Signs were everything.
And everything happened for a reason.
This much the Prodigy knew. The problem of course, was divining them. A pack of shalloths scavenging on the ground, despite typically being both arboreal and solitary creatures, seemed a fortuitous sight, but the night she sighted one such group she spilled ink all over a manuscript she’d been working on for no less than two weeks. On the other hand, coming across the corpse of a shalloth, fallen out of a tree yet untouched by predators, seemed a bad omen, yet the night she’d encountered one of those she’d finally found a long lost notebook under a tree. The sign of Kib was in all things, but that didn’t mean she made things easy.
The night had started out well enough. She’d come out to inspect the pipette grove, as well as work on her sketching. As was their wont, Aethopyga sanguine (or blood hummers, as they were known to the uninitiated) had come to feast on the sweet sap that flowed through her veins. But as she had contented herself with submitting to the precious creature’s will, something hard and round beaned her right on the forehead. The treetops shuddered, and a shadowy figure descended to earth with the grace of a stone. And now, here the Prodigy was, face to face with a girl the likes of which she had never seen before, tall and lean with viridian skin and eyes that glowed like carnelians in the darkness of night. Never in her life would she have imagined such beauty could be found on this cursed island. She blinked her eyes, debating whether the visage before her was hallucination. Her forehead still throbbed slightly.
The stranger was the first to speak.
“Uhhh… hi.”
The Prodigy paid close attention to the inflection of voice, the tone and speed at which the words were delivered. The gorgeous stranger spoke half in jest, and yet a thin layer of fear warbled beneath the levity. What was she hiding?
It had to be something. Strange, beautiful girls didn’t just fall out of gardens in the middle of deserts. The Prodigy carefully pulled her pen to her chest, wielding it like a dagger.
“Hey, easy there! I’m not here to hurt you, see?” The stranger crouched on the leaf-littered earth, hands raised to show no concealed weapons and look as harmless as possible.
But the Prodigy was not limited to her sense of sight. Like her sisters’, it was somewhat lacking, only able to make out basic shapes and colors from a distance. Her sense of hearing, however-
“W-what is that clanking behind your back?”
Only after the words left her mouth did the Prodigy realize this was perhaps the worst course of action. If she was facing a demon (always a possibility) then by acknowledging it she had only allowed its’ sway over her to grow ever stronger.
But to the Prodigy’s surprise, the stranger instead pulled out a pair of Peganan boxing whelks from behind her back and lay them on the ground.
“Oh, these! These guys are for any nasty things I might come across in the woods. Not you!” the stranger paused, then added “Not that there’s anything wrong with the creatures living here, this is a really beautiful garden after all…!”
The Prodigy was surprised by this stranger’s apparent weariness, as though SHE were the threatening one!
“Um… are you okay?”
She was not. On one hand, this visitor could be a temptation, made to lead her astray from Kib’s loving embrace, and by extension the chance to return to the Motherworld. Much in the same way Kib herself faced temptation from the Cats of Saturn, could it be this stranger was here to offer an easy solution to her woes under a guise of innocence and beauty?
On the other, what if the opposite was true? This stranger, given her appearance, could just as easily be an emissary of Kib, if not an outright avatar! Then in rebuking her, she would curse the entire Monastery to eternal dam*ation! The thought of Madame Saguaro’s disappointed gaze hung like a dark cloud over the garden.
And to make matters worse, the stranger’s red eyes would NOT. STOP. STAREING! No matter how much she tried to avert her gaze, kneel in submission, or one of the hundred other methods a beastcaller could utilize to appear as harmless as possible!
Oh Madame Saguaro! If only she were here, she would be able to divine this mad incident! But Saguro wasn’t here. Because she’d trusted her Prodigy, her precious, precious Prodigy, a Prodigy whose beastcalling skills were limited to getting wild animals to eat out of her hand, to be able to act without supervision. It’s a simple task, Saguaro said. Just hone your drawing skills and collect some pipettes, she said. I am granting you a very special privilege, she said. Kib would be very unhappy if you messed up this incredibly basic menial task even a maggot could carry out with upmost efficiency, she DIDN’T say, but the Prodigy saw it behind the Madame’s white eyes.
And now here she was, paralyzed by this one in a million event!
Still, she couldn’t wait for the world to act on her behalf. She needed some way to know what was going on, some information to help make sense of events.
So she asked a question.
. . .
“W-who are you?” As she spoke, the shivering, robed figure looked as if she would explode from fright.
Vera had to admit, they felt mildly irked at the beautiful girl in front of them. With Dad, it was always ‘Look people in the eyes when they’re talking to you, Vera!’ this or ‘Remember what I tell you, Vera!’ that.
