D’Argen and his three companions spent the following week walking around under the hot sun of the Oltrian plains to look for the cheetah. They came across many of the wild cats, but they had no way of telling if any one of them was the one they were looking for. Using both Abbot’s spells to make them invisible and Yaling’s to make sure they were unheard, they were able to approach each of the animals in turn.

Not one of them reacted to the scents of their mahee.

During the days, D’Argen reinflated his ego by making the cheetahs run after him and leaving them behind in the dust. During the nights, Abbot recited increasingly drastic prose about the heat before Yaling took charge of the conversation when they all got annoyed, allowing the sounds of their voices along with the scents of their mahee to help D’Argen restore his body. Abbot filled multiple pages in his sketchbook with the cheetah both at rest and in motion.

On the eighth day, Lilian announced that they were on the last of their food.

While D’Argen himself did not need to drink water or eat food, the sound his mahee consumed enough to replenish him completely, the rest of his companions were not the same.

“We should go back to Evadia, check the records for anything like this, prepare better, report, maybe bring somebody with us to help us figure out what this is,” Yaling said and looked to D’Argen.

The runner looked longingly at the cheetahs where the young cubs chased their mother around. “You’re right,” he finally said.

The others did not say anything else, clearly waiting for him to change his mind. When D’Argen started walking west, they scrambled after him.

It had been over four centuries since D’Argen last saw the white walls of the castle of Evadia. There was something inside him, tugging and coaxing, telling him to go back home. He knew it was his mahee, looking for the rest of its pieces and the one location where the most gods resided. He had been able to ignore it for so long but as his feet finally wandered in that direction and his mind settled on it as a destination, that tugging turned in a harsh yank that he wanted to follow. It was as if this entire time he was waiting for a reason to go back there. Back home.

“Let’s run,” he said to the others, the words coming out breathless. The idea of stretching his mahee so far was exhilarating. It had been a long time since he ran that far with his three friends. Usually, they would only run short distances because none of them actually enjoyed the experience and though he could not cover that distance in one go, he could definitely shorten their travel time.

Lilian was the first to touch him. “Let me take you home,” they said with a smile.

It had been too long since D’Argen allowed Lilian to guide him home. He smiled and nodded.

D’Argen closed his eyes and wrapped his mahee around them. He felt their long hair, every single strand and the dirt settled in it from their time out in the wild. He felt their eyelashes, their lips, the pores of their skin, and let his mahee seep into them. Lilian wore a jewelled clip in their hair and he felt that silver, every dent and curve and divot as it shaped the flowers that Lilian had an affinity to as the God of Spring. The seeds from those flowers were tiny jewels that lined their clothes; the silver dotted the scarf Lilian always wore around their neck, clipped the wide sleeves of their silk blouse at the wrists, turned into larger buttons that held together the soft leather of their waist corset, and hid in the trim of the corset’s skirt to weigh it down where it reached Lilian’s ankles. Lilian’s pack had a few crumbs of old bread in it along with the leggings and undershirt they had removed on the third day due to the heat. There was a pair of daggers on Lilian’s belt that had no engravings on them at all, but the leather of their boots was carved into tiny and intricate little designs of flowers and vines and leaves.

It was both overwhelming and familiar when he wrapped each and every aspect of Lilian with his mahee, feeling their breath as if it was his own and then reaching deeper into their core and touching their mahee. It felt like standing in the middle of a tornado until those winds recognized him and calmed, letting him in.

Yaling’s effects were much easier to wrap around, a single piece of dyed linen that covered her from breasts to ankle, her hips and sides were bare and the legs of her pants were wide before sinching together tight at her ankles. The detached sleeves she usually wore were in her large pack along with the skirt of her belt, the last of their wine, and the fur-lined cloaks each of their companions wore during winter. The hardest part to wrap his mahee around was always her headscarf, a seemingly simple cloth but one embroidered in intricate patterns with thin golden threads and two strings hanging from its knot at her ear, both of them lined with odd coins, beads, and the occasional feather. Her mahee let him in immediately, surrounding him in the twinkling of a thousand musical instruments before it all settled comfortably at the back of his mind.

Abbot was usually the hardest to wrap his mahee around. The man wore a lot of jewelry and different pieces stitched together for his clothes; a thick wrap crossing over his chest in both directions from shoulder to hip, at least five layers to his skirts each with different cuts to reveal his legs, an undershirt, a cape, and then there was his belt and pouches, all filled with different strands of dried tobacco leaves and medicinal herbs, and the wide metal collar he wore around his shoulders that was made from thousands of tiny beads strung together through thin wires. None of that, however, had anything on the man’s braids. They kept shifting and swaying as if trying to escape him. When he caught the last strand of hair under his mahee, he felt the light of Abbot’s mahee shine on him and he used that to light his way as he opened his eyes and ran.