AN: There are a couple of overlong sentences without commas. I promise they're intentional. Also, gory talk of dead bodies. The first section is another flashback and the second cuts to the present.


GO WILD

Chapter Twelve: Castle of Sand


"Ma?"

Commotion drags me from bed into the living room. I switch on a lamp and squint when warm light washes the room. Three-month-old Huan is nuzzled against my mother's neck as she tugs, judging by the white light of the moon in the open windows, the curtains.

She doesn't face me head on until I yawn by her side, "Ma, do you want me to take Huan off your hands for a while?"

I count the tree rings in her brown eyes for they are open so wide.

She finally blinks. "I'm fine Saf. I can watch him all night. He's so precious. He sleeps so much! Just knocks right out!"

"Do you need to sleep?" I ask. She's in her pajamas which means she tried but failed to sleep.

"No, I just did laundry, everyone's laundry, towels, extra bedsheets, pillows, the curtains too. They've been so musty for a while. Should I vacuum? I think I'll start vacuuming."

"It's kind of late and it will make a lot of noise."

"What time is it? Is it late?"

"It's three in the morning."

"Oh, that would be toooo noisy. Wallahae, what was I thinking?" She palms her forehead with a loud smack. "You must think I'm such a nutter. Nutty Miran Jung, waking up the whole building with vacuuming at three in the morning. What would Jiyeon Park below have to say again? She thinks I'm cuurrazy."

I shake my head. "She's ugly as a skunk though."

My mother tries to withhold a laugh with her hand, dropping the curtain in the process.

"It's true. She has a flat nose and her ears are bigger than an elephant."

"Should I start breakfast then? Or should I read? I'm thinking of starting a hobby. I think I could start writing a novel. Should I write a novel tonight? I used to write loads. Huan sleeps so much I have all this energy and I have nothing to do. Should I iron laundry?"

"You could. Let me take Huan."

She hands me the sleeping newborn.

"I think I'll start with the curtains."

I yawn, holding Huan's head on my shoulder while my mother takes the heavy curtains to the iron board.

I watch her begin with fast strokes on the dark fabric.

Last thing I know is that I'm keeping a distended eye on my mother but then jolt to my feet when I sniff burning. She's gone and there's a curl of smoke from the iron on the board. There is a smoking V of singed cotton fibers on my spare pillowcase.

I had dozed off and she had walked away, probably cavorting somewhere. I hear her voice with the sounds of night. She's on the balcony, fiddling with plastic buckets, and talking to herself.

Huan's tiny nostrils flare from the burn I presume, but he sleeps without disturbance. I unplug the iron and hide it under the sink.

"Saf, I was just thinking about how I dragged the curtain on the carpet but it's so heavy I should have folded it and carried it whole I'm such a nutter but then I realized how dirty the carpet must be and I thought I should wash the carpet now thinking about it should I iron the carpet? I lay Huan on the carpet earlier. He must be dirty. I should give him a bath."

She holds her arms out to take Huan. I hold a finger to my lips. "He's sleeping," I whisper. I think of what I've used in the past to soothe her. "We can go for a walk instead."

She brightens at the idea. I take Huan with me for good measure. He gently snores next to my ear. The kid will sleep through anything.


Clearing the path hadn't been enough to spend the energy that had poured into my system and I needed something desperately to do with my hands.

"Shoo! Go away you blasted birds!" A pair of ravens had taken interest in my meticulous sand structure and perched themselves on its walls. Their beaks prodded and claws pierced the wet sand, sending clumps of my hard work tumbling down.

Sheesh, now where was I? This window is bugging me that tower is the bane of my existence those flower bushes need sprucing up I thought I liked them that way but maybe I'm in a wisteria mood not roses that gargoyle is smiling not at all intimidating I'll need wetter sand to—

"What the heck is that?"

A long shadow looms over me and my creation.

The jarring intrusion jerks me off balance. It's been ages that I've lost myself in a project and enclosed myself in a hyper-focused bubble and excluded my surroundings. I hadn't even heard footsteps slosh in the sand.

I put down my chisel (a dry scrap of bark) and face Nobu, who cradles gently a long bundle wrapped in brown paper and clear cello wrap.

His katana, suddenly an over-sized accessory, is belted at his waist.

