Young Writers Society

Author's Note: I was going to have Aspen reveal something major in this chapter, but I decided to push that off so I could make sure I had a chapter done in time for this week. It should come up fairly quickly in the next one, but maybe you'll be able to figure it out before then!

Words: 1,119

Last Line(s): Nebris stared at her. “You have a contracted?”

Cass took another deep breath.

“Yes,” she confirmed, her voice shaking. “I do.”

The moment after Cass spoke, silence fell upon the room. Her grip on the locket tightened. She knew that she had said the right thing – she had had enough of people judging for things out of her control. But the courage that had come with her exhaustion was beginning to ebb away as quickly as it had arrived. She kept her eyes focused on Nebris, letting Lira and Aspen fade into the background behind her. She could already predict what their reactions would be. Lira would be confused; they still hadn't had the opportunity to explain what they had learned from Aldonius. Aspen would be shocked, at least, and possibly even just as frightened as Cass felt now.

Nebris wasn't as easy to understand. She barely knew him. And when his gaze dropped down from her face to the locket she clutched tightly in her hand, she began to understand that she couldn't be as quick to trust new people as she had been back in her little hometown.

He opened his mouth to speak, and she instinctively tensed. 

“Have you already made the contract?”

Her grip loosened ever so slightly when she heard how gentle and quiet his voice had become. “N-No.”

Nebris thought over for it for a minute. “Do you know who your contracted is, then?” he asked. His gaze lingered on the locket. She slipped it underneath her shirt again, but his expression remained the same as he looked back up at her face.

“I don't,” she admitted. She nervously shifted her weight from one foot to another. She waited for him to ask how she was so certain about it, but the question never came. She felt overcome by the urge to explain herself – what if he was coming to the wrong assumptions, whatever those would be? She stared down at the ground. “Someone named Aldonius told me. Have you...Have you heard of him before? He's a traveler, and he knows all about contracts...” 

Nebris muttered something underneath his breath.

Cass hesitantly raised her head.

He was biting his lip. Though it didn't look like he was putting too much pressure down on it, she could see a splash of red as blood began to pool in little droplets. “I haven't heard of him before,” Nebris said and the air grew a little more moist and warm as Lira picked up on the lie behind Cass.

Lira walked over to the altar. Cass hurriedly stepped back towards Aspen as Lira peered down into the water-filled bowl. When Nebris noticed that they had switched, he furiously wiped the blood off of his lips with his hand. “Nebris, what are you talking about? What's a contracted?”

Nebris took another deep breath. “Gods can connect their souls to other people's souls. They don't have to be another god. They can be anyone that they take favor on...” His bodily glow dimmed for a moment, then returned in its full strength with a red touch to his cheeks. “Contracts are built on trust. and you can only trust someone when you know the person they truly are. So before every contract is made, the people that will eventually make it together both start getting each other's memories in the form of dreams. I think the purpose is so you gain a better understanding of the person...” 

Lira was silent.

Cass took the opportunity to glance over in Aspen's direction. Her best friend was deep in thought, biting her lip much like Nebris had been minutes before. She kept glancing between Cass and the altar, and Cass wondered what Aspen could possibly be thinking behind her furrowed brow and small frown. 

She turned her attention to the minuscule bulge her locket made underneath her tunic. Her contracted had to have been connected with Telorum. Why else would a golden locket matter so much to her? She went to go fiddle with it again, but stopped herself just as she was in the middle of pulling it out from underneath her shirt. 

“You don't remember the dreams you have at first, do you?”

She looked back up at Lira.

She was peering over the bowl to the point where Cass had to move to get a view of Nebris, and the view that she got wasn't a good one – Nebris's glow had further diminished, and he was once again biting his lip to the point where it drew blood. She barely understood what gods were like here, but something told her that combination could only be a bad thing.

He let out a sigh.

“You don't,” Nebris confirmed, his voice as quiet as his sigh. “It would feel like a strange dream that you can't fully recall, even though you might wake up with a smile or fresh tears on your face.”

Cass raised a hand up, touching her currently dry cheeks. How many times in the past week alone had she woken up with eyes red from crying over memories she couldn't fully remember? This morning had been the outlier; every other one had left her in tears. What had her contracted been through that would make their memories so painful?

The water rippled as Lira placed her hands on the rim of the bowl. She tried to look into his violet eyes, but Nebris glanced away before she could.

“You're my contracted, aren't you?” Lira asked, her voice filled with hope and a barely contained joy.

He gave no reply.

Lira's grip on the bowl tightened, and the air grew hotter as little geysers of water began to form around her feet. Cass had to quickly step back to avoid getting her shoes soaked by the one that suddenly sprang up beside her. “Nebris, what's going on?” Lira questioned, her voice dropping in volume so it was barely above a whisper. “You're not acting like you usually do. Why aren't you giving me an answer? Do you not know?”

Nebris bit his lip for a third time.

“I...” He glanced around the room he was in, finally looking back at Lira after a few moments of trying to avoid her gaze. “I have to go, Lira. I'm sorry, but I have to go do...godly things.”

He hurriedly swiped at the surface of the water with one shaking hand, and the connection was abruptly severed. The crystals ceased glowing, and the light receded back into the bowl. Any sign of a godly influence disappeared. 

The geysers shot up one last time, then fell to the ground in a pool around Lira's feet. Cass awkwardly stood silently near her; she didn't want to intrude on the life of someone she barely knew, but it was hard to after seeing the conclusion of Lira and her god's conversation.

The water in the bowl rippled as a small droplet hit it.

Cass looked up at Lira's face.

The other girl was crying.

Taking an unsteady breath of her own, Cass reached over and hesitantly grabbed onto Lira's trembling hand. She gave it a tight squeeze, and tried her best to give the reassuring smile that Aspen always gave her when Lira stared over at her with red, tear-filled eyes.