Page 16 of In This Iron Ground
“Dork.”
Hakan shoved Damien playfully. “How do you even know anything about eighties music?” Hakan asked. Damien averted his eyes, watching his fingers trace a pattern on the deep green comforter on Hakan’s bed.
“My dad used to really like that kind of music,” he said, soft like a secret. He felt Hakan press his shoulder to his slightly. “In summer, he would barbecue sometimes and he always put on the same playlist.…I remember once, he left the chicken out on the grill too long and a stray cat came and took a piece away…I laughed so hard. He screamed like a girl…” Damien said.
Very suddenly, he was close to tears. It was a pressure everywhere, deep in his head and pushing outwards. He hid his face against the bed, smelling Hakan all over as he took a deep, shaking breath. He let it out as he felt Hakan’s hand softly in his hair.
Hakan settled down beside him. They lay there. Hakan’s hand remained a steady warmth on his neck. Damien let it anchor him until he no longer felt adrift. He let the memories wash over him, swell after swell after swell, leaving that familiar, salty exhaustion behind. His ribs relaxed. His breath evened.
“So—”
“If you apologize for being upset about your parents dying, I’m gonna punch you,” Hakan said. Damien laughed wetly, turning his head to look at Hakan, inches away.
“Real sensitive,” Damien said. There was a pause as they looked at each other, neither electricity or pressure between them. Just calm.
“Thanks for telling me,” Hakan whispered, his voice an echo of the intimacy ringing within that moment. Damien smiled, shaking his head slightly. He closed his eyes for a moment, feeling soft, raw.
When they broke the moment to continue withDescender, they remained pressed together, only warmth joining them.
**********
A month and a half after the first dinner together, Mia called him into the library when he’d finished his homework.
“I want you to meet someone,” she said. Damien followed her, ignoring the trepidation in his bones.
He’d never been inside the library before. There was a couch below a wide window that let the twilight in and comfortable-looking armchairs around the room, the walls predictably lined with bookshelves. As Damien stepped fully inside, he saw that one of the chairs was occupied by a short, plump woman with the same Native American complexion as Mia.
“Hello,” she said, her kind face widening with a smile.
“Hi,” Damien replied quietly. He sat near the woman as Mia pointed to a chair and then joined them.
“It’s nice to finally meet you, Damien. My name is Nova,” the woman said. Damien nodded.
“It’s nice to meet you, too.”
“Damien, this is the pack shaman. I know you must have a lot of questions about a lot of things, and I thought she could help answer some of them,” Mia said. Damien looked between the two women.
“Okay,” he said. A silence stretched. “Um…what’s a shaman?” he blurted. They both smiled.
“Good question. That’s a bit of a complicated answer. Let me start at the beginning, okay?” Nova said.
Damien nodded.
“I think Mia mentioned about Ousía. Is that right?”
“Yeah.”
“How much do you know about that?”
“Um…not much. I’d never heard the word before. Mia said it’s like your…spirit?”
“Yes. That’s one way of putting it. Ousía is…everything in the physical world has Ousía. Objects, plants, animals, creatures. Ousía is what we call the essence of something, apart but also attached and essential to its physical form. To be something complete in the physical world, you need both the physical and the Ousía. Neither is more important than the other. One is not higher than the other. They are what makes something what it is. Something on someone’s Ousía is as unique as their physical form. It shares properties with the Ousía of similar things, but no two are the same. Does that make sense?”
“Uh…yeah.”
“What separates us—the shifters and the other types of people and creatures of our world—is our knowledge and our awareness of Ousía. Just as physical forms can influence each other in the physical world, Ousía can also interact. However, not everybody has the capacity to reach their Ousía or influence the Ousía of others. Those who do not know about Ousía at all, we call ‘Blinkered’.”
“Okay…”
