CHAPTER 2

★ E A R T H R E A L M ★

★ N U M C R É S ★

The creaking sound of the door woke the cat, who was lying on the chair in the living room. He immediately hopped down when he saw Tanara's shillouette. She stretched languidly while wrapping her tail around Tanara's leg.

"Careful!" shouted Moran as he pushed Tanara out of her cat's grip and drew his sword. Before Tanara could ask why she was pushed out of the way or why he drew his sword, she heard her cat scream loudly, and the next thing she saw was cat blood splattering across her face.

"Alos must have sent this monster after us. I should not be here, I'd be putting you in danger," Moran said, sliding his blade back into position. In doing so, he overlooked the frozen young woman standing next to him.

Tanara had run out of words. Her eyes wide, she stared at the dead, headless cat before her. Staring into her palms after wiping her face with them, she looked at Moran very angrily.

Moran straightened up and backed away a bit. It was hard for him to see why she was angry; after all, he had saved her from one of Alos' monsters, or so he thought.

"What have you done?" She asked, her eyes watering.

"You killed him. You killed Uran," she cried, sinking to her knees. The cat was dear to her, he was the only living creature she had left after the death of her foster parents.

"Uran was never a monster, he was my pet. I loved him, he was my only friend," she cried.

"A pet? You called that thing a pet? Never in my life have I seen such a sluggish, four-legged animal. You must be mistaken," he told her.

There were no cats in the world he came from, and it definitely reminded him of a magical creature, possibly from Alos' magic, sent only to kill them both.

She averted her eyes from the cat's carcass and looked into his eyes in confusion. She thought she had brought a madman home, and from Moran's point of view, he thought he had followed a mad woman home.

"It was not a monster," she kept shouting. "You are the monster because you killed a harmless cat."

"Wait! What did you call it?" he asked, it was indeed a strange name to his ears.

"Get out of my house," she said. It was an outburst.

"What was that?" He asked, glancing backward at the door and pointing over his shoulder with his right thumb. He couldn't believe he'd heard her correctly. He'd wished and hoped that they'd both find time to sit down and talk about the strange things that had happened there at the tarven, how she could do what she'd done there, but it seemed he wouldn't get the chance again.

Although she was also curious about what was happening there, because she had no idea what had happened, she allowed herself to be distracted by her grief. She was grieving for her cat, and that was the only thing that interested her at that moment.

"Go away! I can not have a murderer under my roof," Tanara said to him, and he raised his brows in shock.

"A murderer?" said Moran. He was a skilled thief, but he had never taken a life, and it pained him to be called a murderer.

"You let me follow you here just so you can kick me out the next moment?" He asked, and she walked past him and pulled open the door.

"Don't you even want to know what happened back there? Don't you want to know who those people are and why they were after me?" he said.

Moran turned around and faced the cold wind that brushed his skin and flowed through the open door into the whole room... .

"You called me into this world, who are you?" he said, demanding an answer.

"What are you talking about anyway? Is this a plan to make me so curious that I let you stay? Are you that afraid of the night wind?" she said and he shook his head defensively.

She thought he was making it all up to force her to let him stay, but in reality something strange was happening out there that she did not know about.

"You were the one who kept crying for help like a little princess, and I had to come to make you realize that you were not stuck and you had to keep running for your life," Tanara told him, raising her voice slightly.

"I never called you. I never said a word while I was out there. I thought it was already over, and I waited patiently for Alos to come up to me and end it all. If you heard a scream, it must have come from the crystal," Moran said as things started to make sense to him.

He thought that was the purpose of the crystal. The members of the Horös called it the Crier, and the moment he entered the Tarven, it began to glow mysteriously.

"That's it! Your presence made it glow. He sensed your presence, and so did you. The crystal I had was calling to you, seeking your attention, and that's why you were drawn to me, because I had it in my pocket," Moran said, explaining to her what he was able to gather in the short time . . .

He was a bright young man. His intelligence complemented his extraordinary skills as a jewel thief many times over.

Tanara had looked at him. She stared at him as if she would make some sense out of what he said until he finished speaking, and then she pointed outside and reminded him that he had to leave her house.

"You can not make me curious," she said to him.

"No, I never intended to make you curious. I just want to know who you are. The moment you touched me, something happened. You may not have realized it, but you pushed me through the boundary," he told her, and she poked her head toward the door, holding onto the handle. She was still signaling him to leave, no matter what he said.

"Please, I need to know what you did and how you did it?" he pleaded. He moved closer to her, and she backed away slightly. She felt quite uncomfortable being so close.

"You really think I am a monster," he said, and she remained still and silent, barely able to hear herself breathe.

"All right, then, I'll go," he said. He never thought that killing the cat would make him look like a monster in her eyes. That was not what he had hoped.

His eyes circled Tanara's pupils for a moment, and she had to avert her gaze for fear of being forced by his sad eyes to allow him to stay.

She let her eyes roam the floor until she no longer felt his presence, and at that moment she knew he was gone. Tanara closed the door and began to mourn her cat again.

A few moments passed, and after putting on her night robe, she set about cleaning up. She wiped up Uran's blood from the floor as she mourned him. She wasted no time, she was stressed, and after walking all the way from the cave to her house during the night, she was quite sleepy and tired.

She went to her room and lay down on her bed. It was a pretty big house for a single woman who had no job. Her foster parents had left it to her since they had no child of their own. Even though she had nothing to call her own, she often considered herself lucky that she did not have to pay rent or sleep in motels, and she was grateful to them for that.

Since Uran was gone, she saw the disadvantages of being alone in such a large house. She felt the silence more than ever, and even more than before she was aware of the shadows that cavorted in corners of the room that her lamp could not reach. She was cold.

