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My room suddenly feels claustrophobic. There's just something about the size of the god's bestial form, you see, just something about its larger-than-life presence that easily overwhelms the senses of an ordinary mortal like me.
While moonlight gifts its snowy white fur with a metallic luster, the same beams are responsible for making its razor-sharp canines glisten viciously. Their length is eye-catching in the worst way possible; just so extraordinarily long it's no hardship to imagine them piercing a human neck from one end to another.
The part of me that sees the beast for what it is - a creature whose jaws can snap my head off at any moment - is secretly quaking with the urge to fall on my knees and cower in fright. But then there's the other part of me that sees past its spine-chilling visage. That part of me remembers that a god exists under all that fur, and it's that part of me that makes me feel I'm suddenly drowning in a sea of helplessness and hopelessness.
Why are you looking at me like that?
What's wrong?
He's still spelling out his thoughts in my mind without using his voice, and the despair inside of me grows. He truly doesn't want me to know anything about him, and that says everything, doesn't it?
Are you alright?
I'm full of shame at first, and then I'm furious. The fact that he's both a beast and a god is forgotten in the surge of my rage. What have I ever done to make this god want to play with me so? Why does he waste his time doing and saying all these things to make me think like he's truly concerned about me...only to fucking ghost me just when I've started to get used to him?
Speak to me—-
I cross my arms over my chest and glare at the beast. Make me.
There's a beat of silence, and then the god says in my mind—-
You just did.
The amusement in his voice is unmistakable, and it has me gritting my teeth and wanting to give his divine groin a good, hard kick. "It doesn't count," I snap at him. "I only spoke in my mind at that time—-"
While now you are speaking out loud.
Shiiiiiit. He's right again, and he totally got me now. He was able to make me speak, and...
Are you alright?
"Why do you keep asking me that when you don't—-" I snap my mouth shut in time, and I'm secretly aghast at what I've almost let slip.
Don't what?
I force myself to look away...only to have my gaze clash with Nia as she opens the door to our suite. Her jaw drops as she takes in the hole where our window used to be, and in the corner of my eye, I see the beast disappear just as my roommate recovers from her shock.
She rushes in and comes to a frozen halt when she sees that the window on her side of the room is missing as well. "What the hell happened here?"
Tell her you heard students saying something about Aura.
Nia's gaze flits from one window-less hole to another like it's a mathematically impossible equation she's been asked to solve. "Did someone window-crash into our room?"
"Uh..."
Tell her.
The quiet insistence I sense in the god's tone gets to me, and I hear myself say, "I...overheard a couple of students mention something about, uh, aura?" A part of me is already waiting for Nia to burst into laughter as soon as I finish speaking, but instead my roommate visibly relaxes, and my wariness turns into confusion. "You understood that?"
Nia looks equally astonished. "You didn't?"
"Uh...obviously?"
"Aura is one of the wind deities," Nia says with a wrinkle of her nose. "She lives around here, and she has a certain reputation...well, anyway, the main point is, if Aura's involved, we're lucky we've only had our windows broken."
I can't help looking at our floor, which has practically turned into a mosaic work of art with the sheer amount of broken pieces of glass scattered all over it. "This is lucky?"
"Trust me. Where Aura's concerned, this is absolutely nothing, and...oh." Nia looks at me in concern. "Are you okay, though? Were you here when it happened?"
I instinctively shake my head, not wanting to have to utter another lie, and the other girl sighs in relief just as we hear another knock on our door. It's the building manager, telling us she's received reports from other students about "a loud crashing sound", and just as it was with Nia, the older woman doesn't seem surprised when my roommate explains about Aura's involvement.
We're told to stay put and to wait for maintenance, and minutes later, I have a new item to add to my Most Surreal Things About Rosethorne list.
Maintenance turns out to be a couple of quasis, and in just ten minutes and one quick restoration ritual, it's as if nothing has happened. Our windows are back where they belong, and a lot cleaner, too. The way everything's so efficiently resolved feels anticlimactic, and I find myself dazedly parroting Nia's thank-yous and goodbyes as the quasis take their leave.
"They always remind me of those clean-up crews in the John Wick movies," Nia remarks as she closes the door, and I find myself privately agreeing. The quasis' manners were courteous and professional, but you also kinda get the feeling they're completely indifferent to the whole thing, and it does make you wonder. Do they even care if their next cleanup involves human corpses?
