The Feasting Day of Klavigar Nadox

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text= Gift-shopping is hard enough at the best of times, and, for Andrew, it's further complicated by the intense cultural rift between him and his unlikely partner.]]
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Andrew sat at the table while Oz worked in the kitchen. He was making dumplings. The big, thick ones with casings made of normal dough. The ones you had to cut up because they were too big to eat in one bite. They were good. Impossibly good. Good in a way that only a person with a supernatural command over flesh could achieve.

Oz swore there was no magic involved in any of his cooking, but Andrew didn’t know how else to explain it. Sure, there was a cultural difference. His own home hadn’t exactly valued bodily pleasures, but there was still a limit. Oz’s cooking was accomplished by sarkic magics. It was the only explanation.

//Nälkän// magics. //Nälkän//. They’d had that conversation. Andrew was still trying to unlearn the S word.

“I’m almost done,” Oz said, as he fiddled with the steam-cooker.

“It smells amazing,” Andrew said.

Oz raised his hand to tip a hat that he wasn’t wearing. “A’thank you,” he said.

It was only another minute or two before the food was ready. They served themselves on dark red plates. There was a strange sort of webby pattern on them, chaotic, stringy. When Andrew had first seen he’d, he’d thought they were mystical. Some kind of sarkic—//Nälkän// enchantment to enhance food. Oz had found this very funny. The set of plates had, in fact, been purchased at Walmart.

“God, these things are nostalgic for me,” Oz said as he sat down. “My grandma always used to make these for the Feasting Day of Klavigar Nadox.”

Nadox. Which one was Nadox? “That’s… that’s the nerdy one, right?”

“Yeah, you’re thinking of the right one.”

“See, I’m learning to keep them straight.”

“Really? Which one is Orok?”

“You didn’t warn me there was going to be a quiz.”

“I did, actually.”

“What? When?”

“When I gave you that.” Oz gestured at the introductory book on Nälkä that was currently sitting on their coffee table. It was a thick book, bound in soft leather. When he’d first given it to Andrew, Oz had messed with him by saying it had been made from human skin, but the reality was, for fleshweavers, there was no need to use human skin to make it that soft. Heck, there was no need to use a cow, either. They could just sort of grow the skin to have whatever consistency they wanted.

Andrew had been steadily going through the book since he got it. The two had agreed that they needed to learn more about each other’s faiths. Despite getting over their differences enough that they were able to be together, they still sometimes found out that one of them had retained a misconception, to say the least.

There was, likewise, an old Mekhanite tome on Oz’s bedside table. Oz didn’t read much, but Andrew had managed to get him into the habit of reading before bed. There was a lamp on his bedside table, but Oz made a point of not using it, just to show off that he didn’t need to. His eyes had been the first thing he learned how to enhance. That was a choice he’d made when he was a kid. Even back then, long before he truly started to question his family’s values, some part of him had known that seeing the world more clearly was more important than being strong.

“I’m waiting,” Oz said.

Crap. Now it looked like Andrew had had to think about the question. “Orok is the big tough one,” Andrew said, quickly. “The one that was a pit fighter back when he was a slave in the Daevite empire.”

“Correct,” Oz admitted. “I see you’re learning.”

“That is supposed to be our whole thing,” Andrew said. “Learning. Thinking.”

“No wonder Nadox was always the best at getting along with you guys.” Oz picked up a dumpling. He dipped it in the sauce he’d laid out for it. Andrew did the same. Both of their faces lit up at the taste of it.

“I feel like this isn’t the first Nälkän ‘feasting day’ I’ve heard about,” Andrew said.

“Heh. No. It definitely isn’t. All of our holidays are feasting days.”

“How thematic.”

Oz shrugged. “Humans are animals. We like to eat. Don’t you make that face. You’re doing it right now, and you’re //loving// it.”

Andrew wasn’t in a position to deny that. He swallowed. “Is there more to the holiday, or is that all it consists of?”

“Oh, no. There’s more. Dancing. Exchanging gifts. An orgy. The child sacrifice…”

For just a second, Andrew’s old disgust for Oz’s religion flared in him, only to retreat when he realized Oz was joking.

“You’re too easy to get, you know that?” Oz said. “It’s almost cheating.”

“Maybe,” Andrew said. He ate another dumpling.

