He nodded, and Auli smiled up at her. "He's a fast learner," she said. "We were about to start a game."

The way she said it seemed strange to him. It was throaty, slow, almost purring, and he realized that her words were a cryptic flirtation with him, one that Kimmie wouldn't understand. "But mother said I had to come home as soon as you got back, so I'd better get going. We can play some other time, Tarrin," she said as she gracefully got up. Tarrin did so as well, and while her back was to Kimmie, she winked at him. And it was not a wink in amusement. "You'd better practice. I play to win," she warned with a slow smile, then she sauntered out of the room like she owned it.

Kimmie watched her going with narrow eyes, and when the door closed, she came up and sat down in front of the chessboard. "If you need some company, I'll be happy to oblige," she said with a kind smile. "I'm sorry I ignored you earlier. I'll make it up to you. Want to play?"

"Well, alright," he said, sitting down. "She showed me how the move, but I think there's more to this than just knowing how they move."

"You're right. While we're waiting for dinner, I'll show you," she promised, setting up the board.

Tarrin looked over Kimmie's shoulder, towards the door. Auli had been flirting with him, and alot more seriously than she'd been flirting with Dar. What was she up to? She was a Sha'Kar, and he was a human. Didn't that make them too different for that kind of thing? He had to suppress a flush when he caught himself hoping that they weren't. Auli was very pretty, and very funny, and very nice… and she flirted with him. What if she was interested? What would he do about it?

That wasn't the right question to ask, he realized, his eyes still on the door. The question was, what would she do about it.

Given where they were going, when he would meet Jesmind and his daughter Jasana, he had the feeling that if Auli was serious, she was going to cause some serious friction. Kimmie seemed rather mellow, but from everything he'd heard, Jesmind was not. Jesmind was supposedly a firebrand, and if she laid claim on him, she may be violently opposed to Auli's little games.

Tarrin had a sinking feeling that things in the Tower were going to be very sticky.

To: Title EoF

It was one of those times when there just wasn't very much to do.

They'd gotten him up early, perhaps a bit too early. The night before had been relatively boring for Tarrin, since everyone else was getting ready for the big day today. The day when the Sha'Kar were going to use powerful magic to transport all of them to Suld. The Sha'Kar had been busy packing, and since Tarrin only owned one pack, for him it took about five minutes to get ready. Triana had gone back to Suld to talk to Jesmind, so he'd been left with Kimmie most of the night… which in itself wasn't a very bad thing. Tarrin chafed at them hovering over him, but Kimmie seemed to understand how it made him feel, and strove to make his forced restriction as entertaining as possible with stories, conversation, and even games and books. Tarrin didn't understand what they were talking about most of the time, but he had the feeling that the Sha'Kar had some kind of ability to talk to the Sorcerers in Suld. But just because they could didn't mean that it was a good idea. He heard Triana telling Kimmie before she left that the Sorcerers back in Suld were still in shock that the Sha'Kar were alive, and the Sha'Kar had decided that it would be best for them to only communicate with the Sorcerers in charge over there.

That had been quite a surprise. Triana had told him rather curtly when she woke him up that because of poor health, the Keeper of the Tower, some woman named Myriam Lar, had stepped down from her position as ruler and given the position to his sister. Jenna was only thirteen years old… what business did she have being the ruler of the katzh-dashi? But then he remembered that she was actually fifteen, nearly sixteen, and she was one of those sui'kun people. The Sha'Kar said he was one, and they all fell over each other to be nice to him and ask him what he wanted them to do. They thought of these sui'kun people as kings or royalty or something, and some calculating part of him saw the advantage in making Jenna the Keeper. If the Sha'Kar were as quick to obey her as they were to obey him, they'd need her in that position of power to legitimize her authority in the eyes of both the humans and the Sha'Kar. There were bound to be some problems in bringing the Sha'Kar back to the Tower after a thousand years, so maybe the Tower was taking steps to make sure that thing went as smoothly as possible. Maybe this Myriam Lar really wasn't sick. Maybe that Goddess woman had told her to step down and stand aside for Jenna, for the good of the Tower. If the woman had half the reaction to that Goddess that Tarrin did, she'd walk through fire at her request.

Of course, thinking about that gave him a headache. It delved into those areas where Tarrin's lost memory tried to bubble back up, and that invariably caused him pain. Especially every time he thought of Myriam Lar. Odds were, there was some kind of history between the two of them that the others hadn't told him about, but Tarrin couldn't remember it. He only knew that for some reason, her name sent strange feelings through him that he couldn't explain, nor could he really identify them.

There were other things to think about, though, things that made less sense and caused him as much a headache. For some reason, he was of two minds about Auli. He liked her alot, since she was alot of fun, but her blowing in his ear had completely scrambled his idea of her. He'd only known her that one day, and he'd had a great deal of fun with her. He thought of her as a good friend. But when she flirted with him that way, she seemed to cross some kind of line in his mind. He'd noticed that she was very pretty and had a very appealing figure, but hadn't thought of her that way until she went and advertised the fact that she was interested. Once she had, she'd let the chickens out of the henhouse, and now he was thinking about it.

And that was the core of his dilemma. He felt he had some kind of an obligation to Kimmie, because of who he had been and how she felt about him. But he wasn't that person anymore, and there was no guarantee that he ever would be again. Kimmie represented who he was, but Auli's invitation urged him to continue on as he was, to not just stop in his life and try to regain what was lost. From what he'd heard, he hadn't been a very happy or nice person, and he was just starting to consider whether or not he wanted to go back to that.

He did want his memory back, though, and once he got it, he'd look back and decide what he wanted to do. But until then, he wasn't just going to sit and wait. There were many things to see, many things to do, many things to experience. He had to keep living, keep going. He didn't want to hurt Kimmie, but he didn't want to become stagnant as Triana wanted him to do, to just sit and do nothing, see nothing, be nothing until they could return him back to what they thought he was supposed to be. He did want his memory back, he wanted to know who he had been, what he had done, and what kind of life he had been trying to build for himself. He wasn't going to turn his back on who he was, because that would be dishonoring his own memory. But on the other hand, he wanted to see things, experience things as he was now, and when he got back his memory, hopefully the combination of old and new could come together and make the best decision for his future.

Auli. He liked her, and he wondered just how interested she was in him. From what Dar had told him about her last night, as the two of them played chess, Auli had been the island's hussy back when all the Sha'Kar were being mentally controlled. Was her flirting just an echo of that past, or was she truly interested in him? What level of interest did she really have? She'd flirted with Dar too, was she only interested in playing with them, or did she want a relationship? It was too much of a gray area. Tarrin wasn't going to hold her past against her, since she couldn't help it from what he'd been told. The mind control had made all the Sha'Kar act like Auli to one degree or another. He could certainly see it in them when they went out. The Sha'Kar would blush a little when they met members of the opposite sex, probably past romantic interests. The Sha'Kar weren't half as morally strait-laced as the people in Aldreth were-after all, they did bathe in company and weren't quite as set against showing skin as where he came from-but some of them had seemed to cross some line in their culture that was not to be crossed back when they were under control. He knew they were a bit embarassed about it, but he hoped they didn't dwell on it too much. One couldn't beat one's self over the head over things over which one had no control. They should just forgive themselves and others and then move on. It would be best for all of them.