Covnan Book One: Auros

Four

“I named you,” Auros asked incredulously.

She nodded and looked out the window at the skyline as she said, “The Council chose you to protect me...to be a Guardian...they’d never named me...I was always just little one to them.”

So the Council was real, Auros thought.  He’d have questions about them later, but for now he needed to know what she knew about him.

“How much do you know about me being hurt?”  he asked.

“To be honest, not much,” she replied, “though I do know you tried to hurt yourself very badly.”

Looking down, he said, “Yeah...yeah I did.”

“Please don’t do that again,” she whispered, so quietly he could barely hear her.

He looked up at her and was surprised to see she was looking directly at him.  Even more surprising were the tears at the corners of her eyes, tears he knew he didn’t deserve.

Looking away from her slightly, eye contact still too much for him right now, he said, “Look...I don’t know why this...Council...chose me to protect you...I’m not a protector...I ruin most everything I touch...you probably should have left me in that alley.”

“They said you would say something like that...the Council saw something in you, something that nobody else has...their vision is stronger, but I think I see it too...just barely.”

Touching his chest, Auros thought about Luna...her smell, her touch...the arguments….about Mark holding her and telling her it’d be ok.  

He thought about losing his job because he couldn’t keep up with everyone else, losing his apartment...those first few nights sleeping behind restaurants.

“Yohai...I just don’t know.”

“I trust the Council, Auros...and even though I can only kind of see that special thing that they see...I can see that you’re a good person,” she said, her voice firm.

He looked away, disagreeing with her, but not wanting to push the matter.

Leaning against the wall to his left was another him.

He was taken aback...but the other him locked eyes and didn’t even react, almost like he expected to see a duplicate of himself.

Auros blinked and his other self was gone, as though he hadn’t been there.

Somehow he doubted that Yohai had seen it.

Remembering something Luna had said to him during a fight some time ago, he said, “Maybe I am going crazy.”

Yohai touched his arm and said, “I think everyone goes a little mad sometimes.”

The words reverberated through his head and as they spread, they lit the bed on fire, black as a shadow on a moonless night, the flames spread near instantly, surrounding him in black, heatless inferno.

Those red eyes, the only color in the darkness, just in the distance.

So small they had to be miles away, but they shone so bright he saw them as though they were right in front of him.

A voice spoke, surrounding him in sound, deep and timeless, so ancient that the voice may have existed since the beginning of time, “You do not know your strength...or what you will become.”

Auros tried to speak, but his words died in his throat, falling from his mouth and landing at his feet. 

They gathered and gathered until he was buried in his own excuses and fears.

“ep in the bed with you?”

“What,” Auros asked dumbly.

Yohai shivered a bit in the cold room, a draft blowing through the space, and for the first time, Auros noticed that she was dressed in little more than a thin dress and sandals, far too little for this time of year.

“Can I sleep in the bed with you...they forgot to bring me a blanket and I don’t want to ask again…”

His head drained of thought for a moment and he said, “I..you...are you sure?  I could just give you the blanket and use the sheet.”

She shook her head and said, “Honestly...I’ll feel safer next to you.”

He wondered at that for a second and said, “You’re dressed pretty light...if you want to, you can...but I’ll turn the other way, ok?”

He shifted and rolled away from her, and when she got into the bed and under the blanket he asked, “I’ve been here for three days...did something happen?”

He felt the bed move slightly as she shook her head and said, “Almost...but the other you stopped it while you slept.”

“The other me,” he asked, thinking of the him that had watched him from the wall.

A soft breath followed by a quiet snore answered him...and he was struck with a sudden sense of wonder as a thought crossed his mind, unbidden.

“You really do trust me,” he said quietly.

Her breathing slowed and deepened as she slept, and laying in the darkness of the room, he thought about what she’d said and about his past, about his failures and all the ways he’d gone wrong in his time.

“I wish I could understand why.”

The sun rose and the light gently filtered through the now closed curtains, waking Auros up with a kiss.

Trying to open his eyes, he was almost instantly awake when he saw Luna glaring at him.