“The gift exchange is the biggest thing,” Oz said. “You’re supposed to buy and do things for each other. You remember Nadox’s story, right?”

“He was a dissident who preached a message of peace, kindness, and equality to the enslaved masses of the Daevite empire. As punishment, the Daevites marked him as a ‘sufferer,’ who everyone in the empire was commanded to torment and hurt, but not kill. From then on, he wandered, never able to find aid, solace, or comfort.”

“Exactly. So, on his feast day, we give each other those things. We exchange gifts. We perform each other’s duties. We aid and comfort to each other in defiance of the Daevite mandate to deny those things to dissidents like us.”

“That’s sweet,” Andrew observed. It still wasn’t intuitive to him for Nälkän practices to be sweet.

“Yeah,” Oz said. “You know, Nadox’s feasting day is actually around a week from now.”

“Is that why you made these?”

“No. I didn’t think about it until a minute ago. It’s funny how the smell of something can be so good at bringing back memories.”

“Oh, there’s actually a neurological explanation for that,” Andrew said. “It’s because the areas of the brain responsible for smell and memory happen to be closely wired together. It’s actually a really interesting area of neuroscience that… sorry. I’m sure it’s not that interesting to you.”

“No. No. You can talk about it if you like talking about it.”

Andrew shrugged. “I guess I’ve given the answer already. No need to say anything further.”

“Fair.”

“So, this holiday is something you would do with your family?”

“Yeah.” Oz took a deep breath. “It was a day even my mom would be nice to people.” Oz looked away. “Maybe it coming back around will finally make her miss me.”

Andrew reached across the table. “I’ll be here with you,” he said. “We could do something—”

Oz shook his head. “It’s not something you’d be able to join in on. The traditional gifts are always flesh-crafted items. That’s part of the defiance. Not just helping each other but using our forbidden magic to do it.”

Andrew squeezed Oz’s hand. They’d both chosen the other over their families. Andrew’s parents would have nothing to do with a child who dated a “filthy sarkite,” and Oz has rejected his place in the crime family he’d been born into.

“I’m sorry you had to lose that,” Andrew said.

“It’s not your fault.”

“Technically, it is.”

“Heh. Maybe. I wouldn’t take it back, though. I’d choose you over them a million times over.”

“Me too.”

-----

A proper gift for Nadox’s Feasting Day would be a fleshcrafted item.

That meant getting one would be a challenge. Andrew couldn’t make one. If Andrew was going to get Oz the gift he deserved, Andrew was going to have to go exploring in another Nälkän community.

Fortunately, Andrew did know of a shop where he’d be able to get that kind of thing. It was a place Oz had gone a few times to get things he could no longer get from his family.

The ground floor of the shop didn’t look too extraordinary. This was the part that people on the wrong side of the veil could see. It was a bit eccentric, but not supernatural, full of nick-nacks and vaguely occult supplies like crystals and Ouija boards.

One could almost think it was an ordinary store, except there was a smell in the air. One that an ordinary person wouldn’t be able to place, but that Andrew recognized. The smell of flesh. Not the smell of rotting. Not dead flesh. Living. An organic, sweaty tinge that, just a few years ago, would’ve made Andrew report this place to his church elders so they could come and clean out this nest of sarkites.

//Nälkäns//. //Nälkäns//. This was one place he absolutely could not use the S word. One slip-up would out him as an enemy of the faith, who these people would not only loathe, but also fear.

It was hard to blame them for the fear. Andrew was occasionally shocked by the things Oz had been made to do as a child of Nälkän nobility, but moments like this made him wonder if he’d really been that much better. The people he was about to talk to and buy things from, there was a time when he would’ve had them killed.

Hopefully, there would be no way for these people to know about Andrew’s religion. It wasn’t as though he was wearing a sign around his neck.

Even as he thought that, he felt the gentle grinding of his mechanical heart. He wasn’t as modified as a lot of Mekhanites were. He looked normal enough that he could walk around in veiled public spaces. These weren’t veiled people, though. These people had also had their bodies enhanced in a variety of ways, some of which might improve their senses. Oz sometimes said that, when it was quiet enough, he could just barely hear the machinery at work inside Andrew.

There was a chance the people here would hear the same.

It was worth the risk. This meant a lot to Oz. Andrew needed to do it. He walked up to the store’s front desk. A while back, Oz had told him the password to get to the hidden area of the shop, in case there was an emergency where Andrew desperately needed something fleshwoven. Andrew approached the front desk “Hello,” said the clerk behind it, “What can I do for you?”

