Imperial Capital of Giad
June 1st, Stellar Year 2140
Shin swung through the air, wind whipping at his eyes with enough force to make them water. Or they would have, if he dared to open them. Which he didn't. He held tightly on the old tire, clutching like his life depended on it. Which it probably did. The tire was suspended to a tree branch far above, and Shin couldn't help but be aware of the rope's tired, ancient creaking. It was probably decades old if he had to guess. He could hear the branch creaking too, in an unhappy, probably-five-seconds-from-snapping kind of way.
The tire slowed as it hit the zenith of its arc. There was a far-too-short moment of calm where the thing almost seemed to hang in the air, giving Shin the briefest moment to hear his own thoughts before the tire began to arc back and build speed, the rushing wind regaining its roar. Shin's thoughts, before he lost them, were that the tire was probably ancient; the tree was probably dead; and the drop to the river below was far too long.
"Let me down!" he screamed while the tire-swung hurtled back to its starting point.
Kette backed up as he approached, arms up, hands waiting. Her grin was vile.
"No!" she said, smiling, and caught the tire in her hands. And before Shin could leap from it onto safe, sweet ground she heaved it forward with one mighty push, back out over the hill's steep edge.
"Jump into the river!" she shouted after him.
"I'll die!" Shin screamed.
"You probably won't!"
The almost-certainly-dead tree was perched at the top of a steeply inclined hill that dropped down to a languid river. Several other kids were swimming in it already. A few others were waiting in a disorganized line at the tire swing, shouting at Shin to jump much the same as Kette. He looked back in dismay as their faces grew smaller and smaller - as everything grew smaller. Except the sky. The sky only widened.
The swing approached its zenith again. Shin couldn't help but stare out over the vast expanse of the forest, countless trees spanning in all directions. He wondered how much it would hurt if he jumped and missed the water. Hell, he wondered how much it would hurt even if he didn't miss it. He read that water could be as hard as concrete if you hit it going fast enough.
With cruel mercy the tire-swing hit its apex and slowed, only to speed back up again as it hurtled in the opposite direction. Back toward Kette, whose grin was as bright as bones bleached in the summer sun. Whose green eyes shone like lethal poison. Though the wind was a scream in his ears and the creaking rope sounded downright fragile, there was nothing Shin found more terrifying than that devious look on her face.
She took a few preparatory steps back as Shin approached. Then she made a running start, and as the tire-swing hit its lowest and slowest point (and Shin tried to psyche himself up enough to bail out) she leaped onto the thing, arms wrapping around the end of the tire - and they both hurtled back out over the hill, up into the air. Kette swung herself around, hanging by her arms on the tire's outside edge.
"Well," she said, and Shin felt his stomach drop all the way into his knees. "If you won't jump on your own, I can give you a helping hand."
And she looped one arm through his.
And she let her other hand release its hold on the tire.
And she fell into the open air, dragging Shin with her, and Shin screamed her favorite word the whole way down.
"YOU BIIIIIIIIITTCH-!"
His lungs were completely devoid of air when he hit the river - slammed into it. And at first it did hurt, like he'd been slapped by one massive hand across his whole body. Then his awareness was possessed solely by a chaos of frothing water and bubbles streaming, the invisible fingers of the current tugging at him, a disorientation of refracted light and unfocused images as his body spun end over end. Then a hand grabbed his and pulled him up over the river, water streaming down his face, over his eyes, and he wiped at them and blinked and realized he was still alive. The first huge breath he took was downright sweet.
Kette grinned at him. It was an evil, awful expression.
"Fun, right?"
"I hate you."
She grinned wider. "Good," she said.
And splashed him in the face.
He was too stunned with affront to do anything at first. He just couldn't believe the goddamn audacity of her, that not only had she bullied him onto the swing in the first place, but also pulled him down from it with her own two hands, nearly killing him.
And then she still had the nerve left over to splash water in his face? Unbelievable.
He splashed her back.
And she retaliated with both arms, shoving a massive wave over his head that carried enough force to push his head below the river. Rush of liquid in his ears. Instant blurred vision. Shin kicked up back over the surface. Without much thought at all, he did the exact same to her; shoved both hands into the water and pushed as huge a wave as he could manage over her head. He relished his half-second of not having to look at her stupid face, because it disappeared below the water.
