The Feather on My Scale: Ch 22

The younger mariners dashed for a niche in the cliff face, disappearing through it only to emerge less than a minute later with bright yellow suits. Handing one to me and Ptolemy, they yanked on their own in quick succession before helping the elder Mariner Captain into one. Following their lead, I shoved one foot and then the other into the attached white boots, yanked up the strange fabric and shimmied my arms in before tugging at the metal tab that pulled the fabric together up the front. Tugging on the attached white helmet, I found myself in a stifling, crunchy-sounding, brown-tinted environment.

A squashing sensation of claustrophobia stole my breath away. Rough hands dragged me around and a slap on the back forced a chug of cold air to blow in my face, squashing the sensation. I turned to find one of the young mariners yelling directions at me in their fast-paced dialect. Staring hard, I watched his lips move and waded through the words like quicksand. “Air supply. There’s an air supply that’s on a timer?” I clarified what I thought the man said. He nodded before scrambling back to the console.

More mariners, some in yellow suits and others in their regular clothes filled the streets and docks as we watched the great grey prow level off into a city-sized subaquatic vessel the likes of which I had never seen in any of the history books in my collection.

“Henu. Demons?” Ptolemy cowered at my shoulder.

“That’s a ship, Ptol. Think demons can use ships?”

“No one ever told me they were brainless. I don’t see why they couldn’t.” Ptolemy protested.

The Mariner Captain, binoculars to his eyes, motioned for me. I stepped up to the console beneath one of the windows. He handed me the binoculars and motioned my attention toward the ship.

I couldn’t fathom what was so important about the ship when our air supply was dwindling through the dome wall, our imminent end maybe an hour or two away. The air recyclers wouldn’t be able to replace what was lost even if we got that wall closed back off in time. It would take months, if not a full year to release all the carbon dioxide from this section of the dome back into the rest without crashing the air recyclers. We didn’t have enough people trained on ancient tech to bring them back online. We couldn’t chance-

“Wolves?” I whispered in confusion. On the deck of the vessel were wolves. At least a hundred, no two hundred. “Ptolemy, Sucer, I love you. Say ‘I told you so.’”

Ptolemy’s hand settled into the small of my back as I handed him the binoculars. “I told you so. What the hell are those?”

“Demons?” We watched a series of self-inflating watercraft fall from the sides of the vessel, the wolves leaping down to the water. In doing so they did something that solidified our opinion of demons. They transformed. Shifted. Their fur, their shape melted away to that of men and women, bare to the sun streaming through the cracked glass of the dome.

I saw no ores. A chugging purr echoed off the calming water. The boats sped toward the docks at a phenomenal, impossible clip. Heart in my throat, I left the red building. Dead in an hour or not, I was still Pharaoh of Hawria and needed to find out what was about to happen to my people.

Ptolemy and I waited at the edge of the largest pier as grey ships made of the same material as my yellow suit pulled into the dock. A naked man, close to Ptolemy’s stature, gave us a once over with a raised eyebrow. The rest of his crew, a handful of men and women muttered amongst each other. More of the boats pulled into other piers.

The thunk of booted footsteps raised the hair on my arms. Turning, hoping not to find another horror, I instead felt my heart sink. “Lunam?”

The vampire leader of the Mubharakten dome had a fine sheen of sweat on his forehead. He perked up when he heard his name. He approached our pier and waved. Ptolemy signalled him over. Lunam approached, watching the naked people in the ship cautiously. Giving us the same once over as the man sitting forward in the ship, Lunam plucked at Ptolemy’s sleeve with interest.

“Flexilis? Quare1?” He posed before shrugging, realizing I wasn’t going to have a good clue as to what he was saying. He dragged in a deep breath and frowned at the shattered glass panels before he looked back at the pile of naked people all watching us with interest.

“My imeyem v vidu otsutsyiye vreda2.” The tall man in the ship lifted a pair of placating hands before moving for the ladders.

Ptolemy shifted to move before Lunam settled a hand on his suit. Stepping forward, Lunam crouched in front of the rungs, blocking the man’s path. “Ya ne slyshal yazyk moyey babushka uzhe mnogo let. Kto ty3?”

