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sissytobitch10seconds · 7 months ago

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A Peculiar Flock of Crows: Birds of a Feather

Fandom: Grishaverse: Six of Crows and Shadow and Bone Summary: It's not often that peculiars are found without a ymbryne when they previously had one, but it's even more rare to find one running from their ymbryne. Warnings: Canon-typical violence, human experimentation, and Inej Ghafa's experiences with Heleen Word Count: 8,554 Ship(s): Kaz Brekker & Nina Zenik & Jesper Fahey & Wylan Van Eck & Matthias Helvar & Inej Ghafa

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Guilt crept over her like a second, invisible chains.

The room had gone completely dark when the heavy wooden door was forced shut by Heleen Peacock, the woman that had claimed to be the ymbryne that was going to keep Inej safe. Based on the fact that she had been squirreled away in the basement of a half-bombed out house and had been examined by wights like she was a piece of meat, she was beginning to think that wasn’t quite the case.

Inej had always known that she was special and different, her parents had told her as much. They had a special word for their kind in their language, but it had almost been driven out of her mind by the events of the past couple of days. It had never been spoken around her all that much anyway, as if her family had been worried that if they said it then they would speak the unthinkable into existence. She was living it now, so she supposed that hadn’t really mattered in the long run.

Several days ago, Heleen had approached their camp and asked for people like Inej in the word that the common folk of the world used. Peculiar. Heleen had promised that she would watch after Inej, that she would protect her in the way that the Irish Travelers simply could not. Her parents had been suspicious at first, since many people over the course of their history had tried to come after those of them that were blessed with unnatural talents. Heleen had won them over by proving her status as a ymbryne, twisting her elegant golden hair and pale skin into the drab brown and grand tail of a peacock.

It didn’t take much after that for Inej to pack and bag and get the promise of a return from her mother whispered into her forehead. She was only supposed to leave for a small amount of time, just until the war was over. They had made some kind of plan for her to return from the care of the ymbryne that she wasn’t privy to because her parents still thought of her as a young child.

That was when everything had begun to go down hill, though. Heleen had placed a kind hand on her shoulder for just long enough for the caravans to pass over the next hill. As soon as they were out of sight to the rest of Inej’s family, the woman’s demanear had changed completely. Inej was shuttled into the dark back of a motorcar where she could barely breathe because of the sealed seams of the box. She had spent what felt like hours trapped in that tiny, dark space, until she had arrived at a place that she didn’t recognize.

Her family had very rarely traveled into town and she had usually opted to stay back with her cousins and play instead of deal with the stairs they always got. The closest that she had gotten to actually being in a city was when they had parked their caravans outside of a fishing village when she was seven during a particularly harsh winter. The moment that the box opened, though, she realized that she was on enemy territory and had no frame of reference for how she was supposed to deal with.

Heleen had barely even blinked when her new ward began to cry, which was another sign that all was not right. In the stories that Inej’s grandmother and told all the childings around the fire late at night, they had been informed that the birds took good care of those that were in their flock. They were often treated to lavish meals, dressed in fine clothes that fit them well, always had warm beds, and the best education that money could buy.

The fact that she as being pushed and prodded around so roughly told her that the woman might have been a ymbryne, but she was not a bird. She was not the type of person that would have fawned over children like she was a second mother to them. Inej doubted that she had ever provided anyone with anything resembling an education.

They had marched down into the very basement that Inej was currently trapped in. There had been five other girls, each of them chained with the wall in a way that would prevent them from escaping with their abilities. None of them had known who the other was or how long they had been down there because all of the windows were blacked out. Inej had joined them in their misery, eating stale bread and drinking sips of water that she was allowed.

She didn’t know how long it had been since she arrived, but she knew that she had slept three times, before the men had come down. They had turned on a singular hanging bulb in the basement and then forced each of the girls to their feet. One of them had spoken in a thick accent and was wearing spectacles instead of shades like the rest were. He was the one that let his hands wander over their bodies, pulling their clothes aside so that he could see what they looked like. His fingers grazed places that Inej had never wanted someone to touch. He had spoken about each of them like they were cattle and had made them attempt humiliating things with their powers, even though they were chained to make sure that they couldn’t.

He had taken the girl with long, curly red hair that had been chained next to Inej and promised that he was going to come back for her the next day. She wasn’t about to let that happen. While she had been told stories of the birds and their charges by her grandmother, her uncle had tried to frighten them all with stories of the invisible monsters.

