“Well, are you going to answer? Why keep me around, then?”
“The small nuisance you’ve been—your knife barely did a thing—has been offset by the entertainment.” He can’t be serious. Does he really find me entertaining?
I sit on the edge of the bed, and I realize that my newly healed feet feel dirty just from crossing the room. “You couldn’t have magicked me some socks while you were at it?” I mutter. “Those boots are going to rub on my feet without them.”
“Is it not customary for humans to thank others when they do them a favor?” His lip’s twitching. “I assumed you had socks.”
“Stinky gas station ones,” I mutter. “Which my bloody feet almost ruined.”
He appears to be dangerously close to smiling.
“And another thing,” I say, plopping down onto my side of the bed. “You’re wearing all black. You shift into a black horse. Did it occur to you that some people might, I don’t know, prefer another color?” Not me, but some people. I slide my legs underneath the covers, praying they’re clean. “And dresses are such an antiquated thing for you to make. Did you do that just because I’m a woman?” I yawn.
“Your brain appears to be fuzzy.” He folds his arms and looks down his nose at me. It’s not hard to do. He’s enormously tall, and I’m relatively short. “You need to sleep.”
“You’re so patronizing.” I close my eyes, though, and I sigh deeply. “Don’t tell me what I need. You’re not the boss of me.”
“Actually, that’s exactly what I am.”
I know I should reply. I should tell him off, but I just can’t find the energy to do it.
The only sound in the room is the voice of Lorelei Gilmore lamenting the fact that she had to ask her mother for money so Rory could go to Chilton. I’m smiling as I finally drift off to sleep.
When I wake up feeling much more rested, Mr. Cobalt Blue is gone.
7
Xolotl
Watching a human sleep is quite strange. Watching a human woman sleep is even more bizarre. It’s not something I ever thought I would do. I haven’t spent much time watching, well, anything in the many millennia of my existence. I’m more of a doer than a watcher.
But when Whitney tasked me to watch this ‘television’ box, which appears to be a frivolous, manufactured version of life in which people do things for the purpose of attempting to create an echo of a real emotional response, which I’m certainly incapable of doing, I realize that even for me, watching passively isn’t so unpleasant. After a bit, though, I turn off the moving recording of phony people, and I watch Whitney instead.
Her body’s small.
I didn’t realize how small until she wasn’t alert.
Something about this tiny human gives the appearance of greater size than she actually has. Her breathing is rhythmic, her chest rising and falling in a soothing manner. She didn’t want the black dress, but how was I to know that when it’s such a nice color on her? Her golden and chestnut curls have spread out all across the pillow, claiming much more than her fair share of the limited space.
Without any warning or reason I can comprehend, she suddenly inhales deeply. Her body convulses, and she flops sideways, her head collapsing against my chest, her arms wrapping around my body, and her leg draping over my right leg.
I freeze, expecting her to wake up after such a massive shift.
She mumbles something unintelligible and sighs, and then she curls even more closely around me, much like her hair conquered the entire pillow. I’m not sure what to do. She would never do this to me, invading my space so aggressively like this, while she was awake, I’m quite sure. Do most humans flail around like this while supposedly resting? Or is it only warriors who have been crammed into too-small frames that do it?
It certainly seems counterintuitive if the goal is to rest.
But the edges of her mouth turn up just the smallest amount, and she sighs and sinks even deeper against me. In this moment, unlike all her waking ones, she looks quite peaceful. I let her stay as she is, because to wake her might result in having a broken champion again, and I’ll be staring down the same choice as before. Do I eliminate her to terminate our bond and risk being put back to sleep? Or do I just drag her along injured, seeking another way to control her irritating outbursts?
We did strike an interesting deal, and I need to figure out how to teach her to become a better general. My past champions have been eager to target their enemies, helping me to rally forces that quickly led to other military and violent escalations. They all saw me as their path to greater fame and power, but Whitney doesn’t seem to want either of those things. All she wants is to stop me from fulfilling my entire purpose for existing.
I need figure out how to motivate her so she can help me force the humans into war. In that way, their world will be reminded of their own mortality, they’ll value life more, and we’ll be able to prune the dark, unhealthy, and damaged elements from society more effectively and with greater success.
A well-pruned tree grows better and makes more fruit.
A cleared thicket allows more light and nutrients to reach the remaining flora.
Only when faced with their own demise do humans truly appreciate the fleeting time they have in this realm of their existence, thereby truly living vibrantly. I turn the television back on by pressing the same button I used to turn it off, but the show she started is gone. Instead a strange red screen appears with lots of small boxes, each of them clamoring for my attention. I mash more buttons, but I can’t seem to restore the message about these girls named Gilmore that she wanted me to absorb. Instead, I find myself watching a group of people talking about the state of the world.
