Page 26 of The Alien Noble's Little Human

“Has anyone ever died on a chordata up here?”

Rylan and Taurek look at each other, and I know the answer before they say anything. The higher we go, the more treacherous things are.

“In a word? Yes.” Rylan snickers, and now I don’t know if he’s actually joking.

“But it’s not common,” Taurek adds. “Especially if you’re a skilled rider.”

“Any opportunity you have to bring up your glory days…”

“It’s just a fact.”

I look at Rylan, trying to get a hint as to what he’s talking about.

“Regale the peasants with your tales of heroism,” I urge.

Rylan lets out an enormous laugh.

“Well, before your hero here was famous for riding a throne, he competed astride a chordata.”

“Like gladiatorial fights to the death?”

“Not quite.”

“Will you do some tricks later? This I have to see,” I tease with a laugh. Although I mock it, the idea of Taurek attuned to every single muscle in his body sends tendrils of desire circling.

“Keep laughing. When it gets more treacherous, see how funny it is. Hubris is not appealing up here. Or useful. The sport is preparation for survival. I’ve had close calls where my companions’ mistakes led to their demise.”

Every once in a while, something snaps me out of my delusion that this is another camping trip. Like finding out that at least one in twenty travelers through these crags never leave. At least not alive. Or that even someone as privileged as Prince Taurek has borne witness to violent accidental deaths up here on the same trails we’re traveling.

A few times, I’ve spotted some debris in the distance, thinking it’s discarded provisions from a traveler who packed too much or remnants of a campfire. Inevitably, it’s the body of someone left behind, too heavy or decomposed to carry.

I sit in silence, thinking about the kinds of people who have trekked to these mountains and the reasons why. What were they seeking that led them to seek their death? I imagine riding a chordata that lost its footing, bodies disintegrating from the acidic geysers that rise up from the canyons, or simply giving out from exposure, frostbite, exhaustion, or losing the will to live.

It took a lot for me to come out here, and we’re here for the most important cause there is – preserving the life of an innocent child.

I wonder if my life would have been different if a kingdom had mobilized to find a cure for my sickness. It baffled doctors but with different symptoms from Hanai’s. The cure was different, too, but worked on the same principle. It didn’t just treat the symptoms.

It altered the genetics to repair the body’s processes. With Hanai, it’s electrical signals. With me, it was my hormones not traveling through my body, as if they got stuck at the delta of a muddy river. Like the human illness diabetes, but everywhere.

Most people don’t come here to find cures, and knowledge of roxolite is practically as rare as the element itself. Were the ill-fated travelers seeking adventure? Or running from something? Or trying to siphon the greatest hit of pure life by brushing up against death?

“This doesn’t look good.” Taurek stops his chordata suddenly, pulling its reins as the silken-haired beast looks around, puzzled.

“What doesn’t look good?” All I see is a light dusting of snow falling softly, a welcome reprieve from the gale-force winds we’ve faced the last few days. I wrap my fur closer against my shoulders.

“The sky. With the moisture and air pressure, the freezing rain will fall like bullets. We have to seek shelter fairly quickly. But seeking shelter isn’t the most difficult part.”

“What is then?”

“First, we don’t know how long this ice storm will last. Sometimes days. And once it stops, there’s the issue of repairs.”

“Repairs?”

Rylan chimes in. “We rely on bridges to cross the crevasses. We rely on fixed ropes from previous travelers. The shards destroy them”

“And think of all the supplies we have to fit into the shelter.”

“And we don’t have long to find one,” Rylan adds, craning his neck to the sky.

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