Page 116 of To Trap a Soul

They were just two people sitting there, sharing a few breaths and space.

Lindi looked down at her lap as she fidgeted with her fingers. “Do the Demons live as long as you?”

“Hmm. Most. We are noticing those who have eaten more humans than Elves are ageing at a much faster rate, though.”

“I see.” She chewed the inside of her cheek. “I’m finding it difficult to return to humankind, or even the Anzúli, for that reason. They... age so quickly, and yet I remain as I am.”

“Because you’re not the same, Lindiwe,” he answered in a dark tone, one that dripped with stoicism. “It comes from being other. No matter how much you look the same, you will always be set apart because of it.”

He said it with so much weight, and the truth of it settled heavily upon her already weary shoulders.

Becoming a Phantom came with its pitfalls.

She couldn’t reveal what she was to other humans who didn’t have a large Anzúli influence. She couldn’t make genuine connections, as she’d inevitably leave to continue her duties for Weldir, and the likelihood that they’d be much older and almosta new person by the time she saw them again was what she found off-putting the most.

Even with the Anzúli she felt like an outcast.

They easily brought her into their fold, but there were secrets she wasn’t privy to, and there were rituals she wasn’t allowed to attend. She was other – to them, to everyone. Even to Jabez.

And especially to Weldir, who barely understood her humanness.

“It’s isolating when you’re the only one,” Jabez continued, leaning forward to interlace his fingers between his spread thighs. He kicked his feet subtly back and forth over the ledge. “I know that all too well. Even if you’re accepted, it’s only to a certain degree, whether that’s because you put up walls or they do. I’ve felt that here, as well as in my home realm.”

A small breeze made her curls sway around her shoulders and shifted his short hair around his ears and horns. She looked at their hard, tapered lengths, wondering why they didn’t bother her as much as they should.

And when his red eyes connected with hers, she didn’t find them as sinister as other Demons.

Why do I feel drawn to him?

Why did his red eyes not feel evil, but rather seemed to hold a note of kindness in them?

Or am I seeing things that don’t exist because I want to?

“Will... you tell me how you came to be on Earth?” Lindi muttered, refusing to avert her eyes. It was a question she’d once asked Weldir, although his answer was rather vague.

His mist gave him the ability to touch this world, and another deity opened his prism near the portal at the centre of the Veil to allow him to spread it here. She didn’t understand how that was possible, and why that meant his realm was connected to this one.

He’d merely concluded his puzzling explanation with, “That is how it was done.”

Jabez’s gaze darkened, hardened, and revealed that his aloof personality could be twisted at times. “I imagine he’s already told you. Why ask me to bring up painful memories?”

Lindi shrunk a little under his piercing, cold crimson eyes. “Because sometimes people layer biases in their version of a story. I want to hear it from you, to hear your side.”

His full lips tightened into flat lines, and he looked away. “Let me consider it for a bit. It’s not something I’ve spoken about in a while, and my memories are... unclear.”

“It might make me trust you more,” she said with a playful grin so large it revealed all her flat teeth.

“Trust through pity is the saddest form of bonding.” His eyes slipped back to her, and when they connected gazes, they held each other’s with strength. His nose wrinkled on one side and he groaned. “Fine, I will tell youpartof my story.” Then he pointed his index finger right at her face. “But if you give me a sappy fucking look, I will cease speaking and leave.”

With a hand over her heart and her grin returning, triumphant now, she said, “I promise I won’t.”

She wouldn’t, simply because she’d hate the very same thing.

A time unknown, but a dark day

Why does she keep returning?Weldir thought, as he watched Lindiwe and Jabeziryth converse next to the waterfall.

It was what he counted to be the fourth day cycle of them falling into this strange and unwarranted routine. Every day just past noon, when the sun had faded a little and shaded the area, they both returned.

---