“I wish to partake of the greatest of meats,” Andrew said.

The clerk tilted his head. “Greatest?” he asked.

“Yes.” Andrew said. There was a moment of silence. “Is… is that not it?”

“‘Finest of meats,’” said the man.

“Sure, then. To partake of the finest of meats.”

The clerk shrugged. “Alright.” He motioned for another worker across the store to come over. “Mind taking the register. Got someone for the basement.”

The other man agreed, and the clerk led Andrew through an ‘employees only’ door. From there, he went down a short hall and around a corner, where there was another door that opened to a set of stairs.

The flesh stink, that sharp, wet smell, was stronger back here. He made a noise as he tried not to breathe it in for a second. The clerk looked over his shoulder and studied him. Andrew did his best to compose himself.

The stairs didn’t look much better than they smelled. The walls were fleshy and pulsed gently. They were made of something reminiscent of skin, but hairless and inhumanly pale. Sporadic patches of this skin had a powerful bioluminescent glow, by which the hall was lit. The stairs themselves were made of something hard and dark that made Andrew think of collagen or hoof horn. Unlike the pulsing walls, the stairs seemed immobile and solid. The clerk didn’t think twice about trusting them as he led Andrew down. A bone-white door at the bottom of the staircase flexed out of the way as they entered it. “Here it is,” the clerk said.

Andrew looked around. Things weren’t getting any less Nälkän down here. The floor was a solid, almost flat slab of the same hard substance as the stairs. So were the shelves and counters. The rest was made of more skin

“You’re not a Nälkän, are you?” the clerk asked.

“My partner is,” Andrew said. “I’m getting something for him.”

“Alright,” the clerk said. “Go ahead and look around.”

Andrew did.

The whole underground area was essentially a single room, designed, probably deliberately, so that every part of it would be visible from the front desk. The clerk took his place there. Andrew walked to the far side of the room.

Sitting on shelves built into the walls were various round, vaguely head-shaped objects. Some of them lacked so many features that no one would see them as heads if they’d been on their own. Others were lifelike, with eyes that followed Andrew as he approached. “You’re… you’re not, like, people, are you?” Andrew whispered to the heads.

Back at the counter, the clerk laughed. “Don’t worry,” he said. “They were grown on fleshvines. They’re no more sentient than a Venus flytrap.”

That was a relief.

Andrew slowly perused the shelves. The heads whose eyes were tracking him were “security monitors.”

There were several other head-like products. One of them had large tubular mouth and large tongue. Its name suggested it was an adult toy, something Oz and Andrew had no need of.

There was one head labeled “Aria.” It had no eyes, but the rest of its facial features were present. It was bald, and on the top of its head was a large, round, dark mole, under which the word “push” had been tattooed. Andrew hesitated. Slowly, he lifted his finger, and pressed it.

The mouth opened. In a feminine voice, the head sang a gentle, haunting aria. Andrew couldn’t understand the words, but he recognized the sounds of Adytite.

The head sang well. Its voice overshadowed the quiet pulsing that had previously defined the sound of this room, an intrusion of beauty into this stinking, ugly, gruesome place. Andrew wondered if the words it was singing were as beautiful as its voice, or as ugly as the thing that sang them.

There was only one problem with this gift. It looked too strange. If they were going to keep an object in their apartment, it needed to be okay for people on the wrong side of the veil, like their landlord, to see it. Andrew made a mental note to come back to the head if he could find nothing else, but for now he moved on.

The decorative items were actually more veil-friendly than the functional ones. That made sense. If the point of these things was to be displayed, of course they needed to be something that people could see.

A lot of the decorations were organs in jars. Some of these were still functioning, and the ones that looked normal, well, they were pretty much just organs in jars. Oz would probably be disappointed by an item that almost could’ve been made without any fleshcrafting at all.

Then Andrew spotted it. A decorative object that looked promising. It was labeled “octopus skin painting.” Inside a brown frame was a colorful autumn forest. Every object in the picture had texture to it. The trunks on the orange and brown trees were hard and rough. Their leaves protruded slightly from the painting’s background. The gentle creek that flowed through the center was gelatinous and had a water-like sheen.

There was a button on the side of the frame. Andrew pressed it.