She resurfaced. The curtain of soaked iron-black hair hanging over her eyes made her look like some drowned ghost. "Are you looking to start a third war with me, Nouzen? Because I'm not gonna let you win like I did the first time."
"You didn't 'let' me win. I beat you."
"Wanna bet?"
Shin's reply was to push a wave of water in her face.
"Oh it's on, Nouzen!"
In the month Shin had spent at the old schoolhouse this summer, he and Kette fell into an easy rivalry. For better or worse he just couldn't shake off the half-Eisen girl, finding her at his back (or throwing stuff in his face) almost constantly, and the more he fought back against her bullying, her pestering and cajoling, the more insistent she got. The second war she referred to was one they'd fought on an old video game console someone found while digging through the junk-mountain shed. They dueled it out on a two-player fighting game for fifteen straight hours until Shin passed out in his chair, and Kette not long after.
Point being, she was persistent. Enough so to reveal an equally long stubborn streak in Shin. When the two of them got well and truly stuck into something, regardless of what it actually was, neither of them could be pressed to give up. Least of all by each other.
Neither were they very good at keeping tabs on their surroundings during those times.
As they each came at the other with various aquatic attacks (Shin favored sharp jabs that cast blade-like jets, while Kette liked to slam her fists against the water to create messy, bombastic sprays in all directions) neither of them remembered that the area where they were fighting lay in the direct trajectory of the tire-swing on the hill.
"Get out of the waaaaaayyy-!" came the cry from over their heads.
Shin looked up at the last moment, earning an eyeful of riverwater for the trouble. The last thing he saw was a shape hurtling down toward them at terminal velocity. And then the shape crashed clear atop them both, and Shin, in a wave of sensation, pain, and blackness, went under.
—
Shin stood on a narrow path, not wide enough to be called a street. He was alone, accompanied only by the cold metal walls on either side of him.
He was unaware that his feet turned him in slow circles. To his eyes the night sky and the shadowed footpath were spinning all around him. The rows of huge buildings, clad in their skins of sharply corrugated metal, all slid in rotation with a clear and cloying malice. He was small and no one would help him. He'd been bad, so no one would save him. He'd sneaked out when he wasn't supposed to, which was why the ridged walls of these dark warehouses would press in like steel teeth and crunch him until he died.
Bad boys didn't deserve the food they ate or the beds they slept in. The air they breathed, the life they lived. This was his punishment for acting out. And in the dark no one would find his body. He'd be forgotten, like he never existed in the first place.
They were so huge, and there were so many, and he looked down from them and across the four intersecting paths. His unconscious turning stopped. The slow circles stopped and his feet slapped into one another and nearly tripped him, and as he stuttered to a standstill he saw again that none of these ways were familiar. He looked around for someone to help him, but he stood alone at this intersection of a path so narrow three people could not walk abreast without bruising one another's shoulders. He was all alone. So horribly alone.
Where had he come from?
Where was home?
Shin tried to clasp his hands together, but they were too slick with sweat and simply slid off each other. Why did that bother him? He looked down at his hands and hated them. Why were they so sweaty? It wasn't even that hot today. He pressed his palm against his chest. It left a dark, wetly warm handprint on his shirt. He hated how his heart rapped against his ribs. And what was this feeling in his stomach? It was like someone had twisted up his guts in hard knots. He wanted to rip them out.
He was sure the building at his back was pressing down on him. So sure. So he turned nearly at a jump, and he was equally sure the wall had moved that he took a step back, and when his back hit the sharp weight of the warehouse behind him and he felt the sharpness of that cold, cold metal, he moaned incoherently. He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his hands together. He waited for those sharp, teeth-like walls to close in.
Don't cry. Only bad boys cry.
"Okaa-san," he whimpered, and the tears were stinging through his eyes and he hated them most of all. "Otou-san, help me…"
Shin received no answer except the cold glare of the moon far above, like a single cataract-frosted eye, severe and admonishing.
"Someone, please! I'll be a good boy, I'll listen, I promise I won't do bad things, and I won't sneak out anymore. I won't-"
—
"-Shin!"
