The residents of the forest wake up to cloudy skies and a breeze that speeds up once every hour. From the dim kitchen, Lynx asks Allegra how she likes her coffee; cream and sugar, she says. Chaos comes out of the adjoining room where the rescued bird beasts are staying. He looks exhausted, as does his brother when he follows close behind. They’ve presumably stayed up all night, tending to them. Chaos pushes his curls out of his face and collapses into his chair. “These creatures are a handful,” he says.
“Makes two of you,” Wendy responds. “Or four, rather. No better to heal two corrupted birds than Resident Birdbrain One and Two.” Calamity grabs one of her horns and shoves her gently. It’s the first time Allegra’s seen her grin since they met.
She takes a brief, scrutinizing glance at the two beasts, napping on the floor. She notices their small, somewhat clumsy humanoid bodies. “They’re kids,” she mutters.
Lynx sets a handful of coffee mugs down on the table. “Many of them are,” she explains. “The younger the person, the easier it is for a lost soul to attach to them. But that also means they tend to panic and succumb to the corruption process quicker.”
Allegra furrows her brow. “Lost souls? Corruption?”
She settles into a chair and drums a few fingers on the mug. “No creature is born a “beast”, as you call them. The story goes that if a lost soul can’t reincarnate, it wanders the earth until it finds a body it can attach to. If that body pushes back against the soul that’s attaching to it, the creature becomes corrupted. When the living creature and the lost soul learn to share that vessel, the corruption process reverses.”
“So what does a non-corrupted beast— sorry, creature— look like?”
Lynx gestures to the rest of her team. “You’re looking at ‘em. When you help the souls you’re stuck with, they help you, too.”
Wendy explains that the twins share the lost soul of a crow— hence their connection to one another, their bond with the birds, and their borderline obnoxious behavior. Not joined at the hip, but rather joined at the heart-- in some sense, anyway. Since they’re bound by the soul they share, they can’t venture more than a mile from one another.
The feline soul within Lynx provides her with the best vision of the team. She offers to take point when the forest gets dark or when they’re handling beasts that are sensitive to light. As a former Sentry herself, she seems to have the most experience with leadership; but when placed alongside Wendy, “experience” is a relative term.
Although her body is only in its 20s, Wendy says that the souls within her are much older. “I’m not sure how this many souls have failed to reincarnate, but whatever the cause, I’m responsible for them now. I can only hope that I’m the one that puts them back in the cycle. I try not to think about it too much.” She falls silent. While some people wear their hearts on their sleeve, Wendy’s is buried deep within a closed pocket, only brought out in small amounts. Even with her narrow explanation, Allegra begins to see where the horns and the empathic abilities come from. The whole “lost soul” thing is a lot to take in, but it’s cathartic; after years of being told only to shoot down the beasts and ask no questions, it’s comforting to know that they’re hardly beasts at all.
When Allegra asks how the four of them ended up together, everyone but Lynx gives a terse answer. The twins say they were orphaned at thirteen and Wendy neglects to respond. “I used to be like you,” Lynx says.
“What, a Sentry?”
“Worse. A Sentry and a politician’s child.” She pulls the chair out from the table, sitting in it backwards. “I grew up in Alstine Bay, a coastal city with too much class for its own good. When I ended up with this soul, my mother was running for reelection. She was practically a shoo-in, but she refused to brush with anything that would jeopardize her senate seat. And what better way to do that than reveal that your oldest daughter is a beast?” She chuckles dryly. “Everything was always about her. What if you grow fangs? What if you can’t control it? If anyone finds out, my career is over. So when she sent me to live in the countryside, I went. I didn’t have to hide anymore and haven’t been back since.” She flashes her fanged smile. Allegra takes it that the other three have less-than enjoyable details within their origin stories, so she doesn’t pry. Whether she likes it or not, the “senator’s daughter” characteristic seems to shine through in how Lynx enjoys talking about herself. “Basically, you’re the host and the lost soul attaches to you. Think of it as, like, a familiar. Or a parasite. Whichever one’s most comforting to you.”
Now that the conversation has shifted off of their personal lives, Wendy takes the reins. “Whether or not we learn to live with them, these souls shouldn’t be here. So our question is— why are they getting stuck in the first place?” She says that they have some leads that might lead to answers that they’ll set out on tomorrow. As an unfamiliar tag-along looking to answer her own questions, Allegra is mostly kept in the dark-- but anything’s better than Elk City, at this point.
She takes a sip of her coffee and chokes on it. She’s not much of a coffee drinker, but it is definitely not supposed to taste like that. “What is this made with, fucking chicken broth? Did you just drug me or something?”
Lynx gingerly switches her cup with Allegra’s. “Sorry, that’s mine. It’s bone broth,” she says. “When you learn to live with your souls, you pick up their habits, whether you like it or not. That’s why Wendy’s a vegetarian and hates to admit that she gets lonely by herself.”
Wendy rolls her eyes. “And that’s why the twins always end up stuck in a tree.”
“It was one time!” they say in unison. Gentle laughter fills the room.
Despite their origins, circumstance is hardly the only thing that binds this group. The experiences they share, the goals they’re working towards-- it’s something unlike any connections you could ever make at the bar of an Elk City tavern or in the lobby of a hotel. The souls attach themselves to their bodies, and in turn, experience attaches them to one another. Out here, family transcends blood.
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