Zandelia was walking towards one of the places she knew well enough, though she had not visited it on more than a little while. It was an area of Sunberth’s surroundings that she tried not to think about, normally avoided for most of each season, letting it rot as the winds changed and the weather varied. It was a place where, for the majority of her life now she realized, she had believed her father to be buried. She had managed to make the trek as often as she dared, paying homage to the one she believed to be her role model – in many ways. Since her fateful meeting with Garret, discovering it had all been a lie, she had put off the visit. The area now filled her mouth with the bitter taste of bile and the growing knowledge that she had been fooled all of this time, a sickening twist to her life.
He lies not there, but lived and grew fat at my expense. He will pay in kind, in body, soon enough. For now, though, it will be enough to kick the damned place to pieces she told herself as she slowly made her way towards the pitted gates, her resolve beginning to weaken despite her effort to spur it forwards.
“Afternoon Jebediah,” she hailed the owner of the graveyard, for want of a better word, as she passed through the threshold of death and decomposition, “I’d wager you have been busy these last few days hmm?” she asked him as the repeated pleasantry stated upon each visit.
“Well enough girl, well enough. Always bodies being put into the ground. See you’re not one of them yet” the keeper spoke back without looking up at her from his working.
“Life in me still” she finished the exchange as she walked past him and his workers, her mind set firmly upon what she was about to do.
Zandelia made her way through the mostly barren landscape, her gaze as always noting that there seemed to be a strange order to what was ostensibly the resting place of Sunberth’s citizens. She had tried for years to fathom the order, the thought processes that lay behind such a staggeringly strange collection of nucleated graves and unspoiled soil. As always she remained baffled but impressed with Jebediah’s work. He had a knack, it seemed, for limiting the return of the dead. She had heard tales it was possible and was not one to discount such tales as overly foolish. She had never seen anything of the like, however she was inclined to believe that if they existed the grizzled grave keeper knew what they were about. I was admirable in a way, his devotion to the watch.
Perhaps one day others will say it of me, but for differing reasons she hoped to herself as she began to enter the plot where her ‘father’ was a peace. It was then that she encountered the second Zith of her lifetime, only this one was decidedly feminine.
She padded up behind her slowly, all too aware, from personal experience, that Zith had good hearing. She did not want to disturb a creature that could be half-feral after all. Still, she could not help but admire the creature’s physique. She was curved in all the right places, full pouting lips and hair Zandelia would have killed for. She caught herself wondering if it was in some way revolting that she could imagine herself trailing her fingers through the soft fur that covered the majority of the Zith’s body. She smiled to herself and knew that it was, but found no reason not to desire it.
“Well well,” she spoke softly as she let her hand reach out and let a single finger trail through the soft fur of the woman's back, ending jsut above her rump for full effect and smiling as it illicited a sartled tensing from the creature, “we have a female Zith. Had I know your species was so well endowed I’d have tried to meet one all the sooner!” she chuckled as she came around to lean her hip against the edge of the gravestone the creature was hunched upon.
“Now, the male one I know is not too poor a specimen mind you, but I don’t think I’ll be bedding him any time soon. And wings too, are you all so alike?” she asked as she could not resist touching the appendages, feeling a leathery texture almost brush under her fingers. She stepped back then, lest she face the claws of an irate monster. She felt little fear, however, she had a spring blade should the need arise.
But the pensive expression is not that of an animal, more human than anything. Methinks there is more to this Zith than fangs and claws she thought to herself as she put her hands up in a conciliatory gesture.
“Do you have a name also? Or should I just call you Zith and let my confusion grow more acute?” she asked in as friendly a tone as she could, letting a bit of sultry seep into her words also.