In the dark hours of the early morning, before the sun had risen and the birds came awake, two small figures huddled together in a narrow stone alcove surrounded by northern pine trees. Each sat slumped, their backs to the rock and knees clutched to chest, a single thin jacket draped over the both of them. One was shallowly asleep, tossing and trembling, frantic words muttered beneath his breath. He was being shaken by the other.
"Shin, wake up!"
Two red eyes flitted open. They were sheened with tears. Shin saw the night sky above him, the same sky he saw in his dream, and was greeted the same moon with its imperious one-eyed gaze. What memories he had were all from three years ago. He had no idea where he was or how he'd got here, who this person was, why they were shaking him. He couldn't help the incoherent moan that escaped him - "Oooaaahhsaaa" - bent half toward a word and half to a name, but becoming neither.
The tears burned their way out. He crushed his palms into his eyes as if trying to stopper them in place, or to push them back from where they'd come. Shin hated crying. He hated himself for not being stronger.
Two thin arms snaked around his neck. Shin found his head pulled with desperate, almost crushing force into someone else's shoulder, and his fear redoubled for a moment, an aching bolt of raw emotion shunting through his chest, another scream building in his lungs before his hands lashed out in a shaky hug, clenching around the back of whoever had grabbed him. It was the action of a desperate animal seeking only blind comfort.
"Just a nightmare," she said. Dimly, he recognized the voice as Kette's. "But you're okay now, Shin. You're okay."
Another shuddering moan racked his chest. He hugged her tighter, blinking away tears. She patted at his back, gently at first. Then she patted harder, almost swatting, becoming a plea for him to let go or loosen up, but he looked out at the trees framed only by night's shadows and silver moonlight, and he looked at the moon itself and recalled that night three years ago, and his grip tightened until his fingers were white and his bones ached.
"Ow! Hey, you're hurting me-"
Her voice broke through. Shin let go at once, physically recoiling out from under the jacket they shared. The chill struck like a frigid slap the instant he left their tiny sphere of shared body heat and wind-breaking nylon. Goosebumps broke out in a tight layer across his skin. Forearms prickled, growing coarse like armor.
Kette stared at him with conflict in her eyes. Shin didn't miss the edge of fear in them. Fear of him.
"I'm sorry," Shin said at the tail end of a shaky breath, his voice coming out in a quaver.
"It's okay."
She lifted up the end of the over-sized jacket. Shin's memory returned in small trickles. That was Vance's jacket. He remembered because the Alba soldier said yesterday, before Shin and Kette got lost, that he thought he wore way too much Black Tactical Gear, even when he was off duty. That he'd started to get a little self-conscious about it even though it was just a habit instead of any conscious fashion choice, but Shin retorted by saying he looked cool. Most of all he remembered the sheepish way Vance smiled at the compliment, looking off to the left, scratching at the back of his head.
It was just after they left river, when all the kids began their hike. Vance lent Shin his jacket because Shin was the only one who didn't bring his own, even though it was over 90 degrees when they all set out on the trail. The soldier had made a point of warning all of them that it was always important to be prepared. And dressing in layers was an integral part of Vance's definition of preparation.
"You look cold," Kette said.
He was. He had only his swim shorts and a T-shirt on, and the shorts were still slightly damp from the river.
"Wanna come back in?" She fluttered the jacket invitingly.
Shin shook his head.
She held it up a moment longer. A long moment where she looked at him in a way Shin had never seen before, a kind of softness and concern in her face. It made him uncomfortable, but also slightly warm. Maybe that was why it bothered him. When he made no move to join her, she dropped it.
The jacket's thick, stiff polyester hem splayed out across the dirt. Shin managed to resist the urge to cross his arms against his wind, but he couldn't fight the shivers. They racked through his whole body. He clenched his teeth to keep them from chattering against each other. The wind was blocked at his back, but not from the front. Their stone alcove worked to funnel the gale in harder, sharpen and focus it until it seemed to cut through Shin's whole body.
"Was it bad?" she asked. "The dream, I mean."
Shin nodded. Bad enough.
"Tell me about it."
