Page 2 of Etched in Stone
She lived nearly a mile from here, but with luck, he could hop from one rooftop to another unnoticed. The damn chains were nuisance. He couldn't just let them hang, but carrying them wasn't optimal either. They didn't leave his hands free and threw off his balance, even using his tail as a counterweight.
Frelinray turned toward Jessenia's flat and scouted his route ahead. The sound blast from behind
him nearly knocked him over and the flash of light blinded him for a long moment.
When he could see again, he turned and squinted at the source of the explosion.
The building he had just flown from across the river, was a smoldering shell. Rose must have been storing explosives alongside them in the warehouse. With the searing heat on his skin and the acrid smoke and crackle, it was more than just a Nazi bomb that had leveled the building. Men scrambled out of hiding and began to man the water cannons to stop the damage from spreading. He dare not go back to look.
Even in durammna, the stone sleep of his kind, a Kargyl would have been blown apart by the force of such an explosion. Tas, his friend, his brother, was dead. There would be time for mourning, centuries even, but now he had no time.
“Goodbye, old friend.”
Frelinray gathered his chains once more and leaped to the next rooftop and then to the next, spreading his wings to glide across each span. Most were narrow, especially further away from the river. Many of them were half crumbled from a previous blitz, but he was able to make good time. It was near to daybreak when he finally reached the little cramped flat where he and Jessenia had fallen in love.
She was too young for him, too young, too fragile, but all humans were, when it came to that. He was nearly two thousand Earth years old and yet, when she spoke to him, when she laughed, all he could think of was wanting to spend the rest of his days with her. And that was his plan, to take her away from the war, from the fighting. Some place quiet where the two of them could raise a family and he could let time continue on. He was ready for that now. More than he had ever been in the thousand or so years he'd spent marooned on this backward planet. He knew others of his race had found a match and had settled down, choosing to let their lives play out, but he had always thought they were crazy. Better to stay a stone and wait for rescue than to waste away your existence on this puny little rock.
But then he had met Jessenia. And all his doubts had melted away. They were never going to get rescued. The sigil would never shine. So he would make the best of it here. Have a few sons and make a real life with her.
Frelinray had no illusion that Jessenia would leave her two younger sisters and come away with him alone. Olivia was a precocious child that had grown up too fast, only sixteen, while Margaret was just ten years old. Their mother had died five years ago. All three sisters lived together in the small flat with their father, at least until he had shipped out to France and left Jessenia to take care of her younger sisters.
Frelinray had long accepted that he would have a ready-made family and his children would grow up alongside their aunts as one large family unit. He had money. Lots of it. He could buy an estate out in the country and they could live there together in peace and harmony. Finding a husband for Olivia would be a daunting task, but with the proper dowry (and the right amount of frighteningly mysterious father-figure), he was sure he could get the job done.
He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that their building and the two surrounding it were intact. One building a few down had caved in, but it must have been a few weeks ago, as the rubble had already been managed and the Londoners had routed around it like a colony of stubborn ants.
They had that trait in common. He landed on the roof, tired and ready to stone sleep, but he would be uneasy until he found Jessenia, until he wrapped his arms and wings around her and felt her lips on his. The light came over the edge of the buildings and Frelinray tried the door. She had always left it unlocked for him, but this morning, it was locked shut, bolted from the inside. He probably had
enough strength left to tear the thing off its hinges but that in itself would have been a bad way to announce himself after six months of unexplainable absence.
He knocked, and then sat back on his haunches, and waited. Minutes ticked by and without really meaning to, Frelinray found himself edging toward his old habit, stone sleep. The sun began to warm his hardened skin and the relief of being free sunk into his bones. He nearly entered the second phase when the door opened. Olivia peered around the edge of it.
She gave him a funny look, eyeing him from head to toe, and then closed the door back behind her.
Twenty minutes later, Olivia returned, lugging the largest pair of bolt cutters he'd ever seen.
“Think this will get the job done?” she said, gesturing towards his chains. Trust Olivia to be practical before even putting in the niceties. She put the bolt cutters up against one of the chain links and put all her weight into closing them but they didn't budge. If he weren't so anxious to get rid of them, he might have been amused.
He took the cutters from her, and using the ground as a pivot point, he shoved them in the manacle lock, forcing it down with all the strength he could muster. It snapped with a loud clang and one hand was free. He quickly repeated the process for his other wrist and then threw down the chains with a sigh of relief examining the wrists he hadn't seen for six months.
Olivia tried to pick up the chain. “How am I supposed to explain this to the scrappers? I was using it to hold my gorilla? But then the damn Nazis got him?”
Frelinray didn't especially like being compared to a primate, but he was in no mood to take exception.
“Where is Jessenia?” he inquired.
“I haven't even had my tea yet. You're welcome, by the way,” Olivia replied, evading his question.
“Hello, Olivia. Nice to see you. Where is your sister?” Frelinray repeated.
“They sent Midge off to some farm in the country. She's at least trying to take all in stride, pretending she's some famous explorer off to the wilds of Africa.”
“Not that sister,” Frelinray said, impatiently.
“I know. We got news, by the way. Daddy didn't make it. Dunkirk. Got almost across the Channel.” She turned and sighed, staring at the ground. “At least we got a body.” As if that was some solace for losing her only parent.
“I'm sorry,” he told her.
“It's alright. Everyone leaves. Or dies. Or leaves and then dies. Honestly, you're the first one to come back.”
