Young Writers Society

He wasn't sure what he had been expecting, but a wave of relief washed over him when he realized that the person hiding underneath Lasan's coat wasn't a threat. It just seemed to be an awkward circumstance - he had had plenty of those before.

As Lasan stared into the fire, he opening his eyes and silently sat up. It wasn't intentional; he just had a habit of doing things quieter than most.

"I think I deserve to know the truth, too," he said.

Lasan screamed, falling onto his side. How had Ryder heard him? Had Ryder faked being asleep? Had Lasan underestimated how long it would take Ryder to fall asleep? And how had Ryder been so quiet?

Flopping onto his back, Lasan took a few deep breaths. "One second," he huffed. "How, how did you know about that?"

"I was listening to your conversation," he admitted. He crossed his legs and rested his hands on his knees. When he looked up at Lasan, he kept his gaze steady. "I'm sorry - I realized there was someone underneath your coat, so I thought I'd eavesdrop since you weren't telling me about them."

He thought for a moment.

"It's the paranoia and trust issues," he added.

"Oh," Lasan said. He couldn't tell if he was more disappointed in Ryder eavesdropping on him, or embarrassed that he'd been so obvious. "I guess that makes sense."

He unbuttoned the top two buttons of his coat. "Yeah, I didn't come alone," he said. "I brought my boyfriend."

Mal's head poked out of the coat; the white lion smiled awkwardly.

"Hi," he said to the semi-newcomer. Then he turned his attention back to Lasan. "Why didn't you mention having someone else with you earlier?"

Lasan gestured to Mal, who waved as awkwardly as he smiled. "I didn't exactly want to admit I'm keeping my boyfriend in my coat?"

Ryder didn't fully understand why he would have wanted to keep that a secret in the first place, but he didn't question it anymore. There were a lot of things that had thrown him off since he had woken up - maybe this was just like the rest of them?

If only Eva was here. She'd use it as another reason to treat him as a child, but at least she could do some clarifying that Lasan and his boyfriend weren't.

He leaned back and plopped back onto the ground.

With a few hasty apologies, Mal pulled himself out of Lasan's coat and flopped onto the floor. As his tail flicked around, the lion searched for something to wear that wasn't just a pair of brown boxers. Fortunately, he quickly spotted a dry blanket in the pile of snow-covered ones. Slipping it on, he sat down between Ryder and Lasan, resting his head on Lasan's thigh.

"You guys can keep talking about whatever it was you were talking about," Mal said, glancing between them. "I won't bother you."

"It's alright," Ryder said. "I think that conversation's already passed."

He gave Lasan's boyfriend a smile.

"Besides, it would be rude not to include you," he added. Not knowing he was there had made things awkward, but he had no problem with another person joining in - especially when that person had nothing else to do. It would be wrong to exclude him.

Mal rotated his wrists; Lasan bit down an apology when he saw that one of Mal's paws looked kind of swollen. It had been an accident, and Mal wouldn't have cared for an apology anyways. Not when they were both healers and could just fix the problem.

"I dunno," Mal said, looking over at Ryder. While Lasan stretched out a paw and tapped the palm of Mal's swollen paw, covering it in a pale light, Mal stared at the floor. "I didn't really have any family. My uncle showed up every now and then to give me presents, but that was about it. The priests didn't much like me."

His gaze dropped down to the floor, once again wishing he could be himself instead of Ryder Salvai. Ryder had the perfect family - a brother and sister he had spent his childhood with, and a brother and sister he missed dearly. Even though they were gone, and the pain never truly went away, he still could look back at the time they spent together in a positive light.

But Lasan and his boyfriend weren't like Ryder. They were like the real him, a him that he didn't ever feel determined to show during his time in the base.

As he tried to sort through his internal dilemma, he noticed something out of the corner of his eye. When he raised his head, he found himself looking at a pale light covering a swollen paw.

He straightened.

"What-What is that?" he managed to get out. It wasn't like his brother's light - this was much kinder, and didn't seem harmful. He scooted a little closer and hesitantly reached a hand out, only to draw it away when he realized how intrusive he was being. "I've never seen anything like it before."

"It's just healing magic," Mal said, looking over at Ryder. "You haven't seen it before?"

The light vanished just as quickly as it'd come, leaving behind a regular paw. Twisting the paw to stretch out the muscles, Mal nodded, leaned over, and gave Lasan a kiss on the forehead. "Thanks," Mal said.

"You're welcome," Lasan said, voice a little unsteady as he returned to his sitting position.

"But yeah, that's what it looks like," said Mal, turning to face Ryder. "I wouldn't advise touching it, mostly because I don't know what that does. I could technically heal you, if you want to know what that feels like. It wouldn't last long, but."

"Seeing it's enough for me," he said. It was hard to tell what a healer learned about the person being healed - he couldn't risk his somewhat different biology being noticed. "And, no, I haven't seen it before. We have healing potions where I'm from, and I've heard of actual magic, but I've never seen a combination of the two."

He looked between Lasan and his boyfriend.

"Can you teach me how to do that?"

If he could learn how to do that, he could help out the resistance more. They had a store of healing potions in the base, but it was hard lugging them out into the field. He went on as many missions as he could, and he could teach people who went on other ones - it would totally revolutionize how they did things.

Mal and Lasan exchanged glances, a silent conversation jumping between their eyes. What could they say? They couldn't say yes, but they couldn't say no, either. Lasan nodded to Mal; the lizard was leaving it up to Mal to decide how to explain it. And Mal decided to be honest.

"I don't know?" Mal said, looking back at Ryder. "It's not something we can really teach? A lot of healing magic is just getting good at tapping into your inner energy, concentrating, and focusing on patching the injury. I'm not sure it works if the person is from another world. Which it sounds like you are, since you don't know what healing magic is?"

"What do you mean?" he slowly said. Another world? He knew that there were other planets, but, the last time he had checked, they didn't have life on them. That was admittedly more of his brother's forte, and he hadn't really been paying attention to stuff like that. And it would explain the differences between them him - their magic and their appearances.

"What's your world called?" he asked, somewhat getting over his initial shock. If they said a different name, he'd believe it. If not, he just discovered from another part of his own.