The painting changed. Its canvas morphed, every inch of it recoloring and retexturing itself. It now depicted a snowy mountain, lined by evergreen trees, with a cozy cabin in the distance.

Andrew pressed the button several more times. Every time he did, the painting changed. Its color and texture completely rewrote themselves to depict a different landscape. One was a volcanic mound, bright orange lava gently trickling down its slopes. After that, a beach, where colorful birds nested in tall trees. Next, a field of bright yellow flowers with a mountain in the distance. After that, a tall, craggy canyon with a rushing river running down its center, then a harsh cliffside, heavy waves crashing against it. The final image was the signature of the Nälkän anartist who had created this object, and, from there, it cycled back to the first image.

Andrew looked at the price tag. It was high, but not quite high enough that he couldn’t afford it. Andrew carefully picked the large painting up from the wall. He brought it to the clerk, who began to ring him up.

While the clerk was processing his sale, the door, the same one Andrew had come through, swung open. Andrew glanced over. A woman was coming through, carrying a vat of what Andrew was pretty sure was blood. Clinging to the side of it was a living creature, a big, meaty worm, attached to the glass by a series of suckers. Its whole body pulsed as it gorged itself on the blood it was suspended in.

Andrew couldn’t help but shudder in disgust.

The clerk chuckled. “You’re gonna have to get a stronger stomach if you’re going to date a Nälkän.”

“Probably,” Andrew admitted. “That’s not… that’s not someone’s blood is it? Like, they didn’t take it from someone?”

“No clue,” the clerk said. “They probably didn’t kill someone for it, if that’s what you’re worried about. If the blood came from someone, it was probably replaced immediately.”

“Why not just make the blood, then?”

“Bones already make blood. The easiest way to get more blood is to get them to make it faster. Once you’ve started that process, you actually //need// to extract it, or the excess blood will make the person’s blood pressure dangerously high, and, then, well… I’ll leave the worst-case scenario to your imagination.”

“That’s probably for the best.” Andrew took a deep breath. It wasn’t his job to judge these people. If they wanted to safely use their bodies as blood factories, it was none of his business.

Apparently, Andrew’s efforts to remind himself of this did not keep his revulsion from showing on his face. “This shit really bothers you, doesn’t it?” the clerk asked.

“Yes. I’m sorry. Other than my partner, I don’t spend a lot of time around sarkites.”

The instant he said it, the very instant, he froze. The clerk’s eyes widened. “Nälkäns,” Andrew hurried to correct himself, but it was clearly too late. “I’m sorry,” Andrew added.

“Quiet,” the clerk shouted. Andrew was. For a second, he expected to be rebuked, but the clerk wasn’t saying anything. He was listening. He glared at Andrew, and, with a voice dripping with venom, said, “Mekhanite.”

“I can explain—”

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

“It’s like I said—”

“Really? You’re sticking with that story? That you’re dating one of us? You expect me to believe that? How would that even happen?”

“It’s a long story,” Andrew said.

“I’m sure.”

“You can call him.”

“Call him?”

“Yes. He’s been here before. He can come here, prove he’s a true Nälkän with some flesh magic, and confirm that I’m safe.”

The clerk thought for a moment. “Fine. Phone number.”

Andrew gave him Oz’s phone number. He called it. The woman who’d been carrying the vat set it down and went to get more people. She probably thought there was a chance this would come to blows. If it did, Andrew would be badly outnumbered.

Oz picked up his phone. The clerk had put him on speaker. “Oh, hey,” Oz said, voice full of casual cheer, “Is this about my order?”

The clerk hesitated for a moment. “Order?”

“The one I placed last week. The kidney-worm.”

The clerk glanced at the vat. He glanced at the computer next to him. He typed something into it. He looked at the screen for a moment. His expression shifted. “Wait, you’re Oswald Markovic?”

“Uh, yeah. Why did you call me if you didn’t already know that?”

“Are you dating a Mekhanite?”

“What?”

“There’s a Mekhanite in the store. He says you can vouch for him. Is that true?”

“What? What the fuck is he… Yes, yes, he’s telling the truth. I’m dating him. It’s a long story, but… gods, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what would make him think it was okay for him to go there without me, but you don’t have to worry about him. He’s not even in good standing with their church anymore. Just let me come get him. I’ll talk to him.”

