Fowlhunter [GL]

The girl was swathed in the same garb that all the prisoners wore: a simple grey robe and trousers. Unfortunately for her, she had fair skin, which was always the worst-marred by the crackling, raw-red flaking patches of sunburn. Ennanis’ own skin crawled with phantom pain just looking at them, illuminated by her outstretched lantern.

But despite her ghastly appearance, the girl was smiling.

Eerie, delirious smiles from the prisoners weren’t something that Ennanis hadn’t seen before, but the girl looked genuinely unfazed, like she really did want to strike up a civil conversation with her jailer.

And she was so astonishingly young. She looked Ennanis’ own age. Just what had she done to end up in such a place?...

…It wasn’t Ennanis’ place to question. If the girl was in here, she had clearly done something to deserve it; and she wouldn’t be leaving this place in her lifetime. When Ennanis turned to continue on her path, the girl in the cell spoke again, calling out:

“Well, sunshine, I’m talking to you.”

Ennanis sighed through her nostrils. She twirled her cane, setting it against the bars as she walked face-to-face with the cage. She eyed the girl.

“Why? You think you can trick me into doing something for you, just because I’m new?”

The girl peeked back at her. Under the dim lighting, the colour of her eyes was greyed out, dark and indiscernible. Sun injury tended to leach colour, and her curly hair was similarly dull, where it lay in a ratty, tangled mess on her head. Owlishly, she blinked her eyes, her smile somehow still sparkling in the grey of them. “Do something? Like what?”

“Like, to free you from the prison, or to end your life, stuff like that,” Ennanis droned. “Or extra food, extra water, a ‘bathroom break’...” she rattled off all the dubious requests that had been made of her. Prisoners in the sunprisons didn’t need food and water because they subsisted directly off the bath of Soleki they were immersed in. They also didn’t need the bathroom because their bodies were desperately trying to conserve water, not excrete it.

“Oh,” the girl said nonchalantly. “I don’t really care about that.”

She most likely was lying, of course, but Ennanis was intrigued. She was a teenager. A naive and bored teenager. And so, passing the lantern between her hands, the angel decided to entertain this imprisoned girl’s delusions, just for a while. The girl had no neighbours, so Ennanis could converse with her without being bothered.

Ennanis leaned by the cell. The girl glanced at her. If she was surprised at Ennanis’ acceptance, she didn’t show it. For a moment Ennanis thought the girl might scoot closer too, but she stayed where she was, limned within the alternating curtain of the bars’ shadows.

Her uniform was big on her, huh?

It was true. This commander’s uniform, they only made for older angels, and so it hung a little loose on her frame. Due to their infinite lifespan, angels reached their growth spurt later than humans, only in their twenties. Ennanis was still tall, but she would quite assuredly grow taller in the future. So for now, the shoulder-seams stuck out awkwardly, and the excess hem of the vest was stuffed into her belt.

Perhaps because lying in front of her was a stranger that didn’t matter and would never matter, Ennanis felt free to say the first thing that came to her mind:

“Does it look that bad?”

The girl raised an eyebrow. “What does?”

“The uniform.”

“I didn’t say it looked bad, just that it looked big,” she waved her hand. “Most of the angels in here are old geezers. Did you sneak your way in here or what?”

The thought amused Ennanis. As if any angel would have willingly gone into a place like the sunprisons without being on required duty. “No. I’m just a regular Warden. I earned my way in.”

“Aw,” said the girl. “And here I thought you snuck in here just to save me.”

“Why would I save you? I don’t even know you.”

“Huh? You don’t need to know someone to save them, do you?” she blinked. “In fact, if you saved someone from here, it’s probably because you didn’t know enough about them. So, let’s get to know each other.”

“Why would you… by that logic, if you wanted me to save you, then shouldn’t we be not getting to know each other?‘

“I told you already, I don’t care about those things. ‘Course, I’m not going to say no if you decided to leave a door open for me…” said the girl brightly. “But I won’t mind if you don’t!”

Yeah. Fat chance. She was definitely lying. Ennanis didn’t know this girl, but based on her appearance, she was young and fresh to the prisons, not yet beaten and broken by years of the burnt-revival-burnt cycle of the sunprisons. The spark in those greyed eyes showed that she still believed—believed in the hope that if she tried hard enough to be interesting, she might somehow confuse Ennanis into freeing her. Well, it wouldn’t work.

“You know you’re not the first one to try at getting me to free them. But do you wanna know why I won’t do any of those things, no matter what they say?” Ennanis leaned towards her, gazing at the girl through the bars. “Because I don’t care about people.”

The girl stared back at her. And then she laughed. “You’re serious!”

“Yeah,” Ennanis chuckled back, almost surprised that she did. “That is how some would describe me. Serious.” It was by far one of the nicer descriptors angels employed on her.

“Well, I think you’re a very funny angel,” said the girl. She said this as if the opinion of a stranger meeting her for the first time held any weight against those who had assessed Ennanis over the eighteen years of her existence. That was pretty funny in of itself.

Next, the girl propped her chin on her knee and asked, “What’s your name?”

“Ennanis Zoleil,” Ennanis said. Again she felt no reason to lie. Whatever was said in these prisons would die in these prisons.

Dark eyes sparkled. “Ooh, Zoleil? You’re just like that other old red hag!”

Ennanis’ ambiguous sense of cheer vanished in an instant. “Don’t talk about Amanita like that,” she snapped. And then, realising, she asked, “Amanita was here?”

The girl made a surprised ‘oh’. “You're looking for her?”