He didn't reply, and as if to fill the silence the wind surged stronger through the treetops, rustling leaves and groaning branches sounding so much like a voice that Shin felt pressed to pick out words.
But if it were a voice, it was the voice of a woman who had not spoken for a long time. Perhaps one who hadn't made any sound at all until now, leaving her vowels corroded and her consonants jagged, the auditory equivalent of being bitten by shattered teeth. Shin thought of his mother. He thought of how she might have died. Thought of how no one had ever found her, wondered (fantasized) if that meant she might still be alive. Then the wet heat of tears pricked at his eyes again.
A rustling sound. Shin heard it, but didn't register it, too lost in his imagination. It was only when the jacket draped around his shoulder and he became aware of the warmth of her body heat that he turned his head, and saw Kette sitting beside him, inches away.
"You dummy," she said softly. "Now you're all cold. It's uncomfy." Heedless of her own words, she wrapped her arms around him in a gentle hug.
Shin felt an overwhelming need to get away, push her off and run as far into the night as he could go. Not because her presence was uncomfortable - the opposite. Because her arms felt far too warm.
There was a cold pocket in his chest, deeper than wind or water, sun or fire could ever reach. A chunk of ice over his heart that had settled there when his mother died, and though it was not the kindest reminder he had of her, it was by far the strongest. He could not, could never let it melt. Hence the urge to run.
"I'm sorry," Shin said. Despite that urge (need) he stayed put. He didn't know why. He didn't want to. Maybe it was because he knew he would die if he ran out into the cold, or maybe it was something else altogether.
"It's-" she started. Stopped herself. Said nothing for awhile.
Shin huddled his knees closer to his chest, wrapped his arms around them. He tried to ignore her hand on his shoulder, and when he noticed her pulling subtly at him, drawing him closer to her quarter-inches at a time, he pushed back just as quietly.
"Tell me about your dream."
Shin looked at her.
"I won't forgive you unless you do," she warned. The look on her face was so earnest it caught him off guard. As well as annoyed him slightly.
"Why would I care about that?"
"Because my opinion means the world to you?"
'Looking' wasn't quite strong enough a word anymore. Now Shin stared at her. He was suddenly too irritated at that ridiculous presumption to feel as dejected as he was.
"No," he said flatly.
"Because friends tell each other all their secrets?"
"And you think we're friends?"
"Kind of?"
"You're crazy."
She frowned, lower lip extending in a dangerously effective pout. "Now you're hurting my feelings, Shin."
"You hurt me. Like three hours ago!"
"Only 'cause you were being a scaredy cat. That drop was like ten feet tops, and we didn't have any other way to get down the cliff."
"I could have dropped soft stuff over the edge to land on, like leaves or something."
She rolled her eyes. "Then we would have been stuck there until dark, and we would never have found this cave to camp in."
"My leg still hurts, by the way."
"I told you to bend your knees when you landed."
"You told me while I was falling. After you pushed me!"
"Po-tay-to po-tah-to. Nothing bad would have happened if you just jumped like I told you to."
"Well why didn't you jump first, then?"
"'Cause going first is scary! So is going alone! Besides, I had to push you, Shin. If I jumped first, you probably would have turned around and left me there."
Shin stared at her for a different reason this time. Not exasperated incredulity, but with a shock that bordered on hurt.
"Do you really think I would do that?"
She glanced out at the distant, moonlit trees.
"You just said we aren't friends."
Shin followed her gaze. He caught the moon again in his peripheral vision, and it drudged up still-fresh images of the memory he'd woken up from, but by now its hold was weakening. The terror was gone. Only a lingering apprehension was left in its place. Mostly he just looked out at the trees because otherwise he'd be far too embarrassed to say what he was about to.
"I was joking, idiot. Of course we're friends."
Shin felt a weight settle on his shoulder. He glanced back and saw she'd planted her head there.
"I'm not your pillow," he said warningly.
"Yes you are."
Shin huffed a sigh, wishing silently he could have been brought to a place that didn't have kids his own age. They only seemed to cause him trouble.
—
"-Shin!"
