The Duality of Shadow

[Strawberry]

“Karma...”

A name in the dead of night, distant, like it was caught on the wind whistling through the curtains as they billowed on a midnight breeze in a house otherwise slumbering peacefully.

“Come play with me, Karma...”

A siren’s song, a haunting melody, it drew her from bed without even realizing it. Caleb hadn’t moved a muscle all the while. Normally he would be the first awake, a thought that had her sticking her pinky in her ear to give it a good wiggle as if to clear it out and make sure she was hearing things correctly.

Maybe it was a dream.

“Karma, come play.”

There it was. The echo of it had her slowly understanding the source. It wasn’t within the beach bungalow or even outside. Rather… it was in her head. This wasn’t the first time one of the opals had wormed its way into her consciousness.

“Your siblings were much quieter, you know.”

IceDancer, a near frigid silence, barely so much as greeted her during their time together. Its opposite, FireStar, had been snarky but not so much that it bothered Karma. But from the moment she had taken ShadoWeaver in her grasp, there had been a quiet connection, a subtle humming in the back of her mind that she hadn’t experienced since losing Nem’s influence.

It was almost a welcome feeling.

“My brothers and sisters don’t want to play with me.”

Petulant, this one was.

Karma rubbed her eyes and shuffled out of the bedroom, taking care to close the door behind her as quietly as she could manage.

“What do you want?”

“I wanna play… Come outside… Let’s play.”

This was a bad idea, wasn’t it. She sighed and made her way to the door. Unlike the sprawling Paradiso Ranch, Kāpena Kahakai (otherwise known as #8 Twilight Lagoon Avenue), was much, much smaller and far easier to navigate in the dead of night. Or the dead of perpetual twilight on the Isle, she supposed. Motes of filtered light trickled in through the kitchen windows, muted by the charms placed on the home to simulate darkness at night. She turned into the kitchen, bumping a hip into the corner of the fridge, ping ponging against the opposite counter, and finally reached the side door that opened up onto the partial wrap around deck that clung to the side and back of the bungalow.

Stepping out, she was met by the salt-sweet breeze rolling in off the sea, the rhythmic lapping of waves on the nearby shore, and the more distant chirp of birds in the trees beyond the Gloaming. Pleasant enough on its own, sure, but she would have much preferred the warm comfort of her bed and the assassin she had left sleeping there. Nothing seemed amiss with a scan of the immediate vicinity. A sleepy gaze traced the shore next, passing over rolling dunes and palm bushes until she spotted her quarry.

A small figure stood ankle deep in the surf, the waves breaking around their feet to tickle the sand just out of reach. The same figure had graced Karma with her presence during the challenge against Andrea for the Tower of Air. Karma stifled a yawn, padded down the steps into the sand, climbed a dune to get to the shore proper and stopped just beyond the reach of the tide.

“Come play.” The figure held a black hand out to her. Unlike the fuzzy edges of most shadows, the little girl was as defined as a corporeal being could get, down to the detailing in the dress she wore. Except everything was the same shade of pitch black, as if any light that touched her was absorbed, never to escape. She quite reminded Karma of her younger sister when Ivy was ten or twelve, straight backed, prim, and far too observant for her own good.

“I don’t want to get my feet wet.” Karma protested in much the same way she would have had her younger sister asked her to play when they were children.

“You never play with me.” The little girl pouted, keeping her hand out.

Karma sighed, slipped her hand into the shadow figure’s and stepped into the surf. The water was temperate, as it always was, washing grains of errant sand over her toes in a forward and back and forward and back of give and take. How the Isle had tides with no moon always amazed her. The magic of Twilight Isle was… unique even by Rhydinian standards.

They stood there in silence for a long, long moment, hand in hand.

“Now what?” Karma asked after a few minutes. The little girl hummed quietly, rocking heel to toe and back in the water, her pitch dark eyes cast toward the horizon.

“I dunno. I didn’t think we’d get this far.” There was a childlike earnestness that came with the admission.

“You called me out of bed in the middle of the night… to stand in the water and hold hands?”

“Something like that. And yet here you are. I would venture a guess that it is because we are both curious.”

“Curious about what?”

“That is the big question, isn’t it.”

“IceDancer wanted to be left alone. It said I wasn’t worthy and that they were better than a second place prize.”