I move out of the way to show off my handiwork. "It's a structure I built. There's a courtyard here a spire there the modest beginnings of a rose garden here but I may change it—"

He leans on his back foot, overwhelmed by the divulging. "It's a sand castle," he says dryly, cutting me off and my will to share deflates like popped balloons. An instant buzz-kill.

"I see you've finished your chore," he says. "What do you think? Is this the sort of training you had in mind?"

From the change in tone from flippant to deferred and the swerved direction of his voice, I realize he's not wasting his breath on me.

Foot flipped to the cathedral wall, Machi observes in the shade, holding out for the appropriate moment. She doesn't strike me as someone who poses for a grand entrance, but rather waits for her environment to address her.

How long has she been standing there, arms crossed? She's perfectly stealthy even with her pink hair and white uwagi she miraculously blended into the crumbling facade.

Why build a cathedral with decorative carving in the desert? In the same way exposed stones in the desert are chiseled through relentless winds and sand, mimicking the abrasion of sandpaper, the facade and brick walls of the Tuscan structure have been buffed smooth to the touch. The carved peoples had lost their faces; their bodies reduced to shapeless mounds. This cathedral is one of the first buildings ever raised in Meteor City from how its historic character juxtaposes with the indistinct utilitarian block apartments. Though a cathedral in definition, the nave can't stretch ore than 20 meters tall, a midget compared to other altitudinous buildings in my history books. It's barely tall enough to supply shade as I carved my sand castle.

I had learned historically cathedrals were built to be the tallest man-made structure in townships, that the tallest would be reserved for the structure linking the town to the heavens.

The irony isn't lost on me that the loftiest structure in all of Greater Meteor City is the Council Head Quarters.

"You were productive, Safra," says Machi, her tone not betraying her stoic stance. "How did you do it?"

I prattle about the marble of explosive nen that I would bury into the ground, not too deep for the ground would sink in on itself (remember: sinkholes=bad), nor too high for it would waste too much energy. I cooperated with the tangential winds that helped deliver the sand further south, behind the cathedral into the desert expanse. I didn't stop until I reached the bedrock, curiosity piqued of how far I could go, and the flagstone surrounding the cathedral. I point to the black soot rings in the sand that looked like remnants of dozens of campfires, a curly map of my progress. I say it all with one breath.

"How did you figure that scheme out?" asks Nobunaga. He balances the crinkling bundle and the wind catches notes of green and floral. He's too tall for me to surreptitiously peek into the brown wrap without looking nosy.

"I've seen what explosives can do and when the shovel wasn't working I just tried something."

"Paku noticed the same thing," says Machi, the cool pace of her words contrasting the fast flow of mine. "She says you try when the opportunity presents itself."

"Heh, just tried?" he says, trilled r's and chopped verbs galore. "Isn't that a bit of a risk, rookie?"

Dang does Nobu speak in rough masculine Japanese, exaggerating his consonants. Whereas Danchou speaks eloquently, betraying the Mafia stereotype I would have expected with the troupe, Nobu speaks fluent ruffian.

"You told me to try this. You're the one who hiked through here, suggesting I try my nen without a shovel." The thoughts in my head zoom like a car on a highway. I need to get out of this sun and cool off.

"She does this, Nobu," says Machi. "When she cares and wills it, she has plenty of nen and owns the resourcefulness to try."

"Wrong, Machi," says Nobu. "The word you're looking for is whim. Reckless at that."

"I knew what I was doing," I say. "I kept the yield small and only detonated one at a time." I'll admit the thought of working EVEN FASTER crossed my speeding mind a thousand times. But I was restrained, not entirely beholden to my whims.

"Why am I being scolded for doing as you wanted?"

"Is your name Machi?" snaps Nobu, his sharp words whoosh like a drawn blade slicing through the air. I back down from the heat of his deceptively dull gaze. "I didn't address you with that question, newbie."

The muscles from my jaw to my temples lock painfully as I hold in the verbal onslaught just egging to blurt from my mouth.

"You say resourceful, I say reckless, which is it?" he says and I can't tell if he's trying to egg Machi into an argument or just preaching from his soapbox. "Only time will tell," he says determined to have the final word. He carts himself and his mysterious bundle inside. The hem of his kimono vanishes behind the heavy door and as it rattles shut, I release the tension in my jaw and Machi puffs.

