Chapter 6
The roof where the cats meow
Bellemere always told her daughters bedtime stories. She lied on the bed with legs sunk between the sheets and the back against the headboard, then, her eyes traveled miles away, immersed in the depths of the stories, as if words were as capable of sailing as ships. From under the covers, Nami traveled with the Navy to islands full of danger and adventure, with evil kings and heroes disguised as villains.
Bellemere told to her daughters a thousand and one stories that took them to fly beyond the tangerines and hunger.
Once her mother was killed, Nami never listened to stories or read fantasy books again. Only maps and coordinates. Numbers, plateaus and coves.
Nami avoided the imagination and dreams. Flying over cities was only achieved by reading maps.
All her life she attributed flying to distant dreams on the Grand Line, not to ordinary citizens of the East Blue. Until Luffy took her to fly over the kingdom of Goa.
Nami had the theory that drawing maps from rooftops would make the job easier, but the idea that one day she would fall and leave her sister and the town of Cocoyashi in the lurch tormented her.
Luffy made it easy. He knew the alleys of the city, the squares and the stairs. And most importantly, he knew how to fly through the sky. Instead of flip flops he seemed to be traveling on clouds. The strides he took between the tiles were fluid and full of life. He played with the idea of touch the sun. For him there seemed to be no danger, only fun. Although it was clear that, of the two, he was the one most likely to know the ground with his head, he was on the verge of slipping into the chimneys a couple of times.
She saw him playing on the shore, on the cliffs, a stone's throw from the wide sea, and now that she knew that he was a user of one of the devil fruits, she began to question whether that boy was capable of feeling fear when he never feels it near the sea. Although the time she saw him dance between the tiles, an eternity away from earth, she knew that terror was foreign to him.
After hours of playing between roofs and drawing straight lines, Nami, tired, asked Luffy for a break, who had endless energy to invent a thousand challenges on the tiles that meant a thousand way to die first. He accepted on the condition that they go up to the highest roof in the city and Nami, despite her reluctance, ended up accepting, because Ace was right, it was very difficult for his brother to get the ideas out of his head.
Luffy's belly rumbled as the two of them sat together on the edge of the bell tower, their feet one step away from walking in the wind. And for the first time in years, her imagination took flight.
"The first member of your crew should be a cook." Nami commented with the sound of music and laughter from the square crossing the void to his negligent ears.
Luffy laughed, excited at the thought.
"Or a musician, or a swordsman, or a sniper, or…"
"The best would be a doctor, you live one step closer to death than anyone else. You like taking risks too much."
"But it's so much fun!"
She looked at him out of the corner of her eye in an attempt to decipher something inside of the huge energy.
"What fact? The risk?"
Luffy, once again, gave her that expression that was beginning to become more and more refined to make her see how strange her questions were, even though they were the blandest thing in the universe.
"The adventures, Nami. There are no adventures without risks!"
Bellemere's tales invaded the girl's head in search of dangers. Wasn't stealing food from giants to feed hungry people dangerous? Weren't brave Oden's fight against the tyrant dragon a life or death battle?
Maybe Luffy had more vision for adventures, being a dreamer perhaps had more advantages than she saw.
From the highest roof of the city of Goa, her mother's laughter was in her mind, as if she were mocking her daughter's wounded pride when she was aware of how tiny and corseted her thoughts were. Locked under the clutches of Arlong.
"Your dream would be nice, if it weren't for the pirates, that thing about weighing anchor and never looking back sounds good. Without weights or chains. Just cross the sea, like seagulls, flying."
"Or like beetles."
She started to laugh at the comparison, so typical of Luffy and so funny. Maybe one day she too would be able to see the beauty in those bugs.
"It would be wonderful to have their shells. They live protected from everything with armors."
He looked at her, his hair blown by the wind and her hat flapping behind his back. The sun danced with the sweet strands of his black hair, as if it were covering him.
"Armor doesn't protect you from the world, Nami. They fight a lot. That's what horns are for, I've already told you they're very cool. And anyway, they go out to fly with veeeeery thin wings and even if they are afraid, they fly. You're still a caterpillar" he stated the final phrase, with his chest out and his chin high.
She snorted.
"They are called worms."
"And what is the difference between worms and caterpillars?"
"The same as between the horns and the noses."
