22 Red Twilight Demon of the Flowers chapter 22

Chapter 22 Fractured Memories Part 1

Realm Dodish

Place Southland

Chrono Sphere 20-05

(from the journal of Lovecraft)

As I sit in this train car my thoughts turn back to my school days, better days some might say. I can't disagree more, whenever I think back to sixth grade; I remember only pain and discomfort, I couldn't reach my twenties fast enough. I write in this journal struggling to piece together half-remembered day's gone. I received a letter in the mail from a 'friend' I have not spoken to since before middle school.

Samur Mike Ashcroft. He was an exchange student. I am told he comes from a well-to-do family. He was an acquired one. A hyena if I am not mistaking, he had black hair and sharp green-gray eyes. He dressed in the same outfit almost every day of the week; a cap that was not quite a bowler but not modern enough to be called a ball cap, a silver sports coat with a number stitched into the caller, and black slacks with fade marks running down the lag where the cuffs have been stretched. These outfit based on its wear must have belonged to his father before him. It was a look from a generation earlier.

Mike was never unkind to anyone, but we were kids, and kids tend to act dumb, we never understood Mike when he talked, and the older kids amongst us seemed to have fun ruffing him up at every turn. I remember a smell, Mike had the worst cologne in the world. It was something between watermelon, honey, and gasoline, or maybe fruity urine. Every boy I knew talked about how bad it was. Perhaps the girls liked it, I can't remember.

I do remember a field trip, on the other hand, the one where Samur and I first talked. It was the fourth, fifth and sixth-grade classes, we had gone to a nature reserve, and swimming at the end of the trip. When Mike stripped down to his swimsuit almost every boy in my grade broke out in laughter, his swimsuit was something hideous long black trunks that swung around his knees and a skin-tight undershirt that was apparently cut for a girl. Mike was quiet and sensitive, he broke into tears and ran into the woods screaming. I was the first person to go looking for him.

In the following days, Mike was quick to track me down, and we spent some time together. I was even invited over to his house. To spite him having claimed to come from a family with both wealth and influence the home, he resided in was a house of modesty. Not even so much a house as a room in the upper floors of what at one time might have been a palace but now is a multiplex.

Something that I came to learn was that Samur really couldn't speak my language fluently. History tells us that in a time not so many decades ago there where sixteen kingdoms, all isolated. They had their own church, their own tongue, their own costumes. It was the construction of the railroad that brought the territories together.

Honestly, Samur wasn't that bad at catching on as the school year trudged, one thing Mike never seemed to grasp was that in this land words have gender. He never seemed to use the right variation on words, expressly when talking about himself or his father he always used the wrong word, time and time again refereeing to his father and himself using feminine terms. I continually tried to correct him.

In the later years, our land has slowly married into four mega kingdoms, the area I was born in has found itself as part of what we call the Westerland, and I am now exiting my home and moving into alien tarator. The next trainyard I reach will mark the crossroads of the four lands, I will be boarding a train next talking me into the South-kingdom.

Why? Did I not say? Included in Mike's letter to me was a train ticket. I don't know why, but I feel inclined to go to my one-time friend. The message was less than specific with its instructions saying unclear words like 'I need you.' And 'there is something you must do for me' as for what these things might be that is the part that was left out. Nevertheless, I packed two bags and left my house in the hands of an acquaintance of mine, and now here I go.

On the second train, I board I am greeted by wolves. A strange people they are, being from a land of cats I have never seen dogs best as I recall. In my area, there are no wolf actors or wolf poets. They provide me with an exceptional dining experience, they offer me a plate of meat called something like 'horse-lag' served with a side of eggs and a bitter drink that they serve warmed. I thought the horse was ruff meat and the drink did not suit my pallet. But, I was happy to entertain the company. They seemed to have more than a hand full of questions to ask me as I did them.

We talk back and forth about nothing of interest for some time until at last, I reach the last connection in my trip. The roads leading to Mike's house I understand are uneven, unsafe for motor vehicles to travel in the spring. So, a charioteer awaits to escort me the last few miles to meet my friend.

The property that spreads out before me is like nothing I have seen in my homeland. A fence wraps around the estate that must be five miles long, a whole town fits within the walls. A cobbled brickwork path leads up the side of a hill at the center of town leading to a house that might be a castle. But unlike the house he had stayed at in back during his school years, this one looks functional. An old castle, the type that old-world lords and ladies lived in.

My shock and aw does not recede as I am pushed up the stairs and into the gate. The inner hall is painted in a blinding yellow, mirrors line the walls bouncing light every which way transforming each candle into a hundred or more candles. A grand stairwell wraps around the floor leading up the castle into the highest reaches, five landings can be seen where one could exit the stairs and look down to the stories beneath.

A rope and bell hang from the wall on the left just inside the door, the walls are decorated with spears and shields, armor is set up on mannequins at the foot of the stairs and before each entry. As a man with interest in history I have collected a hand full of knives and helmets, but mine are old and worn, these are splendid and show patina put are still in good repair. These armaments have seen battle and returned home.

"Mike!" I yell having little idea what else to do.

A voice, calm, sexy calls down from the second floor, my eyes roll up searching for its origin, my eyes catching a goddess like figure looking down at me, well-formed, generously shaped, wide hips and moderate breast wrapped in a flowing gown that looks like fish scales forged out of rubies, thick black hair rolling down her back and flashing blue-green eyes. Her fur is speckled between tan gray and black, with a dark ring around her nose and over her ears.

"You sound ridiculous when you say my name. It is the western tongue, you like the hard 'I,' and you forget the 'E' I will not have more of this silliness. You will call me Madam Ashcroft or Sumar, no more of this 'Mike' business." Her voice is low and commanding, but she is trying to make it sound high and inviting. "my lovable Mr. Dirhon Lovecraft. Why should it have taken you so long to come to me?"

I am in shock; the hair, the voice, the body they are all wrong. But the eyes, the inflections they seem right. But this can't be my friend, can it? "Sumar, you are a girl.?." I don't know if that is a question or a proclamation, my heart is suddenly pounding as she starts her way down the steps and her 'hideous perfume' finds my nose, and suddenly I remember it, I understand it.

"Did I not say so much a hundred times when we were younglings?" her voice echoes down the chambers as she follows the twisting spires down to me. "as a girl, many times your face invaded my dreams, my body wanted you, even then, even now. Did you never see it?"

It was never perfume, it was musk, she was leaving a hormone trail, and somehow not I nor anyone else understand it. It was puberty, her body was shouting for attention, how did I never work that though in my head?

As the hyena reaches the bottom landing and moves in close I take a step back pressing my back against the wall trying to collect my emotion, I am overwhelmed by confusion. Sumar is not. One of Sumar's long then hands finds my face, she grips me by the back of the head and forces me to lean into her, her mouth opens, her muzzle parts, her fangs wrap around my lips, she kisses me with a depth and passion I would never have expected. I get lost in the kiss.