Yet by the way this girl’s lovely daffodil eyes flitted about, she’d never had to live under the yolk of such oft-repeated lectures. Vera wondered what that kind of freedom felt like, to have a conversation on your own terms and not constantly have to focus on fixing your stinky ‘mannerisms’.
But more importantly, this beautiful angel had asked them a question, and questions were an excuse to talk.
“O-oh right! My name!” Vera cried, wondering just what was it about this girl that made them so nervous. “I-I’m Vera. My Dad trades with you guys!”
The girl lowered her pen ever so slightly, but didn’t get any closer. The spikes poking through her robes receded, if only a little bit. With any hope, this was a good thing.
They kept at it.
“I’m sorry if I scared you! I just noticed those weird birds were biting you and-“
“H-how did you get up here?”
Vera had to admit, this girl was nothing if not direct.
“I… climbed up here? Well, I was trying to sneak away from my Dad because I wanted to look around and this one lady gave me a thumbs up so I went up here and its’ so pretty at night and-“
Vera barely noticed the Beastcaller’s eyes no longer darted about and were instead looking directly at them.
. . .
To the Prodigy’s releif, the Stranger seemed to enjoy talking a quite a bit. And talking took time. Enough for her to smile and nod as she contemplated the stranger’s testimony. It made sense: even though the Prodigy had never seen the woman who took the Monastery’s goods and exchanged them for all the wonderful artifacts of this planet, it was entirely possible she might have a child, and that said child, by chance, might sneak away to explore the Monastery’s garden.
Yet some things didn’t add up. Creosote, who SHOULD have been attending the entrance, was of good standing amongst the nuns (she wouldn’t have gotten the coveted Chief Mender position without it). In other words, a lady who wouldn’t be so careless as to let a visitor explore the gardens unescorted, where they could potentially suffer grievous injury. And of course, the odds of said merchant’s daughter also being around the same age as her, and so striking in appearance, were a thousand and one…
“By the way, what’s your name?”
The question jolted her out of her thoughts.
“Do you have a name?” The Stranger kneeled and spoke slowly. They were probably trying to make her feel safe, but she couldn’t help but feel a bit condescended to.
She contemplated it. Intentionally or not, it added veracity to the Stranger’s testimony. For if she was a celestial being, good or otherwise, she would already know her true name. But at the same time, if this being meant to tempt her, would it not know to ask such a question to throw off suspicion?
Thoughts aside, the Stranger was correct. Sdid have a name, and a very nasty one at that.
“Azul.” She breathed. “M-my name is Azul.”
The stranger’s crimson eyes lit up. “Azul. That’s an awesome name! But I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, seeing how beautiful you look.”
Azul, for her part, winced. Sure, she looked pretty from the outside, but if this stranger saw her fat nose or her giant ears, veiled as they were, would she really think so highly of her? If nothing else, such sentiments confirmed the stranger was most likely real, otherwise she, knowing Azul’s true appearance, might have thought twice before saying such blatant lies. And if they did know, then it was nothing less than a cruel, cruel joke.
Her thoughts turned to the welts on the back of her neck, where the blood hummer had pierced her robes. Even though scratching felt so nice, even though she knew it would just make the itch worse in the long run, after all the stress in the world piling onto her at once, she just couldn’t resist…
Something the stranger seemed keenly aware of.
“Bug- er, bird bites, huh?” She smiled knowingly. “Yeah, they suck. But don’t worry. I’ve got just the thing!”
Azul stared as the stranger pinched a piece of her hair off between her thumb and index finger, then tossed it at her feet. It oozed clear sap.
“It’s a trick I learned from witches in Lemuria. Rub it on the itches and it should feel better!”
And that’s when Azul realized the truth: this could only be a temptation to lead her astray, just as Kib had been offered relief from thirst by the Cats from Saturn in the Desert of Truth. For in her 12 years, Azul had done nothing, NOTHING, to deserve such kindness.
. . .
To Vera’s surprise, Azul shook her head.
“I-I can’t.”
“Oh, don’t worry! There’s nothing in it that’ll set off allergies or-!”
“No, I mean I can’t stop the itching. It’d be… unethical.”
“What do you mean, UNETHICAL?” Vera had never heard such nonsense in their life! You’re hurting, so why don’t you try and heal yourself?!” She approached the trembling girl, picking up the hair. “It’s easy! Just-“
The bushes shuddered, and a figure emerged. Not much taller than Vera, but where Vera was lanky, this newcomer was robust and muscular, something that could be gleaned despite the heavy robes she wore. Robes pierced by so many pointed spikes. An odd spade was sheathed like a sword behind her back. Her round eyes, twin yellow suns, threatened to melt their new friend into a puddle.
“AZUL, WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?!”
