The following day, the vreki was still in its stall. “Hey there, buddy,” Koradan said to him, when he opened the door. He was more cautious today, opening the stall slowly and peering inside, instead of just blundering in the way he’d done yesterday. “Mind if I come in and clean up your stall a bit? I know you probably feel like shit, but it’ll be just a smidgeon better with clean straw, right?” No one had told him what he was supposed to do with the ailing vreki, or even mentioned his existence, so he figured he’d just get on with his duties as usual.
The vreki gave a huffing grumble, seeming to shrug – if shrugging was a thing vreki did. But he lumbered towards the door, and Koradan opened it wider, allowing him to slip out into the aisle. He cleaned the stall quickly, but when he’d finished filling the wheelbarrow with soiled straw and he’d topped up the water barrel, the vreki just sat outside the door like a stone, his eyes staring blankly at the wall.
“Hey, you want to go back inside for me? I’m not supposed to leave vreki sitting in the aisle…” Did the vreki even care what Koradan’s job was? It seemed unlikely…
But as he stood there and watched the creature’s dull eyes and slow, listless breaths, he felt a strong wave of sympathy for him. “You know what? How about I take you out into the paddock for a bit?” Koradan offered. “It’s getting late in the afternoon, so it won’t be too hot. You could enjoy the sun for a little while. Maybe eat a few greens? Would you like that?” As a general rule, decommissioned vreki didn’t eat, slowly starving themselves to death, but he felt so damn sorry for the poor creature, he could only think that it wouldn’t hurt to try.
“Come on,” he said, nudging the beast. “Let’s go. Just for half an hour, and then you can come back inside and sulk again.”
The vreki turned its head to glare at him, raising one lip to reveal sharp teeth, displaying his displeasure at the description. But instead of snarling or snapping, he actually rose up onto his gangly legs and began a slow, clumsy shuffle down the aisle towards the main gate.
Koradan ducked past him to open the gate. The side walls of the barn only came up to Koradan’s shoulders, the rest of the tall space left open for ventilation. And the ‘gate’, if it could be called that, was little more than a wooden beam set across the aisle, more a placeholder than a real barrier. Koradan shoved it aside, then stood back while the vreki lumbered out into the sunlight.
“Over here,” Koradan said, leading him to the far paddock on the left. “No one’s using this paddock today. And there’s some shrubs at the back that you could eat. I wish I had some fish to give you. Maybe I’ll see if I can bring some tomorrow.”
The vreki huffed and wandered off, plopping down in the middle of the paddock. Koradan watched him for a moment, then gave a sigh of exasperation. Good grief, the daft animal was just not going to make an effort, was he? Koradan strolled over to the far side of the paddock, picking some long, green leaves from the agris shrub that grew by the small creek there. He carried them back to the vreki.
“Hey. What do you think of this? Tasty? You want to nibble on something? You must be hungry.” The vreki looked around, glaring at him with a bored expression. “Well, I didn’t force you to come out here, but since you have, you may as well eat something.”
Koradan felt an odd sensation in his head. It was sort of like someone was squeezing his skull, but at the same time, it wasn’t a physical sensation. “Ow. What… Are you doing that?” he asked the vreki. “I’m not trying to be rude. I’m just trying to help you.” The sensation came again, lighter this time, and Koradan’s eyes opened wide in shock. “Are you trying to talk to me?”
The vreki rolled his eyes and sighed. Then he snatched the greens out of Koradan’s hand, chewing them resentfully before eventually swallowing. He huffed in Koradan’s direction, as if to say ‘See? Are you happy now?’
“You’re welcome,” Koradan said, holding back a smile. “Well, I have to go finish cleaning the stable, but I’ll be back in about half an hour to take you back in. Will you be okay until then?”
Koradan felt that odd flicker through his mind again, but this time, the sensation culminated in one brief word, floating like gossamer on the breeze.Fine.
“Okay. Good,” he said, not managing to hide the smile this time. “I’ll see you later, then.”
◊ ◊ ◊
The next week passed in much the same manner. Koradan cleaned the stalls, leaving the sorrowful vreki’s until last. Then he coaxed the creature outside with offerings of fish or grenfruit and spent about half an hour stroking him and talking to him while the vreki lounged about, doing his best to appear as uninterested in life as possible. The vreki spoke to him now and then, just a word or two. ‘Water’was his request one day, then ‘Inside. Too hot’,the next day, when he refused to go outside, though not without good reason. At the end of the week, a brief flicker of ‘Thank you’appeared in Koradan’s mind, and for the first time, the words were accompanied by an emotion – just a hint of genuine gratitude, accompanied by a thick confusion, and a deep annoyance that Koradan didn’t really understand. It was an entirely odd sensation to be feeling emotions that weren’t his own, and he suddenly understood why it took so many years for a vreki and his rider to attune themselves to each other.
“Why are you annoyed?” Koradan asked. “Do you want me to just leave you alone and let you die? Am I being too persistent?”
Suddenly, it was like a floodgate opened in his head, and a wave of words, emotions and images slammed into him like a hurricane. It was entirely too much. His legs buckled and he sat down hard, his head spinning as his brain tried to process the surge of information.
As quickly as it had begun, the onslaught ended, and the only thing left in his mind was a gentle concern and a faint apology. “Holy shit.” He closed his eyes and put his head in his hands. “Oh gods, please don’t do that again,” he said, riding out the wave of nausea that hit him. He took a deep breath, letting it out slowly, and when he opened his eyes again, it was to find the vreki peering down at him, looking meek and contrite.
Sorry,the vreki said, in his mind.
“Yeah, okay. I know you didn’t mean to hurt me. I’m just not used to that, okay? I’m not like your old rider.”
Stupid,the vreki said, and Koradan was momentarily taken aback.
“What, me? That’s rude. I just said I’m not-”
Not you. Rider. Allriad. Stupid salas. Stupid man. Stupid rider.
Koradan gaped at the vreki. It was the most he’d said to Koradan all week, and an entirely uncharacteristic thing for him to say at all. Allriad had been the vreki’s rider, the one who’d died in a mountain climbing accident.
“You think your rider was stupid?” A vague sense of agreement drifted through his mind. “But I thought vreki and their riders loved each other. That you were bonded and hated being away from each other?”
The vreki sighed.Allriad. Arrogant. Not partner. Rider. Control. Rules. Not listening. Stupid mountain. Told him no climb. Allriad climb. Tell him no fly, he fly. Tell him sandstorm, he fly. Allriad love Allriad, not…The sound that came next was impossible to decipher. It sounded like a combination of a moan and a sneeze.Allriad dead.The sneeze sound came again.…supposed to die. Stupid rule.
“What was… Hang on, that sound you made. Is that your name?” Koradan knew that the vreki had a handful of ‘spoken’ words in their language, but he’d never spent enough time with them to learn much about it.
The vreki nodded, then made the sound again.