She wasn’t going to let that be her fate. She had too much ahead of her, she had been promised too many things to simply succumb to the idea that she was going to feed a monster that she couldn’t even see. She had decided that she was going to break away from her captors the moment that the wights stepped down into the basement and she was able to see where the escape routes were.

The only problem was, she was only able to use her gift on herself. She had heard of people that had the ability to pass their talents onto those around them as well as using them on their own bodies. Her gift was nothing like that, she had no name for it and any experiment where she had tried to help her cousins had ended in them having a broken bone.

Inej couldn’t help the guilt that overwhelmed her at the idea of having to leave the other girls alone in the basement. She wanted to be the one that took them by the hand and brought them from the dark place, the savior that her parents could be proud of. It would be more than her walking on a wire strung between two of the caravans on her day off or finding a spare lyre from the circus that they were tailing. She wanted to make sure that they didn’t have to face the experiments that were promised to them by the poking, prodding sensations that still plagued her when she tried to sleep.

She couldn’t, though, and she wasn’t about to let that guilt override her ability to go out and live her own life. She would find one of the real birds that could teach her more about what she could do and the world of people like her. She would grow into something fierce and powerful so that she could make sure that things like this never, ever happened again.

Now that she had made that decision, it was going to come to pass. Her body always listened to what she wished it to do. There had never been a time that she had fallen or tripped, unless she had wanted to for the comedic timing of the moment. So when she decided that she no longer wanted to be in the bonds, they fell away from her body and onto the floor. She caught them before they couple tumble all the way down because she knew that was going to be too conspicuous. Chains rattling was normal as they tried to pull towards the comfort of each other or into the corner they used for waist, but the cuffs were louder and heavier.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered to the other girls when she set her bonds down on the ground. “I’ll try to find someone that can help you and bring them back here. I promise I’ll try.”

None of them said anything. She knew that one of them wasn’t able to speak, didn’t have a mouth to do so. The others she was sure were seething in their rage about her breaking free when they were still held in captivity.

Slowly, she turned on her heel so that her back was to them. If she kept staring at the other peculiars then there was a good chance that she would do it until Heleen came back down and saw that she had tried to escape. After that, she was sure to be sent with the wights so that they could extract her soul and do a number of other horrible things to her.

A shudder ran through her body before she rounded her shoulders and then launched herself forward. Her fingers grasped the edge of the tall windowsill that led down into the basement and she pulled herself up easily. She decided that she wanted to be on the ledge and so she was there, not a single wobble in her posture. She usually liked to tease her parents with that, looking more precarious than her body was even physically capable of being.

She reached towards the window and then curved her fingers around the boards that were placed on the outside. She reached down to the knife that she kept to pin her hair up. It look like nothing more than a bobby pin to the untrained eye, but it had been passed down for generations in her family. It had been given to her for her birthday only a few short months ago and she hadn’t truly appreciated it until them.

She slid the knife into place against the board and then used it as a lever to get the poorly constructed nails to pop out. She was thankful for the war for the first time as well, because it had caused a lot of products to be made smaller or with less of the harder metals that were required for bombs and plains to be used in consumer goods. Her mother had always told her to look for the small things and to be grateful where she could, but she was only understanding that now.

Inej repeated the process with the other nails that were holding the board in. If she had been anyone else, then she wouldn’t have had a single hope of squeezing through the tiny space that the coal slot mate. It was barely half the width of her shoulders. But she was herself, with her second soul, so she knew that her body could do it if she simply demanded it of herself. And she did demand it, because it was crucial to her survival.

She wiggled through the tiny hole and then into the hole that separated the chute from the rest of the ground. The only thing that she had to do after that was place her shoulders against one side and her feet along the other. She wiggled up the hole until she made it to the top, where fresh air and the light of the sun broken down on her like heaven had been offered to her.

When the back of her head hit the cool earth of the outside world, she felt a rush like nothing else overwhelm her. It took all of her self control to not start crying like her brain was screaming at her to. She knew that she wasn’t entirely free, and she had to focus lest she be dragged back into the pit of despair.

