Page 13 of Joy Guardian

“Um…already?” I jumped up too.

He paused. Tentatively, as if trying to touch another person for the first time, he placed his hand on my shoulder.

“I’m not running away from you, Ciana. I will see you again.”

“Will you? Tomorrow?” I asked, perfectly aware how needy I sounded. But I did need him.

Kurai’s company gave me some sense of normalcy. The humans in thesaraistill seemed overwhelmed by what had happened to all of us. Their anxiety exacerbated mine, but Kurai’s presence calmed me.

“Come have dinner with me tomorrow,” I invited.

“I don’t eat dinner. We usually only have one meal at midnight.”

“It’s pasta tomorrow,” I said quickly. “Spaghetti, they say. I haven’t cooked pasta since that day when…” I swallowed hard at the phantom sensation of Dylan’s rough hand in my hair when he shoved my face into the pot. “Since…” I couldn’t finish the sentence. The words refused to form.

Keeping his hand on my shoulder, Kurai moved his thumb along my skin in a soothing caress.

“I’ll have dinner with you,” he promised.

That one simple sentence somehow made breathing easier for me.

“You will? I used to love spaghetti before, you know…” I waved a hand in the air, unable to voice it. Or maybe I was just unwilling to mention Dylan’s name again. I never wanted to say his name out loud ever again.

Kurai moved his thumb again in that small but so very soothing circle.

“No need to remember bad memories too often. Once a night was enough for now,” he said in his deep, calming voice.

“Maybe you’ll help me create new memories that will override the old ones?” I smiled.

“We can certainly try.” His lips stretched to mimic my smile. It wasn’t perfect, but he tried, and I was so incredibly grateful to him for that effort.

KURAI

I couldn’t stay in my room that day, leaving it even before the sunset.

I’d been so careful at avoiding connecting my tendrils to Ciana. Yet herleilathasproved unnecessary to convey the deep compassion this woman was capable of. She’d long unwrapped her arms from around me, but the warmth of her hug still cradled my heart in comfort as I walked the crowded streets of Kalmena.

I needed to lose myself in the crowd to have its noise muffle the thoughts that screamed in my head.

My mother died the year after she had dropped me off at the temple. The Master Guardian delivered the news somberly, along with his kind permission for me to connect to the Source of Joy for comfort any time I wished that night. I assured him it wasn’tnecessary, then I cried alone in my bed while the rest of the Joy Guardians prayed upstairs.

I mourned Mother, feeling angry that I did. For a century, I pretended her death didn’t affect me. I convinced myself that she’d been dead to me all along, from the moment she’d abandoned me and chose my stepfather over me.

Shreds of the memories I’d been trying to forget all this time swam to the surface now. Like pieces of a puzzle, they lined up into a grim picture of my early childhood.

My father died in a raid of desert dwellers. He was a farmer, trying to make ends meet while working day and night on a farm that demanded a lot and brought little.

My mother remarried soon after his death, probably because it proved impossible for her to keep the farm afloat on her own. But to me, it felt like a betrayal to my father’s memory back then.

The memories of my stepfather were all laced with pain and fear.

Shouldering my way through the crowd on the street leading to the city market, I tried to understand why a grown man would have such hatred for a child, especially in our society that generally treasured children.

Maybe he hated to share Mother’s attention with me. Maybe he had no patience to deal with the moods of the boy who was still grieving his father’s death. Maybe poverty made him resent giving up any morsel of food required to feed me.

Whatever the cause was for his hatred, he never missed the chance to make it clear how much he hated me. He beat me. He yelled at my mother to get me out of “his” house. And when she finally took me away, I believed she did so out of obedience to him and indifference to me.

“You’ll be safe here, Kurai.”The words that fell from her injured lips that night haunted me now.

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