Invisible Scars Still Linger

Lurching up from his bedroll, Ealdian clutched his chest over his heart, the memory of agony fresh in his mind. The carrion of the battle was still tangled across the ground, his waking eyes darting across the lumps and mounds with sickened dread. It was dark, for the fires that he’d seen burning before his death had long been put out. The grey world was blurred in drizzling rain, obscuring the landscape in shadowed mists. As Ealdian drew in each shaken breath, the ancient memory of war faded. The twisted bodies of the fallen became stones and roadside debris. He took a shuddering breath and put his head between his knees, nauseated.

“Are you alright?” Blackbird asked, looking over at his friend while keeping watch. Considering the undead man did not sleep, he usually took the role of watchman so that his companions got the rest they needed. However, Ealdian felt anything but restful as nightmares plagued his heart even as his lilac eyes were open to the waking world.

“I am fine, Bird,” Ealdian said. “It was only old memories from the last time I traveled in this part of the world.”

“I take it they weren’t good ones.”

Ealdian shook his head. “It may be a blessing that you do not remember the war in which you passed. There are days I long for the release of amnesia.”

Silence filled the camp, broken only by Sari muttering in his sleep about yet another theory of magic. This was not off-putting to the other two, having accepted that the researcher never stopped talking.

“May I ask what it is like?” Bird asked.

“War?”

Bird nodded.

Leaning back, Ealdian rubbed his chin, lavender eyes flashing in the moonlight as he looked at the stars, comforted by their shimmer as his mind traveled dark paths in his memory.

“I fought a battle here long ago, as part of the free folk resisting Lord Id’kyet, perhaps five and a half centuries ago. I was relatively young then, late in my one-hundreds, and I had not yet seen what war could do to a man. I was born in a time of peace, and far from conflicts. It was humbling, seeing friends die beside you with an arrow through their throat, or paraded over conquered ground as a morbid trophy held up by spears. Id’kyet’s men did unspeakable things, for they were invading lords from a land unknown to even me, and their ways curdle the stomachs of those accustomed to our way of life.”

“So, why did you fight?”

Ealdian shrugged, rubbing the spot on his chest still. “Innocent lives were being lost, and there was no hope that Id’kyet would abandon his conquest before taking all of the continent. He had the manpower to do it.”

“That all happened here?” Bird looked out across the night-hidden plains to their left. Ealdian didn’t need to look to know what the undead man was seeing. No signs of the ancient battle remained, but in the eerie light, one might feel the place is haunted by the soldiers that never got to go home.

“Indeed. I fought at the front once, but I soon realized I am not a man built for war.”

He rubbed his arms, cold with the mist and memories.

“In one of the battles, it had begun to rain heavily, turning the dirt and blood into a mire, where I could see faces in the water as the dead rested beneath the surface. In another, a spear was driven through my heart, and…”

Ealdian felt his voice choke as the memory grew vivid. A single pain had become a dozen as he’d revived upon the spears of the enemy army. Paraded. There had been screams. He felt his heart and other organs impaled and eviscerated. His blood wept from his body to land upon the dirt and trickle down the spears holding him to paint the hands of the soldiers wielding them. Several minutes of torment to end in yet another death as he’d been flung to the dirt and ended in a flurry of stabs.

“Ea?”

Ealdian blinked, clearing his vision as a streak of wet trickled down his cheek and Bird’s voice pulled him back to the present.

“I’m here...” Ealdian’s voice sounded far off, even to his ears. Wandering.

“Are you sure you want to talk about this?” Bird asked, concern on his illusory face.

“… I don’t think I want to. No.”

“Have you ever talked to anyone else about this stuff?”

Shaking his head, Ealdian wrapped his arms around his knees and rested his head on them. “I keep to myself. It is my curse to carry, this immortality. I won’t burden anyone else with such gruesome memories. Only once did I tell someone and… she’s gone. I won’t tell another. Not that any offer to listen.”

“So, you just bottle it up? You told me once that would only cause it to fester.”

Ealdian glanced at Bird. “I did, but my case is different. I will never find true peace externally due to the nature of my existence. You can move past your appearance, leave behind memories, make a life you enjoy, but I cannot. Everyone I love will eventually leave me. Sharing how I feel only makes the loss more painful to bear. I am at peace with what I am, but not with the attachments I am forced to lose. Does this make sense?”

“Not really, no.”

Ealdian turned away. “Then I know not what else to tell you.”

“Well I know what I need to tell you,” Bird countered, placing a hand on Ealdian’s shoulder so he could not turn his back. “I’m immortal too, in my own way. I’m undead. I can’t die again. Look, I get that you’ve suffered more than I have, but that doesn’t mean we can’t find common ground. Let me help.”

“How?” Ealdian pushed Bird’s hand away, not with any aggression, but the rejection was there. “How could you fathom what this is? You may be immortal but your memory is only a few years long. You can’t imagine the centuries of loss yet. You haven’t lived it. No one has lived it. You haven’t lost anyone, not me, not Yrsa, not Sari- not Gwendolyn…”

Ealdian’s vision blurred with the name, his heart aching with pain anew. Lilac eyes narrowed, he glared at Bird though his voice stayed calm. “You know nothing of what I’m going through. So, please, let the matter rest. I’ll deal with it as I always have.”

