Young Writers Society

Maahes gave a startled cry when the knocking began, his grip somehow growing even tighter than before. Odris wanted to comfort him by telling him it was probably just another person like them, but that didn't seem like that would amount to much - Maahes was trembling so hard that Odris doubted reason would have any effect on him.

At least, not like that.

Odris shifted Maahes's weight a bit and approached the door. Maahes struggled and frantically tried to get down as he walked over, but Odris somehow managed to fight against the little djinni. Maahes ducked his head back into Odris's shoulder the moment he opened the door, fingers digging into Odris's neck as he trembled even harder than before.

There was a boy standing in front of the cottage. He couldn't have been much older than Odris was, give or take a year.

"Hi," Odris said.

Now Maahes finally glanced at the door, and his demeanor instantly changed when he realized there wasn't any threat. He still clung to Odris, though - he apparently liked being held. "Have you seen Hali?" Maahes asked. "We have to find Hali!"

“I—I’m sorry?” said Galen, startled words beginning to spill from him. “Who’s Hali? Are you all right? I heard a loud noise from outside, so I wanted to see if I could help, and I also . . . don’t know where I am.” Self-consciously, he tugged the cloth higher up towards the bridge of his nose and shuffled a foot. “Sorry, I guess I should slow down. Does that roar I heard earlier have to do with Hali? Is this a friend of yours?”

Maahes watched the newcomer fiddle with the thin scarf tied around his face with interest. It was a really funny place for a scarf. Was he trying to hide something? Maahes turned himself around in Odris's arms so he could get a better look at both the man and his weird scarf.

"Hali's someone we met here," Odris said. Maahes didn't really pay much attention to what was being said, instead seeing if he could reach the scarf from where Odris was holding him. "He just...disappeared before you came-"

He stopped when he saw what Maahes was trying to do.

Odris would have been able to stop him, if it wasn't for the fact that Maahes had managed to get a grip on the scarf by this point. He gave the scarf a little tug down, his guise's tiny fingers having plenty of strength to reveal what was hiding underneath.

There were really weird scars running on the side of the man's mouth, almost like he had a really big smile. Maahes reached out his hand again and touched the scars, feeling the scar tissue underneath his fingers. Odris hurriedly stumbled back, grabbing onto Maahes's hand and pushing it down.

"Maahes," Odris hissed.

Galen's cheeks turned bright red and he looked down. He couldn't meet the pair's gazes as his fingers fumbled with the scarf and he finally succeeded in pulling it back up again. Even though he knew his face was hideous and he'd been through this so many times, it never got any easier, nor felt any better than before.

This Maahes was a child, so it was obvious that he would be curious. Most were, unfortunately so. And what about the older boy, the one about his age? Was he like some who told children not to stare, for fear of either incurring Galen's anger or offending him?

Galen didn't go out much in broad daylight anymore, but he felt he had seen plenty of types of reactions over the years he remembered. No screams or cries of disgust, and no ridiculing laughs from them, at least not yet--a rarer response. What were they thinking?

At least Galen didn't cry when people gaped at his face anymore, like he did when he was much younger. He tried not to relive the memories of why he had stopped, though.

"Sorry," he said softly. "That--that must have been unpleasant to see." He backed away from the doorway. "If you could tell me the closest way to get back to the capital, I'll be on my way."

Odris glanced between the now squirming djinni in his arms and the man in the doorway, torn between scolding Maahes and explaining what had happened to the newcomer. He eventually settled on doing the second of the two options. If the squirming was anything to go off of, Maahes had figured out that he was going to be reprimanded as soon as Odris had the chance.

"I don't think you'll be getting back to the capital soon," Odris said. He knew it was wrong to stare, but it was hard not to - he couldn't help but wonder how he had gotten those scars, and wonder what living with them had to be like. "None of us are from here. We're all from somewhere else. It seems like this is a place that you end up in when you're running away from something."

Now he finally turned his attention back to Maahes.

The djinni immediately froze when he noticed where Odris was looking.

"Maahes," he repeated, giving the spirit a stern look. "It's not nice to invade people's personal space."

"But I was being a scholar," Maahes protested. He drew his lips into a thin line and puffed out his cheeks. "I was trying to learn, Odris! Just like you do!"

"You have to ask when you're doing something like that-"

Maahes suddenly stopped meeting his gaze. It wasn't that Maahes was trying to get out of the conversation - Odris knew what that expression was. This was a different one. He was distracted. Odris turned his head and looked at where Maahes was staring.

He was staring at where Hali had been standing.

Maahes gave an excited little gasp. "No one took Hali!" he exclaimed, looking back at Odris. "Hali figured out how to leave!"

