We never raced anymore, he and I, because we always tied. It didn’t matter if one of us started later, or if one was tired; we would reach whatever mark we’d set at the same time, our breathing almost in unison, our feet hitting the ground at the same instants. We were like twins, he and I, and at the end of every botched competition we’d laugh and shake our heads, never really quite understanding or believing it.

Although Uar and I never raced, that didn’t mean we couldn’t run; so together we’d fly along the ground, our hands grasping at each other’s. The sun glimmered off of the willows, casting odd ghostly shadows on the grass. No animals lived near our house anymore – Mama said that they were afraid of Uar, which was probably true – so near the lake it was quiet as a grave. We would run everywhere we went, and together we went everywhere.

When I turned eight they sent me to school. Uar was ten at that time, and he should have been going to school long before, but he wasn’t – he never went. My mother taught him to read a little, but she herself didn’t know well so they stopped this soon after it started. While I was at school, I don’t know what Uar did; he would meet me in front of our cottage when I completed the three-mile walk home. He never met me at the town.

One night, after school was over for the day and the sun had already sunk down between the hills, Uar and I sat on the ground by the lake. The only thing that broke the stillness of it was our feet splashing in the water, spreading ripples across its surface.

“Kaea,” he said softly, so that I had to lean in to hear him. “Kaea, I have to tell you something.”

“What?”

“It won’t be much longer.”

I met his eyes, knowing exactly what he was talking about. “I thought it would take more time than this…”

“It won’t. I feel it. And your mother and father – they know it, too. The animals… and now, they think that my magic will starting coming soon. I’m scared, Kaea.”

I slid closer to him, feeling the cold air of the night creeping in. “I’ll stay by you.”

“But that won’t happen!” he cried. “I have to go.”

“Go?”

“Go away – I have to leave.”

“No!” I leapt to my feet and, slowly, reluctantly, he followed my lead. “Who’s making you do this? This isn’t right!”

“It’s your parents,” he said, and I bit my lip to keep from screaming. I ran into the house, my feet tracking pond-mud onto Mama’s shiny floors, and nearly ran into my father. He jumped a little in surprise. “Kaea!”

“No!” I screeched, shoving him backwards with all of my strength, which wasn’t enough to move him. “Don’t talk to me! You’re sending Uar away!”

I ran to my room and wouldn’t move. No one came in, and no one tried to get me to leave. I finally left the next afternoon, after skipping school and breakfast.

Uar was gone.

The air smelled of flowers and my arms were heavy with books. The sun was warm, too warm to be normal for this time of the year, and my gloves itched, but I worried that if I put my books down I wouldn’t be able to pick them up again. Besides, there was only a short distance before I could climb into one of the carriages and be free, at least for a short while.

“Kaea!”

I slowed down. “Oh, Sela. I didn’t see you there.”

She grinned at me and twisted a piece of her light hair behind an ear. “No more schooling,” she said. “You’re still carrying your books? I gave mine to the school. My parents might not like it, but I have no younger siblings. We won’t need them, and it’s better than throwing them away. Why did you keep yours?”

“Because I’m going to the university in the fall,” I said. “Didn’t I tell you?”

She gave a half-gasp and clapped me on the shoulder. “No. Gods damn you, tell me these things! They let you in?”

“Somehow.”

She rolled her eyes and we laughed. We were at the carriage by then and she held the door for me. “Then I have to tell you something,” she whispered. “You kept your schooling a secret from me—”

“Sela, I forgot!”

“—so it doesn’t hurt me to tell you now that I’ve also kept a secret from you.” She smiled slyly. “My parents decided it might be a good idea to throw me a coming-home ball.”

“That sounds excellent, Sela.”

“You’re invited, of course,” she continued. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to get your hopes up if my parents wouldn’t let you come. I mean, of course they’d let you come; but you don’t live at all nearby, so you’d have to stay at our house during that time. That’s what I wasn’t sure about. But they said it’s fine.”

“I’m sure that it will be fine with my parents,” I said quickly. “I’ll write when we get to your home.”

“That’s twelve days from now. Are you sure that you don’t want to write now?”

“It’s fine. I’ll wait.”

--

We left the housing building the next morning, our things all packed away in our bags, and those loaded onto the back of Sela’s family’s carriage. It was nicer than the school carriages and it smelled better, like faint cigar smoke and ladies’ perfumes.

“It feels like I’m home already,” Sela said, leaning against the dust-red cushions. “Everything’s so awful at school. You’d think we hadn’t paid to get in, or something. But the university – is it a public one?”

“No, it’s private.’