At the sound of the familiar voice Shin turned at once to see the face of his brother, warm black eyes framed by red glasses and longish locks of crimson hair. The sight of Nii-san sprinting down the street was a relief above all others. The concern clear in his face made his heart sing with the warmth of love, his brother's and his own, shared through their bloodline link. More than anything else, seeing him brought clarity. The world stopped spinning. The sharp corrugated metal walls were suddenly just walls again, not rows and rows of waiting teeth.
"Nii-san!" Shin cried. He took off running for him, and when he reached him he jumped up in a great sprinboard leap, holding no regard whatsoever for the hard cement of the footpath, no thought that his brother might fail to catch him as he threw himself into his brother's arms. Shourei caught him and lifted him up, twirled him in two quick circles, and it was not at all like when his legs had turned him unconsciously around and it had seemed to him like the whole world was circling cruelly around him like sharks on the open sea. Now he felt only a child's honest excitement at being up and flying.
"Thank God you're safe, Shin," Rei said through a breathless exhale, setting him down, and crouching to his knees to be at Shin's height. "I was looking all over for you."
Shin threw his arms around his brother's neck in a clumsy hug. Rei hugged him back, tight and strong, warm fingers splaying across his back and shoulders.
"I'm sorry, Nii-san!" Shin sobbed, relief and hysteria pouring out of him in one babbling litany. "I won't sneak out ever again, I promise I'll be good, always, so please don't leave me, please don't ever leave me-"
"It's okay, Shin," he murmured, running his hand through Shin's hair in gentle strokes. "You're safe. That's all that matters."
For a long time they stayed that way, watched only by the pigeons roosting on steel gutters. Shin held onto his brother like a lifeline at sea. He cast suspicious looks at the towering walls of the warehouses at either side of them, but ultimately knew that as long as Nii-san was here for him, he wouldn't be hurt. It was a fact to him, as sure as stone or the sunrise, reinforced by the steady warmth that emanated from his brother's soul, carried to him by their bloodline connection.
"How about I read to you when we get back?"
The warmth pulsed brightly, a sensation like a hand taking his, like a soft blanket being draped around him. That was his brother's love, and Shin sent back his own in return, and the fond smile Nii-san gave him was worth more to him than gold and light and the sun itself. To Shin, Nii-san might as well have been the sun.
"Let's go home, Shin."
—
Come the morning Shin and Kette were both deeply sore. They were also groggy, thirsty, and utterly unable to think of anything except food; mountains of pancakes drenched in syrup floated between the trees; buttery scrambled eggs announced themselves atop wayside boulders; the phantom smell of french toast drifted on the wind, tinged by pine sap.
But at least they weren't cold. For a little while the two walked in step with one another, shoulder-to-shoulder to share the jacket, at least until the sun had angled high enough to cast warmth through the forest canopy and it stopped being necessary. When they separated, Shin found himself missing the contact, just a little bit.
Not that he would ever admit it out loud of course.
He did eventually share the contents of that dream. Neither of them had been able to fall back asleep, so eventually Shin found himself talking about it if only to speed up the passage of the next hour. Definitely not, as Kette insisted with the most irritating smirk that had ever and would ever exist, because she asked him to.
He told her it wasn't exactly a dream that had woken him up, but a memory from exactly three years ago. Of when Shin decided to sneak out of his clan's compound and see the city for the same reason Vance and Tori took all the kids in the orphanage out into the forest: to celebrate the first day of the new month.
And just like that celebration in the forest, the start of that day had been downright magical. An adventure filled with sights and sounds all completely new to him, hundreds of things he'd never seen before. Yesterday it was the river and tire-swings. Three years ago it was people with hair and eyes in a color other than sheer black.
And just like three years ago, the magic of the day in time gave way to a cold, bitter night. He shared what he remembered, which at eight years old was much, much more than he'd have at fourteen. How frightening the industrial district had been, dark and moonlit, how he knew beyond doubt that he'd die on that claustrophobic footpath when the walls closed in on him, corrugated metal like long sharp teeth, eating him alive.
And Kette listened on in silence, not offering so much as a hum. Shin's voice had petered out before he reached the part where his brother came to save him, thinking she might have fallen aslleep.
And at that moment she did the unthinkable:
She apologized.