Inej flipped around so that she was on her belly and then finished pulling herself out of the pit. She scrambled onto the earth and then up to her feet. She was in the garden of a town in the middle of a sprawling suburb, the other houses close enough that she could have touched them by leaning far enough out of the window. She supposed that if someone wanted to hide the peculiar trafficking trade that they were doing in their basement, a place as busy as the city was a good spot to do it.

She didn’t stand around to look at anything for much longer than that, though. She grasped the edge of the fence to haul herself up and then began to run along the top. She reached and street and flipped down onto the sidewalk where she broke into a run. She knew that she had to look like a sight because her shirt was hanging mostly open, her hair was in a wild mess of matts and tangles around her face, and she was still clutching in knife in her hand.

Despite that, she kept running until she got to the edge of the city and could dart into the woods. She was much more familiar with the countryside and the perils that it held than she was with the peculiar world or the city. She knew that it was a risk to launch herself into a forest that she didn’t know very well, but it was safer than any other alternative that she had.

Her body was listening to her every whim as it always did, so she kept pounding on ahead. She ducked her head to keep the sun out of her eyes and make sure that she wasn’t going to step on any creatures. She could always force herself to run faster or longer, but she wasn’t really looking for the opportunity to find out if she could outlast a wolf.

Turning her head down apparently ended up being the wrong choice to make because only five minutes of running after she did it, she ran into something. She wasn’t able to redirect her course because she was getting tired, so the only thing that she did was stop. Her force wasn’t exerted the other way because she didn’t want it to be, so she only took a step back to see what she had run into.

The man towered over her with a mess of scars where his neck should have been and two completely white eyes. She knew that the wights and white eyes, usually hidden behind black glasses so they could pretend to be blind or hiding from the sun. The depth of the forest had made this one cocky, though she could see why after her gaze darted away from him.

There was a boy about her age laying in the tall grass of the meadow. He had golden-red curls that clung to the front of his forehead with sweat. His skin was pale but dotted with freckles and he was completely lacking in any of the scars that children in her type of family would get. “Are you okay?” she asked him as she darted around the wight.

“N-no, he just tried to kill me,” the boy replied as he pointed an accusatory finger towards the man in question.

Inej knelt down next to him with a single, fluid motion and then wrapped her arms around him. “I don’t think that he can kill us if we run. But you’re going to have to trust me because I’ve never carried anyone and I’ve been running for a really long time.”

“You can’t hold me, you’re way smaller than me,” the boy whispered as he shook his head. “L-look, I think I can distract him but you’re going to have to promise to close your eyes.”

She had already known that the boy she happened across was peculiar, there would be no other reason for a wight to be toying with someone. If a normal person had found out what he was, by some huge stretch of the imagination, then Inej was sure that he would have just killed them. So this was someone that knew about the abnormal powers that some members of society possessed and was trying to steal it from them for their own gain.

“You two do know that I can hear you, don’t you?” the wight asked as he took another step towards Inej and the boy.

They had to act fast or they were going to lose the surprise that she had accidentally caused. She kept her arms wrapped tightly around the boy’s front and then buried her eyes in his shoulder. She shouted, “Now!”

Her ears felt like they were popping a million times over, like she had somehow managed to dive from the tip of the sky to the bottom of the ocean. She was overcome with a rush of red and yellow heat that made her skin feel tender after it was gone. She would have been forced back by the wind whipping around them if she had wanted her body to respond to that.

Instead, she tried not to think too much about what had just happened and focused instead on picking up the boy in her arms. She could feel the natural strain of her muscles, something that always happened when she was exerting herself to the limits of her power. Inej knew that this wasn’t the time to decide that she could give up on something important. She forced herself to stand up and then to take the first couple of steps forward before she imagined herself running at the same speed that she had been before.

They were whirling through the forest within a couple of seconds, passing by the massive trees and bramble thickets. Inej didn’t stop until she spotted a cave a few yards away from the path that they were taking around the pine needles and grass. She turned and then rushed them into it so that they were shrouded in darkness, where she promptly collapsed next to the ground.

They were both panting as they tried to bring in the air that their bodies were craving. She wasn’t sure what the boy had done, but it was clear that whatever it was had taken a lot of out of him. “A-are you like me?” he asked, breathlessly raising himself onto one arm.

“If you mean peculiar, then yes,” she breathed out a slow, low breath so that her lungs would stop heaving. It worked like it had every time before, and she rose so that her legs were crossed underneath him.

