The Mist and the Lightning. Part 19

“Yes, it gives me pleasure, he is ready for anything for me, but I’m not ready for him. It happens.”

“Yes, it is really so,” Kors agreed sadly.

And Zaf seemed to understand his hint:

“How is the situation with your son going?” he asked at once.

Zaf asked exactly that, he called Nik the son of Kors, knowing full well that Nik was a Demon in a human body.

“Nothing,” Kors replied, but still complained, “hekicked me out!”

“Don’t take it so seriously, he just needs to work with you, but he can’t, he loves you,” Zaf said.

“He loves me?! He threw his boot at me!”

Zaf laughed.

“He needs to complete a task with you, but he doesn’t want to. Don’t hold a grudge against him, but help him.”

“I wonder how? He doesn’t listen to me!”

“Just love him too!”

“Too? He doesn’t love me! He loves Prince Arel!”

“Well, with Arel he’s just been longer. I don’t know for sure how many lives they lived together in different worlds. But I know for sure that at least two of them Arel was his slave. And he spent his first life on a chain, wearing a mask and gloves, forgetting how to walk, see and talk.”

“WHAT?!” Kors did his best not to look overwhelmed by this information.

“I was also with him in one of the demonic worlds,” he quickly orientated himself.

“I know,” Zaf laughed, and Kors realized that Zaf was there with them, but Kors didn’t remember anything.

“Do you like our world?” He decided to turn the conversation in another direction.

“Yeah, I love warm cozy caves,” Zaf said dreamily.

“I love this world too!”

“And your son?”

“Oh!” Kors was confused. “I don’t know! I’mconfused! What kind of son is he? He doesn’t listen to me, doesn’t follow the laws of the hierarchy, where the youngest belongs to the oldest, he is a finished type!” Kors turned away. This conversation tormented him. He came to Zaf to distract himself, and everything again came down to discussing Nik. Kors took a few good sips from the goblet, and the attentive slave, noticing this, immediately poured him wine.

Zaf sensed Kors’ mood and suggested:

“If you want, stay with me for now. Do you feel good with me?”

“Yes.”

“Then stay with me.”

Kors himself didn’t understand why, but next to Zaf he somehow became calmer.

“You know, Zaf, don’t think that I ignore stressful situations, I just solve them in my own way.”

“Yeah, everything is fine,” Zaf smiled.

The unclean oneswere talking lazily and digesting what they had just eaten, many of them lit up again. The slaves finally cleared the table of sticky plates. Shukul, having laid out his tools, began to tattoo forone of his friends another busty beauty on his shoulder. Kors watched him making the tattoo, noting involuntarily that compared to Nik, Shukul did it much faster.

Zaf gestured to his slave, who was sitting in the corner of the tent, and he crawled on all fours to the master, knelt at his chair. Both lips of this unfortunate man were pierced and greatly stretched, it was already a stretch to call them lips, since they were completely deformed and turned into long stretched loops. Round plates were inserted into them, protruding both lips strongly forward and making the impure look like some kind of terrible duck. Zaf sprinkled some powder on his upper lip plate, and, leaning slightly and holding a small pipe to his nostril, inhaled the drug. The slave stood motionless, waiting for his master to use his upper lip as a table.

“Will you?” Zaf picked up the pipe, inviting Kors to join.

“No, no, wine is enough for me.”.

Zaf leaned back in his chair, gently rubbing the slave’s short dark hair.

“Your imagination in decorating yourself, your friends and your slaves is limitless, Za,” Kors noted. “Can he speak at all?”

“He can mumble,” Zaf laughed.

“Yes, it’s probably hard to pronounce a word with such decorations on the lips.”

“He doesn’t need to talk. He is a slave. And I replace his plates with all the larger diameters. They snap each other so funny when he moves his mouth. By the way, Vitor, it’s high time for your slave Adry to change his lip decoration too.”

“I’m going to let him go,” Kors said.

“What?” Zaf was surprised. “Why?! Aha-ha. I’ll pick up a bigger stone for him. You can eventually put an ashtray or a cup on it.”

“Well… I’m not sure I need it.”

“Go to your place,” Zaf ordered the slave, and he crawled away from him.