Page 95 of A Soul to Guide

The red flames were constantly in her peripheral, and it took her a moment to realise there was an image in the middle. It was hyper clear in a way that was completely unnatural.

Blinking rapidly, she covered her face, and the image of rocks, greenery, and a blue sky faded. When she moved her hands away, it returned.

This wasn’t like before, when Merikh had shared his sight.

It was her own viewpoint. She could change it and move where she focused it, but it was disorientating. It’d been years since she’d truly seen anything physical, and it was an overload to her senses.

The red ring never faded, but it also never impacted her vision. It did make the outer rim of her sight glow, but the middle was utterly clear – clearer than she’d ever been able to see before.

What she saw took her breath away.

When she’d imagined the sky, she hadn’t pictured such a light shade of blue. The fluffy white clouds were like those back home, but the singular sun beyond was yellow. The three suns at home were green, blue, and red, which often shaded the world in different hues, depending on which was closer in its yearly rotation.

The lush greens were also varying shades. The grass was lighter than she expected, but some of the trees were darker. Their bark was truly brown, when she’d thought it would have a redness to it, like the sap in her realm.

And finally... the canyon was far larger than she could have ever expected it to be. It was like a planet-sized giant had stabbed the ground with a knife and cut through it.

Raewyn let out a sharp gasp and backed away from the edge Merikh had let her be dangerously close to. The fall looked long and fatal.

Her gaze shot to a waterfall spewing into the canyon not too far away. She’d been able to hear it, but she hadn’t appreciated how close it truly was.

Movement caught the corner of her eye as an arm reached up, covered in a red flannel shirt.

“What the fuck?” Merikh spat, covering his own face with sharp black claws. “Why can’t I see?”

Her lips parted as she, for the first time, truly saw her travelling companion.

His feet were bare, the flesh of them a dark grey with little black claws on his toes. His pants were black, loose, fitted to him by a brown belt. His shirt had been altered on the sides to fit his massive frame, two triangles of cream cloth making it bigger, like he’d sewed them on himself.

Short, glossy black fur poked out from his pants and shirt cuffs.

What had the warmth draining from her expression was when he removed his dark-grey clawed hands from his head, and she saw his face.

It was a pure-white bear skull covered in what she could only imagine was his version of scarring. The dark-brown, curling horns on top of his head almost appeared devilish, like he’d come from the pits of damnation. His eye sockets were empty though, when he’d told her he had glowing orbs there.

She covered her eyes once more.

Uttering under her breath, she whispered, “You gave me your sight?”

She couldn’t believe this. She could literally see!

It had been over six Nyl’therian years since she’d been able to see the sky, the ground, her own hands! She’d almost forgotten what her hands looked like! She stared down at the backs of them, her eyes widening.

Holy mother...She brought her fingertips closer to inspect them.I really need to clean my nails.

It was the weirdest thing to focus on, but it immediately made her smile.

“What do you mean, I gave you my sight?” Merikh growled, before blindly reaching in her direction. “Give it back.”

Raewyn’s feet moved of their own accord as she stepped back to escape his reach. She hadn’t meant to, she really hadn’t, but she didn’t want him to take it back... yet?

When he stepped forward a second time, her heart swelled with guilt as she purposefully stepped back again. She panted as anxiety gripped her sternum.

The way Merikh’s bony head twisted was unnatural. It tilted until it was nearly upside down.

His following snarl sent a spike of fright through her, but she quickly squashed it down. He knew, whether because he missed her twice or because he could hear rock shifting under her feet, that she was retreating.

“Give it back, Raewyn,” he demanded, stepping further away from the bags he’d been checking.

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