“I don’t really know what that means. I just thought that maybe you could do things that other people can’t. I’ve always been able to do something weird, but I thought that I was the only one. But you shouldn’t have been able to pick me up and run away from him like that, we got away way faster than he could go and he was full grown,” the boy explained.

Inej couldn’t help but giggle. She was tired and worn out, her stomach was craving food that she didn’t have, her mouth was parched for water she didn’t trust, and her legs ached with exertion. She had just run away from a man that had wanted to experiment on her and a woman that her parents had trusted to take care of her. Arguably, she should have been sobbing her eyes out and shaking with fear. Instead, she was giggling at him until she saw the pout on his lips and burst out into full chuckles. “I’m sorry, I know that you’re just going by the only things that you’ve been taught, but you’re literally describing what being peculiar is. It means that we can do things that other people can’t, or we’re different from them.”

“What can you do?”

“You go first,” she replied as she knocked the tip of her toe against his leg.

He flushed a dark red and then brought his legs up to his chest. “I’ve always been able to summon explosions. I don’t know what causes it and I really, really want to. I just think about something too hard and then the entire thing just,” he pushed the tips of his fingers together and then flared them out so that none of them were touching.

Inej thought about it for a moment, tilting her head to the side. The boy spoke with the rounded, perfect letters of someone that had grown up in high society. It was the kind of accent that she had heard her cousins imitating when they came across someone rude while traveling. “I’ve always been able to control what I want my body to do. I can’t fall, I can’t trip, I can’t do anything unless I let myself.”

“Do you have to breathe and beat your heart manually too?” he asked.

She thought about it for a second and then shook her head, “I don’t think so. I’ve always just done those things, but I think it’s because no one really considers them as something that your body does. They’re just in the background so that you can be alive.”

They went quiet for a bit, the cave full of the sound of rushing water from the stream in the distance and the boy’s ragged breathing. Eventually, he said, “My name is Wylan, by the way. I’m sorry that I had to drag you into my mess. I didn’t think that my father would actually go through with any of his threats.”

“Your father knew that you were peculiar?” Inej immediately asked. She was probably prying too deep into his past too recently after they had met each other, but she had always been a naturally curious person. She couldn’t help but pry.

“I guess so. I mean, it’s kind of hard to raise a kid that can blow things up with his mind without thinking he’s a bit queer,” he winced when he said that word and then touched his upper arm. “Did your parents know about what you could do?”

“I’m a traveler,” she nodded. “We have another word for it, but we’ve worked closely with them the entire time that we’ve been a people. It’s said to be a great honor to be blessed with the second soul of a peculiar, but right now it feels like a curse.”

Wylan went quiet, curled into a tiny ball while his bright blue eyes bore a hole into her being. “I think that calling it a curse is a bit of an understatement.”

Matthias had been removed from his home three days, four hours, and twenty three minutes ago. He had been trying to get back to the place that he had been born for the exact same amount of time, though most of that was futile. Some part of his brain knew that his home had been burned down to the ground and it was unlikely that anyone had made it out alive, but he couldn’t let go of the hope that his family would be waiting with open arms when he finally got to return to them.

Trassel pressed his wet snout into Matthias’ hand and immediately settled the whirlwind inside of him with a few, simple words, We are never truly without family if we have each other.

“I know that, but that does not mean that I cannot also miss our pack,” he replied bitterly. He wished desperately that the war had not traveled to him, that he would have been able to live closer to Denmark and the other neutral countries instead of living in Finland. He wasn’t even sure that the people had come to hurt him and his family were members of the war instead of people taking advantage of the chaos to hurt unknown strangers.

The world seemed to be against him in every form that he could take, after all. He had been forced to run from a fire so fierce that he could still hear the crackling, popping, snapping of the home that he had known since he was born when he slept. He had spent hours and hours on boats being shipped to England where his aunt lived, only to find that she wasn’t the one waiting for him at the shore.

He had always known the story of the peculiars. It had been passed down through his family that there would one day be a young boy born alongside a white wolf pup. The two would share souls, would name each other, and would be able to speak to each other across the language barrier of humans and animals. Matthias had been that person, the first to be born with that gift since his great-great uncle.

The reminder of the story was enough to make him drag the howling of the fire from his mind. His mother had informed him that she had made a sudden, snap decision to have her first baby at home. They had lived far enough from another home that her father had to race into the center of town instead of going to one of the neighbors so that they could go instead. She had given birth alone, just in time for a white wolf mother to whelp in the barn attached to their home. They had discovered each other in the foggy days after birth, the single babe and the single pup.

