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Smoke

Thinking fast was hard, right now. He'd had days unable to shut off the incessant clamor of his thoughts and this as much as anything was making him insane.

"If humans smoke," he informed Lurks, "it kills them. They print warnings on things you smoke about how your lungs turn black and shrivel up and she told you not to hurt me. And those are things you smoke anyway. If I smoke anything else it's even worse."

This was not, strictly speaking, untrue.

]Smoke

"Oh," he said, shrugging, and taking a drag. "Okay."

Joint in his mouth, clenched between exposed teeth, Lurks Beneath produced a flower crown of various dried plants, in different colours, faded.

"I made it for you," Lurks whispered, as if it were a secret, and hung it on the Original's head with a dreamy smile, and exhaled and billowed smoke again, a moth lazily fluttering out of his mouth and resting on the wall next to the human.

"If the stupid ones can have nice things, I think you can, too. It doesn't hurt."

Smoke

He said nothing, apathetically submitting to the crown without a whisper of protest. After the incident with the water he felt it perhaps wiser to be as obedient as possible, although his bile still rose at the idea.

Do your job.

"Can you make them too? The stupid ones."

Smoke

"Oh!" Lurks replied, and shook his head. "Only the Mother." He tittered to himself, admiring the crown of flowers. He wore one, too, all red and orange like muted flame. "She is very very special. Have you met her?"

His voice sounded as if he were recalling a dream, and a fond one at that.

Quiver

A long pause, and then: "What's your name?"

Quiver

He circled around the Original, scarves swirling around him, and he reached down to caress his hair. "Watching," he murmured, "waiting." It was rote recitation, a prelude to a name he gave to himself long after he forgot the one that came before. "Beneath your bed, and beneath the sand."

The scavenger leaned down, the words laughed against the Original's ear. "We Lurk Beneath."

The moment was no more than a brief flash in the pan, over as soon as it started. "Lurks is okay," he said, thoughtful. "It is shorter, and shorter is good."

Smoke

He was afraid to appear too curious, lest Lurks read something into it, but he was coming to think that the childish naivete of the thing wasn't an act but sincere.

"She is very impressive," he said without inflection, because this was at least true. "Are all your Clan's lairs so big? I got lost," he added, absently digging the tip of Fiona's blade into the floor of the room, without even realizing he'd summoned her yet again. "Or is this one especially impressive, because it is hers?" He reached up and gently touched the crown of flowers, recovering it from an imaginary shift in position, because he could not bring himself to humbly say thanks but he wanted Lurks to think that he appreciated the token. He imbued the gesture with an air of proprietary care, as though the crown slipping from its spot was the worst thing he could imagine.

Quiver

He did not know what good subterfuge would do him; he was not in the right mindset for subterfuge anyway, and too addled by thirst and hunger and constant terror and the shame of his incessant debasement to make a good attempt. He made an unsubtle one instead, moved by Lurks' divulging of his name and by the frighteningly childish way he moved and spoke.

"I like you better," he said very quietly, "than the other two." He remembered the things he'd said on that first day they'd found him, and added: "I like you better especially than the tall one, the one you called Qarah."