A Different Kind of Despair Read Online Free Page A

not taking more time to appreciate the
culture of my own people -for being too weak to do anything other
than run.
    Despite his obvious aversion to my affections,
I hope that one day Marvin can understand why I'm behaving the way
I am.
    Words of love were not as common as they
should have been between Hikari. I myself shied away from my
mother's affections in my tent the day before. The ghostly weight
of her lips remained on my skin, and I kept bringing my fingers to
my forehead and cheeks, as though I could pick up a more physical
trace of her existence.
    Though I died of embarrassment a little every
time I said it or pulled him close, I want Marvin to know that I
care for him. For however short a time, he was Hikari. I loved his
willingness to learn our ways. I loved the way he cared for our
people. I loved the scent of his tent with all its pungent
tinctures and ointments -I even loved the way he scolded me without
a second thought, where most men in our matriarchal setting
reserved their concerns for private discussions.
    Until I could fully comprehend the loss of my
home, Marvin was my only real constant. He was there when my world
was still standing. He is became my world when my old one had
died.
    Ma'man, am I doing the right thing in going to
the home of necromancers? Did you know that Kurai would attack us
as they did?
    We stopped at an outcropping of rocks. I
watched as Will and Leo shoved a weighty set of boulders to the
side, parting the matted tufts of grass beneath them. A set of
natural stairs came in view, leading somewhere beneath the
earth.
    Leo and Will made their way down this passage,
with Marvin grudgingly falling into step beside me.
    "Come on," he said. "We'll have to make a stop
at Purilo's. It's only an hour away."
    I did not know what a Purilo was,
but I did have serious misgivings as I stepped underground. Leo and
Will resealed the passage, and I felt a trill of fright once the
last ray of sun disappeared.
    "This place is unnatural," I muttered, barely
able to make out the shapes in the dark. I tripped over something
and sucked in a startled breath.
    "Can you not see?" Marvin asked beside
me.
    "You can?" I balked.
    "Since necromancers are born and mostly raised
underground our eyes just adapted over time," Leo explained ahead
of us. "Marvin, you might have to carry her. The passage only gets
harder from here."
    "Marvin, carry?" Will snorted. "He couldn't
even carry himself last time he was here."
    "I did some reinforcement surgery two years
ago."
    Marvin didn't ask to pick me up; he just did.
I flailed uncomfortably at first; I was tall for a woman, standing
at six feet in height, and packing nearly 180 pounds in fat and
muscle (or so Marvin said once, when he was running some tests on
the tribe as a whole). It was normal for my kin to be built this
way, but I still worried as Marvin was slight as far as our men
were concerned.
    The Hikari had the leanest frames
among the Four Tribes as we spent so much time running across the
flat lands, breeding horses, and trading with merchants of the High
Cities. Outsiders, while still thinking us barbaric, also
considered Hikari to be the most civilized of our kind.
    Kurai, or those with Kurai blood,
like Leo, were mountains unto themselves. Living in shadow of
Drahk'onil, the High City of militaristic ophidians, demanded
strength of the most primal kind in order to survive. Men and women
were equal there in terms of sway, but ultimately decisions were
made through contests of strength rather than cunning. They made
their homes in the hollows of the mountain ranges, and were
notorious for robbing and sacrificing any wanderer that could not
hold their own against them.
    Akatsuki members were our dark-skinned
relatives, and they sustained themselves by moving from one oasis
to the next. They doubled as guides for travelers looking to find
their way to the High City of Isoviel, and as peace keepers on the
sands. In the past, long and bloody wars were waged by the