Audas wandered into the structure to find the ceiling reaching up to just above a story tall. Ten low doors ran along the right wall, leaving an equally sized hole above them. A multitude of tools were scattered along racks and piles of hay. Roof hatches were propped open to let light shine in. No one was in sight.

  Straw rustling underfoot, he closed the door behind him. Finally… He sighed. Hopefully no one will come into this… barn for a few minutes at least.

  Picking one of the haybales near the enclosure doors, he slumped down into a heap. His mind began to wonder as he forced in deeper breaths to start relaxing. Zackary had got close to the truth. Too damn close.

  That female Nyúlfur didn’t help matters… who was she even? An assistant? He huffed at the thought, I suppose it makes sense… again…

  There was still something about her that kept nagging at him though. Was it her silence? Her eyes?

  Damn it, I don’t need her distracting me now.

  He couldn’t get her out of his head though, so he did the next best thing. He forced other thoughts through to the surface. He imagined Kaine sulking in some dark corner for a start, that brought a smile across his face as he rested the back of his skull against the wall. Then Dray’s saddened face flashed across his mind, and the smile faded away. Damn it… I wonder what he’s doing now?

  He tried to force something else through, only to find himself drifting through a sea of uncomfortable faces. Dorian’s angry scrawl, Alika’s look of concern, Zackary and Ray’s probing glances.

  And of course, the girl again. Oh for god’s sake…

  Groaning, he thumped his head softly against the wall. Did she even know who he was? Been aware of the commotion at the front?

  He closed his eyes, ears rolling back as a bird tweeted outside.

  Was Alika even being honest? About giving the Nyúlfur a chance? He knew that he was asking the same questions again, but his mind kept flashing back to that night in Burningham… how it…

  His fist tightened, Audas bumping it against his thigh. Everything he had known up about the Nyúlfur was something he had took as a certainty. A fact… Until the day he woke up in that cabin.

  Where are the monsters? He questioned, Or are they just hiding in plain sight?

  A warm blast of air brushed the top of his head. Blinking, he looked up to find a long brown head sticking out over the enclosure door, where a big pair of eyes were trying to focus onto him.

  The horse huffed again, trying to reach down to him.

  Audas felt his lips twitch, “…not afraid of me huh?” he whispered.

  It merely shifted its head, and a single orb gazed down at him.

  Easing himself up to his feet, Audas turned to face the horse proper. Don’t want to startle him now.

  And yet the horse didn’t move. Gingerly, Audas reached out and placed his hand gently against its head to stroke it. The horse pressed back, it’s eyes slowly blinking.

  He pulled a little smile, “Do you think I’m something else?” he asked, patting its neck. “Or do I seem like just another Nyúlfur to you?”

  The horse could only huff again. Well, I’m sure that’s a good opinion… or you just like the rub.

  “I thought I would find you in here.”

  Audas’ ears went erect as he spun to find a single white furred figure stood in the lit frame of the entrance, a large leather sack slung over his shoulder.

  “Everest!” He blurted out, startled at his presence. How did he-

  Heart racing, he started to back up. “Look… if this is about…”

  The elder Nyúlfur’s raised hand interrupted him, “I already know about the fight, and there is no need to apologise.”

  Audas flinched, “What?”

  Everest placed the bag by the door. “In fact, I should be the one to apologise. I should have checked up on you sooner. Running a settlement doesn’t leave much free time, but that is little excuse.”

  Audas frowned, he wasn’t expecting Everest to suddenly reappear, never mind seem so relaxed despite the former human causing a few headaches. Audas shook his head, “I don’t think that would be necessary.”

  “If that’s what you think.” The elder replied, walking over, sweeping his gaze across the barn with a raised brow. “The stable is a good place to unwind anyway.”

  Grey eyes flicked towards the horse, and Everest smiled as he brushed a hand down its neck. “I’ve found myself in here more than once.”

  Audas’ watched on, already sensing his muscles relax. “You come in here?”

  “Not so much today, but years ago I would have.” He tilted his head, looking up at the big beast. “It’s incredible how much an animal can help one’s psyche.”

  He looked back at him, his voice quiet, “I can understand why you had to get away from people.”

  Audas looked away, instinct drawing his foot back. He resisted the urge to snap or growl, even if he wasn’t in the mood to talk to anyone, “I don’t think-“

  Everest raised his hand slowly again, “It’s alright, I’m not here to lecture you.”

  Audas blinked again, a word trying and failing to form on his lips. What? What game is he playing?