Matthias remembered his name being spoken to him by the voice that was ever present, like a constant buzzing in the back of his skull, when he was four. His parents had just been referring to him as the bigger wolf until that point, affectionate nicknames and kisses muttered across his face. He had told them his name and been called that ever since. The same had happened with Trassel, when he realized that he could do the same thing to his companion that had been done to him.

It wasn’t surprising to him that people had started targeting him when they had the distraction of all the other tragedies happening in the world. A boy never seen anywhere without his dog was a peculiar sight, even without the professional meaning of the word. He also wasn’t surprised when he and Trassel had stepped off the docks in England only to be met with a man that called himself Jarl Brum.

He had claimed to be the man that Matthias’ aunt had married, but he knew that was a lie. While his aunt lived on another continent and had fallen out of communication with them to an extent, she would have written about something as important as her getting married. So Matthias had knocked the heavy sunglasses off of his face to reveal a pair of eyes that had no pupil and no iris, a sure sign of the type of peculiar that wanted to hurt people like him.

He had run away as quickly as he could until he found himself at a small village that spoke a language he didn’t know. They were in the depths of the mountains in the north half of the UK, squirreled away from the outside world and happy about it. They didn’t mind much that he was strange and that he didn’t speak their language, they seemed used to boys like him stumbling into the wrong place. They gave him a job that provided him with a single penny for work, but gave him as much food as he could eat and a warm, clean, dry place to rest his head. They also didn’t mind having Trassel around the farm because it meant that he kept away predators and prey looking to dig up the fields.

I am going to go into the woods today, Trassel informed him when he had determined that his boy was settled enough for that to be a good idea. His wolf would never leave his side if there was even the implication that Matthias was somehow upset or in danger in anyway.

“You will check in with me,” Matthias said, the surety in his voice startled even him. Since his family had perished in the fire and he had been forced into hiding in a foreign land, nothing had felt sure.

Trassel responded with a low woof and then bumped his head against Matthias’ hand again. The boy replied by giving his head a firm pat before he returned back to the tiller in his hands. He pushed it forward so that it dug long, even lines through the thick earth that could be planted in. It was monotonous, hard work that none of the others wanted to do. He was told to do it because he had been there for the least amount of time, but he was also bigger than a lot of them were so it made sense to him.

He worked until he felt the spike of panic rush through him. It was a feeling that he had only gotten once before, when he was a little boy and he and Trassel had been playing alone in the woods. They had been told to stay back in the barn or at the edge of the tree line because people had been spotting bears around their home recently, but they were both young so neither of them had listened. Trassel had wandered ahead of Matthias so that he could catch some of the wild wolves, none of which would ever touch the boy who shared a soul with one of their own. He had come across the great, hulking beast only moments before the bear had come down and tried to charge at the young man.

Matthias had turned on his heel and run away from the advancing predator as quickly as he could, but it was still the scariest moment of his life. He had had nightmares about it every night for almost six months, though he was able to tell that some of his nightmares had actually come from his ever-faithful companion. He also knew that while the memories would fade and his perspective of the world would change slightly, he would never forget what it felt like to sense that Trassel was in danger.

He turned his head to the side where his wolf had gone and then rushed in that direction as quickly as he legs would carry him. His muscles burned with the sudden change in what he was doing and his lungs heaved for air that he couldn’t give them. The fight to get closer to his best friend was enough to override that part of his mind so that he stopped listening to it entirely.

He only stopped when he broke into the clearing several yards away from the last house in the village. It had slow, weepy looking grass and was ringed by a couple dozen craggy looking trees that were meant to produce fruit but had never actually managed it. It was a place that he had gone a couple times before, usually when he and Trassel were so overwhelmed that they just had to get away from other people. It made sense that his wolf would explore that place first, but neither of them had been anticipating what they found now.

Trassel was standing at the part of the clearing closest to Matthias, his legs spread wide and the white fur on his spine raised to make himself look bigger. He was a massive animal even without them, so it was a bit intimidating even to Matthias to see him like that. That as the first thing that he had taken in, but it didn’t take him very long to trace the wolf’s gaze to what was making him so angry.