“Ea…”

Grabbing his pillow and ignoring the surging nausea at the memories of the hills they were camping in, Ealdian lay down with his back toward Bird. “Good night, Blackbird. Wake me if there is anything amiss.”

“Fine, good night.”

Ealdian heard the man sigh, though he had no lungs, and tried to drop off to sleep. He closed his eyes only to see blood, and when he opened them, he saw the same sight as when he last lay here, his breath leaving and not returning, the agony of a dozen blades sundering open his skin, the flutters of his failing heart.

Rolling onto his stomach, Ealdian buried his face in his pillow, trying to stifle the memories only to feel the suffocating pressure of the pillow over his mouth and nose. Breath catching, he pushed himself up to his hands and knees, staring down at his assailant.

“Ea?”

“Not now, Bird,” Ealdian said. He got up and grabbed the edge of his bedroll in one hand and his pillow in the other. Rising, he moved the bedroll to a new spot and tried to find sleep again as he lay back down upon it.

“Then when?”

“I don’t know, just not now.”

The sound of footsteps upon slick dirt and grass was faint, but Ealdian could still hear Bird walking over to him. “Bird, I just said—”

“Shut up and just take it.”

Ealdian rolled over to continue telling the man off only to find his view blocked by a stuffie. He sat up, blinking at it as his weary mind tried to make sense of its sudden appearance.

“What?”

Bird, who had been crouching, sat down beside Ealdian and continued to proffer the stuffie. “Take it. Hug it. Give it a chance.”

“It’s a toy.”

“Trust me on this.”

Ealdian raised a brow, but accepted the stuffie, feeling its soft fabric and admiring its glass eyes. It had a trunk like an elephant, but was fuzzy and bulky like a bear in body. Paws like a big cat’s formed its feet, and its tail was thin and tufted on the end. Along its neck and shoulders was a mane not dissimilar to a lion’s.

“It’s heavier than I anticipated,” Ealdian said, hefting the stuffie into his lap. While not huge, it was the size of his pillow at least, and weighed the most of the two.

“I use a stuffing I invented,” Bird said. “The weight is good for grounding someone.”

“You made this?”

Bird nodded. “I sew them for those who I help in my travels as a medic. Usually, I save them for kids, since they can be scared when hurt or ill, and this helps calm and cheer them up. But I also give them to special cases.”

“Like me?”

“Like us,” Bird corrected. He took a wolf stuffie from his pack. It was a dark, charcoal gray with patches of wear on its lopsided form.

“Strider was the first one I made,” Bird continued. “It’s why he’s kinda messed up, but he’s mine. Helped me through rough times more than once.”

“Why did you start to make these?” Ealdian asked.

Bird shrugged. “I didn’t want to only cause fear. These bring comfort and sometimes even joy. I’d rather make the world better, if I’m stuck being a part of it.”

A faint smile crossed Ealdian’s face. “That is a goal I share. It is a noble one.”

Bird smiled as well, the solidarity genuine even if his face wasn’t real.

Returning his attention to the stuffie, Ealdian tried to figure out exactly what animal it was. Its mismatched appearance was a distant, faint memory of a legend he heard of a few centuries ago. When he tried to grasp it, to identify the being within, it slipped through his fingers like the fog of the lands they camped in tonight.

“What is this supposed to be?” Ealdian asked, yielding after a few minutes of futility.

“A baku,” Bird said. “Creature said to live in Suneater Jungle.”

“Ah yes, I remember now. They are quite rare.”

“I didn’t think they actually existed,” Bird said, his shoulders lifting into another shrug. “They’re said to eat nightmares though, so, I hoped it would help you sleep.”

Ealdian looked at the undead man, surprise crossing his face. “You made it for me? I thought you simply had it on you.”

Bird shook his head, his smile returning. “I did, because I’ve been working on it for a few days. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen you suffer from a night terror. There’s usually muttering and sometimes thrashing. And it can be boring, being on watch all night by myself. Sewing helps pass the time.”

Lifting the baku stuffie into his arms, Ealdian lay down again, his back flat against his bedroll with the stuffie perched atop him. “Let me know if you ever want company for these nights, Bird.”

“Thanks,” Bird said, “but I’ll pass. I’m fine having some quiet to myself, and you both need sleep. I can’t sleep, so, I might as well put it to good use.”

“That is kind of you.”

Bird shrugged, taking out some fabric from his pack along with a sewing kit. “It’s just how I am. Helping others helps me remember I am not a monster, regardless of what I am under my mask. It’s who I want to be.”

Ealdian turned his head to look at Bird. “You’re not a monster, Bird. You never were.”

“You’re in the minority with that opinion,” Bird said, “but thank you. Get some rest, we still have some hours before we need to get moving again.”

Ealdian nodded and looked at his baku stuffie. Resting his hands on its soft fur. Feeling its weight pressing him to the ground with gentle comfort. Studying his reflection in its glass eyes.

Closing his own, Ealdian drifted off, letting sleep take him and trusting his new plush friend to defend him from fear until the dawn.