Prologue:

Now I can begin to tell my story;

A legend’s not a legend ’til it ends.      

                                                —“One” by Denisse Lara

            Greetings, Seer of the Thought. I am Dylan Seyoni, a true disa by birth and desire. I am a Kyorlen, but I doubt you’ve ever heard of our race. The Kyorle are from another plane of existence, one that, in many aspects, is close to your own, but is still very different. And yet my world is closer to yours than you may think.

            I have studied your culture these last few years, in order to adapt my story to better your understanding. Mine is a tale of greed, love, betrayal, and of the lust for power; a true child of the romantics. I will not lie and say it is a pretty tale, but it must be told.

            It all started that fateful day, a half-dozen years to the hour after that blasphemous war began…

Chapter One

            It’d been six years to the day since that gods-forsaken war began, and I’d been there the final two of those six. Nobody was really sure how the war started, or why, but the fact of the matter was it did, and I was there, for better or worse.

            Fresh out of school, I joined up with the Kyorlei army as a disa, or a sort of psychiatrist. The main difference between a disa and a psychiatrist is that a disa can Feel emotions and See auras and feelings; I was a disa. As such, in this army at least, I was not technically military personnel; I believe “baggage” was the term the Commandante used. No matter, I’d been called much worse by much better people.

            Being as I was not part of the army, I needed not adhere to the majority of their strict standards. For the most part, I could do as I pleased, which annoyed the Commandante to not end. He was one of those strict, everything-must-be-just-so people with a hidden agenda, and it will forever bother him that I could wear my own vivid blues and greens rather than the dull red-brown of the Kyorlei army and he could say nothing to the contrary.

            Still, there were some things I had to compromise on. I had to use a military-regulation tent, but I could take with me whatever I liked, within reason. At least once a week I had to eat with the rest of the soldiers, but I did every day anyway. It helped the camp morale. I had to be polite to my superiors, but growing up as I had, one learned to be polite to everyone, or they would become intimate friends with the meanest switch on the backyard tree. Also I had to wear my rank on the cuff of my sleeve, like everyone else.

            As that camp’s psychiatrist, I eventually was able to meet everyone, and let me tell you, there were some I would’ve as soon left alone. My job wouldn’t allow that, however, so it was only on rare occasion I could have a moment of peace to just sit in my tent and read or draw by the light of the glowing geoli­ stones I kept and sip a delicately steaming cup of shokorlaa, or chocolate. It was in just one of these moments I heard someone coming to my tent.

             “Disa Seyoni? Are you busy?”

I stifled a sigh and closed the cover on the sketchpad, calling out, “No, not at all. Come in.” I leaned over and placed the paper and pencils inside a box beside my bed.

            The flap opened and a man entered. My spirits turned for the better as I recognized Feiori Noyn, one of my closest friends in this war. Three years my senior, he was six inches or so taller than I, with creamy tan skin, darkened by the harsh sunlight. Bright green eyes twinkled at me as he settled himself on one of the many cushions I had strewn around the tent floor. Feiori had black and blue feathers intertwined with his shoulder-length red-gold hair, which was against regulations. But the feathers were a crucial part of his culture, and with my urging, the Kyorlei  Council  allowed him to wear them.

            In Feiori’s heritage, the colour combinations of the feathers in one’s hair represented, among other things, one’s marital status. The black and blue feathers carefully entwined in Feiori’s claimed him “available,” but only because he was a male. If a female wore black and blue feathers, it declared her “widowed and grieving.” It was a confusing outlook, but Feiori had carefully explained the process to me at an earlier appointment. The fact that the feathers today were black and blue caught my attention; usually he wore blue and green, the combination of engagement, and a painted feather of his jika, or fiancée.

            While he was tall, Feiori’s build was lithe and slender. His body moved with the easy grace of his people, the willowy effortlessness of his movements liquidy-smooth. His face was thin and delicate, and yet masculine. The red-brown uniform suited his frame.

            I sat up straighter on my cot and smiled at him. “Heyla, Feiori. What brings you here?”

            Feiori smiled at me, then frowned. “Disa, can I talk to you? Off the record?”

            Quietly I slipped off the bed and onto one of the cushions not too far from him. “Of course, Feiori. What is it?” I pulled my knees under me and leaned on one hand. “And how many times do I have to ask you to call me Dylan?”

            He smiled briefly, then started fishing for something in his pocket. In the end, he pulled out a much-folded piece of paper and began turning it over and over in his hands. Feiori was one of those people who talked best if he had something in his hands to fiddle with, to fidget. And so as he folded and unfolded, turned and twisted the paper, he began, “Well, you remember before I told you about Cora, my jika?”

            I nodded and just let him go at his own pace.

“She… Gods, Dylan, she’s dead.” His eyes lost their emerald fire and he finally handed me the paper.