“Good. Good. Then you won’t suffer.” She took off her gloves and rubbed her lovely pale hands together. “I need new gloves. My hands sweat too much. I need gloves too often.” She looked up at me, struck with a sudden idea. “Kaea, your university – is it all girls?”

“No,” I said slowly. “It’s not.”

She laughed loudly. “Ha! Then you’ll have to have some contact with men. You make me so sad, Kaea, you really do.”

“It’s not like I’ve never spoken with a man, Sela.” I felt myself blushing. “I’ve just never attended a ball.”

“You have hope,” she said, laughing and slapping my arm with her glove. “You can be my project. I’ll loan you a dress and some gloves that actually fit you, and I’ll make you the loveliest girl at the ball.”

I smiled, saying nothing, and turned my gaze to the window.

--

Sela’s house, really more of a mansion, was a vision of white-painted beauty. My room was larger than any I’d ever slept in, not counting the room at the housing building I’d shared with three other girls; this was all mine, and I could drown in it. I felt hardly large or grand enough, and surveying my meager collection of dresses did not help.

But Sela seemed to take a perverse sort of joy in fitting me in her old dresses – her body had grown out too much to fit into many of them herself, but they were still grand and hardly ever worn – and making my untie my hair from the great knots I kept it wrapped in, trying to find which color matched my skin best and which scarves and things I could put in to keep my hair in check.

“This won’t work,” Sela said, sighing, after I’d modeled the third dress of the day. “We’re simply too different.”

“They fit fine,” I protested, turning myself to see what only she could notice.

“No, no, not the fit,” she said, “although that’s debatable. The colors, Kaea. The colors.”

“I like the color of this one,” I said. “What’s that called, anyways? Peach?”

Sela snorted. “You’re so naïve, Kaea, that it scares me. I’m talking about our skin. Yours is so much darker than mine. The peach is too tame. You could take… you could take a deep green, if you wanted, or even a red. Red’s not out of fashion yet. But my parents insist that light colors are best for me. I own nothing but pastels.”

She kept digging through her things, getting into older and older dresses. “These will hardly even do,” she said despairingly. “They’re so conservative. You’re small enough that they’ll fit, but I just hope you don’t look like a barrel. –I mean from the clothing. You’re not shapeless…”

I assured her that I wasn’t offended but she stopped, not hearing my words, and emerged from her wardrobe beaming. “Look.”

The dress was the color of nighttime, a deep violet-blue; I almost expected to see stars dotting its hem. “It’s like it’s made for you,” Sela said in a low voice. “And, hells, maybe it is. I cannot remember wearing this, ever.” She laughed and handed it to me. “It’s yours, now. It better fit. Gods, I hope it does.”

--

The night of the ball came too quickly for my liking, but Sela could scarcely breathe from excitement when it finally had arrived. She did herself up first, and then focused on me; but time was running short, and once I had the dress and my jewelry on, that still presented the problem of my hair.

She plaited it quickly but I tossed the braid between my hands, dissatisfied. “It’ll fall out, you know.”

“Then let it come out!” she said sharply, tugging the tie from where it held my hair in place. Then, she stepped back, surprised. “That actually doesn’t look terrible. Brush it out some – but not enough to take the curls out – and I’ll find a pin, and it’ll do. It’ll do.”

When we finally stepped out into the ballroom, it was filled with people. I would have turned around and left then had I not felt Sela’s hand gripping my arm with a firm sort of purpose; she’d guessed what I desired, and she steered me forwards, towards the music and the dancing.

I didn’t dance at first, though I did know how. The girls at school had taken the time to teach poor ignorant me the steps, but I’d never danced them to music or with a man. Sela seemed to understand. Somehow she secured a partner the second she left my side, so I was left alone to watch.

After two dances, my eyes were beginning to glaze over, but I was startled back to attention by Sela shaking my shoulders. “Kaea, Kaea, it’s awful,” she moaned, her voice soft so that we could not be overheard. “There’s all sorts of creatures here, and they’re over eating the food.”

“Creatures?” I echoed.

She nodded helplessly. “Demons. A bunch of them – five or six – and they’re all different types, fire demons and winds and dirt and, ugh, they look disgusting… I wish they’d leave. No one invited them.”

More out of curiosity than anything else, I let her lead me over to where she said they were. There they stood, off in the corner near the food, just as she said they’d be. They all wore the same earth-brown uniform that I’d seen before, the same uniform that all demons had to wear – as if the skin wasn’t enough of a giveaway.

“Kaea? What are you doing?”

I’d slipped out of her grasp, my gloved hand falling away from her own, and I was making my way though the room. Past the dancers, past the food, to the demons.

Their conversation died away as I came and I curtsied respectfully. Still, none of them said anything; I scanned their faces and found what I was looking for, what I thought I’d glimpsed from across the room.

