“Yes, I do,” she said fiercely. “You’re the only man that has ever treated me with kindness and respect, and the least I can do is say sorry when I mess it all up.” She looked him right in the good eye, and he was grateful to be wearing his eye patch. “And I am, Kest. Really and truly. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
He nodded, trying to mask his disappointment. She doesn’t want to hurt my feelings. She’s a good person. Nothing more to it than that. A friend. Well, he wouldn’t turn up his nose at a friend, but he wished she’d said something a little different instead. “Thank you,” he managed to say. “I’ll be fine. It will just take some getting used to, that’s all.” He put on a smile that he hoped was convincing.
Still she did not retreat. Holding his hands, her face uncomfortably close to his own, she said, “Kest... can I take a viewing of you?”
He blinked. He sometimes forgot about her unusual power – she tended not to make much noise about it. “You want to see my future?”
“If that’s what I do, then yes.” She shrugged. “I want to, I don’t know… get a better sense of you. Where you’re going.”
He shifted in his seat. “Do you usually ask first?”
She laughed uncomfortably. “Up ‘til now, not so much. But with a friend it seems like maybe I should.”
“Right.” He wasn’t sure how to respond. “Will I see it too?”
“If you want. I figured out now how to either share the vision or withhold it.”
“I don’t think I want to see my own future,” he muttered. “That seems... not right.” She nodded, dropping his hands and pulling back. She wasn’t offended; she merely accepted what he said. As a friend should. Her hands had been warm. Comforting. “But if you want to see it, you can.”
Her smile lit up, white teeth dazzling against her dark lips. “Good,” she said, taking his hands again. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
“What do you have to do?” he asked.
“Not much,” she said. “You won’t feel a thing, not unless I want you to. It’s more like...” She searched for the right words. “Like opening a door in my head.”
“And you won’t tell me anything?” He wasn’t sure why that seemed important, but it did.
“Not a word. Promise.” She closed her eyes, and her breathing slowed. In Kest’s heat vision she began to glow brighter. She was still for thirty seconds, then a minute, then two. He took the opportunity to drink in the beauty of her face. Her nose was ever so slightly upturned. Her lips were entrancing.
Then her eyes opened, full to the brim with unshed tears. A dazzling star-point of light spun in the depths of her pupils, and he couldn’t tell if he was seeing it with his natural eye or his heat sense. It twinkled, dimmed, and was gone. “You’re really something, beast boy, you know that?”
He smiled unsteadily, not sure how to take the statement. “Did you see something?”
“Much and more,” she responded, wiping the tears from her eyes. “Don’t worry, I’m not crying. The tears come on every time I use the gift. You should have seen me at first – I used to gush forever afterwards.” She wiped her face, grinned, and sat next to him again. “See? All better.” She laid a hand on his shoulder. “Thank you, Kest. It doesn’t make much sense, I guess, but... I wanted to see.”
“Why do you think this happened to you?” he wondered. “No one survives the Pure Light. What’s different about you?”
“The difference is,” she confided, leaning in close, “that I’m amazing.” She laughed, leaning back. “No, I don’t know. I think it just happened. No reason, no purpose, no intent behind it, just a random occurrence. It could have happened to anyone.”
“But it didn’t happen to anyone. It happened to you.”
“Yup,” she said.
Incredible. She had made her peace with it, this disfiguring, life-ending event she had weathered. He dug deep and found a shred of courage. “I don’t know anything about the Pure Light, but I think you had it right the first time. You seem pretty amazing to me.” He fought the urge to look at his shoes and was rewarded by a pleased smile.
She turned on the log to face him. “Kest,” she said, her tone both kind and serious. “I know this thing, this whole eye business... it has hurt you. But nothing is forever.” She struggled with herself as if she wanted to say more, but then she relaxed and smiled. She reached up and took him by the face with both hands. “It’ll be all right.”
Gently, she reached for his eye patch. Reflexively, he moved to block her, but she batted his hands away and pulled the patch off. Feeling exposed, he looked down at his hands. She lifted his chin until he looked at her. He was flushed with shame, but her eyes were gentle.
“I don’t care what you look like, Kest. I still see you.” She leaned forward and kissed his cheek just below that alien, unspeakable eye. Her lips were velvet soft and hot against his skin, and he shivered at the delicate sensation.
Confused, he pulled back. “I look awful.”
“Yeah, you do,” she admitted. “But only a little bit, and only on the outside. Who cares about that?”
She winked at him, patted his cheeks bracingly, and slipped away into the underbrush before he could muster a response.
He touched his cheek where she had kissed him, his thoughts whirling. Amazing. His fingers slipped to the lumpy, unfeeling flesh of his alien eye. It was ugly, and he knew it, but for once the thought did not bring him to despair. There are lots of ugly things in the world. Doesn’t mean they’re useless.
His heart lifted for the first time in ages. I am one of the wild sons of the south,
