Page 12 of A Soul to Steal

“Take you? I thought you were leading the way.”

Gideon straightened up. “Why would I be leading the way? I don’t know where we are or what this place is like. I remember someone mentioning you’ve been here for a month, and I only just woke up. Why don’t you show me what’s here? I’ll happily follow your lead.”

Aleron nodded, despite his shoulders turning inward self-consciously. He didn’t know where to take the human, since he didn’t know what he’d like to see.

There were many places within Tenebris.

“I could... take you to the other Mavka who lives here.”Aleron couldn’t think of anywhere else to take the little human, and perhaps he could help get the silent serpent Mavka to talk. If so, then Aleron may no longer need Gideon’s presence so desperately.“It is far, though.”

“The further, the better.” Gideon pointed with his head and, with a spike of humour in his tone, stated, “Lead on, Captain.”

Aleron hesitantly stepped forward, only to turn right when he remembered it was in the other direction.I hope we do not get lost.He was used to flying across Tenebris.

Then again, he always seemed to head the correct way no matter what he did, as though he instinctually knew the way.

“I could fly us both there,”Aleron offered, dipping his skull to the side when the human came to walk next to his right shoulder.“It would be faster.”

Gideon’s firm lips tightened as his eyes drifted over their surroundings. There wasn’t much to see, as a mist constantly overshadowed the land like a barrier between towns and forests. Most of what was around them consisted of hills and valleys of densely packed trees. Only where they walked the sun appeared, as if it followed them – although Aleron knew that wasn’t true, just the perspective of walking across the ground.

“No offense, but I don’t know how I feel about flying.” He shot Aleron a twisted expression. “The southlands, which is where I’m from, doesn’t have many mountain ranges. I’ve never been up high, so I don’t know if I’d be comfortable with that.”

“You do not know until you try,”Aleron responded, confused about his hesitancy.

Now that Aleron knew how to fly, it felt so... natural. He hadn’t known how to before he came to the afterworld.

“That’s true, but...” He cast Aleron an odd smile. Why did it seem like the more he did it, the less genuine it felt? “We have no reason to rush. I’m guessing time is meaningless here. This is forever, so why rush through it when we can just take our time? Is there an end to this world?”

Aleron drifted his sight to the sky.“I have not found an end, but all I know is that it is round.”

“Aren’t most worlds round? We knew enough to understand that about Earth, and that there are other planets somewhere out there. Even the stars are round.”

The Earth is round?Aleron had not known this.

“You know a lot. Could you teach me more?”

“Sure, I can teach you all I know, but it’s actually not that much since there were many books I never had the chance to finish reading. It was just some shit I learned in school and at the library. I enjoyed reading texts rather than fiction.”

About half of what Gideon said was coherent to him.“What is a library?”

“It’s a place you can go to borrow books. Ashpine City, which is about a five-day walk from where I grew up, had the biggest library in the region, but Fishket’s was pretty big. I used to help volunteer as a scribe in my free time, since many of the books were decaying. Since I liked reading about astrology, psychology, and philosophy, and most people don’t, I was able to choose the books I’d like to scribe and learnt a bit. I’m not that smart, though, so not all of it sunk in.”

“You seem pretty smart to me,”Aleron grumbled, unsure of what was required to be deemed ‘smart.’

His own mind felt like a lost cause, especially the more the human spoke. A graininess lingered – like his thoughts and his ability to piece things together were broken.

An odd, yet subtle, pinkness lifted into the high ridge of Gideon’s cheeks. “Thanks. I tried really hard to learn, especially for my parents. My birth parents died when I was really young, but I knew we were poor since they weren’t able to enrol me in school. My adopted parents enrolled me, but I was already behind, and the other kids made fun of me. I wanted to do well with the opportunity given to me and make my new parents proud, so I studied hard and tried to be an information sponge.”

“Your learning was stunted because you were notenrolledearly enough?”Aleron asked, curiosity lacing his tone.

“Well, of course,” he responded, lifting an arm to shrug with it. “How the fuck are you supposed to learn anything if no one teaches you? Half the time people come across as idiots because no one gave them a chance to learn. We judge people for beinguneducated, when really it’s the way society is that fails them. They aren’t stupid; they just aren’t able to reach their true potential.”

“I see...”Aleron’s wings dipped as his sight turned blue, and he looked at the ground.“I do not think this is the same for Mavka. Much of what you have said I do not understand, but I can also tell that I am not able to properly absorb it either. There is a blankness in my mind. I do not think a library will be useful for me.”

“I’m guessing Mavka is the term you Duskwalkers use to call each other?”

“It is what the Demons call us. I believe it means ‘forest creature.’”

He ducked his blue sight to Gideon, whose head had dipped forward to look upon Aleron’s skull better.

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