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Hi everybody :)
I put the list of German and Veril words in my profile for everybody who wants to refresh their memory and brush up on their vocabulary.
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CHAPTER 12
"Are you unwell?"
The General's eyebrows drew together as he scrutinized me while a soldier placed a clay bowl full of warm stewed and thickened berries and a basket with some star-shaped buns on the table in front of us. The cloyingly sweet smell the fruits exuded was intense and soon filled the whole tent.
I clasped my hand over my mouth as I felt my stomach flip. For a moment I tried to concentrate on breathing shallowly but realized soon that it was a lost battle. I jumped up and ran to the exit, hand still pressed against my lips. I opened the flap and, had the guard outside not possessed inhumanly fast reflexes, he probably wouldn't have managed to jump aside.
"Ch'ish," he hissed while I was violently sick.
When my stomach was empty, I straightened up shakily and deeply inhaled the fresh air. Dusk was turning into night; the temperature had dropped a few degrees lately, and the sweltering heat had given way to a refreshing little breeze that smelled like trees, and grass, and the smoke of bonfires.
"I take it that rililchun are not your preferred dish," the General remarked, handing me a clay cup.
He had stepped behind me and stood in the tent's entrance. He closed one hand firmly around my upper arm as if he were afraid that I would topple over. The part of me that was so deeply connected to him wanted to lean against his broad chest and allow him to comfort me, but that was not who we were anymore.
I rinsed my mouth with the cool water, and he guided me to the bed, where I sat down wobbly, resting my forehead on my knees and caressing my belly, trying to soothe the nausea. I had been having stomach problems for a while now--but for how long exactly?
Since my failed escape attempt, I had sunken into a state of passiveness, discouraged and scared to take actions that might get more people hurt again, but still somehow hoping that something would happen and help me get free. And in the process, I had kind of lost track of the passing days. I partially blamed the Veril's nocturnal lifestyle. It was astonishing how difficult it became to preserve a sense of time without ever seeing daylight, and so I had settled into a strange type of routine, and the nights had melted into each other in a blur of sameness.
Most nights a guard would wake me up at dusk when, kenkirtim,
sundown food
-- the Veril equivalent of breakfast -- was brought in. Normally it was a more simple version of the meal we had been served tonight and consisted of cheese, some berries, and a piece of flatbread.
Usually I ate alone. Although
alone
was not really the correct term, since the evening I had tried to run, the General had stationed a guard
inside
the tent, watching over me whenever he was not there.
For my own safety
, he had remarked over his shoulder, because I apparently needed to be protected from the foolishness of my own decisions.
At the time I had not dared to argue, and by now I had kind of gotten used to it. Sometimes I was even grateful for the company, although the guards rarely reacted to my attempts at communicating with them, neither in English nor in the broken little phrases I could form in Veril by now. I had been incredibly proud that I had managed to find out one soldier's name--Sishmik--but this had pretty much been the highlight of my interactions with the guards.
The General himself had been distant, coming and going to the tent and rarely staying for long; sometimes his uniform was impeccably clean; sometimes he was covered in dirt; and on one occasion even blood again. I didn't know what kept him so busy, and his expression had been so guarded that I didn't want to ask. In general, our conversations had been short and functional lately, the longest ones being the grammar explanations during my Veril lessons. But I had no doubt that whatever he was doing was of world-shattering importance.
After eating
kenkirtim
I would usually go to the training field with Vik Ichel. This had quickly become my favorite part of the night. Not because of the physical activity--I wasn't a very sporty person, even though the exercise was pretty nice after spending most of my time in the tent--but because, despite our rough start, I had really come to enjoy the colonel's company and uncomplicated demeanor.
The General had joined us a few times, and we had tried--with little to no success--to make my darkness appear again. It was inside of me; I could feel it flowing through my blood, but it recoiled whenever I wanted to command it, evading my grasp like the nothingness it was. A few nights ago, on our last session together, the General had succeeded in making me produce a faint wisp, not more than the smoke of a cigarette, by pushing his magic through the binding and pulling it out of me. But as soon as he had let go, it evaporated into thin air again, leaving me dizzy and clutching my wrist, my cheeks burning in shame because he had more control over my magic than I did.