"That's him paying you a compliment," she says and I balk.

"He all but told me to use nen and he knows the nature of my nen."

"I know," she says. "It's very hard to please him and even harder for him to outright compliment you. That was a covert compliment."

I heard no compliment.

"Reckless and reactive is the nature of your nen and yet you were calculative. If I notice that, he did too."

"Then what's with the weird reverse psychology?"

Machi sighs with baggage of something she had felt a long time. "The enhancers have an odd way of showing their approval. Nobu especially knows all about reckless. He trained with Uvo, whose way of showing that he cares involves beating the crap out of you."

I instinctively hear Uvo's chomp at my ear and shudder.

"In Nobu-language, he was acknowledging your power and urging you to take your nen seriously."

Oh, he could have simply uttered that outright.

"I know, why didn't he just say that?" says Machi, hinted with her subtle humor. "Maybe he thought you wouldn't have listened."

It creeps me out when she does that.

"If I decide to forge my path with a less reactive nen substance, he won't need to worry or waste his psychology on me," I say, half in jest.

An irritated tick in Machi's stance. So slight I almost miss it, but I've been honing in on her body language. Each tick, nudge, jut, blink speaks volumes from her. I said something she did not like.

"Has this experience prompted you to change your substance?"

"I still haven't decided," I say, fidgeting with my scarf.

"That isn't something to say indecisively," she says, tension tightening her shoulders. "What is on your mind?"

Too many things. "I don't know," I say, watching wind dull the intricate points of my castle. "I grasp the point of this exercise: show me the versatility of my nen, that it doesn't have to be all about destruction, and problem-solving. But I still…I don't know. I didn't naturally choose my nen. It chose me, all based on exposure I couldn't help. It's not fair."

"May I be blunt?

I steel the last shreds of my pride and nod.

"You didn't choose your nen, but you can't mourn that forever. By your substance naturally choosing you, you bypassed a frequent problem with Transmuters: choosing wrong. Oh, it can happen and it's a disaster. Picking a bad fitting nen is like trying to run in shoes a size too large."

She points a nimble finger, gnarled at the tip from thread work, at me.

"I watched you, Safra. How you sprang into action after Nobu's nudge. You experimented, calculated, you even played." She snipes a glance at my castle. "So stop pitying yourself and accept your nen as it developed. I can fix the fundamental problems with your technique, but I cannot force you to care."

Ever been that kid that frustrated your teachers? They told you that you have talent and natural skill but no matter what they said 'if you just cared you'd have all the potential to accomplish your dreams?' Well, it's not that I don't care, I don't see the truth in their words. I know I am smart-ish. I know I am capable. I wouldn't have survived working with explosives if I weren't. And it wasn't all dumb luck. It was skill and my nen working to keep me alive.

Is it that I don't care or that I merely don't care about what you want me to care about? No that's not it doesn't make sense I can't keep my whirling thoughts straight they're torpedoing into each other—

"Safra," says a distant voice in the fog. "Safra?" A finger drums my shoulder.

Think before speaking, but I can't form a coherent thought.

"I need...water."

I turn away before being dismissed from the exchange with Machi. I feel her cold eyes watch me with disappointment, disapproval, disdain, I don't want to know. Not because I don't care.

I feel like I've had three cups of coffee. I need to slow down and meditate.

Relax. Speak to her later and explain. Tell her you were dehydrated or something...

I remained too excited, too long up in the stratosphere and I need to return to Earth—

The lounge is closer than my room so I dart there. I unhook the safety pin and the sand spills as it billows off my face. I peel off my robes and bundle them into a heap.

High tar smoke. My dismay is so profound I feel it churning with the dregs of breakfast in my stomach.

There are two, the last two I care to see, sitting with leisure in the lounge. There is a towel on Phinks' shoulders as one would after hitting the gym and a cigarette lit between his fingers. Feitan broods with his eyes shut, but I notice the slightest nudge of his long lashes when I enter their quarters.

I march straight for the sink, squishing against the counter with my robe-scarf bundle. Zero shame, I drink from the faucet. The water gushes ice cold against my lips and it soothes my heated heart. I shut my eyes and Mien drags the entire world and my spitfire thoughts to a calm, gentle snail's pace. Heart rate slows, the whole world slows finally.

