The portal closed behind Zedane, bringing an end to five years of humiliation and pain. His time in the Crystal Towers had been more brutal than he could have imagined. Still, it had been necessary, whatever his father thought. The wider world was a hard place, he’d learned, and he needed to make himself hard enough to match it.
Sand stung his eyes, and Zedane raised his arm to protect his face. With his other hand, he reached into his backpack and fumbled around until his fingers curled around a piece of cloth. He pulled it out—a faral wrap—and he shrouded his face and head until only a thin slit was left open, allowing him to see.
He wasn’t so long gone from the desert that he didn’t remember how to wear a faral wrap, or how to hold his head so that he could see without the sand striking his face. His face now protected, he took a moment to study his home.
The Desert Palace stood out in brilliant whiteness against the red of the sand. Three massive domes circled a central tower, and they were surrounded by seven outer towers, each tower flaring to a spire at the top. Arching bridges connected each of the towers to the domes and to each other. There were more the fifty bridges and it was rare that the shortest distance between two points in the palace meant traveling on the ground. From a distance, the bridges seemed to overlap, a giant wondrous white cobweb.
Zedane started down the dune, his feet sinking into the hot sand with each step. The sun beat down on his neck and sticky sweat prickled up inside his clothes. He had remembered to bring the faral wrap, but his clothes and shoes weren’t appropriate for the desert. Perhaps he had forgotten more than he thought.
Still, the heat, the wind, the sand—none of it really bothered him. With every step, he was getting closer to the Desert Palace. The familiarity gave Zedane a thrill. He had changed so much, and he feared that his home would look different. He wasn’t the same person who had left; he had become stronger with the metal at his core forged in the crucible of the Crystal Towers, where every speck of respect had to be fought for.
Zedane slowed as he neared the wide arc of the entrance. No gate blocked his path, but the shimmer of blue showed shield magic in place. A single yosun angel stood in front of the shield, specks of sand coating her blue feathers.
Zedane stopped in front of the yosun.
You weren’t expected yet, she thought. Yosun didn’t have gender but Zedane had always thought of them as female. Their humanoid bodies were the same size as a man, though the wings folded behind their backs doubled their height. Their faces, covered in dark blue down, were also human in appearance though their expressions were inscrutable.
I came early, Zedane thought.
Your father, Lord Halcone, is presently away from Desert Palace.
He’ll be back soon, I’m sure. Can I enter?
You weren’t expected yet.
Yet you knew I was coming. The magic of the yosun, the way they thought, the way they saw the world, everything about them was different. Yosun looked at time differently than other races. For them, the present, past and future blurred together in a way humans couldn’t understand. Yosun had been part of his childhood, yet rarely had any stood in his way before. May I call you Avik?
She inclined her head. An acceptance.
Yosun didn’t have names but understood that humans preferred them, and Zedane had called them Avik. It wasn’t until Zedane was in his teens that he’d discovered that Avik wasn’t always the same yosun. They had little concept of individuality because all experiences were shared between them. Zedane had subsequently learned to tell them apart via the subtle difference in the patterns of their under-feathers, then realized the pointlessness in that. As a yosun would think: Avik is Avik.
Is there any reason why I should not enter? Zedane thought.
Her wings shifted outward, then fell back into place. Something might happen.
Something bad or good? Even as he articulated the thought, he realized it as a poor question.
Just something, she thought.
Yosun didn’t see the world in terms of good and bad. Like Mother Nature they were impartial. They saw no difference between the rainstorm that flooded a village and the one which rescued a town from drought.
“It’s my home.” Zedane spoke aloud for the first time. “Are you refusing me entry?” He made sure to imbue his voice with authority. Such things meant nothing to yosun, but authority was a habit—one he intended to fully embrace.
Avik leaned her head back, signaling no.
“I might as well enter in that case. No point staying out in the wind.” Surely Avik didn’t expect him to go back to the Crystal Towers, then return in a few days.
Avik inclined her head and unfurled her wings. A gust of wind lifted her up into the air, then she soared high over Zedane’s head. Avik’s under-feathers were a riot of yellows and reds.
Zedane followed her ascent and was shocked to see several more yosun circling above his head. Since Avik saw and felt what every other yosun experienced, there was no need for more than one to be in the same place. The only time Zedane had previously seen more than one in the same place was when they doubled up as Halcone guard detail, which was for ceremonial reasons.
The tinny sound of sand hitting the magical barrier disappeared and Zedane walked through the arch and into the main courtyard. He glanced up and was glad to see that Avik didn’t follow him. Had they changed so much since he’d last been in the palace?
Or was it what they saw in his future that had gotten them so disturbed? Zedane couldn’t imagine what that could be.