I swallowed at the soft voice. It was deep, melodic, and made of dark promises. What those promises were yet, I wasn’t positive. It sounded like love and death in the same breath. Lunam’s voice was choppy, skittish in our language. He struggled with the s and r intonations, the skittering style. This though, it was the origin of his accent. It wasn’t Easimal. It sounded nothing like Corticibus or Maria Mater. It didn’t even sound like Sanctus who was supposedly from his same dome.

The man in the boat’s eyes grew huge. “Borysko. Ktyo ty4?”

Lunam flashed a smile, fangs in full force as his eyes shifted from green to black. “Vash koshmar. Mozhesh’ zvat’ menya Lunam.5”

The group in the boat flinched back at this revelation. Some bared fangs of a less serpentine and more canine nature back at Lunam. He turned to me. “Henu, man says named Borysko.”

“Borysko?” I asked. The man flicked back and forth between us.

“Ty slomal biokupol. Teper’ my vse umrem. Vy vse idioty. Chto my budem s toboy delat’? Pochemu ty zdes’? Govori bystro. Ili ya s”yem tebya.6,” Luman was commanding every person’s attention on the dock with that voice, and yet none of us could figure out what he was saying.

Borysko dragged in a sharp breath and twisted to look at the dome wall. His color sallowed. “Yebat. Faddei, pozvonite na korabl’. Nam nuzhen tsement.7” He motioned for one of his men to look at the cracked glass. The man, leaner and dark-haired nodded before digging around in the seats of the inflatable ship. He extracted a clunky -looking version of our coms in green and grey. Rotating the nob at the top he called in what I could only think were more people on the ship.

Wolves still on board the ship shifted into more naked humans. These pulled hoses from hatches on the ship and pointed it at the dome wall. Soon a blanket of cream colored foam coated the glass and built down to the water’s edge where it struggled to harden.

Through this astounding grab from Osirisus’s clutches, Lunam and Borysko held what sounded to be a heated argument. Neither of them raised their voice above normal speech, but I had the impression of hostile aggravation from Lunam. What I wouldn’t give for Nour to be here translating what was going on.

“Ptolemy?” Lunam asked over his shoulder. “Person has cloth?” He pointed towards the group of mariners.

“Cloth?” Ptolemy asked, confused.

Lunam pulled at his shirt and pointed at Borysko. “Cloth? Need. Need? Need to be…cloth…? Pants. Shirt? Clothed! Yes. Clothed.”

“Are they hostile? Who are they? Where did they come from? What do they want?” He ignored the request, snapping out of his confusion.

Lunam shifted away from the barrage of questions. “Slow. Slow, please. Clothed easy?” The man pleaded, though the black orbs and fangs was not helping us feel like he needed much help.

“Do I need this suit?” I asked Ptolemy.

“Probably not. That foam looks like something solid. I think they didn’t realize they come up through the dome. Probably safe to take these off.” Ptolemy tugged his suit off and stepped out of it. Lunam motioned to have it. Ptolemy tossed it to him. I followed suit, leaving me in my formal attire. Many of the mariners, realizing who I was, quickly knelt, though the Mariners Captain and his attendants stayed as they were. Ptolemy scoffed, though I shushed him. Tossing my suit to Lunam, the vampire dropped them into the boat. Borysko and a woman next to him tugged them on, sans helmet. Others in the boat muttered the same word, flicking glances at us, cheeks turning red.

Raising a hand, I commanded silence for those close enough to take notice. “Fetch clothing for the foreigners!”

With everyone clothed in a varying state of traditional mariner robes or traditional Hawrian skirts, we finally had time to figure out what was going on. Men had been sent to the curtain station closest to the Nile Bay where they would be able to start decompression on the plastic. It would take days to drain and retract it. Maintenance crews would need to be brought out to inspect it for rips. Construction crews would be summoned after to help with any infrastructure crushed when the curtains had come down. Emergency personnel from the mariner ghetto were sent to the edge of the curtain to start looking for anyone who might have been caught in the curtain release. The scale of clean-up left me hollowed out. But there was not enough time to contemplate if my decisions had ended in fatality. All I could do was let that worry have a place on my shoulder.

Rubber? Why?We mean no harm.I haven’t heard my grandmother’s language for many years. Who are you?Borysko. Who are you?Your nightmare. You can call me Lunam.You broke the biodome. Now we will all die. You are all idiots. What are we going to do with you? Why are you here? Speak quickly. Or I’ll eat you.Fuck. Faddei, call the ship. We need cement.

Chapel Orahamm (C) 2022-2024. All Rights Reserved.

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