from his wing-brother’s flailing splashed up into his face, and the sand of the domed roof above. There was no light that could reach down, but Werfas was struggling in water too deep for him to stand up in.  “He can’t swim!”  Kyrus shouted.  “I’m going in!”

He slid on the creeping sand into the hole after his wing brother even as his da shouted ‘no’ and Ilax yelled ‘wait!’ He didn’t hesitate and held his breath as he dropped, feet first, into the darkness where Werfas flailed and coughed and tried to call for help.

He scraped against a razor shard in the wall as he fell and splashed into water, luckily next to Werfas, not on top of him. Werfas smashed him in the head with one hand, flailing and Ky grabbed that arm. He stretched out in the water, pulling him up and smacked him back.  “Quit it!  I’ve got you!” He wasn’t listening and Ky finally shouted, the noise echoing and cracking in the well they seemed to be in, “WINGBROTHER TRUST ME!”

Werfas stopped, Ky got him under the chin, and he coughed up a huge belch of water.  “Quit it.  I can swim... just quit fighting!” Water droplets, caught up high, pattered down slowly into the stilling water.  Ky snorted water out of his nose his legs moving barely enough to keep them on the surface.

He’d forgotten the ferret in his shirt and while he’d been fighting to get Werfas to listen, Tizzy had clawed her way up and out and now sat on his head, squealing and snarling.  Every claw mark on his back burned like fire.  Who knew how toxic this particular druplet of water in the planet’s crust truly was?

A ball of bees and dragonflies shot down to circle just over the boy’s heads, settled on rock all around and began to glow, like Elemfias’s lume flies.  The noise from up above was awful.  It sounded like one or more of the birds had panicked when the ground dropped away from Werfas and everyone up above was fighting to subdue or calm it down.  That, or kill it, though that was the last resort, they’d need the birds to get to the next wadi.

Great kicks of sand were being shoved down the hole, pebbles and rocks of various size plunked into the water from the ragged edge and into the boy’s faces so they flung hands over, closed their eyes and were forced to keep spitting, Ky repeatedly poking his friend whenever he started to panic again and get them noses full of water.

Tizrav fell off and scrambled back up again. “OW, stop it, you stupid thing!”

“Ky? Wer?” It was Hara calling down.  The cursing and yelling, screeching and roaring from behind her was getting quieter.  Hara spun a ledge of stone all around the edge of the hole to keep the sand out and the edge stabilized.  “Are you all right?”

Kyrus scrubbed his face clear of water and grit and could see her head silhouetted against the greenish lume fly light.  The bee’s glow, down near them, grew stronger and he could just barely see her worried face.

“A couple of the birds need to have their heads bagged completely,” she said, and must have been able to see them, finally, floating safe below, a ferret dancing angrily on their heads, because she started to laugh.