Empyrean Iris Story Collection Vol. 3

An Agreement

Sunny stared.

Dzara stared.

Adam stared in open mouth wide eyed shock, that was, admittedly, not particularly flattering to his face, though the shock in the room was so palpable it was almost opaque and blocked anyone from noticing his dumb expression.

Sunny stammered once, "D-daughter."

Dzara lifted her head high with an imperiousness born out of years and years of holding her head against ridicule.

"Yes. We are sisters."

Adam reached up and rubbed his head and then his good eye and then his head again.

Sunny shook her head slowly, dumbfounded just trying to wrap her head around what she was being told.

Her mother had had more Kits.

Granted she had abandoned those other ones.... But of course she had always assumed that she and Kanan had been the only ones, or at least that any others had been thrown bodily into the fire, bu she supposed what Dzara was saying made sense. Drev mothers, and Drev in general were very protective of their young, and that didn't change ust because your child was born with some sort of deformity or disability. Granted the movement of their culture and the social rules had made it impossible for mothers to keep their children, but that didn't mean that any of them were going to have the heart to actually kill them.

"So let me, get this straight. You are saying that there is an entire nation of Drev, like you and these others, who..... who we didn't know about, who are in hiding because of-"

Dzara lifted her head, "Because like you we have been ridicule and mocked and might even have been killed if we had been seen."

Standing off to the side Adam looked Dzara up and down slowly.

He had been mostly forgotten for the moment, and that gave him some time to think. Dzara stood at about his head height with her chin raised.

He agreed with Sunny on their thought process, Dzara raised her head with the imperious nature of someone who had learned to stand under a very heavy weight, but there was soemthing about her that made him think that maybe she had taken it too far. The kind of person who had to fight for themselves for so long that all they understood was being serious.

They were going to have to tread very lightly around Dzara as he was under the impression she would be insulted very easily.

He glanced over at Sunny and wondered if she had come to the same conclusion.

He wasn't sure that she was likely to.

Sunny had always been focused on her physical survival rather than her emotional survival. It had cost her pretty badly in the mental health department, so she didn't really pay attention to those sorts of things, but she did pay attention to physical threats. By the way she was carrying her spear at her side made it pretty clear that she did not consider anyone in this room a threat.

She was right to think that.

The two of them together would have been able to take most of these Drev out.

The vast majority of them had some form of physical malformation or another, legs or arms twisted and causing limps and catches. Of course there were others who were missing hearing, and one or two who appeared to have difficulty seeing. That would give him and Sunny a slight advantage, and with their training it would be possible if not easy.

She had certainly come to that conclusion.

But the rest of it?

Sunny shifted almost uncomfortably on her heels not sure how to take this new information. Dzara stared at her, those familiar golden eyes making sense now that she knew where she had seen them.