  “I’m not going to try and ask what you might have been through either.” Everest continued, lowering the hand. “I’ve always believed in leaving my door open for when someone is ready to talk things out… unless it’s vital, of course.” The elder Nyúlfur tilted his head again, “I doubt things have got that far though.”

  “What makes you say that?” Audas finally asked.

  “Because you don’t look suicidal.”

  His heart missed a beat as his foot slipped halfway back once more, taken aback by the wooden words of Everest.

  “Believe me.” He continued, his voice dipping slightly as he held his gaze at him. “I would know.”

  Audas hesitated, unable to follow up with a reply. On one hand, he couldn’t help but admit the Nyúlfur was right, the thought had never crossed his mind. But on the other… could Nyúlfur actually-

  He didn’t want to think about it, trying to extinguish that chilling shadow from his heart as he slowly nodded back. “I… I understand.”

  “Thank you.” Everest replied, pulling the hand away from the horse. On cue, the beast blew another puff of air and pulled itself back into the enclosure.

  “So…” Audas started, lightly rolling a shoulder. “…why are you here then?”

  Everest merely shrugged, “Just to talk. Or offer some advice, if you want to hear it.”

  A part of Audas wanted to blow a retort, tell Everest he didn’t need it. But there was something about how Everest kept his voice low, tugging him with a gentleness that he couldn’t quite describe. That, and there was a bit of logic to hearing him out… or perhaps it was curiosity…

  Either way, Everest seemed like the last option he had left to figure out what the Nyúlfur were truly like. And beyond leaving Dray on hand to keep an eye on him, Everest hadn’t done anything problematic, at least not at the surface.

  “Advice?” he asked, “Like what?”

  A low chuckle rumbled forth from Everest, “Like how to deal with some of the people here, for a start.”

  Audas frowned, “Well… I tried.” He admitted, slowly emerging from his shell if only for the sake of pragmatism if anything else. “Alika told me to try to give people a chance here and look where that got me.”

  “Well to be fair, we do have a… colourful community.” Everest confessed, suppressing his chuckle. He waved a hand down the length of the barn. “You won’t have to do anything with Alika, if anything she’ll be concerned about everyone involved. She got that off her sister. Believe me when I say this, if she advised you to give people a chance then she genuinely meant it.”

  Alright, he’s got a way with words, I’ll give him that.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Before Audas could reply, the elder began to walk alongside the enclosures, and he found himself falling in alongside him as if he was some obedient puppy. “I’ve already heard that Dray is a little bit shaken from the fight. I’ve got no doubt he’ll be fine, but talking to him will go a long way to helping. Everyone else just needs time.”

  Everest began to scratch at his chin, “Kaine and Dorian… will need more work.”

  He fell silent. Audas waited a moment for him to continue, until it dawned on him that Everest was leaving an opening for him to speak. Feeling like an idiot, his nose twitched. “Kaine is… he doesn’t know when to stop. He couldn’t stop cracking a joke for one minute. And Dorian? Look… he’s just an asshole. Hated me before he even saw me.”

  Everest huffed in response, “Cloak and dagger.”

  Audas swivelled his head round, “What?” Damn, I really need to stop saying that…

  The white furred Nyúlfur didn’t chuckle this time, merely dipping his head. “Forgive me, what I am trying to say is that their behaviour and actions often hides what they really want or feel.”

  He raised a finger and tapped it into his palm, “Take Dorian. He has almost certainly made his distrust clear to you.”

  “Clearly.” Audas replied coldly.

  The elder narrowed his eyes, “Have you considered why?”

  He opened his mouth to reply, only to once more find the words dying at the tip of his tongue. His eyes narrowed, trying to conjure up some reason for his actions… but not one sprung to mind. If he was human, he could at least throw that argument out… but for obvious reasons, that was a bad idea.

  “The truth is that he’s always been protective.” Everest stated, “To a fault arguably, but not without reason.” He squinted his eyes, “He sees you as a danger, a possible threat to what he cares about.”

  Audas glanced away, replaying the encounter in the yard again, how Dorian approached him, knew about him…

  “Perhaps… or you could be hiding something…”

  With a deliberate slowness, Audas found himself nodding in agreement. He was more on the money than he knew. I did come wandering in out of nowhere and my accent wouldn’t help.

  “He used to be more welcoming than that a few years ago…”

  A shiver ran down the back of his neck, If something did happen to him… maybe that could explain why he’s acting the way he is.

  He looked back towards Everest, “So if that’s the case, how can I show him otherwise?”

  “That’s more difficult than it looks. Time alone might be enough. Spilling any beans might help ease things over too.” He started to scratch his chin again. “Trusting the people here will help the most.”

