Tessoul
It was day two in the cage the humans had constructed perfectly enough for me to be out in the forsaken cold for the rest of my days. I looked down at Ed as he squirmed up to the bars and I knelt down, patting his head.
He let out a high-pitched “brr-brr” noise and squirmed underneath my touch, satisfied. Then he looked up at me with his wildly expressive eyes and made something of a forlorn expression.
"You and me both, buddy," I said, wondering if he was as bored of the camp as I was.
I felt a bond to Ed that I hadn't voiced to Sidney, in large part because I didn't know what the bond was. There was a connection I felt when he was around that was both unfamiliar and unsettling on some level. It was the same feeling in my gut that left me sick, lost, and purposeless these days. A pull.
It turned out that on top of Sidney setting me up for capture, she'd also stolen some of the guns Jareth had been working on. I saw one poke out of the side of her knapsack: the heat gun. I scowled at that, at my stupidity, and became restless being cooped up in my chamber.
Several of the women at the camp had scoffed and scowled at me as I passed, shouting incoherent curses. But others, many others, had brought me blankets and made a makeshift tent around my cage so that the snow wouldn’t fall on me. They told me how wrong it felt that Sidney did this to me and that they didn't know that portion of the plan.
"Why lock you up?" one of them said with a thick Southern accent. "It just doesn't make sense now that yer, well, you know, thinkin' an all." She swallowed hard and grabbed my hands through the bars, apologetic. "Not that you weren't thinkin' before but, you know..."
I waved her off with a laugh. "I get it."
Now and then, one of the females would bring me hot meals that they'd cooked and seemed to take great pleasure in how quickly I would eat it up. Today a woman named Cathy, bright-eyed Cathy, had slipped into my presence and lay down a plate with strange, unknown meat on it and two squares of bread. I swallowed it down quickly, and she commented on my appetite.
She left me to my own thoughts, and my body transfixed once more on the strange pull I'd been feeling: the pull that Jareth spoke of and the same sensation that drew me to the mountains over and over again. And all of the sudden I realized what it was.
A war was coming, yes, but not with the humans.
I swallowed hard and bit my lip, pacing my cage as my hands shook unwillingly before me.
My mouth went slack, dry, and filled with taste buds then. A panic set over me that couldn’t be quelled: anxiety ballooning in my stomach and throat as Sidney approached.
She walked up to the cage with crossed arms; her body bundled in a thick green coat. She looked up at my makeshift shelter that the girls had made for me and rolled her eyes, jealous somehow.
I wanted to yell, to tell her she put me here and how dare she have something to say about it, but the anxiety had taken over me then.
My arms bristled with thick goosebumps, and I turned away from her.
“Hi,” she said in a small voice as she reached the bars.
I shook my head and looked away from her, wandering to the other edge of the cage.
“Look I’m sorry, okay?” she said, impatient. “Look at me, please. Talk to me.”
I bit my lip, my thoughts elsewhere, and knelt down once more, watching as Ed made his body go slack and slipped through the bars, rolling over to me.
Sidney leaned down then, following my movements as I knelt to reach Ed. “Please talk to me,” she pleaded once more. “I can’t sleep, I can’t think, I feel like my chest is caving in.”
“You set me up,” I said tersely.
She shrugged awkwardly, offering me a sheepish grin that likely got her out of trouble in the past. “Sort of,” she said with a finger to her lips.
“No,” I said slowly. “It’s one or the other. What’s the truth here, Sidney? Because I can’t tell anymore.”
She reached for me through the bars and tried to pull me toward her. I followed her touch, and she kissed me, hard.
When I pulled away, she said, “It was a mistake. Yes, I wanted to come back here. Yes, I was scared to stay with the Vithohn, but…”
I seethed and tried not to let her kiss throw me off balance. “Did you know I’d be put into captivity? To be—”
Then I froze.
“What?” she asked.
I felt a cold shock through me, and I grabbed my forehead, squeezing it between my thumb and forefinger.
“I know what it is,” I said quietly, mostly to myself.
“What it is?” she repeated, and my silence greeted her in reply. “Tessoul, please, I’m trying to talk to you. I love you, please. I’m going to do everything in my power to get you out of here.”
Just when I thought I had been emptied of love, my eyes shot to hers and I swallowed down a thick helping of air.
“You love me?” I repeated nervously.
She blushed, a pink hue overcoming her freckled skin. “Of course I do. What did you think?” She giggled then and reached back through the bars. “I’ve never felt more hope than I do when we’re together, and that’s saying a lot.”
I looked at her with a renewed hope then, only to feel the weight of my pull against my chest once more. I looked down at the creature in my hands and felt a burning sensation, an evil strength, and without thinking, I tossed him to the ground, crying out in agony.
“Hey!” Sidney cried out with fury. The shock that covered her face was painful to see as she raced to pick him up.
“Sidney,” I warned sternly. “Don’t.”
“What the hell’s wrong with you?” She scolded.
“Do you remember what I told you about the Kilari?” I asked, and she looked at me with a focused rage. “That… force I’ve been feeling for weeks now,” I said through gritted teeth, feeling weaker by the second. Drawn to the creature and trying to pull back from it. “It’s Ed.”
I wanted to laugh at the ridiculousness of it, but her face was stone stoic.
“That’s them,” I said, pointing to him once more.
“That’s impossible,” she said, plucking him up from the ground and holding him close to her body, cradling him like a child. “They’re extinct. You said so yourself.”
“I feel it,” I pressured. “Sidney, you have to trust me.”
“They’ve been extinct for years!” she shouted back. “You killed them, remember? And they don’t look like him, and he hasn’t even shown any sign of evolution or growth!”
“Where did you find him?” I demanded, and she became immediately standoffish, unwilling to share.
Finally, she relented, “Outside of your base.”
“Sidney, what reason do I have to lie about this? You have to trust me. I feel this pull at all times and even more so when he’s near.” I began to hyperventilate then: shaken. “I need to get out of here.”