Chapter 605: Traveling Companions

"But... how are we going to get the ingredients for..." Heka’s voice had softened considerably.

The earlier storm of tears had slowed to occasional traces that still shone on her dark, scarred cheeks.

She looked down at the smaller elf still half-wrapped around her midsection and managed a small, tired smile that pulled faintly at the corners of her mouth.

Eric pulled back just far enough to free one arm.

He pumped a fist into the air with sudden, restored energy, green hair bouncing with the motion. A smug, thoroughly confident expression spread across his face.

"No need to worry!" he yelled, volume completely restored and then some. "I doubt anyone in Thaad can match my culinary skil—"

"YES, BUT CAN YOU STOP SHOUTING NOW! GET WHAT YOU WANT AND LEAVE ALREADY!"

The shopkeeper had somehow appeared right beside them without either of them noticing her approach.

Her arms were folded tightly across her chest, with a thick vein stood out clearly on her forehead, pulsing once in visible irritation.

The look she fixed on the pair carried the accumulated patience of a woman who had already endured far too many loud customers that afternoon and had reached the absolute end of her willingness to tolerate further noise.

"S... Sorry...!"

Eric clapped both hands together in a rapid, apologetic bow and delivered the word at nearly the same volume as his previous boast.

***

The Scarab Boros.

The name itself had a particular weight among those who still paid attention to the older symbols and the creatures that had outlasted empires.

It was a beast that stood for completeness—not merely unity in the simple sense of two things joined, but totality in the deeper sense of a cycle that refused to break.

Regular mortals, the ones who lived and died inside a single short span of years, had always been forced to depend on one another for the continuation of anything that truly mattered.

A man—no matter how great his strength, how long the list of his accomplishments, or how brightly his name shone in the memories of others—would see his line end without a wife or female partner to carry it forward.

A woman—no matter how outstanding her mind, how sharp her skills, or how striking her beauty—would never know the particular joy and burden of motherhood unless she was chosen and joined in turn.

Both sides could decide to walk alone, of course. They could call the choice freedom, or principle, or simple preference. And many have.

Yet a heavy biological price waited at the end of that road: a deathbed surrounded by no one who carried their blood or their memory forward in the most literal sense.

Completeness, therefore, required both the white fish and the black fish swimming together in the same eternal circle.

The two creatures pulling this wagon of mine were mature Scarab Boros.

They were the only beasts known to have existed continuously since the age of the dragons, when the world had still been shaped by forces most modern scholars preferred to treat as legend.

Their survival across such an impossible stretch of time rested on a single, arrogant gift: extreme adaptability.

A male Scarab Boros placed among only other males would, over the course of seasons or years, become female.

A female kept among only females would become male.

In the rarest and most extreme isolation—decades without any other of their kind at all—one of them could become both at once and produce offspring through virgin birth, closing the circle entirely within a single body.

Bear-like in bulk, heavy through the shoulders and hips, covered in segmented plates that gleamed like polished dark horn when the light struck them, they were regarded by scholars and mystics alike as both the flaw and the perfection of creation.

They refused to be limited by the usual rules of sex and lineage, and in doing so they had outlasted nearly everything else that had once walked the same ground.

The wagon itself was a solid, practical construction of dark, weather-hardened wood and iron fittings that had been repaired more than once.

High-sided and covered with a canvas that had faded from whatever original color it once held into a dusty, indeterminate grey-brown, it creaked in a steady rhythm that matched the rolling gait of the two beasts.

The Scarab Boroses moved without urgency, their broad, padded paws leaving deep, clean prints in the softer sections of the track and clicking softly against stone where the road improved...

"...Excuse me, are you listening?!" I snapped the words at the man sitting beside me on the driver’s box. "You seem bored and it disturbs me."

He had been staring out at the passing trees and the long stretch of open ground with the blank, distant expression of someone whose thoughts were entirely elsewhere.

The sight of that open boredom irritated me more than it reasonably should have.

A man could at least pretend to follow a proper line of reflection when he was sharing the box.

He turned his head just enough to acknowledge that words had been directed at him.

His voice, when it came, was flat and unimpressed, with none of the deference one might have hoped for from a younger passenger.

"Hm? You are the one who went ahead philosophizing on your own. Why must I give you a listening ear? I did not ask for a lecture on fish or completeness."

Tsk.

Youngsters these days had no respect for a proper monologue, nor for the effort it took to arrange one’s thoughts into something worth hearing.

I faced forward again, hands steady on the reins, and let the silence settle for a few breaths.

"Old fart, are we not there yet!"

The call came from above, clear and carrying easily over the creak of the wheels and the low, occasional grunts of the Scarab Boros.

A charismatic, pale lady with her hair pulled back in a high, practical ponytail was seated on the wooden roof of the wagon.

One knee was drawn up; the other leg dangled loosely over the side.

I twisted halfway around on the box, squinting up against the angle of the light.

"I agree, I am aged," I said, "but do you not think calling me a wrinkled and skeletal ancient relic is going too far? There is a difference between acknowledging years and reducing a man to a collection of bones and folds."

"What’s with that? She never said anything like that?!" A second voice joined from the roof at once, sharp with mild offense.

The female beastkin had her cat ears angled forward, the fine fur along the edges catching the light.

Her green eyes were narrowed. A long tail flicked once against the canvas roof with an audible soft thump.

She added: "And can’t you go a bit faster, wrinkled old skeleton? The road is clear and these things look like they could manage more than a stroll."

I opened my mouth to deliver a suitable reply involving respect, the proper care of elders, and the foolishness of rushing beasts that had already outlived several human civilizations.

"Mama taught me to respect the grey and elderly." a third passenger, with multi-colored hair, on the roof spoke in an even tone. "Sekhmet, please apologize."

She sat cross-legged near the rear edge of the roof, her expression almost empty of emotion.

The various colors in her hair shifted slightly when the breeze caught them.