"That's why you had that nightmare," she'd said breathlessly. "Because everything was the same. Getting lost in someplace new, no one to help you, everything dark and scary… all because of me. All 'cause I wanted to see a stupid waterfall."
None of which was false, per se. Choosing a moment when Tori and Vance's backs were turned, Kette all but manhandled Shin off the trail, demanding she wanted to find where the river came from. She heard there was a huge waterfall there and wanted to see it more than anything. So they went off to find it, and got hopelessly lost shortly thereafter.
"I'm sorry, Shin," she'd said, sounding so hopelessly sad it made Shin angry. What did she have to sorry for? Maybe she dragged Shin around a bit, but Shin made his choice perfectly on his own. If he didn't want to see the waterfall too then he wouldn't have gone, plain and simple. And he would have made sure she knew it.
He told her as much, and at least she thought about it. Shin figured she did anyway. Otherwise she would have argued with him. She didn't argue with him anyway, and that let Shin pick up an hour of fitful sleep before the sun broke the horizon.
That brought them to their current situation.
In the future Shin would grow used to marching on an empty stomach (and fighting, as well) but that would be a long few years away. Right now he felt unforgivably faint, like his arms and legs were jelly instead of flesh. Kette must have been the same, as she staggered almost every step.
They headed south. Kette claimed that even though she might have been only half-Eisen, she was still a Vargus through and through, and knew how to find her way through forests like these. Shin was too desperate not to believe her.
They supported each other as they moved, hand in hand, sometimes shoulder to shoulder. They came to a steeply inclined hill and Kette took the lead ("I'm still a year older than you, so I get to go first if I want to") as Shin followed behind, and when she stumbled he put a hand on her back to keep her steady, and after she reached the top she held her arm out for him to grab and steady himself with.
They came to another sharply-dropping cliff, and this time Shin volunteered to climb down ("Not gonna let you push me again," he said, to which she pouted in a way he found inexplicably dangerous) the twelve-foot ledge, and she kept a tight grip on his shirt to keep him anchored, crouching, then laying prone over the edge to extend her hand as far as she could while he made his way to the ground below. When it was her turn to climb Shin waited at the bottom with his arms open to catch her if she fell. And at the halfway mark, she did, tumbling down overtop of him and sprawling the both of them out in a bruised, graceless heap. But they were able to laugh about it once they stood back up and realized nothing was broken.
Hours passed. Shin's empty stomach gurgled its protests incessantly, his thoughts dominated by food. Several times they had to stop and just sit for awhile, feeling too faint to do anything else, and every time they did it took a great deal of arguing - internal and external - to convince themselves to get moving again. But they did, each and every time.
At the sixth hour, just as noon reared its hot and ugly head, Kette pushed through a thick crop of underbrush and out of sight. When Shin heard her scream a moment after, urgency, fear and protective instinct jolted through him, all his fatigue and soreness melting away in an instant as he bounded after her.
"What's wrong!" he shouted.
"Nothing! Look, Shin, we're on the trail again!"
Shin ripped his way out of the brush, scoring long, bleeding scratches through his arms and legs for the effort, and as he turned right then left, ahead then behind, he felt the adrenaline give way to clarity - relief beyond measure.
"Holy…" he looked around again. Saw neither Vance nor Tori there to scold him. "Holy shit! It really is! We're almost home!"
"Pancakes!" Kette screamed.
"Scrambled eggs!"
"Ice cream! Brownies! Soda!"
Shin's mouth was already starting to salivate. Without another word he began to run, all his faintness dissolving under a wave of galvanizing hunger. He tapped Kette on the shoulder as he passed her, and she took off too.
"Race you back!" he said.
"You don't stand a chance!"
In the end, they tied.
Happy Tuesday! I posted early, as you can see. :)
I've managed to put together a decent backlog of chapters recently. It's a good thing because it means I have a safety net in my posting schedule if I ever slow my pace. It's also a bad thing for the exact same reason; having a safety net means having room to get complacent. Anyone who's ever written a large project like this knows that complacency is your worst enemy. If you slow down, you lose momentum. If you lose momentum, the project dies.
Hence why I'm posting this early. Expect another chapter at the usual time, and have a good day! Stay hydrated. Or don't. It's of no consequence to me.
- Verbosity