To my great relief, we had not tried it again since then. I suspected that this was less due to my discomfort and more because the General didn't have time. Sometimes I wouldn't see him for an entire night, and if he did show up, it was normally after midnight had long passed, and I had already washed in the lake and eaten a snack of dumplings or a soup--all under the supervision of at least one, sometimes two guards.
The soldiers disappeared immediately, evaporating into shadow whenever he stepped inside the tent. Most often he sat down at the table as soon as he arrived, studying or writing documents--which he never left out in the open again--while I waited for him in the bed. On some occasions, he didn't even have time for our Veril lessons before he had to go again. Most mornings I went to sleep alone because he was away until late after dawn.
Our interactions had been a strange contrast between devastating intimacy in the bed and distanced politeness outside of it. Since the events at Alexanderplatz, I had never actively opposed the General again, and it seemed that this was what he had wanted all along. He was content with me as long as I didn't argue, as long as I waited for him and was ready to spread my legs whenever he wished. A welcome relief during his undoubtedly stressful nights, but nothing that required his full attention or kept his concentration away from the really important things.
And it had been dangerously easy for me to sink into the apathy of our routine, relieved that his lack of attention on me allowed me to retreat into myself, reading and working on my little Veril grammar and waiting for
something
to happen.
The soft animal furs of the bed were tickling my legs, and I pressed my hand tentatively against my belly. I didn't want to admit it to myself, but in a way, having kenkirtim together tonight had been a pleasant surprise--deep inside I had been happy for the extra time with him--if only I wouldn't feel like crap. This was not the first time; as I came to think about it, my whole body had been somewhat off lately--not as much as tonight, but still.
A realization started to gnaw at the back of my mind, but I was too terrified to explore it. It had been a mistake not to track the days; I should have stayed more alert, more present. How long had I been here,
exactly
?
My phone was fully charged now, but with the constant supervision I was under, it had nonetheless been pretty useless for keeping up with current dates and events. I had only managed to switch it on a few times, smuggling it with me as my guards gave me sparse minutes of privacy while I used the camp's latrines, barely enough to write short, reassuring answers to my mom and to Tim, of course.
I had been hoping anxiously that my former roommate would mention those people again who could supposedly help me get out of here, because I had nothing--my whole brain got blocked whenever I tried to come up with possible escape plans. But Tim kept putting me off whenever I asked about it, and I got the feeling that he had probably overestimated his so-called friends.
For a while he had kept insisting on me trying to find a way to translate the map, but he seemed to have finally realized I wouldn't be able to help him. The messages I had received from him in the last couple of nights only contained questions about how I was holding up and some snippets of news about the upcoming elections.
I sat up, straightening my torso carefully. My stomach still felt a bit sore, but fortunately the nausea didn't return. I glanced over to the table and was relieved that the berries had been removed and only the star-shaped buns remained. The General was standing at my side next to the bed, and I had to crane my neck to look up at his imposing figure, framed by the last bit of gray light shining through the opening at the tent's crown.
"What date is it?" I asked him, trying to keep my voice calm, although a sense of foreboding was already closing my throat up.
"It is night thirty of the flower moon."
"Ah yes, that's very helpful; thank you so much." I was unable to keep the frustration out of my voice.
His eyebrows drew together as if he wasn't used to my disobedient side anymore. He crouched down next to me, all grace and controlled movements, took my chin between his fingers, and forced me to look at him. His golden eyes narrowed as he studied my face.
"Tonight is
tutilitin
, the summer solstice." He pointed to the star-shaped pastries on the table, and after examining me a bit more, he added, "I think you are not looking so well. I will call for a healer." He got up and walked to the exit.
"Stay," he added over his shoulder before he stepped outside as if I were a dog, as if I could go anywhere, but I hardly heard him; my mind was busy with calculations.
The summer solstice--what date was that again? If the
winter
solstice was shortly before Christmas, I guessed its counterpart must be six months earlier, which would be something around the twentieth to twenty-third of June. I attempted to count again, but it felt like the ground had suddenly opened up and I was dropping into a bottomless pit. No matter how I put it or what I tried to factor in, there was no way of denying anymore that I was
