Page 82 of All That Has Flown Beyond
“Yikes.”
“You know, a lot of them weren’t such a problem. Like, there was one—” Kaiyo smiled, recalling the memory, and Ahmik smiled reflexively back. “There was one, they called itManekute no Yurei, that showed up if you went to the bathroom in the middle of the night. It would manifest as a hand that poked out of the hallway wall as you passed, and literally all you had to do was acknowledge it for it to go away.”
“What the fuck?” Ahmik laughed.
“I know, right? They only really became a problem if they showed themselves to Blinkered,” he said, referring to those who didn’t know about Ousía.
“Jesus, I bet. They’d probably piss themselves.”
“Well, they already had to go to the bathroom, so…” Kaiyo grinned.
Ahmik laughed. “We also had a mischievous—well, this one was an elemental. I have no idea what it wanted, but it would come to the pack house and just mess with shit in the night. Put holes in my boots, change the doorknobs. It did something to the wires of the toaster so that it sparked and scared the hell out of me when I turned it on.” Ahmik tried to glare, but it looked like a pout to Kaiyo.
“Oh my God.”
“I swear to God, Thea dragged her feet in helping just so she could laugh at me.”
“I wouldnotput it past her.”
They grinned at each other, shaking their heads.
“Was Amaya around then? I bet she would have gotten a kick out of that.”
“She was, but she’d just joined the pack. She was…adjusting. She’d, you know, been a meanderer for a while,” Ahmik said, his voice going quiet. “I can’t really…I mean, I, even with everything that happened, I can’t imagine being where she was. A meanderer.”
Kaiyo remained silent. The truth was,hecould. He knew what solitude and loss, complete loss, could do to you. “Yeah,” he said anyway, just to fill the silence that had fallen.
“Have you ever…I mean, you must have visited so many packs. Have you…is there one you, you know. Want to join?” Ahmik asked hesitantly.
“I mean…there are options, I guess,” Kaiyo said, not wanting to go into details. “But. It’s a big commitment. It’s like a marriage but…more, almost. You choose a family, but also a piece of land. You can leave, obviously, but…”
“Yeah.”
They both knew that no matter the circumstances, leaving a pack was incredibly difficult. It took a toll emotionally and psychologically; it had practical implications on where a person would move onto, especially if they were a shifter. All kinds of creatures could be part of a pack, but most shiftersneededone. In truth, Kaiyo was often frustrated that there wasn’t more of a system or protocol for abused shifters—or simply those that wanted to leave their pack—to do so.
“In any case,” Kaiyo went on. “It was cool to hang out with so many different packs, even if I wasn’t officially part of them. I got to see their little, you know, quirks and traditions. The kids, especially, were great.”
“You do seem to really get along with them. I’ve never seen Isla bond with someone like she’s done with you.”
Kaiyo shrugged. “Yeah. I mean, kids are just…I don’t know. They haven’t adopted as many social constraints as adults, and that can make them pretty harsh but more genuine as well. And the way some of them show their interest in things is just so…complete. Like, there was one kid who was obsessed withProject Runwayand would use me as a model for all his creations,” Kaiyo laughed.
“Bet you’d make a pretty model,” Ahmik said. Kaiyo looked at him, ready to joke back, but there was a heated spark in Ahmik’s eyes that rendered Kaiyo dumb. A visceral shudder went through him. He looked away.
“Well, it was better than Thea’s interests. Remember when she cut off the hair of her dolls and made a collage with it?”
“Jesus. I’d forgotten how weird she was,” Ahmik said, and Kaiyo laughed with him. “Although, you could get pretty caught up in things too,” Ahmik went on. “Like that time—and you were seventeen, by the way, not seven—that you found the book that had a description of some sort of…I don’t even know, plant or mushroom or something and you went looking for it and came backcompletelycovered in mud.Completely.”
“I may have fallen once or twice.”
“Kaiyo, you had mudeverywhere,” Ahmik complained.
Kaiyo smiled. Ahmik looked back at him, and he got caught up in the memory.
Ahmik had helped clean him, scrubbing away until all the caked mud was gone and then running a soft sponge across Kaiyo’s skin. They’d been wrapped up in the steam of the hot water, in the sound of it hitting the tiles. Kaiyo had become dozy with it. Ahmik had become transfixed on the task of taking care of him, bathing in the opportunity to have him still and pliant, skin sliding against skin in nothing but affection and love.
Kaiyo blinked back to the present as Ahmik’s fingertips brushed his arm. It could have been a mistake, an accidental touch, but it seeped right through him. Kaiyo felt melted into the couch, disintegrating in Ahmik’s warmth. In the memory and the reality of him.
“Yeah,” Kaiyo said, finishing a thought that hadn’t even been started.
