Page 12 of Rifted Hearts
Kaveh didn’t understand the overwhelming urge to have physical intimacy so many people—Riftworld or human—felt, an urge he didn’t share. Attraction and love had come to him only once and likely would not come again. He was fine with that.
As for human-Riftworld marriages, Kaveh visited the Saguaro Rift monstertown frequently and had a clinic where he saw many patients in such relationships. He didn’t talk about his work there even with his friends at Moon Star Ranch, like Kat and Garreth, and he certainly wasn’t going to share that information with Remi.
“I suppose for some people it might work out,” Kaveh said. “Love is strange at times.”
Remi laughed at that. “I suppose that type of love could get quite strange indeed.” Those words held enough innuendo that even Kaveh noticed. “The docudramas love to talk about the Matchmaker curse. You know, when somemonster falls into obsessed love with a human and carries them off.”
“I’ve heard of the Matchmaker, yes.” Kaveh had heard far more than he wanted to. The Matchmaker was responsible for ending Kaveh’s only romantic relationship. He certainly didn’t want to talk about that with Remi, so he kept his gaze set on the path ahead.
They lapsed into a silence Kaveh welcomed. This man had a talent for finding topics of conversation that made Kaveh uncomfortable.
Marriage brokering in human society was an occupation for social busybodies who liked to bring people together, out of altruism or profit. The Matchmaker—whether it was a sentient creature or a set of natural laws which acted intelligently, scholars and the religious disagreed on this point—was viewed with deep respect in drakone society. It was a complex and ancient process humans would call magic and took into account factors no living individual could predict. The unions brought together by the Matchmaker might cement political alliances that would become critical decades later, or it might lead to warring factions reaching a mutually beneficial truce during times of conflict.
After the Sundering, the relationships brought together by the Matchmaker began to include inter-clan marriages that horrified traditionalists, including ones between rift people and humans. Ceto, the matriarch of a clan of aquatic drakones who lived offshore of Massachusetts, had recently been paired with a human man and was scandalously proud of her new husband.
The ride wove in and out of the famous saguaros, with shorter plants adapted to the desert climate interspersed at a distance that gave the impression the landscape had been planned out by an expert gardener. They climbed up ahigher elevation, the horses picking their way through the rocks. The animals were extensively trained on the trails and could all but find their way out and back blindfolded.
At the summit, Kaveh gestured toward a cluster of cookie-cutter single family homes down in the valley. Other structures not resembling any human architecture sprouted amongst the buildings.
“That’s the Saguaro Rift monstertown. It was a housing development in progress when the rifts opened worldwide. Now it houses about a thousand inhabitants.” Kaveh pointed to the remains of the abandoned military installation, gray and gloomy against the tawny desert landscape. “The base is also home to numerous Riftworld species.”
The ranch guests nudged their horses closer, chatting amongst themselves about monsters and if they might see one. An older woman with a professorial air about her asked a question about water rights, a fraught topic in Arizona and the West in general. Kaveh explained the interspecies agreement that allowed water to be shared across the rift, allowing both the monstertown and Moon Star Ranch to be fully supplied with the rare resource.
He left out that he’d been the one to negotiate the agreement. It wasn’t a secret that Kaveh facilitated communication between the drakone clan and human society, but he didn’t like to advertise it either.
Remi put on a pair of dark sunglasses, appearing uninterested, but Kaveh had the sense his eyes were assessing the settlement with more than the typical curiosity of a guest at the ranch.
“Do the mons there allow visitors?” Remi asked. “Salem’s version gets quite a few tourists.”
“By invitation only,” Kaveh snapped back more sharply than he had intended. He tried to add a friendlier note as hestarted down the mountain slope to the final viewing point on the ride. “Except on Wednesdays. There’s an open-air market and getting permission to visit and shop is usually granted for small groups.”
“I’m not one to miss an opportunity to go shopping.” Remi tensed as Ranger stumbled on a loose stone, swaying for a moment before moving faster to catch up with Pogo. Kaveh was certain the horse had done it on purpose. “I’m sure Garreth could get me in. Would you like to join me and tell me all about the scary townies we might meet?”
There was an intensity to Remi’s voice, as if the words took an unusual effort to say, despite his light tone.
“I have a clinic on Saturday afternoon.” Kaveh didn’t want to add that the clinic was in the monstertown and he could easily spend the morning there with Remi. Was this more flirting, or did the blogger genuinely want to learn about the community there? Maybe he was being too hard on the man, so worried about his own secrets being revealed that he was finding conspiracies where none existed.
They approached a turn in the path, and Kaveh was relieved to hear the amazed gasps of the guests in front of them. There was nothing like a first look at the rift to bring an end to an awkward conversation.
A few kilometers away, the saguaro forest ended in a rippling wall of light and color. The phenomenon had been compared to the aurora borealis, and it stretched up from the ground to soaring heights against a clear blue sky, extending hundreds of kilometers in length. The natural laws of this world didn’t apply to it, so even though it was little more a meter in depth, entering it on either side meant traveling to the piece of the Riftworld that had been sundered from the whole.
It was Kaveh’s home—and it wasn’t. As much as he wasgrateful for the care and protection the drakones there had given him as a child, he didn’t feel he belonged among them. And since he wasn’t human, he didn’t fit in on this side of Saguaro Rift either.
Kaveh brought his horse to a halt alongside Remi and sent out more soothing thoughts to Ranger so he didn’t try something while the blogger was distracted by the view. As he did so, a long shape appeared in the sky, and the guests began to exclaim and point overhead.
Above them floated a red-and-gold drakone, a massive serpent swimming through the atmosphere as if it was water. Xiang Jao —Kaveh recognized his clan matriarch in her stunning aerial form—twisted and floated in intricate patterns. Two more drakones came into view, Rhys and Tarasque, Xiang Jao’s two husbands. The three of them must have decided to take a mating flight out past the boundary.
Well, today’s guests were certainly getting their money’s worth.
Kaveh was soon barraged by questions from the group, starting with why the drakones resembled giant floating serpents as opposed to the winged and fire-breathing reptiles depicted in human myth and legend. That led into explanations about marital relations among air drakones and their dual forms, one humanoid and the other enormous and aerial. The conversation took all of his concentration, and he only had a chance to see Remi’s reaction after Xiang Jao and her husbands turned back and swam out of sight through the rift.
The blogger had been oddly quiet during the excitement of the drakones’ appearance, and he cupped his hands around something when he noticed Kaveh’s attention.
“I was trying to take a picture with my watch.” He did anexcellent imitation of an embarrassed grin. “Silly, right? Everyone knows tech won’t work out here.”
Ranger snorted then gave a mild buck, little more than a wiggle, but Remi wasn’t expecting it. He grabbed the saddle horn with both hands, and the watch he’d been holding tumbled to the ground.
Kaveh swung off Pogo and bent over to pick it up. There were reasons the ranch staff advised guests not to bring along Earth technology on a ride this close to the rift. Losing a smartwatch wasn’t the worst that could happen.
