Star Side

Chapter 27

The maiden was calling to him.

He couldn't recall when she had left his protective position. He'd been lost in the feel of her contact with his wing, then the swirling pain of his head. Nausea flipped his stomach inside out. His claiming venom had long gotten out of control and tainted with digestive saliva. He could hardly think, let alone remember.

But she was calling. Calling to him in soft waves of concern. So sweet. So kind. A fruit no being could resist.

The call tugged with a line of need. She needed him. How? Need...need...need him there...need him to her...follow?

The need moved his limbs beneath him. He could only crawl now. The smell of his own sick made his head spin. It had gotten hard to breathe again.

What was wrong with him?

Then the light begun to increase and he stopped, hissing in pain. He shut his eyes tight.

Concern? Concern? Oh! Realize, realize! Hurry hurry!

The light died down to an acceptable dimness and he could see again. The maiden was before him, in reach, still blessedly in reach. Not that he would touch her. Not that he would do such horrible offense. Even if his wing had already crossed that line, he couldn't find it in himself to feel guilty. She had wanted the wing. She had wanted to fix it.

He crawled on. He was in the tunnels again, a youth, forced to crawl along the sharp stone paths until his skin hardened. But this time, instead of his father at the end, it was the maiden, ever ushering him on.

Past her, a black smudge against the dim, was the divine being of death. But since he didn't get any closer, Gilrack didn't mind him. This was heaven, after all, his realm.

But the maiden was not death's realm. Not yet. Not ever.

After what seemed to be an eternity a familiar scent cross his nose. Something about the taste of the air rung familiar. He raised his heavy, throbbing head, expecting to see the overlands forests, but instead found a very strange world of leaves and metal. The plants grew from boxes, pots, and even dirt from the floor, but in a pattern not natural at all.

It was a garden. A garden of plants from the land.

He breathed in deep and found the aching of his jaw easing a bit. His head throbbed just a bit less.

The maiden called to him still, standing in a puddle of color, and—once his hand touched it—a puddle of soft. His heart leaped so high and hard it hurt.

A nest.

To think, the maiden would have—that he'd be so honored to touch a nest of her making—for her smell was smeared here and there as testament—he dove into it, crooning with happiness. He could be sick forever if it meant she'd make him nests, and oh the softness! And the colors! What a lovely female, what talent! Could she get any more perfect!

None of his kind had ever thought the forests of the overworld comforting. Home had always been the stones and caverns of the deep. But there, sick, weak, vulnerable, and encompassed all about in his maiden's nest, the smell of the plantlife had never been so divine. Even as he breathed it in he thought he could feel his body loosening and his stomach settling.

The maiden didn't leave right away. He tried to stay awake, but wavered in and out of consciousness, occasionally jolting awake to his stiffened limbs seizing and shaking. He worried his venomous tail might accidentally lash out at her, so he stuffed it underneath himself, ignoring the discomfort in his rear that it brought. But each time he came to he could either see, smell, or sense her presence somewhere nearby, emitting those now familiar mind waves of concern.

At some point, the smell of meat came before him. His sick stomach both ached and churned at the smell. The maiden had it in her hands, and he would have eaten it just for that reason even if it was poison. But the thought of throwing it back up on her filled him with such utter humiliation he refrained, more afraid of being sick on her and surviving that eating poison and dying. But when she came back with water, he happily guzzled it up.

When had he ever been so tended to? Had his own mother been so attentive and kind? Never. What had even happened the last time he'd been sick? Oh yeah. He'd been left in his den. No one had even known he'd been sick. That was the way of his kind. Tending to the sick involved touch, and touch was strictly for mates, children, and soul friends, and Gilrack's only soul friend had been gone from the caves then. But even before that, his mother had left his siblings and him to fend for themselves when there were sick. She'd had too many children to begin with, and a royal couldn't risk so many dangers to their power.

When the maiden's hand accidentally brushed his face helping him drink, nothing could have stopped the explosive croon from his chest. His guilt was lost to the instant elation. She'd touched his face! His face! So warm! So soft! So sweet and divine!

He just resisted burying his face into her palm. His fangs had still been acting up. He couldn't risk scratching her or, perish the thought, touching her with unasked for claiming venom. No, never would he bite before she asked. Never.

But touch...touch...

He blamed his feverish mind when he next bumped against her hand. He knew what he was doing was wrong, even on at the edge of sin, but the sensation of being in contact with her, with his only, his maiden, was beyond anything he'd ever known. It filled him with thunderous croons. It made all pain void. It made everything he'd suffer until now a joy.

Because of that, his sleep was filled with dreams of touch. In a maddening swirl of colors too bright for the underworld she'd reach out to him and trace his face, his neck, his shoulders and arms, and when she reached his chest she would allow him to touch her. His imagination couldn't come up with how soft her skin must be, but the it still made his spines fall askew from their sockets and his tail go stiff. His fangs would lengthen and the claiming venom, rather than tacky and bitter, would taste sweet as she'd peel off her fine robes.

To bite...to claim...to finally feel what it was like to have another body pressed entirely up to your own, nothing but touch...

Then, after some time, he woke up to find his body no longer burning or his stomach and mouth flooding. He could see the metal encased garden clearly as well as the colorful patterns in the next he barely fit into. A plate of various foot stuffs he didn't recognized had been set just outside the nest along with a large bowl of water.

The divine maiden, however, was not. She had left, along with the divine being of death who always seemed to accompany her.