Galen stepped a little closer again and glanced inside. "I'm not sure I understand," he said, once again checking that his mask was secure despite the usual feeling of the cloth brushing against his skin. "So we all just appeared here for some reason?" His mind raced with different possibilities.

So say their whole story was true, and Hali really had just disappeared. And then Maahes had just said that their acquaintance had figured out how to leave . . .

"Perhaps there's some sort of test we have to pass before leaving," he suggested. He felt rather ridiculous for going along with something that sounded so unrealistic, but if this was really all a dream, he would just wake up eventually. "Wait, so, what was happening before Hali vanished? Why do you think this is a place people go when they're running away from something?"

That thought made Galen uncomfortable. He had run away before, and although it had practically saved his life, it had cost him dearly as well. He didn't want to even explore the things that he could be unconsciously avoiding.

James was admittedly miffed at the arrival of a newcomer at such a key turning point, and didn't give the man more than a brief side-ways glance before turning to stare back at where Hali had been before he disappeared.

Maahes was coming to some of the same conclusions he had. Hali must've found a way out, and considering Hali hadn't done anything physical, it had to be something psychological. A revelation. A thought. Something Hali learned or decided or felt.

He tried to trace back what Hali had been doing before his disappearance, only to realize Hali hadn't done much apart from look in the mirror. James hadn't bothered to see what was special about his reflection. Maybe he should've.

All he could recall that Hali had said was "he's gone," with "he" presumably being the person who he was hallucinating. For James, Carter was still there, now watching through the window like a haunted figure.

Then Hali had whispered something under his breath. James tried to play back the mumbled words in his mind, but there was no sound. All James could make out from trying to read his lips at the time had been "ready."

If only Hali hadn't been so cryptic.

But, from the few things he could piece together...

"He... maybe he was ready to stop running," James concluded. "Maybe he wasn't afraid anymore."

Maahes frowned and shook his head. Even though they had previously established that he had been afraid, too, he couldn't let Odris know that - it would be bad if he did. Odris was supposed to think he didn't care about all the work; he was supposed to think he was the perfect scholar and diplomat.

Which he was!

But if he had to stop being afraid, that meant he was afraid in the first place. "I think it's because he looked in the mirror!" Maahes declared. With a burst of strength, he managed to finally break free from Odris's grasp. Maahes then darted on over to the mirror and peered at his reflection again, standing on his toes so he could get the best look at himself as he possibly could.

"Hali was a dragon in the mirror, and that's what he actually was!" Maahes continued to say. Odris rushed over to him and tried to move him from his spot, but Maahes was stubbornly staying put. "Maybe you have to accept yourself instead of no longer being afraid. Like I have to accept that I have tentacles, and a beak and a-"

Odris slammed his hand over Maahes's mouth.

Maahes frowned.

"It's not nice to cut people off, Odris," he tried to inform his summoner, but his voice came out muffled thanks to the hand covering his mouth. He squirmed as Odris tried to pull him close to his leg, hand still preventing him from speaking.

"Or it's both," James said, already trying to figure out how to even do that in order to escape. Stop being afraid? Accept yourself? Those things were much easier said than done.

He sighed, and gave Odris a pointed look of disapproval for cutting off Maahes.

Odris didn't address the look - he was too busy trying to prevent Maahes from saying anything else that would reveal the truth. James may have not been a problem; it was hard to tell. But Aurick was standing only a short distance away, and he had tried to kill someone close to him until they had convinced him to do differently. If he saw what Maahes looked like - or learned the secret about the supposedly normal boy - then they would be in far more trouble than either one of them could handle right now.

Maahes said something into his hand that sounded suspiciously like, "Let me go, Odris!", but the Alteran had no intentions of doing so.

James sighed, watching as Odris muffled the poor boy. He was aware that Odris was trying to keep Maahes from saying anything that could get them in trouble or draw suspicion, but James, at least, was beyond that point. He was just trying to think about how he could work through whatever ‘fear’ it was he had to stop having so he could go home.

Not that home was safe, but, that was a different matter.

“Let the kid go, Odris. You can’t muzzle him forever.”

Odris gave James a long look, like he wasn't sure he wanted to follow through with what was requested. Maahes kept squirming in his grasp - he wanted to be able to say things without Odris stopping him! He wasn't sure what he would say now that he had been muffled for so long, but still. It was the thought that counted!

Odris let go.

Maahes immediately took a big gulp of air and went darting back to the mirror, even though the air wasn't really needed.

He gave his reflection a long, serious look.

"Maahes," Odris whispered. "Please get away from the mirror."

"But I want to see myself!" Maahes protested, standing on the very tips of his toes. It was still really cool seeing his reflection, even if the djinni there was smaller than he actually was.