“Tell me where she is!” she demanded. Her patience was lost—she slammed her cane against the bars.

“I don’t know, man,” the girl huffed behind the ringing metal. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen her. Years, probably. Also, I'm stuck in here, remember? If she's not here, I can't possibly know where she is right now.”

Ennanis said nothing, because she knew that the girl was right.

The girl grinned. “But, wow, so you do care about someone. I’m glad there’s a heart somewhere in there, beating under that broody, stone-cold exterior.”

Ennanis was gravely silent.

“What’s your name?” she eventually said. “I’ve given you mine.”

The girl laughed again. Her voice had been uneven in clarity, but in laughter the distortion was more pronounced—like cracked glass. It was then she finally stood up, walking out of the shadows, stepping up behind the bars. Her prison garb hung long and heavy from her frame; they, too, were much too big on her.

She looked up at the angel. Standing, she was a few centimetres shy of her, but her gaze was level and firm, meeting the widened slits of the angel’s gold eyes.

“I’ll give you my name,” the girl smiled, “once I have your heart. E-nna-nis.” The name dangled from her lips like a taunt.

And that was the start of a strange, clandestine, unwise companionship. Days, weeks passed, but no one knows exactly what had transpired there. The angels speculate, definitely, but only that. In the entire world, overcloud and undercloud, there are only two who know the truth.

The truth… of the beginning of the end.

~~~

"Chime," Ennanis said.

"Huh?" The girl in the cell looked up from her knees.

"That's what I've decided to call you," the pink-haired angel said, hands in her robes’ pockets, standing behind the bars as she gazed in. Her cane was left propped up on the wall beside. "If I’m going to talk to you, I don't want to keep calling you Weird Prisoner in my head. Unless, of course, you give me your real name."

Ennanis hadn’t planned on talking to the young inmate more than once. However, between making her endless rounds and being yelled at by the other prisoners constantly, she couldn’t help wanting to talk to the only other person she could have a civilised conversation with here. So she found herself back at the cell.

"Okay, sunshine… but why Chime?"

"I dunno. Suits you," Ennanis said. She didn’t know how to say it was because the girl's voice had reminded her of bells tinkling in a breeze. Fragile, yet resonant.

"Sure. Whatever," said Chime. Now that it was day she was curled up in a corner of the cell slightly more shaded than the others. She folded herself in her patchy prison garb, minimising her skin’s exposure to the boiling sunlight. Just her head poked out from the wrappings to look at Ennanis, short-sheared curls escaping from under the hood. Under daylight her hair colour was more yellowish, the colour of straw.

"So, what's up?" she said airily.

"The same old." Ennanis replied. "Just missions and stuff."

"What kind of missions?"

"The normal kind."

"Wow. You're a real gabber, aren't you?"

"You’re the one who wanted to chat, not me," Ennanis retorted. “Maybe you should tell me more about yourself.”

"I don't know," Chime shrugged, a fingernail poking out from her sleeve to pick at the walls. "As you can imagine, my life hasn't been the most interesting since I was thrown in here."

"Well, what were you doing before you were thrown in here? Why were you thrown in here?"

"If that isn't the million-dollar question," Chime had pulled together a tiny ball of dust from the wall. She squished it between her fingers, blew it into the air, where it floated for a bit before settling to the ground.

"Sorry,” she said finally, “you're not exactly a friend. I won’t answer that."

"Friendship," Ennanis murmured. "What would you know about that?"

"What?" Chime gave her a strange look. "You think that I don't have friends? Pfft—of course I do! But none that you have to worry about, lady. If they had the ability to rescue me, they would've done so a long time ago." Her gaze drifted to the rows of tally marks etched on the wall. Lightly scratched, but noticeable. There were a lot of them.

Ennanis' brows furrowed. "You're sure it's not because they just didn't want to?"

The girl sighed grandly. "Look, I can spend all day thinking all kinds of shit, but while I'm in here it really doesn't amount to anything. I trust my friends. That's that." She gave Ennanis a meaningful look. "You, on the other hand, don't seem like someone who has many friends."

"What makes you think that?"

"Uh. Everything about you screams loner," Chime gestured at the entirety of Ennanis, which was honestly pretty rude. "The other angel guards hang out with each other, but never with you. Besides, you told me yourself that you, quote-unquote, don't care about people on the first day we met. It's writing on the wall."

"Yeah. Fine," agreed Ennanis. "So what?"

"So nothing. I'm just yapping," Chime responded. She slumped over, lying on her side. "You'll find that when you've been chargrilled for years on end, you stop caring about what you're saying." She buried herself in her hood. "Banana. Apple. Croissant.”

Ennanis studied her. “Are you hungry?”

“No shit?” Chime rolled over to look at her with wide eyes. “Y’all never feed me! I don’t even know why I’m still alive.”

“The sun is supposed to keep the inmates sustained physically,” Ennanis said, “I didn’t know you still felt hunger.”

“Yeah, well, I would kill for a basket of oranges right now, and I absolutely abhor oranges.”

“Oranges?”

“Yeah. They’re horrible,” she crossed her arms. “The texture’s all icky and crummy. The taste is way too sharp.”

Really weird things to bring up. The girl’s brain really did seem fried. “Okay. Whatever,” Ennanis said. “The point is, I will bring you food—and no oranges—if you help me do something.”

Immediately, Chime sat up. “What is it?”

Ennanis sighed. It was a good thing she was not a shy person, for a person with a smidgen more shame would’ve not been able to ask such a humiliating question. She took a deep breath: “Can you teach me how to make friends?”