            The paper contained little more than a notice of her death—it didn’t even tell how, just that she’d passed on—but from what Feiori had told me, Cora had been a healthy young woman with much to live for. If she’d been ill or something, why hadn’t he found out sooner, especially since they’d been “engaged” for years now? The letter was dated three days hence. I looked back up at him sadly. “Feiori, I’m sorry, really I am.”

            He nodded and took the paper back from me. “I just had to tell someone, you know?” A brief smile crossed his features, and his eyes lost their cheery light. “And I thought since you’re a disa… and Dylan, you’re my best friend, so you’re the one I wanted to talk to. Even about Cora…” His voice trailed off and he turned his gaze to the side.

            All I wanted to do was gather him into my arms and shelter him from the pain I Felt from him, but I knew that wouldn’t help at all. So I let him talk about her, to get it off his chest and mind.

            It was an hour and a half before his voice dried up and the words faded. I bustled around the tent and fixed two cups of shokorlaa. He accepted one gratefully and sniffed its delicious aroma with an obvious appreciation, sipping the drink delicately. He sighed and leaned his head back against the cot.

            Sometime during the conversation we’d moved to where we were sitting side by side, our backs leaning against the side of the cot and the pillows bunched up under us. I didn’t remember moving, and I didn’t think he did either, but there we were. I leaned my head against his shoulder and he rested his cheek on the crown of my head.

            He sipped his shokorlaa and I felt him shift a bit. “Dylan?”

             “Hmm?”

             “Thank you.”

            I just smiled and sipped my shokorlaa. That was what I liked most about being a disa: helping people, the feeling of purpose after somebody’s confided in me, or I’ve helped them sort through some long-suffering problem. It was a warm, glowy feeling in the pit of the stomach area, made me feel all thingy inside. But with Feiori, I didn’t have to use my Gifts to read his emotions; Feiori wore his feelings on his sleeve, and I liked that about him.

            From outside the sound of the drill bells drifted in. Feiori sighed deeply. “The bells are chiming.”

             “I hear,” I answered softly. “You have to go, don’t you?”

            I felt him nodding from where his cheek rested against my head and he sighed again. I straightened up so he could stand, and he helped me to my feet. Feiori held onto my hands for longer than necessary, and I looked up to see if anything was puzzling him.

            His gaze locked onto mine, and I felt a faint flush rising in my cheeks at the intensity in his eyes. “Thank you,” he said quietly. “I don’t know how to thank you—the words are not enough alone.”

            I blushed and looked at the cushion at our feet, then glanced up at him, shaking black and blond strands from my eyes. “Feiori, I’m a disa. You’re my friend. Do the math.” Though I tried to make light of this subject, and he smiled, that intensity in his eyes wouldn’t be shaken.

            His hands moved from mine up to my shoulders and he squeezed them lightly. “Dylan, I mean it.”

            Then he lowered his head to mine until our foreheads and noses touched—a sign of respect and friendship in his culture. His eyes were closed, I noted, a symbol of trust. I closed my own eyes and leaned into him a bit to return the touch. When he pulled back and finally opened his eyes, the brightness had returned to their emerald depths. His hands slid down my arms and back into my own.

             “I have to go now,” he said as the bells continued their din. Oh, how the sound was bitter to my ears. Feiori stepped back but held my hands until our fingertips no longer met, and then disappeared from my tent.

            For a few moments I stared at the tent wall where he disappeared. It wasn’t until the bells ceased their incessant tolling that I was startled from my reverie. Mechanically I began to clean my tent up, my mind wandering. My fingers wrapped around the still-hot mug of shokorlaa Feiori had abandoned; I stared at it as if I’d never seen one before. What are these sensations, these…feelings…in me?

            On that thought, my eyes drifted up to the small mirror on top of my chest of clothing. The face in the pane of glass seemed so familiar, and yet so alien to me. The slant of the silvery violet eyes I recognized as my own, but since when was I so dazed, were those eyes glazed so thickly? White-blond hair with a lovely smattering of black highlights I knew so well, but the way they draped over the high, flushed cheeks was so odd. Slim, pointed, elfin chin, nose and ears on a round, heart-shaped face I identified as belonging to Dylan Seyoni, and yet they weren’t mine. Hesitantly I lifted a hand to my cheek and brushed the pads of my fingertips over the skin; it was warm to the touch. My face was always cool and dove-soft.

            The braiding system in the hair was the way I did my own daily, one thin braid from the corner of each eye plated back into one at the back of my head, but in spite of that it was so different. The one earring in my left ear was indeed the same one my mother had given me the day I finished school and moved out to be my own man, but there were subtle differences; when I’d gotten the silver tyel—a hawk-like creature with the body and instincts of a wolf—earring, it was bright and shiny, lustrous. Now it was dull and lackluster, lifeless.

            Why didn’t I recognize my reflection? What was I seeing in the looking-glass—or the better question, who was I seeing?