Beginnings and Endings

William nodded.

The scientist hadn't been fond of them before the tour. William doubted that had changed. The scroll-keeper, who seemed to at least tolerate them being there, probably had a point when he suggested that William should stay away from the mortician. William would have to be careful.

But danger wasn't necessarily a reason to leave someone or something alone—especially when the alternative was being stuck here.

"Thank you," William said. "Your tour was very useful. I'll meet with the mortician now, but I'll see you afterwards or at the next meal."

William turned and started to head towards the mortician.

skekRa had dismissed Nosa and her friend at this point and had begun work preparing a coffin for the Gelfling who had perished under skekTek's newest machine. The Emperor had assured him the Gelfling's death was going to be kept secret; he and the Chamberlain had devised an excuse that Mira had been sent out on patrol and never returned. Even so, skekRa had been bored lately and crafting a coffin gave him something with which to busy his hands.

skekRa had regrettably not been present when the Essence was extracted from the Gelfling, but he made do with what remained when the other Skeksis had drunk their fill. Even that little dose had been enough to nearly send him into a faint; the intensity with which his limbs were reinvigorated and his wrinkles smoothed was nothing short of staggering.
He wanted more; that much was certain. To feel young again was something skekRa had never dreamed he would have the chance to do, yet there he had been at skekTek's side, sipping from the vial of that Gelfling's life and feeling as if he could conquer all of Thra. But to have more would mean to harvest more Gelfling...

William should have just lingered in the hallway after excuses themself from the tour, but death called to them in a way they couldn't quite shake. Maybe it was because of the stone buried in their thigh. They absentmindedly moved their hand over the philosopher's stone at the thought. They didn't like to think about the stone much, but sometimes it was too hard to ignore the voices in the very back of their mind.

They kept moving down the hallway. The smell of death only grew stronger. It was strong and hard to stomach after all these years, but it felt...weirdly nostalgic.

William stopped in front of the mortician's doors.

They could still turn around now, but...

They sighed, rolled their eyes at their own hesitation, and opened the doors.

skekRa whirled, and his spines rattled threateningly. Who dared disturb him without knocking?!
The sight that greeted him certainly wasn't what he'd expected. It wasn't a Podling or Gelfing, that much was certain. The anatomy was all wrong--too long and too angular, flat-faced.
skekRa's spines stilled, and the room went quiet. He clacked his beak once, curling his lip back to show needle-thin teeth. "What manner of creature are you, little-footed one?" he hissed, looming over the strange thing in front of him. "And how have you stumbled upon my domain?"

Little-footed one?

That name was...ironic. William couldn't help but shift ever so slightly at the comment. They were good at distributing their weight now; the days where William left little craters everywhere they walked were long gone. The mortician had no idea how incorrect his description was.

William looked up.

"My name is William Drago," they offered. "I'm a human. I'm guessing no one told you that I was here. The scroll-keeper and scientist just gave me a tour and mentioned your work area being here."

A human? skekRa had never heard of such a thing. He kept hold of the mallet in his primary left hand, narrowing his golden eyes. What exactly was a human, and why was it here? What business did skekTek and skekOk have telling this creature where he was?

"This is my private work area," he retorted, brandishing the mallet. "What is a human and what is your business at the castle?" He'd never seen anything quite like this "Wiliam Drago; as much as he wanted to chase it out of his mortuary, he couldn't help the spark of curiosity.

(I'm sorry about my Skeksis continually calling William "it." They refer to just about every person that way unless they consider them equals. skekRa's been getting better at calling Nosa "she" but it might be awhile before he warms up to William.)

Spoiler

I understand! I've had similar issues with characters of mine in other stories. It can be hard balancing a biased perspective with the right pronouns, especially when you want to highlight how strange and unfamiliar a character is to another character.

William raised an eyebrow at the mallet being brandished in their face. It was one of the least threatening weapons they had ever been faced with. After growing up with Lust's extending fingernails and Greed's Ultimate Shield, it was hard for William to be thrown off by something like a mallet.

"I'm a human," they said. "I come from a country called Amestris. I'm not entirely sure how I ended up here, but your emperor is letting me stay here until I can find a way back to my home."

"Amestris is not a land of Thra, to my knowledge." skekRa turned the mallet over in his hands, shifting his two secondaries to gesture at the door. "What do you want with me, human from Amestris?"

(Also, real quick: skekRa would be the only Skeksis William has seen with all four arms functioning. The others keep theirs covered up because they're vestigial now. Just a little note)

Spoiler

Oooh, good to know! Thanks for the heads up.

"My name is William," they correctly. It admittedly wasn't actually William, but they still preferred to be called by a name. It made their chest ache less.

As they tried to put what led them here into words, William noticed that the mortician was the only person they had seen that had four arms. When William thought back to the others like the mortician, they had only two visible. They could have been covering the other two, but why would they hide those arms?

William pushed the thought away.

"I might have wanted an excuse to leave the tour," they admitted. They faltered, feeling slightly ashamed at the other reason they had come here. "I was...also reminded of where I grew up. Humans don't usually grow up underground. I haven't been in a place like this is a long time."

"The Scroll Keeper is very dull," skekRa mused. "You were raised in catacombs?" This creature just became more and more intriguing. It didn't look like the sort to swell underground--then again, most Skeksis didn't either.

William couldn't help but give a small smile at the comment about the scroll keeper.

Then their smile faltered.

"Not exactly," they carefully said. They had been good about never sharing their past with anyone, but this was another world. It was nice being able to reminisce about their childhood, even if it was far from the best possible one they and their siblings could have had. "I'm sure there were catacombs somewhere, but my siblings and I never went. There was a secret area underneath the city."

"Hm." skekRa frowned. "What sorts of creatures are in this city of yours? Gelfling? Podling? More of your kind...humans?"

“More of your kind,” the mortician said. The question was probably just a result of simple curiosity, but it dug into William's chest like their sister's claw-like nails. The mortician didn't know they were lying. They didn't know that William only had a handful of people in their life—had had a handful of people in their life—who were remotely like them.

And there was absolutely none that were exactly alike.

“More humans,” William confirmed. “We don't have podlings or gelfings in Amestris.”

Now that was strange. "None at all? How did this come to be?" His eagerness to have this thing out of the mortuary was diminishing slowly; the oddness of the situation was intriguing. Hardly anything happened down here, anyway. Usually that was how skekRa liked it--it let him work in peace, but if this being wasn't of Thra then this was a very rare experience indeed.

"I'm not sure," William admitted. "I think we might be from different worlds. I've never believed in that before today, but I've never seen someone like you and you've never seen someone like me."