“Um.” My eyes dropped to the floor. “Excuse me…”

“Do you need anything?” a blue-skinned winds demon said. Although his words were carefully polite and unsarcastic, his voice leaked resentment.

“Yes.” I raised my head, still not knowing what to say, wondering if perhaps it would be better to turn around and head back to Sela, who stood several paces away, too bewildered to come near.

But the moment to turn back, if ever there was such a moment, had passed; one demon stepped forward, elbowing his friends out of the way. “No,” he said softly. “It’s not…”

The others were watching, their mouths open slightly. I laughed and took a step forward. “I’d recognize you anywhere, Uar,” I said, “with that nose. A trees demon? You’re a trees demon now?”

He was speechless, but he took my arm and we stepped away from the other demons and away from Sela, who mouthed “What the hells?” to me as I glided past her. Uar walked like he knew where he was going, and led me out of the ballroom itself and into a deserted hallway.

“Sela said she didn’t invite demons,” I said, my old smile still on my lips. “So why are you here?”

His black eyes were running up and down me as if trying to eat away the years, and, although I’d spoken, I was doing the same, not worrying that he had given me no reply. Uar had little muscle on his arms and chest, although he was broad-shouldered. His nose was large – I had myself broken it, purely accidentally, when I was six – and it looked hugely out of proportion on his slender, smooth-jawed face. And his skin now was the color of leaves, with it darkening into freckles on his cheeks.

“Green suits you, I think,” I said, and he laughed.

“I still can’t think straight.” He turned from me, then turned back after half a moment. “Is it really you? It’s you, Kaea?”

“Yes,” I said, bringing myself nearer. “I never really got to say goodbye.”

“Nor I. Do you live near here? Did your family move?”

“No,” I said. “I went to Porthalm Girls’ School, and I’m staying here now – with Sela, a friend from there.”

“They brought me to this area soon after, and I’ve lived not far from here ever since,” he said as an answer to the question I was about to ask. “Your parents, well… they were right. It was less than a month. You should’ve seen me then, trying to guess what color my skin would turn… I got sick for a long time and I though I’d be winds, with the blue I was. But it was trees in the end, and I like it.”

I was silent a moment, looking around. “It’s hot in here,” I said. “Too many torches. Let’s go outside.”

He smiled. “Alright. I’ll let you lead the way.”

--

We stood under the sliver of moon, trying to find each other but too shy to touch. He spoke first. “Your dress is very beautiful – how much did they pay you to take me? Are you all splendidly wealthy now?”

I laughed out loud. “It’s my friend’s. We spent all of the money on my schooling.”

“That’s good,” he said. “Your future was worth enough for your family to trouble itself by taking me in. I’d be happy for you if I wasn’t so offended.”

But I heard a smile in his voice. “Do you suppose, Uar,” I said, tasting his name for the first time in almost nine years, “that if we ran, right now – if we raced – we’d get a draw?”

He took my hand. “Shall we try?”

We tied.

We finished together, panting in our finery, slipping barefoot (since we’d kicked off our anklebreaking shoes before we started) on the rain-slicked stones of the street. After we’d caught our breath, he took off his jacket and spread it out on the ground, then sat down – on the street next to it – and motioned for me to seat myself on the covering.

“It’ll get dirty,” I protested.

He shook his head. “I don’t mind. I don’t like it, anyways.”

I sat down beside him and pulled the dress’s skirts inwards, towards myself. If it was ruined, Sela would have something to say to me; she probably would anyway, for leaving her party early and with a demon as well.

“Have the years been good to you?” I asked, turning my head to face him.

Uar sighed and leaned slightly against me. I felt the rough material of his undershirt brush my skin and I shivered, but if he noticed he made no sign of it. “Decent. Demons don’t understand each other, you know. All of us are raised by humans, sometimes radically different humans – we can’t form societies like you all can.”

“That doesn’t really answer my question,” I said.

“Well, life is… complicated. Thank Gods demons can’t hurt each other.”

“Do I want you to elaborate?”

“No, you don’t.” I felt him drawing nearer to me, felt the warmth of his skin through his shirt, and I didn’t resist the touch this time. The night was cold, and he was comforting; I took off my gloves and twined my fingers in his, leaning my head against his shoulder, trying not to worry about how wrecked his coat must be getting and how much Sela would kill me if she could see me now.

((I've heard some interesting pronounciations of my other characters' names, so I'll help you out with this story's. Kaea is two syllables (KAY-ah), Uar is one (WAHR), and Sela is SAYL-ah. :) Oh, and there will be more chapters of this. Not sure how many more - but this is not the ending.))