She continued to think, she had no idea when her thoughts completely drifted away from Uran and travelled back to her last moments in the Den that day. She thought about what she had seen in the Tarven. She thought about Moran, Alos and his men, and what had really happened with the axe.

It occurred to her that Alos' axe went through Moran as if he were a ghost, but when she touched the axe, she felt the solid blade, and Moran was just cut when he touched the blade after her.

All this made her curious. She hated to imagine Moran's face after what he had done to Uran, but she just had to endure it if she wanted to remember what he had said before he left.

"I just want to know who you are. The moment you touched me, something happened," Tanara recalled. She did not mean to pry, but she could not help herself.

She was thinking so deeply that she did not even feel the change in the weather. She was jolted out of her thoughts the moment she felt tiny raindrops pelting her through the open window.

Tanara quickly closed the window, and when she was done, she couldn't go back to bed because she knew Moran was out there somewhere with no roof over his head. She ran for the door as she felt a pang of guilt. When she got to the door, she put her hand on the handle but couldn't get up the courage to open it. She felt guilty for leaving him out there in the rain, but she couldn't bring herself to dishonor Uran's memory.

"For Uran," she muttered as she left the door and returned to her room.

* * * * *

M O R N I N G

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

She opened her eyes and still heard the raindrops pattering on her roof. She wondered if she had slept, only to wake up and see the moon again, as she wondered why it was still dark in her room. She rolled out of bed and hurried to the window, resisting the urge to lie back in her bed and enjoy the weather. She could only hope that it was morning, or at least dawn, so she could go out to see if she could find Moran.

She tore open the window and saw that it was morning, but the cloudy sky made it seem darker than it should have been in her room. She had finished mourning Uran and was now more concerned with the questions she wanted to ask Moran.

Tanara ran barefoot to the door and unlocked it as fast as she could, she had no idea if he was still out there, but to satisfy her curiosity she hoped he was somewhere under her eaves. Sensing the pattering rain, she retraced her steps and retreated out of the corridor where she could clearly see he was nowhere to be found. She felt bad not only for missing the opportunity to get answers from him, but also for leading him out into the rain that night, knowing he had nowhere else to go.

She looked around again and went back inside because it was too cold for her outside.

Tanara closed the door and a gasp escaped her mouth as she turned and saw Moran coming out of the kitchen with a tray in his hands.

"I made you breakfast, it's my little way of saying thank you for letting me stay here," Moran said, walking up to Tanara and shoving a slice of bread into her mouth. He handed her the tray, ignoring how frozen she was.

Tanara looked down at the tray and saw that he actually took the time to prepare what she saw on the tray. There was soup, there was bread, there were many fruits and seasoned meats.

"How?" she could only say with a mouthful of bread crumbs as she watched Moran sit down.

"How did I manage to cook all this? I am a really good cook, anyone who knows me appreciates that," he said.

That was not what Tanara was talking about. He knew exactly what she was talking about and what she was getting at.

Tanara swallowed hard to free her mouth for words.

"You know what I'm talking about," she groaned. Her mouth twisted, her heart racing so fast with anger. She couldn't believe she'd been deceived. And the fact that Moran was so calm about the situation made her even angrier.

"Relax, it didn't take me too long to prepare the food. You don't have to feel bad?" He said and she frowned, she didn't need to say another word to get Moran to give her the answers she wanted.

Moran saw that she'd lose her tolerance if he didn't start speaking at that moment.

"All right, all right. You left your back door open after you cleaned up last night," Moran said, and she frowned.

"You broke into my house through the back door?" she asked, and he nodded.

"There's some truth to that, even though I didn't actually break in. You literally left your door open, and I didn't really do much to get in," Moran said, and she gritted her teeth.

"What kind of man are you? Where did you come from, anyway? You do have a home, do not you? You did not grow up spending nights in other people's homes without them knowing about it, did you?" said Tanara, it was an outburst.

"Why are you here, what are you doing here, can you just get out of my house and never come back?" She said to him after setting the tray down on the table.

"I do not belong here. Yes, I have a home, but not here," Moran said, standing up and standing an arm's length away from Tanara.

"Numcrés, Afrí, Ivádia, Havañak, Denark, Truése, Laga, where? For if you need money to begin your journey, I have that, and I will gladly give you half of my savings if it will help you get away from me," Tanara said.

At that moment, she was no longer curious. She hated to see Moran's face. After killing Uran, he had the gall to break into the same house and spend a night there without her permission. She felt this was disrespectful and could no longer tolerate it.

"No!" said Moran. This time he dropped the joke. He wanted her to listen to him, even if he was going to find somewhere else to stay.

"No what?" said Tanara.

"I am not from any of the countries you mentioned," Moran said so seriously that it confused Tanara. One moment Maron was acting like a buffoon, the next like a reasonable person, and with all that she could not really tell when to give him a sympathetic ear.

"Then I guess you are from Keda, Grinamm or-". She could list more countries, but she was interrupted by Moran's statement.

"I am not of this realm," he said, and Tanara's brows drew together.

"Excuse me?" she said, having no idea what he was talking about.

"The realm of shadows, that's where I am from, not the Earth realm," he said to her and her eyebrows drew even closer together than they already were. It all sounded foreign to her ears. She had no idea what he was talking about or what he meant by the realm of shadows.

"You are lying to me. How could you, after everything you have already done. You leave my house and go back to wherever your home is, whether it's the realm of shadows or the realm of people who break into other people's houses," she said, turning around.

Moran put his hands gently on her shoulder and made her turn toward him. And she slapped his face.

"How dare you touch me?" she said, and Moran's face sank to the floor.

"Now get out of my house, I never want to see you near me or on my property again," she spoke slowly and in a dead voice, and Moran raised his head and let his eyes sink into her pupils for a few moments, then he left the house through the main door after grabbing his coat. . .