Luffy's face lit up, proud that Nami was talking about horns.
"You'll see, when you're a strong big orange beetle, you'll be the best navigator in the world. Everyone will know the name of the Pirate King's navigator."
Nami shook her head in annoyance.
"I will be the best navigator, but I am not going to be a pirate, Luffy, go find another job if you want me to work on your ship. And a lot of money, cause I charge a lot for my services." she pointed out at the end. Her monetary ethics were always ahead.
"Namiiii!"
She turned a deaf ear to the complaints, stood up and wiped her skirt with a shake of her hand.
"Come on, I'm hungry too and I have to heat up food for dinner."
Luffy forgot about the fight, his eyes hungry and his mouth open.
"What are we going to have for dinner?"
The question caused Nami to look at the teen suspiciously.
"I don't know what you'll have for dinner, Luffy, I'm going to eat lentils."
He pouted, but nodded thoughtfully.
"Well, Ace must have hunted something, so don't worry, the lentils with the meat are delicious."
"I'm not going to eat with you, I have my food and my place to sleep."
"But don't you want to have a pajama party? You're so boring, Nami. Come to sleep at home."
"No, I already told you that…"
The birds took flight seconds before the world trembled under their feet. The tiles clinked as they clashed against each other, and suddenly the wall of the building in front of the bell tower, an immense gold and white palace, exploded.
The explosion sent chunks of plaster and stone flying in all directions, and the shaking heightened the sense of danger.
Nami tried to balance herself and as soon as she looked ahead, at the edge of the roof, she saw Luffy trying something similar. The difference was that a piece of plaster hit under the boy's flip-flops and the heel slid, looking for support that ended up being air.
When her mother died, Nami felt that the bullet's journey to her head had been eternal. It took years for the light in her eyes to go out. The corners of the mouth return to their place for eons. The body struggled for centuries against gravity to hit the ground face-first.
When Luffy slipped and fell into the void, time lengthened again. The knee curved at an odd angle, too springy. Annoyance turned to surprise and his mouth felt open, unable to chew the words. The tiles flew away before the body did.
The difference between her mother's death and Luffy's fall was the immobility.
The moment they pulled the trigger, Nami turned to stone. Instead, before the first tile touched the edge, her arm rushed out to grab his friend's red vest.
Bellemere left alone, but Luffy dragged her with him as soon as he hooked his fingers in the clothes.
"Na ..." the boy's sentence was silenced by the harsh sound of the explosion.
As soon as Nami's fingers wove between the reddish strands of the garment, time returned to its course and the void rushed over both of them.
The girl's thighs, ribs, and chin hit the tiles as Luffy met the fall. For a few moments, she remembered that, until a few minutes ago, her body was still complaining about Arlong's beating and yet she felt no pain when she hit the ground. The adrenaline had already enveloped her.
They both screamed when he was left hanging from the roof, only held by her friend's thin arms. Despite the devil fruit, the fall would be fatal.
The tiles slid under Nami's body and fear screamed through her again as soon as she had half her body out.
The gaze of both friends connected between terror and Luffy soon stretched out his arms and grabbed the weather vane of the bell tower, where they both ended up as soon as the rubber returned to its place.
As soon as she felt the earth under her feet, Nami vomited the little she ate during all day, shaky and sweaty. With the adrenaline still tingling under the skin.
Luffy laughed next to her, between gasps. She promised him a slow and painful death with a single gaze.
"Now you have to come no matter what and eat with us."
Nami wanted to say something, but a second explosion shook the city and the desire to speak was diluted with it.
She didn't know what the hell was wrong with that island, but damn the moment she thought it would be a quiet, easy place to map.
Notes at the end of the chapter:
Well, bbys, I usually comment on AO3 because here, since they don't give me the option of notes, it's hard for me to touch the texts. This chapter is this fast upload thanks to the holidays about the constitucion of my country and the fact that I'm introducing some cool new plots that occurred to me the other day (that's why in the previous chapter there was that strange conversation) and I'm excited. Maybe I'll upload another one soon or next week.
I have cut times with my job. I hope you are liking it as much as I do!
And sorry for the grammar mistakes, I'm spanish and English is hard for me. You can tell me any mistake, I will correct it in no time and I can learn too.
bye, see you soon 3