Looking around for Yohai, he felt a pressure on his chest and looked down to see that she had turned and was now holding him in her sleep.

“Sleep well,” Luna asked, clearly annoyed.

Mark stood next to her and raised an eyebrow, smirking softly as he said, “If we’d known you’d be...sleeping so well, we probably wouldn’t have rushed on over.”

Auros tried to speak, but Luna sat in a nearby chair and crossed her arms, her lips pursed and gaze focused, stonelike, on Yohai.

He knew that gaze, and knew better than to say anything.

The him sitting at the end of the bed laughed and said, “Man, we really pissed her off this time.”

Trying not to answer himself, a strange and uncomfortable thing to have to do, Auros looked past him and said, “Luna, she was cold.”

This was the wrong thing to say.

“Oh, I’m sure she was.  I’m sure she was absolutely freezing in this temperature controlled hospital bedroom,” she said in a huff.

“I didn’t even think about the thermostat,” he replied lamely.

Somewhere inside himself, he knew that this was also the wrong thing to say.

Before she could fire back another retort, Mark said, “Well...Doc says you’re healed faster than he was expecting, so we can take you home now.”

Sitting up, Auros gently touched Yohai’s cheek and said, “Hey...its time to go.”

Why did he say that?

What did he mean by that?

Mark couldn’t think of any way to play this off, and Luna was immediately up and shouting, “What the HELL do you mean by that?!”

If the mana she’d radiated yesterday had been a storm, this was a cataclysm of energy, sudden and intense, and dangerous.

It crashed into him and threatened to shake him loose from himself, terrifying in a way he’d never experienced before.

Mark put his hand on her shoulder and she was immediately calming down, though clearly it took tremendous effort on her part.

Auros had always envied that about Mark.

He had a way of calming Luna down and making her less afraid or angry when she started to spiral.

Looking down, Auros said, “She...doesn’t have anywhere to go.  I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to just say that, I don’t know where it came from…”

A slight pain raced behind his eyes for a few moments, though not so bad he couldn’t ignore it this time.

Mark said, “We don’t have any space man, you know you’re barely in a room as it is.”

“Then let her stay in the room and I’ll figure something else out…”

Maybe leaving their place would be good for him, he thought.

Luna said, “Absolutely not!  I’m not putting you on the street for some strange girl who could do anything to us in our sleep.”

Auros sighed and tried to quiet himself and said, “You’re right...I can’t ask that of you.”

Luna started to nod, interrupted by him continuing, “We’ll find somewhere else then...I feel I’ve already made things harder on you guys as it is anyway…”

It wasn’t a bluff.

Before he’d decided to take his toll free elevator ride off the Sundover building, he’d been thinking of leaving anyway...being with Luna and Mark was...difficult.

Mark sighed, hard and loud, and said, “Look...Luna, come with me.”

Looking at him with outrage, Luna followed Mark outside and Auros turned to the still sleeping Yohai.

Brushing some hair off her face, he raised an eyebrow and said, “The Council sure picked a winner, huh.  Homeless crazy suicidal man.  I’d hate to see who they’d pick if they hated you.”

Twenty minutes passed, then thirty, then an hour, and Auros could hear muffled talking and shouting from the hallway.

Finally the door opened and Mark said, “She can come...but you really need to find some kind of work...I can’t support four of us.”

Yohai had woken up and when Mark finished talking, she said, “Can I have a moment?  I need to get changed.”

Mark nodded and didn’t ask why Auros was allowed to stay, taking it in stride, just smirking again at Auros.

Auros looked at Yohai and said, “Change?”

Yohai turned away from him and stuck her arms out, snapping her fingers.

Her clothes started to sparkle and glow with light and suddenly she was in a T-Shirt and Jeans, a bag hanging around her shoulders and resting on her hip.  She pulled a phone out of the bag and turned her head toward him and winked.

She turned fully toward him and handed him the phone, smiling widely and then started walking to the door, practically bouncing.

He turned the phone over in his hands and, seeing that it was his, now fixed as though it hadn’t been broken, said, “I’m in trouble.”