Shade of Deception (Two)

Two - SoD

Two:

Beauty and lies, they were all around us as I walked with Clarke. The illusion of the mighty human race, and the very thin veil of safety. Little did they know that people like me spent tiring hours late at night sealing rips in space-time, to maintain that veil.

Ok, so I was not yet mature enough to take all the flak with a grain of salt like the old folks tell me. A girl has a right to fume, so long as she does not zap any innocent civilians in her fowl moods. Brooding seemed almost an artform these days. As the days drew ever closer to my eighteenth, my heart weighed down more with the guilt of my lost love.

Ariel was the specter that would forever haunt the home of my heart. I would carry some sliver of her soul into my forever. She was the love which reminded me of the innocence and beauty in humanity, when all I can currently see is corruption, evil, and deception.

“It never ceases to amaze me how they will take to a beautiful lie and discard a bitter truth.”

I grumbled in a grumpy tone to Clarke, who snorted and looked down from his considerable height. He seemed to look almost more imposing by the day as his shoulders and chest expanded outward in a more prominently masculine manner. He was a hunk of a fudge brownie on campus, and every girl and their actual mothers wished to be his girl. Every girl likes her some sweets, and Clarke was an All-American boy-next-door who won’t cheat and who will blanket a girl with his own flesh and bone if danger came knocking.

So, when he looked down at me and gave me a reassuring smile and a playful wink, I shouldn’t have fumed more. I should have just come to expect the positive and up-beat Clarke routine. Being his best friend in the entire universe and sister from an ethereal mister, I retain the right to my hissy fits.

“Come on you, stop with the whole Zen master Yoda routine! Would it kill ya to get mad with me for a bit?!”

Clarke chuckled in middle amusement and sighed lowly.

“I believe you have the mad covered for both of us for the rest of time. I think of it as my personal job to counter-balance your perma-frost attitude.”

I looked at him crossly and muttered, “I am not cold, whatever!”

Clarke looked to the heavens, as if willing form some higher power the strength to carry on with his conversation with his frustrating friend.

“Ice can burn, just like heat, you should know that better than any normal person.”

Clarke was referring to the faust-flame I had conjured intuitively after witnessing several distinctly different expressions manifest in more simplistic manners. Senna had to transform to extinguish the absolute-zero fire spreading in the woods. To say she was angry, would be underselling her lethal emotions directed towards me. Sometimes it amazed me that she did not kill me. Senna made no apologies for her personal stance on my existence. She honestly believed that the Nix were endangered by my continued presence. Skylar, my other bestie, and her apex daughter had bested her mother effortlessly with a display of power and expression that rivaled my own shade capacity.

Sky had vowed to end me herself, should I ever betray her people. You might think a girl could lose sleep around such a ferocious declaration, but Sky and I had plenty of peaceful slumber parties after intense training hours. Sky’s house also came outfit with a functioning Japanese-style hot spring bath. For those who don’t already know, my human mother was Japanese, so color me sentimental. Though it seemed the shade Caucasian traits were fierce and prominent, my mixed heritage was still obvious to the casual observer. Even though my hair was brown and honey blonde mixed and the streaks of blonde appeared to lighten further only gradually with time.

Most notable of all, my violet eyes, which I am told reflect the power of my ethereal heritage.

“Mother was cross for weeks after that debacle. We are both lucky the challenge was already met, or you would have been beheaded where you stood.”

Skylar spoke dispassionately about beheadings, as she flipped her medium length red locks over her shoulder. She was still only five-zero, but she was now about a hundred pounds of sassy Nix dragoness. Her curves had begun to fill, and she looked womanlier. I would find her as enticing as the mythological sirens, if I did not perceive her like a silly little sister. Despite the popular trope propitiated in pop-culture, gay girls don’t just want to jump everyone! We have our own flavors and standards. Mine perceived the slightly younger girl as a little sister. She was hardly fragile or in need of protection, yet I felt defensive for her. Sky was a slightly newer piece of my heart I had only recently discovered. We embraced our profound connection, despite how illogical it was that we met and instantly forged lasting immortal bonds.

“Jesus, don’t you ever enter a conversation the normal way?!”

Clarke chastised her, and she smiled at him, but gave nothing of her mood away.

“Normal is extremely relative to whom you are speaking. My sense of normal would indeed include the jest I just made.”

Sky said mater-of-fact, and Clarke shook his head in disbelief.

“That was a joke to you? We need to teach you some basic mortal manners!”

Clarke didn’t dislike Sky, they just tended to run in a very confusingly hot mood around one another. Ever since the first time I observed them, I often wondered if it was romantic interest towards Clarke or if Sky just enjoyed teasing him and getting his goat. For Clarke, it seemed like he was forever unable to articulate something towards Sky. They were an unwilling and unplanned comedy act in my life.

