Work Text:
Kikka did not return home immediately after Hemer. The brigadiers were not easily fended off, and Hemer - as Bemelle had indicated - was nothing like her home village. Hemer was more spread out, the huts more distantly spaced out. To the east was a burgeoning new settlement, Veck, in which someone had constructed the only tavern this side of Lake Sinnlos.
"Ale to wash down our troubles!" Bemelle had said, with somewhat false brightness. The ale tasted like cardboard.
Bemelle had left months ago. Kikka had not heard from him since then - not back home, not in Hemer or Veck or even Dogrut, the village east of home. It was possible he still served as a guard. Kikka herself no longer did.
Bemelle had never really understood. Why she stayed, why the lake had captured her. Hadn't they successfully crossed? Wasn't it time to go back to their normal lives now? The Nixi hadn't caught them. So why had Sinnlos?
It took three weeks in Hemer - terrifying twilight walks by the shores of Sinnlos - before she could sense it: the exact time the bridges would rise, the exact location they would. The patterns of the first few bridges. There had been four interactions with groups of prowlers - one she nearly didn't survive. You could not use fire so foolhardily this close to Hemer (too many wood-thatched cottages, those were people's homesteads), and prowlers didn't recognise the danger of a sword, as she found when she lopped off the legs of one, and that didn't stop its ambling towards her.
On the fifth interaction, the prowler stopped and stared at her for thirty minutes before turning around and returning to the water. It was a very long staring contest. Kikka supposed that meant she'd won, and remembered that she was supposed to feel satisfaction. That she was supposed to feel anything.
It took another four months to begin piecing it all together, and a full two years before she got the whole picture. By that time the dread and fear of Sinnlos, the whispers in the waves, the chill breath on the back of her neck as a prowler stalked, had become commonplace.
It never quite left you - not when you were on the shores, not when you were on the bridges - but you got used to it. It took the place of other things. It ate at you. It felt like penance, for Lu, and for Margret. It felt just, and Kikka told herself again to remember what satisfaction felt like.
Now, sometimes, Kikka could see the Guide's light from across the lake. Tonight, they were both crossing, evidently. He was taking villagers from Hemer to the other side, she was taking people from her home village (well... once, it was home) to Veck. Once they had been walking the same path; now they were passing ships in the night.
Kikka had no clue whether he lost passengers this time. Kikka lost hers, though. Her name was Prata, and she had been too young and bold to know what danger really was, so that when she felt it, it was all she could feel, and she was easy prey. Remember their names, Kikka remembered the Guide suggesting.
Six months further passed before Kikka saw the Guide in the tavern in Veck. On his own, in a quiet corner. No one approached unless they had business; the nearest people would sit was three tables over.
And no one would have business with him today. Kikka knew this because the only people who wanted to cross had taken to doing business with her.
Boldly, she strode up to the table and took a seat.
They spent a companionable hour in silence. The Guide had never been much on words, and had always preferred to lurk in the unsaid things between them. At last, he spoke.
"I have to admit," the Guide said, "I did not expect you to fleece my clients."
"You don't do this for money," said Kikka. "You don't need money. You don't need lodgings or food."
"Is that what this is about for you?"
Kikka shook her head, slow and solemn.
Another silence. The bartender sent over another pint of ale for Kikka. The busboy who delivered it dropped it onto the table like he was terrified of Kikka and the Guide both. He probably should be.
"You feel different," said the Guide, once the busboy had sped off.
"You're not going to ask the obvious question?" asked Kikka.
The Guide let a thoughtful silence pass. "Not what I was asking. That's deflection," he said. "I could call you out on it."
"You already know why I feel different," said Kikka. "That's how you've survived the bridges. The Nixi can find you if you're fearful; it only takes one person in the group to panic and they'll know where you are in the fog. That's why the most successful crossings take the fewest people. The fewest emotions to track. The less they can hunt." Kikka the Steadfast died that first crossing, and Kikka the Stoic had taken her place.
It wasn't that you built up a resistance. That wasn't exactly how Sinnlos worked... you had to let it grind you down. You had to take it in, like a long drag of smoke, and you had to do it enough times that it stuck inside you. That aching, hollow sensation Kikka had had on the island at the midpoint, where they rested for a day? Sinnlos burnt the emotions out of you. Coal and ash remained, and the chill wind across the lake eventually blew that away, too.
"And how did you find out so much about the Nixi?" asked the Guide.
"I guess I had a good guide," said Kikka, unsmiling. It was designed to rile him up, and it worked.
He snarled and banged a hand on the table. Three tables over, people jumped; Kikka did not so much as blink. "That was never part of my job," the Guide growled, his lip curled to bare his very human-looking teeth. No, thought Kikka, the last thing the Guide wanted was to teach people about the ways of the Nixi. "I should never have taken you across. Clearly it's given you a sick taste for it."
Kikka, carefully, said nothing.
"I should never have let you close," the Guide whispered.
She held his gaze and took a long, slow, almost sensual draught of her ale.
"How many times have you gone across?" he asked.
"By now, I must have taken at least twenty over the lake," says Kikka. Well, the twenty that survived.
"I meant you, alone," said the Guide. He leaned forward in his seat and a shaft of sunlight from the tavern windows lit his pale face. It almost looked like a streak of white across his cheek. For a moment her heart palpitated - somewhere between fear and lust. Maybe both. Kikka forced herself not to react. "Do you think I haven't sensed you there? Going back and forth. Alone. Why do you do it?"
"Why do you think?" she asked.