“See that you do,” the clerk said. “And see that it’s the last time you visit our store.”

“Understood,” Oz said, after a moment. “The kidney worm is for my grandma. The delivery address is hers, not mine. It’s for the feasting day. I hope you’re still willing to deliver that?”

The clerk sighed, as though this were an extremely cumbersome request. “Fine,” he said.

“Thank you. I’ll head over right away.” Oz hung up.

He looked at Andrew again. His gaze was just as cold and piercing as before.

“Can… can I still buy the painting?” Andrew asked.

“No.”

Andrew hesitated for a moment. “Please? It’s actually for the feasting day as well. That’s why I came here. You’ll never see us again either way. It’s not like it’s something we I could use against you. There’s no reason for you not to take my money.”

The clerk thought about that for a second. “Double.”

“What?”

“Mekhanite filth pays double.”

“But that’d be more than two-hundred… Fine. Done.”

----

Once he arrived, Oz couldn’t get downstairs fast enough. The painting was already in box, covered in red wrapping paper. The vat, and the worm inside it, hadn’t been moved. Oz ran up to Andrew and grabbed him, pulling him into a hug. Andrew hugged him back. Oz was warm. Warmer than an unaltered human. His enhanced body used more energy, which meant his cells generated more heat.

“Don’t you ever worry me like that again.” Oz said.

“I’m sorry,” Andrew said.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“Getting you a gift,” Andrew said, gesturing at the wrapped red box.

It took Oz a moment to understand. “For the Feasting Day?”

“I’m surprised he knows what that is,” the clerk said.

“I told him,” Oz said. “I’m so sorry about this. I’ll take him home.”

“Good,” the clerk said. “And the next time anyone here sees either of you, you’ll end up on our shelves, in pieces.”

Oz took a deep breath. “That’s understandable,” he said. “Thank you for letting us leave this once. I’m sorry for the distress we’ve caused you.”

The clerk scoffed. Two of the other workers led them upstairs, and out to the car. Oz made Andrew sit in the passenger seat. “Gods,” he said, as he pulled away from the store, “what in the actual fuck is wrong with you? Aren’t you supposed to worship a god of intellect? Of reason? Of //good// ideas that //don’t// have better-than-even odds of getting you killed?”

“I’m sorry,” Andrew said. “It just seemed like it meant a lot to you.”

Oz took a deep breath. “It does,” Oz admitted. “Thank you for getting me something, but never go somewhere like this on your own again, understood? Gods, why wouldn’t you just take me with you?”

Andrew looked down at the floor of the car. “I was shopping for a gift,” he muttered. “I wanted it to be a surprise.”

Oz’s face softened.

“I’ll bring you,” Andrew said. “I’ll bring you to the next Nälkän place I go, if I ever go to one again.”

“Good,” Oz said. He pulled out of the parking lot, and onto the road.

Andrew hesitated for a moment. “So, what //was// that worm thing?” Andrew asked.

“A gift for my grandma,” Oz said. “She’s old school enough that she does actual charity work for the feasting day. That worm is an artificial kidney. Drinks blood from one end, cleans it, then secretes it back into your veins from the other. It’ll be a big help to the hospital she works with.”

Andrew imagined for a moment what it would be like to have that thing latched onto you. To feel it devouring your blood, then secreting it back inside, all while its suckers gripped you, and the whole creature pulsed.

“If we are doing stuff for the Feasting Day,” Oz said, “there are a couple of other things we’ll need to get. I’ll need to prepare a special meal. There would normally be decorations, but we’re in a veil-sensitive situation, so we’ll skip out on those. I suppose I’ll make you a gift, too.”

“That’s very kind of you.”

“No problem,” Oz said. “That just leaves the orgy.”

Andrew waited for a moment for Oz to start laughing. He didn’t. Andrew’s eyes widened. “Wait… is… is the orgy real? I thought that part had been a joke. You said—”

Oz smirked. “The child sacrifice was a joke. The orgy is very, very real.”

“Oh,” Andrew said.

Oz reached across the car and lay his hand on Andrew’s thigh. “It’ll just be the two of us, but, well, if we’re going to celebrate the holiday right…”

“Okay,” Andrew said.

“Good boy,” Oz said. He patted Andrew’s thigh twice, then pulled his hand back to the steering wheel.

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The Feasting Day of Klavigar Nadox

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