On the other side of the clearing stood two people. One of them was a short woman with bronze skin and a waist-length braid, dressing in an undershirt and a pair of pants that were too big for her. The boy next to her was about a head and a half taller than her with curly red-brown hair and a set of clothing fitting someone that would live in a mansion instead of one that was out in the wilderness. They were both covered in dirt, scraps, and looked absolutely terrified. The boy was standing with his hand pointed out towards Trassel and the girl had what looked to be a very small knife clutched tightly in her hand.

“What is going on here?” Matthias asked. His accent had gotten less thick since he had been staying in the village in the mountains. There were a handful of English speakers from soldiers that had deserted the armies dealing with the war that had taught him the language. He hoped that eventually he would be able to find his aunt so that she could bring him back to the land where he had grown up, so that he could find his parents. That meant that he had to speak the language of the country that he was currently in.

“There-there’s a wolf!” the boy stuttered as he pointed an accusatory finger out towards Trassel.

“Yes, he lives here,” Matthias replied like they were stupid. He knew that it was a bit unfair since they had never been around him before and thus had no idea that it was normal. All of the homesteads where he lived had always understood and respected the relationship that he had with his wolf. The strangers in the village also learned to live with Trassel.

The girl blinked and then slowly righted herself so that she was no longer bracing for an attack that was never actually going to happen. “Why does he live here?”

“Trassel, stop it,” Matthias muttered in his own language to his wolf. He was speaking out loud for the benefit of the others out of an irrational habit that he had formed. It wasn’t like the new people he had just met would know the language that he was speaking, but he had gotten used to it for Mila’s benefit. He answered their question after the wolf had let down his hackles and turned his bright eyes up towards his soul-companion. “He lives here because he is my friend. Don’t you live around your friends?”

“You can speak to him?” the boy asked. He shared a look with the girl and then they both slowly crossed over the meadow.

Matthias opened his mouth so that he could answer but then he remembered the man that had met him on the docks when he was supposed to be traveling to his aunt. He had always assumed that what he had was a gift, that was the way that his family had spoken about it. He wasn’t quite sure that everyone saw it that way, however, based on the fact that it had almost gotten him very hurt.

“It’s okay, you don’t have to be afraid of us,” the girl explained.

“Why would I not be afraid of you? You were threatening my wolf,” Matthias scoffed. He didn’t often refer to Trassel as being his in the same way that a dog owner would refer to their hound, but it seemed like the safer option if it turned out that the duo was a threat.

“We’re like you, I think,” the boy said. “My name is Wylan and my friend here is Inej. We were just looking for somewhere that we could stay the night.”

“Are you not traveling with your parents?” Matthias asked. He remembered how stupid of a question that was as soon as it slipped from his mouth. Most children had been separated from their parents because fathers were sent to war or they had been shipped to the countryside for their safety. It was unlikely that the two individuals that he had just encountered were going to be traveling with any adults, much like Matthias himself.

“Our parents aren’t with us,” Inej shook her head, confirming the doubt that Matthias had come to realize.

He took a moment to assess them again. Now that they were no longer standing quite so menacingly at Trassel, it was easier to see them as friends instead of as people that were trying to hurt the part of his soul that they could get to. “My name is Matthias. What did you mean that you think you are like me?” he asked.

The two shared a look before the girl said, “We’re peculiar. We can do things other people can’t, and that means that we’re in danger. Aren’t you the same?”

The image of the man at the docks with his colorless eyes and the creeping doubt on the base of his spine returned to Matthias in a rush. “I… yes. I thought that it was something specific to my family. My parents were anticipating that one of their children might be born with the soul of a wolf, so they were never strange about it. They told me that I was special.”

“You are special,” Wylan nodded. “I-I think we all are, but that also means that there are people that are out to get us.”

He nodded solemnly. While he had only been partially attacked by one person, he knew that there was a danger out there in the world for people like him. “Are you two running from them?” he asked as he looked over their dirty clothes once more.

“We are. I was captured by someone pretending to help people like us so that she could hand us over to people that wanted to experiment on us,” she shuddered at the memory.

Wylan walked over to Matthias with Inej trailing slowly behind him. Now that they knew that Trassel was not a wild animal, he knelt down with his hand exposed to the massive, hulking beast. The wolf leaned forward and sniffed at the appendage before it gave it a single lick and then curled around his human’s feet.