Nia helps me clean my wound after my shower, and it's while my roommate meticulously wraps a fresh set of bandages around my middle that a hollow feeling carves into my chest. So much has happened in just the past hour or two, it's almost as if I've only imagined the god crashing through both real and imaginary windows to yank me out of my nightmare.
I try to convince myself that I'm okay with the god coming and going just like that, but as soon as I slip under the covers, my eyes start to sting—-
Shit, shit, shit.
I'm about to get out of bed, intending to make up an excuse so I can cry in peace in one of the cubicles in the shower room, but just as I start to get up, a strong pair of invisible arms wrap around my body from behind, and a shriek of surprise escapes me before I realize what's happening.
Nia, who's still at her desk working on her photos, jerks in shock and twists around in her chair, demanding, "What is it?"
"I...uh..." It takes me a while to answer, with my senses still reeling from the familiar heat of the god's body pressing against my back. Even though I can't see him, I can feel him - and I feel enough to know that he's once again entirely naked.
"Hales?"
The god pulls me closer under the covers, and my whole body goes up in flames.
"Is anything wrong?"
It's so, so hard to concentrate, and I end up blurting the first thing that comes to my mind. "I...uh...had a nightmare?"
Nia stares at me incredulously. "You literally just got under the covers seconds ago."
"I'm a fast sleeper?"
I feel the god smiling against my hair, and it makes me feel pissed and giddy at the same time even as I scramble to convince my roommate, who's now looking at me like I've a couple of screws forcibly loosened by Aura.
"It's the painkillers," I finally remember to add. "The divine herbs in it are just making me..." I pretend to yawn for added effect, and this seems to do the trick as the frown fades from Nia's face.
"Now that you mentioned it, I remember Keia saying it's super effective." A sly smile unfolds over her lips as she asks, "Maybe you can use it as well to heal other kinds of pain?"
I look at her blankly. "What other kind of pain?"
Nia presses the back of her hand against her forehead in a dramatic gesture of misery. "Boo-hoo, my god no longer wants me—-"
Heat bursts in my cheeks when I realize all too late what she's talking about. "Shut up—-"
"Never," Nia says with a snicker. "Do you know how hard it was to control myself the entire weekend? But now that you seem fine—-"
"I'm not!"
"I've been meaning to ask you - was it true? What you said? Have you really never seen your god?"
"Um—-"
"Then again," Nia says reasonably, "I really don't see you as the type to lie about something like that, so I guess it's true? You've never seen your divine benefactor...even if you've obviously enjoyed lots of beneficial hanky-panky—-"
"Nia!"
But my friend only grins. "Is the truth too painful to hear? But seriously, you were unbelievable that night, dude! You just couldn't shut up about your god—-"
I was not aware that I was a favorite topic of yours.
Mortified to the bones, I'm unable to help myself as I protest, "You're not!"
Nia blinks at me. "I'm not what?"
Shit.
"Correct," I say lamely. "You're not correct." And now I'm feeling even a thousand times lamer, with the way the god's chest is rumbling with laughter against my back.
Nia, however, is shaking her head at me like she's just caught me with my hand in the cookie jar. "Why don't you just admit it?" she asks reasonably.
"There's nothing to admit—-"
"There so is, dude. Remember how you also couldn't stop yakking about your god's sexual prowess?"
"Nia!!! Shut up!!!"
"My god is different," Nia mimics. "He's very, very nice, and he kisses nice, too!"
For the record, I also think you are very, very nice, and your kisses are equally nice.
I so badly wish I could snarl at the god, but since I can't, I decide to test a certain theory by pushing my elbow back hard—-
And said theory proves correct when I hear the god release a slight grunt as my elbow makes contact with his invisible body.
"You also said, and I quote—-'he does everything nice', and the best part was when you said—-"
Now, this I have to hear.
Nia's words, combined with the god's comment, make me panic, and I glare at my roommate right away, saying, "If you say one more word, I swear I'll find a way to make you spend time with me at the library—-"
Nia's eyes widen.
"Every day of the week!"
Spoilsport.
Nia makes a face. "Spoilsport."
"I mean it," I threaten. "Not another word." And just to make my point, I turn my back on Nia...which then turns out to be a huge mistake as I find myself squeezed right up against the god's naked body, and my lips pressed directly against his.