55 - It Was an Accident

The night wind in the desert rustled through the lollipapera trees and the razr grass, icy after the heat of the day.  The temperature plunged, even as Kyrus sat, waiting for Werfas to pull himself together.

“Hey, its cold.  You can tell me about it from under covers,” Kyrus said.  Under covers.  He’d set up their bedsacks with one folded open on the bottom and one open across the top, bottoms tabbed together so they could share, rather than two larva-like bags, back to back. Did I really think I was going to tell him no? When I set up our bed like... one bed, not two?

He wiggled out of his clothes even as Werfas huffed at him and slid into the bedsack.  “You can sit out there and freeze if you want, wingbrother.”

“Um. Er. Um. Um.”

“Idiot.  You’ll be warmer without all the cloth.  You heard the Amiri... clothes on top of the bedsacks... extra layers... it keeps them a trifle cleaner too.  If there’s one thing I’ve learned from travelling in the Lainz army... we stink.  Even scrubbing with sand.  We stink.”

Werfas snorted his laughter. “Oh.  Right.”  Kyrus could see him turn his head away though, before he skinned out of his clothes too and crawled in under the opposite edge of the bedsack, a cold, flapping void between them as the top sack was pulled tight.

“Yi! Quit letting all the cold air in!” Kyrus moved right over to drop the cloth between them.  It’s not sex, its warmth.  He’s my wingbrother and I won’t let him freeze, even if... um... even if I’m being weird about sex.

Werfas’s back was tense enough that Kyrus wondered if he’d run into a wooden board all of a sudden, even though his skin was warm.  He laid one of his hands against Wer’s shoulder and felt the iron-wire tension in him, along with the scarred ridges that started as high as his shoulder and ran down in deeper and deeper troughs all down one leg.

Kyrus realized suddenly that one of those ridges crossed Wer’s spine.  It couldn’t be possible.  No one could live if they’d cut their spine there and this scar was clearly that bad. He flattened his palm against that spot on Wer’s spine and waited as they slowly warmed up.  The wind blew colder and colder against their heads and Werfas pulled the hood up, slowly, to keep them warm.

“I... I was a kid,” he said, finally.

“I figured,” Ky answered.  “The scars... look old.  I didn’t think even Grey tigers could claw that bad.”

“No. It wasn’t anything as dramatic as a tiger.” Wer shut up again and Ky told himself to keep his big mouth shut.

“I suppose I should tell you,” Werfas said, finally. “Everybody keeps telling me I shouldn’t be ashamed.” Kyrus had an instant response but bit his tongue on ‘listen to them, idiot!’ and waited instead.

“I was seven and doing shepherd rotation... Viltaria had the biggest flock... this was before the war and we had strains of sheep that would make our wool something special, so I was full of myself being allowed to watch those special flocks.”

“Uh-huh,” was all the noise Ky let himself make, to encourage Wer to keep speaking.

“I took them up to the Barren, because there were the bitter plants there that that would be so good for them.”

“Um... the Barren?”

“Yeah. we never took you up there.  I wasn’t supposed to.  It was too dangerous everybody said.  I figured I was smart and I’d be careful.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.” Wer’s voice in the dark was flat.  “A bushie came out of no-where and grabbed the ram... our special ram.  I ran, yelling and shaking my stick at him and he didn’t even pay attention, just flew off with our prize ram... and I fell into a bushy-crack and got stuck.”

“Ow.  OW.  How on earth did you not get eaten by the egglings?”

“I was trapped in a weird pinch in the rock, full of scales, but the egg-stuck scales had all fallen through... it wasn't breeding season anyway, so there probably weren't any, lucky for me.”

“Ow.”

Werfas paused and took in a deep breath that shook him all over.  “Yeah, ow.  I was pinched in a pile of bush scales right over my kidneys.  I couldn’t feel my legs and I’d hit my head.  I’d gotten slashed up like this from tsingy and scales and they found me next day, after the flock made it home the night before and they back-tracked the moment they could see a track at all.”

“But that’s an accident.” Kyrus could have bitten his tongue again but the words were out before he could stop them.

“Yeah.  So everyone said.  I was lucky.  My grandma had enough mandery in her to get my legs working again.  But... she died so soon after, I always thought that if I hadn’t...”

“You can’t know that.”  Ky knew that much.  “Take it from a new-student.  Mandery doesn’t have anything to do with how long you live.  I asked.”  He found himself with his arms around Werfas and it was warm and he could feel his friend’s skin all down his front and it was all right.  It wasn’t nasty.  It was healing and he could understand that.  He shook Werfas a little, feeling the slight tickle of scars against his belly.  “She saved you.  You’re a good cliner.  You and I in the code... and Wer... you were a kid.”

“I still dream of being stuck in that crack, sometimes.  I was out of my head with bushy toxins for most of that year.  That’s something nobody could shut down because they were too complicated for what we could do.  I just had to endure them.”

In the silence, Ky could hear someone singing a lament from a long way away.  Are we always lamenting our lives?  Maybe we could be good to ourselves for once?

“My mom was like that for years... wandering in code.  She was sick and we all thought she was dying.”

“Really?  You’ve never said.”  Werfas rolled over to prop his head up on his hand, looking at Ky, even though they could only see the vaguest shapes in the dark.  “She was dying sick?”

“Yeah.” Ky clenched his eyes shut on that memory.  None of the monks had batted an eye when he’d paid for a single year’s care for his mother before he left.  They hadn’t expected her to out-live that year. “Most people don’t come back from that kind of toxic sick.”  His own bout with sand-smeared knives had given him an interesting perspective on it, and a certain understanding. “I got cut up once with knives coated with poison... don’t know if it was bushy, oyuk or peacock snake... I was sand-sick for weeks.”

“Ohhhhh.”

“Um... Werfas... I don’t think I can get sexy after all this tough talk... but you know... I’m starting to think my ‘boys are bad’ training is starting to look a little silly.”  Lying skin to skin with Werfas is good.  It feels good.  More than ‘I’m not going to die of cold’ good.  I can do this.  Um.  Yeah... my parts really want to do this.  As if he were a girl.  His parts too.

Werfas went to say something but Kyrus cut him off.  “And if you’re thinking that an accident that happened more than ten years ago is going to make me think you’re not worth loving... scars or not, then you’re a bigger idiot than I am... and I got taught to be an idiot that way.”

A movement in the dark and then warm, dry fingers were gently laid over Kyrus’s mouth.  “I hear you, wingbrother.  Maybe we should quit calling each other ‘idiot’ and ‘stupid’?”

Kyrus didn’t pull back.  “All right.”