The two give me a look of recognition. They've been there, sweltering heat so quenching they couldn't wait to pick up a glass to drink.

Still, they snip because they can.

"Use a glass like a civilized human," says Phinks, patting his dry forehead as a forced show of cleanliness as if it were still greasy with sweat. Civilized digs deep in me. After hearing a plethora of stereotypes about East Gortese and our alleged 'stone-age' and 'barbaric' way of life, (all false!) I can't decide if there's subtext in his words or it's just a cheap dig for not using a glass.

"Machi can add that to her list for training," says Feitan.

I mop my mouth with my glove, not feeling dignified, yet I don't care.

"Maybe I can someday learn how to transmute fucks to give," I say.

They both snit in their unique ways, Feitan's firecracker hiss and Phinks' brusque grunt.

I gather my bundle and begin to shuffle out, intending on meditating in my room. I better do it before Machi assigns me more grunt work. Welcome to Meteor City, I hear in Fazier's chipper voice.

Wait. Fazier.

I turn around. "Fazier... You never told me what you did with his body. Did you at least bury him in a shallow grave?" Most people, even if they weren't trained to handle the dead, would at least attempt a simple grave. Also shouldn't crime goons at least have the duty of 'cleaning' the scene afterward?

Phinks doesn't have a brow to hike but a muscle quirks up. He takes a drag from his cigarette.

"Sorry, we didn't touch him." From him, it wasn't an apology.

I grasp the door frame for balance. I should meditate before taking on an emotionally provocative, overstimulating activity. Yet I dust my sand stained robes and with a weary sigh throw them over my uwagi.

"You found him where?" I stick my head through and reshape my ponytail. "I'll do it myself."

"Don't," says Phinks.

"Don't what?"

Phinks scowls balefully, don't even ask but I don't budge. "Dont waste your time. He was your ally. We get it. But you can't do anything for him now. His body is mangled and it's been there for a couple of days. It's not worth it."

I'm a mortician's daughter. The keepsake they stole-emotion surges through me. If I had any vestige of hope that I could one day see eye to eye with them, it's officially dead gone. My hands tremble with the need to strangle them both. "You don't get it, do you? You just killed him and left him there like trash. Do you have even an ounce of respect for the dead?"

Phinks wrings the tail of his towel. "That's not what we—" he says, but he stops short when Feitan sends him a look.

A pregnant silence fills the lounge as they acknowledge one another, to confirm something.

"She doesn't know," says Feitan with knitted brows.

"Doesn't know what?" I say.

Another pause, imbued with calculation. Phinks takes a long drag of his cigarette and takes his time blowing the smoke.

"We told the others while you were in your room what we saw that day," says Phinks. "We didn't murder Fazier."

I freeze, reading their posture, faces, waiting for the punchline. None came. "But you said he was dead?"

"Stop the presumptions. Yeah, we said he was dead," says Feitan. "But it wasn't by our hand."

"He had been freshly chopped before we got there. We didn't stick around to find out who did it either," says Phinks.

That would be a curveball for me if I believed it. "Nice try. I don't need you to tell me because I can find him myself." And do they really expect me to trust their word after they stole my keepsake?

Smoke coils and obscures Phinks' stricken features, Feitan, however, slackens in his chair, his hands hidden in his pockets.

"In his apartment," says Feitan, miffed.

"You think that wise?" Phinks asks Feitan.

"She'll go. Stubborn but she's well within her right to confirm her comrade's death. We can't force her not to go."

Oh it's too rich for words. The man who threatened me with torture to force a confession out of me is not a fan of force.

Phinks doesn't respond but I witness a new complexity creep into his scowl and I wonder if he had the same thought.

"Go on." Feitan turns to me. "But you best be prepared." Then he says another word. At first I thought Gortese, but it's not. It's not Japanese either, also confirmed by Phinks' soft heh? beside him. He said the Chinese word for dangerous and despite the centuries and ocean that separates us, some words, with different inflections, are still virtually identical in our language family. The word, so eerily close to Gortese, roots me to the floor and plucks my heart like a harp. So Feitan is Chinese, didn't tell me before when I asked, but exposes that part of himself now to caution me.

His eyes, the only visible part of his face, wrinkle with warning and sincerity.

The foreboding tension gnaws at my gusto as I stand in stunned silence.

