Six-year old Ruby and her Mom exited Noon Lodge through its kitchen. They passed through double-screen doors which slapped behind them.
A ten-foot tall fence closed in a courtyard that extended to the right and wrapped behind the building. Lacquer darkened the wood and sealed it completely with no gaps except for the outline of a chestnut door, where a pewter handle and deadbolt stuck out. Midday Sun flooded the lane where there was no furniture, no staff members, and no customers to speak of. Stale alcohol and a trace of smoke from hours ago still tinted the area, and a trash can invited flies to one corner.
Mom said, "We're practically celebrities, Roo. It's hard to believe, but now you've seen it for yourself."
"Why?" Ruby kept up with Mom's stride by hopping from stone to stone that formed the patio's ground.
"Why what?"
"Why does everyone know us?"
"I should be the one to tell you, but I don't know that you'll fully get it."
Ruby twisted her face and landed upon a stone with extra oomph in her sandals. She tried to look at Mom, but an unseen barrier divided them. It shouldn't have stopped them from catching each other's gaze, but Ruby couldn't meet her. The figment wall stopped her, or maybe something else did. She silently blamed the mystery was in her way, but it couldn't be the only thing. She didn't know what other questions Mom wouldn't answer, so who knew what else stood between them.
Ruby asked, "Why can't you tell me?"
Deep thought silenced Mom until they arrived at the door. She scrunched the bridge of her nose and grasped the knob, but she didn't open it, yet. She always got this look while summoning difficult answers — solutions to someone's question without knowing which words to use.
She looked that way when Ruby's sister asked math questions.
The same look obscured her when reviewing mission notices for work.
It also possessed her each time Dad asked for the secret recipe of her cookies.
Mom knew the answers to everything, but she didn't always share them.
Before they moved on, Mom responded, "It's not that I can't. It's more important that I tell you when you're older. Does that make sense?"
"How old do I need to be?"
Mom counted something in her head. "A few more years, I think." She rotated the doorknob left a few times, swiveled it to the right several more, and spun it back the other way.
"Like how many? I could be infinity years old. That's old enough."
Mom turned the deadbolt.
Something on the other side that slid out of place with a thunk lifted Mom's features at once and provoked a giggle of relief. "Another time, Roo. We have to get your school supplies!" She sprang through the door where steps tunneled below ground.
Ruby leapt after her.
Panels overhead and windows on the left and right radiated butter-yellow auras. The Roses' combined laughter echoed behind their race downward. Ruby snatched again and again at the flow of her Mom's vest, ever inches away.
Mom sang that she was going to beat her to the bottom.
Ruby squealed no again and again, that she was going to win, instead.
They sped past business men, corporate workers, and gentry dressed in suits.
Some were bowed over large shopping bags, sorting through outfits freshly purchased.
A woman discussed politics into her scroll with someone on the other end of the call.
A guitarist strummed chords while they recited lyrics of a folk song, and their instrument case lay open for anyone to throw charity their way.
All sorts of grown-ups littered the steps, but once Mom beat Ruby to the end, their walls and floor widened to become a three-story deep canyon. The little girl rammed into her mother and for the first time scanned the largest space she'd seen in her life.
Perfume and cologne stirred the air.
A bridge roved ahead of the Roses connecting elevators and stairs to lower levels. Corridors on either side dug into the chasm walls, leading to other departments lit by the same sunny glow. Catwalks flanked the escarpments, where shops revealed their windows and opened their doors for business.
Pop music blared out of unseen intercoms at the same time as chatter babbled from all sides, while friends tried to be heard over each other.
Along all walkways, shoppers roamed in search of their next purchase. All forms of human were here, all different skin tones with a variety of heights and sizes.
This was Ruby's first visit to her homeland's underground shopping complex: Underday Arcade.
During the next several hours, Mom helped her shop for a list of needs, including a backpack and suitcase; new shoes for activities plus a second pair for formal occasions; and the standard office supplies a six-year old girl needed in the coming season. Mom bought crayons and markers, among other writing tools. They found binders and folders to organize the classes she'd take. Mom showed her notebooks designed with the cartoon faces of Ruby's beloved movie characters, so they had to buy them, of course.
They visited a dark-walled clothing studio under indigo-glowing beams called Summer Subject, where Ruby found outfits referencing her favorite videogames and shows. They sold everything in shades of black, purple, and red, but their designs shed like neon and chrome.
Before they left the clerk's desk, Ruby squirmed into an extra large adult's shirt, on which the front read, "Hubris Attacks Twice", in pink graffiti-style.
She wore it for the whole rest of their shopping trip, too.
Eventually, the mall's sunny light features deepened to hues of merigold and honey. Above ground, day was nearing its end, and when the Sun slipped beneath the horizon, Underday Arcade would start closing its departments.
Mom set down their bags in front of a TV screen on a walkway of the second story. Other shoppers manuevered around them. "I can never remember…."
The screen's eight-foot tall display illuminated both of their fronts, where maps showed each level of the complex and all of its legs. Numbers identified every shop they could find here.
Ruby had tucked a pair of water bottles under one arm and was eating popcorn out of a small carnival-themed bag, but a kernel occasionally spilled through her grip before she mouthed each handful. She left a trail of flakes and puffs on the ground, a couple stuck to her new shirt, and parmesan powder stained her fingers. "What's wrong?"
"There." Mom tapped the screen amid a list of store names, then again on the third level's illustration, then once more on the red dot showing her current location.
"Where are we going?" Ruby asked with her mouth full.
"Old friends of mine lease a spot here. I haven't seen them since last summer, so I want to check up on them." Mom handled their bags again and strode onward.
"What does lease mean?" Ruby skipped after her.
Within ten minutes of winding among shoppers through the maze of walkways, they entered an avenue choked by heat, where doorways were twice as wide and tall as the majority of shop entrances. Windows breathed with relentless yellow glow and sooty atmosphere stuck to their clothes. Four studios flanked the alley, each with an awning of their own to indicate their main entrance and the specialty practiced within.
Metal clanged deep inside their hidden workshops. Saws and blowtorches roared.
Ruby snatched glimpses through doorways, enough of a sight to tease her, and each one made her squirm like an earnest cat. "Mom, look!"
Mom placed her bags outside one entrance, beneath the canopy of steel-gray, hotrod red, and stripes of cider-color.
Ruby scrunched her empty snack bag close to her front. Blazing heat from within baked her skin and stretched her shadow backward.
Fire mangled the outline of her silhouette, so it couldn't keep one solid shape in the presence of what she witnessed. Perhaps her vision of Underday Arcade once stole her breath, but that was a glamer compared to the energy evoked in true form before her.
Nothing of what she'd experienced that day held a match to the ovens here.
The craft shop's logo hung on a sign overhead which could have stood for anything, as far as she knew.
She later learned it was called Aged Steels.
However, for a moment, she smiled upon a romantic idea in which the workshop summoned her personally, because during her reverie, the logo A.S. could have meant her, too: the Academy Student — destined to one day be part of this forge as much as it would one day be part of her, too, along the path to her future career.
A grown-up's snarl spooked Ruby, coming from within the smithy.
"Do you know who I am!"