“Again, humor is relative, depending on...”

Skylar begand.

“Your audience, I know.”

Clarke finished for her and Sky huffed and looked away as if she were already tired of this topic. She was very much a princess in her world. She ruled, and she was accustomed to being groveled to by men. She was from a social normal where the apex males around her still bent to her. Clarke was as strong-willed as they came, and he did not cater to Sky like she was accustomed. No matter how well she behaved like a human when eyes were on her, Skylar was forever alien to the species.

“In other news, I heard our favorite sub shop in Philly is open again. What do you say we make a day of it after we finish our expression training tomorrow?”

I asked looking between the pair. They nodded almost in unison. The two things that cemented them together were their mutual love of me, and their love of good Philly Cheese Steaks. Not surprisingly, dragoness love meat and cheese, and so do growing evolved human males.

“I’m so down!”

Clarke said, and Sky just nodded and grinned a toothy grin. Only someone who has seen the dragon, could find this small girl’s smirk terrifying. She was just an adorable pubescent ginger who appeared every inch the Celtic beauty that her Nix parents had planned for her to appear. Senna had purposefully chosen certain human genes to incorporate with Skylar’s directed evolution. Part of me wonders if this random series of combinations had something to do with the boom in her power scale. Skylar was said to be the rawest powerful Nix in history.

It made a sort of sense that the three of us would find one another. We were all random variables in the cosmic scheme. Each of us destined to burden the responsibility and solitude given to us by each of our distinct births.

“I was sent to deliver a summons. My mother, the apex presiding, wishes to inform you that you shall be required by law to participate in the coming of age ritual tests, as will all the other Nix youths who recently turned seventeen or eighteen. Sometimes, it skips a year, so you’re up.”

I frowned and said, “What is this for?”

Sky gave a limp dismissive wave.

“Nothing too important, just a test of power, agility, and expression dexterity. You’ll pass it in your sleep, assuming they tested you while you are a sleep.”

Sky said, and I could catch this as a Nix joke. She was snarky in her own way, just off-beat by human normal standards. She seemed an aloof princess that cared not, but that persona was a mask. Sky was tender hearted, and she loved profoundly if she let you into her life.

“This isn’t your mother’s latest attempt to kill me, is it?”

I asked, only half joking, and Sky rolled her eyes like a normal teen.

“As if she would dare defy the future apex!”

Thundering power echoed from what could almost be perceived as a distance. Sky was actively pressing down the dragoness powers of expression, but the storm of her changing moods could still be felt by someone as deeply intuitive as myself. Sky was a force of nature on a cosmic scale. She could destroy worlds with her anger, should she ever find herself a slave to her temper. She was a very real flesh-and-blood incarnation of many superhero comics where some unbelievably powerful humanoid character could break whole solar systems. That was Sky, yet she was as seemingly harmless as a dove to mortal eyes.

Even Nadia, the hot reaper I had met over a year-and-a-half-ago was worried with ending up on the business end of Sky’s dragon talons. Nadia was flippant about most things, but not Nix apex females.

“You were summoned as well, which surprises me.”

Skylar said to Clarke, who looked at her almost as if his letter form Hogwarts had finally arrived!

“So, what exactly is this test for?”

I ask her once again, and Sky sucks down a fresh breath and then begins to launch into a hasty but thorough explanation.

“It is how we test the population to see where they might fall in service divisions to aid the Hidden against the Architects and the reapers. Those who test high enough are given a sort of expressive scholarship to the City of Hidden. That is the site of power for the resistance to the Architect occupation force, and the place where a fifteen-thousand-year-old college for expressive arts is housed.”

My jaw hung open at this last bit of information. It was still unusual to hear such lengths of time spoken of trivially. Clarke whistled and I could see the gleam in his eyes as he seemed determined to get into the city, and the college. Clarke was like an alchemy junkie—not exactly, but that is how deep his passion for expression was. He lived and breathed to learn of expression. Being more than merely a mortal had been such a welcome gift to Clarke. He worked many times harder than I did just to learn how to conjure and express power. He was more in line with what was “common” and “expected” in an immortal expressionist’s limits and abilities. Skylar and I were merely aberrations of nature. Things as powerful as the two of us normally did not exist in the mortal realm. This was also likely partially the source of natural discordance sown between us and normal humans. They just intuitively felt repelled by us, as if our very nature disgusted them.

“Well, I guess I’ll do it. Though, I doubt that’s going to change anything in regard to me entering the City of Hidden. They seem pretty much dead set against a shade having the keys to their castle.”

Sky shrugged and said, “They’ve not tried to assassinate you yet, so there is that.”

And on that cheery note, we all walked to Clarke’s tricked out Subaru Sports Sedan.