The Guide twitched. He hated it when you answered a question with a question, as though only he had the right to be cryptic. "I think you're trying to get my attention." He folded his arms. "I told you. This ... won't work. It doesn't work."
"Certainly, that's why you do it," argued Kikka. "Because you think Nixi and humans can't ever intermingle."
"Your settlements and their activities are killing us slowly." The Guide was hardly even bothering to lower his voice anymore - if anybody were to care, they could hear what was being said, they could make their deductions about the supposed son of Garvyn the Exemplar and his true origins. It wouldn't take much. Anyone from Veck who had been from Kikka's village had heard all the tales. "It's only fair that we protect ourselves."
"It took you a year to notice this new settlement, outside Hemer," said Kikka. "If having a settlement there really did so much harm, why didn't you take note earlier?"
"Because you distracted me," snapped the Guide. This took her aback. That he would be this open about it. That it actually worked. "Because you went and made yourself a guide. Now more people can cross. Now more people do cross. Supply and demand was something I had under control, and you've upended it!"
"A new settlement needs proximity to water," argued Kikka. "If we can maintain a connection across the lake, it will help connect Hemer, and Veck - and other, nascent villages - to the allied villages on the other side. This is important for growth. Humans have always built their homesteads near water. We need it to drink, we need it to live."
"Ah," said the Guide cruelly. "So what happens when you build near water that houses something that actively seeks to kill you? What happens when the well is poisoned?"
"But you're not a well," said Kikka, "and you're not poison if we can develop an antidote."
"The Nixi cannot develop an antidote to humans."
"How long have you been talking to me," asked Kikka. She leaned in, balancing her folded forearms on the table. "How long have I been on your mind? In your heart?"
The Guide looked stricken. Shocked. Wordless, he shook his head, he looked away, as though not addressing it would somehow make it go away, but she could smell the anxiety off him like the prowler she'd become and stalked closer.
"I figured it out," said Kikka. "If I become more like you, less empathetic, maybe it'll force some empathy into you. Because one thing the waters of Sinnlos don't show you is the reflection. Either they are murky, unknowable depths, or the face you see isn't your own - it's white-eyed, tear-stained, and predatory. No - look at me, you look at me -" she reached out to take his chin in hand, to redirect his face back to hers. "This isn't a punishment. This is change. It's okay to be afraid of it. So are we."
"Nixi are not afraid," said the Guide. "Nixi are fear incarnate."
"Which is why you need numbers in a prowling group to find people who are so quiet." She elected not to resist a brief tease, drifting her thumb back and forth over his chin, smoothing it along the sharp edge of his jaw, skirting it along the plush of his bottom lip. "You can attack if there is only one of the group who is particularly fearful/emotional. The best chance of success in crossing is to be meditatively, almost supernaturally calm in the face of obvious life-threatening monstrous danger."
"Like you are now?" the Guide guessed. "Sitting across from one? I could destroy you. I should destroy you, to protect my people. Lu died for less."
Kikka dropped her hand, and it fell on the somewhat-sticky table between them. "You'd have to get through all these people to do it," she said.
"Look around you. They've given us a wide enough berth," said the Guide, "that I could have you flat on your back in a split second."
Don't make promises you can't keep, she thought archly.
Kikka took her chair and moved it around the table to sit next to him. He flinched as she sat down and relaxed back, shoulder to shoulder. One or two in the tavern took note; the remainder were content not to concern themselves with people normally so unfriendly. Let them be together, they probably thought.
"I noticed there was an intuition to navigating the bridges," she said. "You can't sketch out a map - the bridges change nightly. You have to develop it over time. I think..."
Her voice wavered. No, best to say it aloud. Make it as true as it already was... Commit to the path you'd chosen...
"I think what's actually happening is the magic of Sinnlos warps your mind as you become attuned to it," said Kikka. "And if I want you to be something more than what you were, I couldn't expect not to give something up myself. I'm not exactly what I was, either. And you can sense it."
"Yes," said the Guide. "You - turned -"
"It's only fair," said Kikka. "To adapt ourselves too. So that we can work together instead of bringing each other down."
"You can't be sure you won't bring us down," he said.
Kikka remained - as ever - unemotional. "There's only one way to find out." She held out her hand. "In exchange for my services, the tavern lets me keep a room upstairs. You can show me exactly how compatible you think we are."
This had the guide incredulous. "I," he stammered.
"You cannot let yourself fear, or they will find you, and they will drag you down into the depths of the lake," reminded Kikka. "Isn't that what you taught me about the Nixi? Maybe it's true too about the humans."
The guide attempted to collect himself. He looked as though if it were polite to scoot his chair away, he would have (did Nixi have manners? That would explain a lot about him), but something had kept him there. The same something, suspected Kikka, that had kept her in Hemer years after she could have gone home, and never returned to Sinnlos, and kept more of her blatant compassion. He swallowed, closed his eyes, then took in a deep breath and let it out again slowly. When he opened his eyes again, he seemed more calm for it, though whether he was, was another story. He must be much older than me, thought Kikka. He should be old hat at this. Clear your heart - remove the feelings from it - keep moving forward. Pretend the prowlers aren't there. Don't fear.
"Do you intend to drown me," he asked.
She had to grin. "In a manner of speaking."
"Kikka, I cannot guarantee I will be able to keep up the mask," he warned.
She narrowed her eyes, a query for clarification.
"This form," he explained. "It's not my real form."
Oh. "That much, I know," Kikka replied. "Your true face haunts my dreams."
She took him by the chin again and drew him down to kiss him. It felt monstrous and human, and like everything and nothing. It felt just.