AQUIVER || Award-winning short stories about love won and lost

Unmarked

My people have one purpose in life, and it marks them from birth.

When a Grearus brings his offspring into the world, each perfect young has pointy ears with a tiny tuft of fur at the tip, velvet golden skin and a red thread-like mark etched onto its tiny forearm.

Our Goddess gifts every member of our species with a unique pattern on their body, matching them with the mate destined for them. The marks swirl or angle in intricate patterns and grow more beautiful with every year of a Grearus' existence. When two sides of a pair finally meet, when they touch for the first time, the mark burns bright and shifts to indigo blue, the colour reminiscent of the calm resulting from the perfect unison between mates.

Our planet is one of love and unity, fated pairs roaming the blue meadows to pick black flowers blooming at their bare feet.

I was born without the Mark.

According to our priests, I was the first one in recorded history with untouched golden skin. The implications were too horrendous to even consider.

For the first time, there was a Grearus without fated mate, without the soul-deep purpose to search and unite. The priests whispered about the danger of the Unmarked. Too many of us, and the unity in our world would shatter. Purposeless as they considered any Unmarked, they could only imagine misery and war would follow.

The sole reason they tolerated my existence was because I was no danger on my own.

My father tried. He came up with a myriad of theories about my faulty design. He claimed the Goddess had another purpose for me, and all I had to do was find it.

His love—despite the murmurs, despite the wary looks and condemnation of our community—was what got me through the first score of my existence. His belief in my worth spurred me on.

Slowly, I came to realise that my bare forearms represented a blank slate. Where every other Grearus was destined to find his mate, I was free to find my own path.

The young I grew up with started their search as soon as they assembled the means to travel our planet, eager to attend the mating gatherings organised in every community.

Meanwhile, I buried myself in the velvety scrolls covered with our script, its curls and swirls as mesmerising as the Marks on the forearms of every Grearus that surrounded me. If there was a purpose for an Unmarked, I thought I might find it in the writings recording our history and rules.

At first, I studied the scrolls I had easy access to in our local temple and only found the stories the priests recited to us in their Wisdom Chants. Every night, they sang to the community gathered around the fires as the two moons, Greac and Erus, rose on the horizon. Just like the image of the two moons rotating around one another, symbol of the fated mate every Grearus possessed, was burned into my mind, the words of the Wisdom Chants were etched into my very soul.

When I'd read all scrolls kept in our temple, I realised I had to widen my search. Saving up every chunk of obsidian I earned by harvesting black flowers, I bought every scroll I could get my hands on, some from traders who only lurked on the outskirts of our community.

The scrolls with legends I'd never heard before gave me the first hints. Buried among the endless stories about fated pairs and the quest to find one's mate, there were stories about a red-and-gold planet, so unlike the shades of blue and black that coloured our own planet. The swirling script told stories about terracotta skies and golden rock, crimson rivers and yellow flowers.

My rational mind told me these were tales made up to soothe crying young. Still, the stories took over my waking hours and my every dream.

When my research brought me across the vast expanse of the black sea to the temples and traders in other Grearus communities, I found more scrolls by the hand of other priests and historians telling similar stories. Doubt hooked its tiny claws in my mind and soul.