“Bold claims for a brother given to fourth place when we were first enslaved by the whims of brawlers gifted something more precious than they could ever understand by a sorceress who thought to free us of one another.”

“That’s a lot to unpack…”

“So it is.”

“Anyways. That was IceDancer. FireStar talked a lot about her past holders. That was a little annoying.”

“That surprises me not. Always so self important, my sister was.”

The little girl looked up at Karma, almost pointedly.

“And then there’s you.”

“And then there’s me.” The shadow figure looked back out to the endless sea that surrounded the Isle.

“What do you want?” Karma asked more directly.

“You came to me long ago. Looking for something. We wonder if you found it.”

“Are you… talking about the kids?”

“Mmm. Mayhaps.”

“If you are, then yes. If you’re talking about something else, then I have no clue.”

“Something else. You spent months in the realm of Shadow. Months. And when just when you think your mind may quiet, it’s there, calling to you in the peaceful moments, the shadows, the whole realm mayhaps. Did you ever find your quiet?”

“...I don’t want to play anymore.” Karma let the girl’s hand fall from her grasp and turned away to head back toward the bungalow. It was then she saw him, the old man with an amused, crooked smile. He too was familiar but her exasperation that came from spotting him seemed only to light his dark smile further. Like the little girl, he was a being of shade, clearly defined without so much as an ounce of light. “Great. There’s two of you? Wonderful.”

She pushed past, ignoring the double pair of eyes that followed her all the way back to the deck’s door. The old man’s voice chased her inside, smothered not even by the closing of the door behind her.

“Come play with us again soon.”

[Caleb Feren]

Caleb opened his eyes shortly after she had left the room.

He had woken as she tried to pry or wiggle something out of her ear, but he kept his breathing even and his eyes closed to nothing but slits. It was rare for her to wake in the middle of the night, and even more so for her not to settled back into his arms soon after.

This time, she got up and was moving from the room, trying to be as quiet as possible. But that was foiled by the conversation that he heard coming from the other room.

“What do you want?” With those words, he slid quietly from the bed and moved towards the door.

“She’s fine. She’s just talking to the rock.” The voice came from the darkest corner of the room. Caleb dropped and went on the defensive, putting the door to his back to make sure that he was between that voice… a voice he knew well… and her. Of course, if someone else was out there, that wouldn’t mean much. But he would keep her from this one… this bastard.

“What do you want?” He echoed her question.

The laughter that came coincided with the door that closed as Karma walked outside. “To play.”

There was an almost primal growl that started in Caleb’s throat. It had a weight to it that would send most people running, if they didn’t outright freeze. It was a sound that spoke to the old world.. the world where beast hunted humans.

“Oh, put it away. You don’t have your claws, and they wouldn’t hurt me anyways. We’re not here to hurt her, or you. If that was the case, I wouldn’t have saved you so long ago, or helped you when you asked it for her.”

The growl immediately stopped, but Caleb didn’t ease from his stance. His hands cracked and popped with tension as his fist seemed to harden. True, he didn’t have his blades, but that didn’t mean he would need them. He had something more now, and it rested on that left hand.
“I will kill you if you hurt her.”

“No you won’t. But you already know that. And I have no intention of hurting her. You’ve done your research. You know what I gave up to that rock she now holds. Don’t be stupid and use your brain. If I was going to hurt her, I wouldn’t be here talking with her. And no, I won’t let the one who she is playing with now hurt her either.”

“Then why are you here?” Caleb was starting to feel like a broken record… again.

“Those new blades you crafted. The stone used to make them, to be more specific. You’ll find it more than just stone, and capable of more than what you created. You’ll need them for what’s to come… well, for a few things, actually. One I can help with...” the old bastard paused, and even in the darkness, Caleb could see the smile. “… have helped you with now. The other… the other, you will need to talk to the one who collects that which has been falling.” The shadow paused and looked to the door, then looked back to Caleb and smiled. ”Let him know that I sent you. He’ll help with that other blade.”

Then, the shadows lessened and the bastard was gone. Caleb turned and yanked the door open. His stride carried him to the front door of the Kāpena Kahakai just in time for him to hear her, and the resulting comment.

“Great. There’s two of you? Wonderful.”
”Come play with us again soon.”


Cross posted in Heart of the Dragon