What if they are telling the truth and they hadn't murdered Fazier? That his killer was still meandering out there, rubbing hands and that I should at least be alert to the possible circumstance? I banish the thought.

"Bull. Shit," I rasp. "This is another ploy to rile me up again." I swivel around to leave.

"Take Machi with you, even if you don't believe us," growls Phinks. "You're dumber than you look if you go alone."

Cold reluctance balls in my chest. My instincts agree with Phinks, however begrudgingly. The sinister implications aside, it is much safer to be with another in Meteor City. Asking Machi for support isn't an insane idea, excellent one actually.

Yet after what we just discussed it might be bothersome to ask Machi to accompany me.

My nerve to face her is still low after our talk and she won't rush to see my 'indecisive' face for at least a little while.

No, I can handle it myself. I spent so much of my time alone in Meteor City and I wasn't about to start relying on these people. I'm not even part of the Troupe.

My instincts compound against me. Take five minutes. Clear your head. Cool down. Wallahae, go meditate. You're not thinking clearly. My knotted thoughts are tangled on my tongue.

If you can't ask Machi, ask them— Again, I banish the thought, exile it to Syberia. There's no one I can ask and I don't need them.

I round my defiant gaze on both of them before ending the discussion with a firm period, "You're both just trying to scare me."

They don't edge the silence with wit or snide as I leave them behind, cigarette burning to the filter, in the lounge.


The unholy decay hits me in the corridor of Fazier's apartment building. Not a peep of life in the hall or up the stairwell as if death haunts the entire building. I pry open the door and unleash the pungent smell and I reflexively gag. Good thing I skipped lunch.

I face the open hall that leads to his bedroom but there's a dark cloud buzzing in the living room. Beside an overturned dining chair, hoarded by flies, lies Fazier. With the tiniest glimpse at the clothes, I ID it as his body. Livor mortis marbled his skin and limbs, past primary flaccidity, were flexed stiff with rigor mortis. Maggots have made a home in four concentrated points on his torso and abdomen.

Gut a pig and let it sit for three days in the heat, dab it with cheap perfume and you'll have half of what Fazier's rotting corpse smells like.

If I had a gun to my head and if forced to choose, Meteor City's smoking junk dunes would easily win preference over a single putrid corpse.

My mother had a stomach of steel. How did I as a child handle the mortuary?

I'm even more disgusted with Feitan and Phinks—how dare they leave a body without disposing of it? Respect the dead and their bodies.

Wallahae, I kneel down, covering my mouth but it does little to mask the smell as I gently roll down his lids over his lifeless eyes.

Poor bastard.

Did this man have family? He had a crew. None of whom I bothered to associate with and even in a time like this I don't know how to contact them. He told me he had been exiled to Meteor City so I imagine he lost all connections but rebuilt himself here.

What would become of his business? His connections, the landmines he sold. Where had they gone?

Clink-clink.

I move my shoe. Bullet blanks litter the carpet.

Guns?

The wall. Four holes and the black splatter of blood on the wall and carpet. I lean closer. The buzzing and live larva turn my stomach like a blender, but I confirm something: the four points the maggots feasted on, are in fact trauma punctures. How did I miss it before?

Fazier died by gunfire, but how? Feitan and Phinks killed him right? I can't picture them as the type to rely on guns. I don't see any charred flesh or mangled limbs like I would expect from those two.

So what the hell happened? Paku didn't go with them and judging by the caliber of this bullet blank, it's too small for her pistol—

A shadow lurches. A gun cocked in Fazier's hall. My brain only has enough time to register Mistake! before the blunt trauma at my cranium. Darkness chases my conscious mind away and mercifully, racing thoughts halt and I black out before hitting the bloodstained floor.


AN: Tsk, tsk, Safra. You should have listened to your fellow troupe members D: Welp she is definitely in a pickle to frame it lightly, but it's not the only issue on her plate. I swear one of these days I'll cut her some slack... but there's a price to pay for stubbornness and her unwillingness to reach out to her comrades. Not that I fault her for not trusting Feitan and Phinks...

On a happier note! PaindorePerdu, AwkwardBlackCat, and WormwoodSand31033 THANK YOU THANK YOU for your kind words and offer of fan art (squees)! Seriously, I mean it, thank you. Your comments made my week, they always make my week :D