  Audas’ ears twitched as he held back the frown that tried to surface. Trust. That impossible commodity. How could he provide something he didn’t have? How could he trust them when he was constantly questioning if they trusted him?

  “Start with something simple.”

  Audas narrowed his eyes at the elder, struggling to find the right words, “…it’s not that simple…” he replied, tone wooden.

  “Then go for something even more basic and go from there.” Everest replied, “Trust goes both ways after all. Even showing a little bit of yourself will go a long way to build things up, or disprove any misconceptions someone might have.”

  “Misconceptions?”

  “About you. Or others like you or affiliated with you. Again, it goes both ways.”

  That could mean a lot of things. Is he just meaning Alika? Or something else?

  Audas frowned, “And... what about Kaine?”

  The corner of the white furred Nyúlfur’s mouth pulled upwards, and he tapped a second finger, “Kaine goes in the opposite direction. He may seem arrogant or…” he hesitated, rocking from side to side, “Excitable… at inopportune times. But he isn’t just using it for the sake of it. Well, that’s part of it. But he uses that sarcasm and humour to hide a part of himself.”

  Hide a part of himself? It’s not the first time I’ve heard of that.

  Audas didn’t feel particularly convinced. Regardless, he nodded back, motioning for Everest to continue. “The best way to deal with Kaine is to either get past that attitude carefully with a little bit of prodding… which in his state of mind isn’t the best idea… or tolerate it.”

  “Tolerate it!” Audas growled, bristling at the thought of trying to grit and bear Kaine’s obnoxious behaviour, “How is that supposed to work!?”

  “Sarcasm.”

  Now he stopped dead, as Audas stared blankly at the Nyúlfur leader, who’s mouth stretched into a little smirk. “Playing at Kaine’s own game has its perks. Sanity is one of them.”

  Audas rolled his eyes, I suppose he’s not wrong on that. Maybe I can drive him further into lunacy.

  The two continued on, “If you can live with his ‘jokes’, then you won’t find a more resilient Nyúlfur out there. And if you handle things with care, Kaine can cool off.”

  The two stopped just short of the entrance to the barn, where the faint buzz of Nyúlfur activity came through the open doorway. Audas’ mind stubbornly struggled with the ‘advice’. Strange and yet… there was an odd logic to them that did make sense. He could just pick out some odd links, tracing themselves back and forth between Kaine and Dorian, then onwards to the others. “I’ve got a feeling there is a theme to all of this.” He noted.

  Everest’s smirk melted into a frown, “Sadly, yes.”

  The elder Nyúlfur stiffened, “Everyone is different, yet it’s easy to think that it’s just a representation of everyone around them.”

  Audas’ scowl reformed, “I got a hint of that from the folks cheering Kaine on.” Still… that still seemed somewhat of a jump. What was he playing at?

  “Perhaps… but let’s aim higher. Take the wider human population for example, discriminating against a group of people for their ethnicity or faith, again, as an example.”

  Audas gave him a concerned glance, all too familiar with the old human prejudices that only ended up rearing their ugly heads in the wake of the Outbreak. They have always had a knack for alienating entire groups. But why throw humans into the conversation? What did Everest know?

  He decided to play along “Like say…” he started, searching for an example, “…Westerners discriminating against Muslims?”

  The urge to slap himself surged. He said too much, surely. Only for it to dissipate as Everest merely nodded back, “Excellent example. You learn of an attack from a radical Islamist, or perhaps the opposite, an extremist Westerner and suddenly, you find the victims unable or unwilling to trust or respect anyone who happens to be related to the attacker. They see them as a threat or a danger, and so they direct their fear, anger, and grief at them. But here is the thing, the radicals are only one small subgroup…”

  “And yet the wider group still gets ostracized.” Audas stated with a hint of realisation, looking back towards the door, “Even if the majority condemn the attackers.”

  “Precisely.”

  He had seen that all too often on the news. Someone detonates a bomb or flies a plane into a building, and as soon as the victims find out even a hint of the attacker’s background, they immediately turn on anyone even remotely related to them. He had read enough history and seen enough new articles to recognise that.

  “And unfortunately, some of those who hated the violence get pushed into the ranks of the radicals.” Everest finished with a surprising hint of sadness, “A repeating cycle of hatred.”

  Audas didn’t a chance to think on that as Everest’s brown eyes slipped closed and he breathed a heavy sigh. “Not too different from Humans and Nyúlfur.”

  Audas snapped his gaze back at him, unable to hide the jerk of his body. No… that can’t be… We’re not the same! How can…

  His thoughts teetered away, the memory of the Nyúlfur children rising back to the surface. The joy on their faces, laughter in the air and the look of shock as they ran into him…

  What… what is Everest implying? That there is another cycle? Humans and Nyúlfur at the centre?