“I believe that I have encountered one of those men too. He had something wrong with his eyes and he was claiming that he knew my aunt. It was why I was not able to go to her,” he explained.

Inej nodded, “That was definitely a wight. They like to take people like us and then use us so that they can try to achieve godhood. The only people that can keep us truly safe are the birds, Wylan and I have been looking for one.”

He turned and looked back at the town that he had been staying in. He was grateful for everything that they had done for him, he could feel it swelling grand and great in his chest. He had always known that it wouldn’t be a place that he would stay for very long. He used it as a safe location to stay while he made his plan, but that plan was developing far faster with the introduction of the two new people than he had thought it would.

“I will come with you. We will look for a bird together. But tonight I think that you should come and get cleaned up. You will have to work for the afternoon but the townsfolk will accept you without questions,” he explained. He wondered if any of the strange-speaking folks he had been staying with knew about people like him and if they had specifically not asked questions because they knew that he was peculiar. He didn’t have much time to think about it outside of that as Wylan and Inej looked like they were about ready to fall over at the mention of a bath and a meal.

They ended up staying for longer than any of them had been anticipating. The travels and Inej’s time in the basement of the bird had taken a lot out the travelers, so they needed some time to recuperate. The process went slower than it would have normally because they were also working around the village and in the fields so that they could earn their keep.

Wylan struggled with actually pushing the plow or bringing down the hoe in the way that was effective, but he worked wonders on some of the old, broken machinery. Inej was best at skittering up the sides of barns, houses, and even the massive church steeple so that they could get some much needed repairs done. Matthias continued to work in the fields and lugging things around because it was something that his great size and farm-ready muscle lent easily to.

They shared the stories of where they had come from and Wylan finally admitted what he really was to someone. His father had always been aware of his gift, as had his mother before her untimely death. He had mentioned it before to Inej and it still held true. It was hard to not realize that a child could make powerful bright lights and explosions with nothing more than his hands. He told them about the way that he had heard his father talking to men without color in their eyes about how much he wanted in place of Wylan.

In turn, Inej spoke of the way that her parents had been fooled by the peacock. She apparently had a lot of very complicated feelings about returning back to them knowing that they had let her easily go to such a horrible place. She also understood that they did what they thought was best for her and no one in her family or caravan would have had any idea that Heleen was not who she said she was.

Matthias shared about how he had grown up with Trassel by his side, both of them aging at the same rate because they shared a soul with the other being. He talked about how he had lost his family and the shock of the differences in language and culture when he had been transported from Finland to England.

The most important thing that spoke about while getting to know each other was the bits and pieces that they knew about the Peculiar world. Inej only had the stories that her uncles and grandmother had told her, which was hard to decipher out of the story and into the reality. Matthias knew the second most but a lot of his information was derived from legends. Wylan felt like he was the most ignorant in a school of people that knew barely anything because he hadn’t known that he was anything less than a freak until about a month ago.

He found community and belonging with his two new companions, to the point where he felt more like himself. He was bolder when it came to singing with the villagers during the full moon when they had their feast day of the month. He got bolder when it came to hugging Inej and Matthias so that he could get the physical touch that he needed to feel truly human.

They rose with each other every morning and then bedded down in the spare bedroom of the root vegetable farmer’s house every night. Trassel would curl down at their feet as they wrapped arms and legs around each other like they would be stolen if they didn’t. They were still virtually strangers, barely knowing the others and yet they had already formed a tighter bond than anyone could hope to in their lives.

Wylan tilted his head up at the cloudy sky as he finished sifting through his thoughts. He was taking a break from trying, and failing, to fix the harvester for the fourth time that week. He knew that if he wasn’t caught in the shade with his thermos of tea from that morning then he was going to get an earful from the town’s grandmother. She was an ancient old crone that spoke only Welsh and Wylan has only passible in his mother’s language. He knew enough to know that he was going to be in a right mess of trouble if he didn’t listen to her.

Something caught his eye from around the barn and he slowly crept to the door. He paused when he caught sight of two people with black hair and a girl with brown. He had been expecting the rolling flashes of white fur that came with Trassel when he was hunting in the woods surrounding the town, so it startled him enough that he fell back.

Wylan could barely scramble to his feet fast enough as he turned to go find Inej. Instead of finding her, since she was likely perched on the top of a roof or in the rafters of a barn, he ran face-first into Matthias’ chest. “What is going on with you?” the older teen asked as he steadied his friend.

