Chapter 6: What the Plates Hid
Shuun-Vo spent three days in the Mutable Refuge.
He slept at the edge of the lake. He ate what Lumea offered him, small mineral fruits that grew on the cavern walls. He didn't speak much. But he also didn't leave.
On the third day, a plate fell.
It was the plate from his left shoulder, the one with the first fissure. Shuun-Vo woke and found it beside him, detached, like a dry leaf falling from a tree.
He stared at the plate for a long time.
- "Finally - Lumea said, approaching."
- "Finally what?"
- "Finally you're leaving something behind."
Shuun-Vo touched the place where the plate had been. The skin beneath was pale, soft, vulnerable. He had never seen it before. Never felt it.
- "Does it hurt? - Lumea asked."
- "No. But it's... strange."
Lumea knelt beside him and examined the exposed skin. There were no wounds. No scars. Just a ordinary, animal/normal skin.
- "You spent your whole life covered by these plates - she said." - "Protected. Isolated. What do you think you'll find when they fall?"
Shuun-Vo didn't answer. He didn't know. Throughout his entire existence, the plates had been his identity. They were what made him the Rejected Presence. Without them, what would remain?
- "Maybe nothing - he said, his voice lower than usual."
- "Maybe you - Lumea replied." - "Just you."
Shuun-Vo looked at the plate in his hands. It was rough, cold, dead. He set it aside at the edge of the lake and touched the exposed skin on his shoulder.
The sensation was strange. The air touched his skin in a way he had never experienced. The cavern's humidity tickled. The warmth of Lumea's body, nearby, was comforting.
- "I don't know who I am without them - he admitted."
- "No one knows who they are - Lumea said." - "The difference is that most people don't have plates to hide it."
Shuun-Vo laughed. It was a short sound, almost a bark, escaping his throat before he could contain it. Lumea smiled.
- "You laughed - she said."
- "It was a spasm."
- "It was a laugh. You're getting better."
Shuun-Vo shook his head, but couldn't prevent the corner of his lips from curving slightly upward. It was the first time in cycles, perhaps the first time in his entire existence that he felt something close to lightness.
That night, he slept without dreaming. And when he woke, another plate had fallen.