  He pulled his gaze away.

  Are there Nyúlfur… some Nyúlfur out there who don’t hate humans?

  “People are complex.” Everest started again, dragging him back out into reality. “The point is, just because one person acts in a specific way, or a group for that matter often doesn’t mean the wider situation is what you think it is. Wherever it’s one person or many. And cycles like that always run when things burn. You can either add fuel to the flames, or put it out.”

  Audas felt a chill return to him. Annoyingly, there was a logic to it. But how could he do that? Forget humans and Nyúlfur for a second, what about him and people like Kaine? How did that do that? Small steps you idiot.

  Everest was looking over at him, “So.” Audas said, “Take the time to try and prove them wrong?”

  “Essentially… yes…” Everest replied, a slither of humour in his voice. “Which brings me to the other reason I’m here.”

  “There was another?”

  “Of sorts.”

  Everest stepped back towards the bag, left untouched by the door. “Some of our scouts reported they found a crash site.”

  Another phantom punch settled into his gut, Oh shit…

  His body went tense, ready to defend himself, ready to…

  Audas shook his arms, forcing the muscles to relax. No, he had to hear him out.

  Thankfully, Everest didn’t see him move, unzipping the bag. “There wasn’t much left in the wreckage, so there was no easy way to identify the plane without going there yourself… so I was wondering if you recognised this?”

  He pulled out a red object, rolled up into a cylinder.

  Marked with a distinct tartan pattern…

  Audas’ eyes widened. “M-my jacket?”

  Everest glanced back towards him; a brow lifted as he unrolled it.

  Audas’ heart almost sank as the tartan flapped open. Black marks pick pocked the surface of the fabric where it was burnt to a crisp. Other sections were crisscrossed with faint stitch marks and similar, but not quite identical patches of fresh tartan. The sleeves had been cut away all together, ends knitted back over themselves to restore some semblance of neatness. It looked more like a roughly patched up gilet than anything else.

  But a faint warmth still radiated in his chest. He didn’t care if he overly reacted. It was still his old jacket, torn and battered, but his. The bastards must have had it loaded in a container somewhere…

  “A friend of mine did what he could to repair it. It’s not perfect, but it’s wearable.”

  Everest handed over the jacket to Audas. Stilling himself, he took it out of his hands with the touch of a feather. He wasn’t going to accidently destroy the thing now - this last link to his past, to that of his family and friends. He ran his fingers through the rough fabric and a sudden sense of surprise settled over him as his thumb brushed the soft fur lining, still intact inside.

  He closed his eyes for a moment, losing himself in this relic of his past before he returned to the present. He looked back at Everest and for one brief moment, he didn’t see another Nyúlfur.

  He saw another person.

  “This… this means a lot to me.” Audas said, holding back a quiver in his voice. “Thank you.”

  Everest smiled, small but holding some hidden... respect as a furred hand reached out and rested onto Audas’ shoulder. He didn’t flinch.

  “We help each other out.” He declared quietly, “That’s what counts.”

  He peeled the hand away, lifting the bag with the other. “I’ve taken up enough of your time, but like I said, if you need anything, my door is always open.”

  Maintaining that little smile, Everest pulled the bag over his shoulder and with a final glance, strolled out of the barn.

  Audas found himself alone again, staring through the open door at the swaying crops beyond it. His mind raced. He didn’t expect that. It threw more questions at him… and yet it also gave him some answers.

  He looked down at the jacket, and with a slow, delicate effort he slipped it on, settling onto his shoulders like an old glove. He sighed with barely disguised relief. If there is one part of my past I’ve got to bring with me that wasn’t a person… it had to be this.

  At the very least, he would keep it for the memories.

  He straightened up, closing his eyes. Can I even…

  He stopped himself, Everest’s words creeping back to the fore. He found himself looking back at the past… his human past… he had seen how humans had torn themselves apart, even when millions didn’t deserve it.

  ‘Not too different from Humans and Nyúlfur…’

  He gulped down a breath of air, working out the last hint of tension in his muscles. Any other time, there would be a part of him demanding he disregard it all.

  But where has that got me?

  That urge wasn’t here this time… instead there was an… obligation not to just turn and leave. To stay on, a corner of his heart asking him to at least prove that any trust in him was not misplaced.

  Another other corner was frankly, at this point no longer in fear. Instead, it was just curious.

  Rolling his shoulders and casting one final glance into the barn, he stepped on out back into the day.

  But if I’m going to try and find out more… I’m going to need a little bit of help…