“There’re people coming out of the woods!” he shouted as he pointed back towards the barn. Matthias’ face darkened and he jerked his head towards the direction that Inej was no doubt in. It was hard for the other man to be able to translate his thoughts when he was feeling particularly emotional and Wylan had never seen him that angry and protective.

He scrambled towards the church as quickly as he could, darting around the other townsfolk as they went about their business. “Inej!” he called as he spotted the dark blip of her hair amongst the cedar roof shingles.

She turned around, her face obviously pinched with worry. She held up a single finger and then returned to her work. She finished it with the efficiency of someone that wanted to get it over with before she slipped down onto the ground with a fluid movement. Wylan opened his mouth in amazement before he remembered that Matthias was on his own, facing three people that might want to kill him so that they could harvest his soul. “There are people in the woods,” he repeated, calmer that time.

“People in the woods? Like the villagers?” she asked, her eyes flickering out towards everyone.

“No, people about our age. One of them is like really tall,” he explained. He felt his cheeks flush when he realized that was the only thing that he had focused on when he had caught them. It was the detail that was sticking to the forefront of his brain despite their clothing, the presence of weapons, or just about anything else being more pertinent.

“Maybe they’re just more deserters,” Inej shrugged. Despite that, she was following the path that Wylan had come so that they could check on their friend.

“They had a girl with them,” Wylan shook his head. He didn’t necessarily agree with the way that women were treated given all of the hurt that he had seen his mother go through because of her gender and nothing else, but he knew that it was a truth he was currently powerless to fight. Inej shot him a worried look and then charged ahead of him so that she could get to Matthias before something happened.

Wylan took after her but his peculiarity had nothing to do with speed, stamina, or his body, so he was going way slower than she was. By the time that he got back to the barn, his chest was heaving and his heart was hammering in his chest. He had to pause after he pushed the door opening, lowering his body down so that he could grasp the tops of his thighs and brace himself from falling over.

He tilted his head up and then saw that nothing like what he had feared was going down. Inej was standing with her knife twirling over the back of her knuckles. Matthias had Trassel beside him and was carding his long, calloused fingers through the wolf’s hackles to put them back where they belonged. The three people that Wylan had seen before were seated on the haybales near the edge of the barn, which allowed him to get a better look at them around the tractor he had been working on.

The tallest man had dark skin and coiled hair that was cropped close to his head. His body was lithe but farm muscular, his arms nearly bursting out of the worn white button down that he was wearing. The boy next to him had hair that was shaved on the sides and long on the top, which accentuated the high cheekbones and quizzical brow. The girl on the other side of the tall boy had long, wavy brown hair and pale skin that was dotted with freckles. They all looked better than Inej and Wylan had when they were traveling through the wilderness, but they had obviously not had a bath or a proper meal in a while.

“I’m confused, you three found this place by accident?” the girl asked, scooting forward on the haybale.

“We did,” Wylan spoke over the others as he came to stand beside Inej. “What’s going on?”

“These three are peculiars. Meet Nina, Jesper, and Kaz. They’re traveling to find a loop as well,” Inej explained easily.

Matthias then said, “I believe that it would be a good idea for us all to travel together. There is safety in numbers and we all have the same goal.”

“What makes you think that we can trust you?” the boy, who was apparently named Kaz, said in a raspy tone.

“Kaz, stop,” Nina groaned as she placed both of her hands onto her face. She took a deep breath and then righted herself, “As I was explaining to your companions, we’ve been traveling for quite some time to find somewhere that we can rest while we work out the location of another loop. We don’t have a Map of Days or anything of the sort, so it’s been a bit of a struggle. This place is hidden from the outside world and only recently became known to peculiars as a haven. The people don’t care about who you are or what you can do as long as you can work.”

It was eerie to hear an outsider describe the very thing that they had found all on their own. “So we’ll all travel together as soon as you two have rested?” Wylan asked, glancing over the three of them. He tried not to let his gaze focus for too long on Jesper lest his mind start wandering to unfavorable places.

“Sounds good to me,” the aforementioned teenager stretched his long arms above his head and accentuated the beautiful way that his chest muscles flexed under his nearly too-small shirt.

Wylan felt his face flush and bit back a groan of disappointment. He was really in it now.

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