It wasn’t at all an exaggeration to say that my heart stopped.
And if a tiny burn hadn’t done the trick, I was pretty sure that the sudden arrival of a gigantic flying… thing should have been enough to wake me from what I’d briefly hoped was a terrifyingly vivid dream. No such luck, though, not for me.
I ducked into the tall grass at the forest’s edge so fast that it was more akin to the ground dropping out from under me, every muscle and nerve tensing at the sound of the monster in the sky above. All around the very air flared with heat, stirred into a deafening whirlwind. I didn’t dare move.
At first I thought the thing was just that; a monster. A giant or flying serpent rampaging across the countryside would have almost made sense, but in the split second I had to think, I knew it felt off. There was tremendous energy pouring from it – I couldn’t believe I’d been so distracted that I hadn’t felt it coming – but it was somehow cold and dead all the same. Both at once, like a flame in a lantern.
Through the dark boughs I could see its silhouette some distance above me, its presence still overwhelming; then, as quickly as it had arrived, it passed, and began to recede away from me. The wind died down, and the world settled around me again into relative calm. It was moving towards the town.
As I regathered my bearings, watching it recede, I got a better look at it. Its underbelly was sleek and narrow; sprouting from its top, I caught a glimpse of wings that were perhaps more similar to sails, blotting out the sky. It looked made of wood, partially, but striped and decorated in bright colours that gleamed in the glow of the town beneath it. They were dim, but there were more lights dotting it. They twinkled like scales.
I realized, though, that they weren’t scales. It was indeed dead; because it was a ship. A flying ship, somehow soaring through the empty sky, hung from the stars and set aloft.
In the windows and open roads, the shadows of faces and hands turned to look up at it as it passed overhead, but none seemed frightened. Apparently great, fiery sailing ships roaring through the night were nothing to be surprised about.
Whatever it was doing, and whatever its captain was doing, did it have one, they didn’t seem to notice me – why would they, after all? – and as it approached the far edge of the city, I lost sight of it in the dark. Whether it landed somewhere or continued on, I couldn’t know.
Wow, I have... no idea how I’m supposed to process any of this.
I reeled, catching my breath, focusing on the blood imperfectly carried through my veins. Considering everything about the day had been unexplored territory, there was no clear course of action. But I couldn’t do nothing.
All of that was, to lay it out plainly for myself, just more to mindfully observe, from which to draw my own conclusions. If the ship was gone, I didn’t need to worry about it just then. If it wasn’t, and if for whatever reason it eventually bore down on me again, I could figure out what to do then. But there was no sense in worrying about nothing. I’d been doing a lot of that for myself already.
Maybe there wasn’t going to be a better time to find out what was happening, so I didn’t exactly have a choice. Settling my rattled nerves, I waded through the tall, damp grass towards the town.
I was going on a journey, I thought, an intrepid adventurer, but it really didn’t feel as heroic as the stories made it sound.
The outskirts and the fields around them were crossed with quiet tracks and dotted with small houses between the wide swathes of empty land. The stone-paved streets and the denser buildings of what I imagined was the city proper seemed arranged vaguely in a spiderweb formation, spokes stretching from the bright, loud centre to the pasture around the edges. I stuck to the outer tracks as I went, though I reasoned I’d have to go deeper eventually.
For a few moments, I actually started towards one of the wider streets, drawn in by the warmth I was still missing; but then I saw the silhouettes of figures – people – walking towards me, our paths bound to cross, and on instinct ducked back to the darker, well-trod outer road, nerves pounding in my ears.
What was I supposed to be doing? What did it even mean to be one of those people? Stealing glances at them as they passed some distance away, I tried to match their gaits, their collective demeanour, and I could say with certainty that it was… it was definitely an attempt. Not trying to mingle was probably a good idea.
Out there, I could feel the heat and the magnetic pull of the mass of living beings, but it was dulled a bit by the cold and the quiet. Much more manageable, less overwhelming, especially when I was out of sight and the pressure to camouflage evaporated. That was a perfectly fine trade-off for me.
I wasn’t certain what there was to be looking for, as crept through the dark to the centre of the city; everyone once in a while I passed a sign etched with flowery script I couldn’t read, or overhead the low rumble of spoken words, but none of that could help me. I could try and find a book or map or anything, but if it was all indecipherable… I needed something I could actually understand. Or someone.
A door slammed somewhere, and I started, but it was okay. I was fine, here. I wasn’t bringing attention to myself. I started to consider that maybe, given it was obviously so well-known around here, the flying ship and whoever was on it could help me. Just so long as it was still nearby, and I could somehow navigate through the city without–
At about the same time I could pick out the noise from the ambient buzz, I noticed the dull heat of an actual, living person, just before they stepped out of the shadows of the tall plants to one side and collided with me.
They were carrying a rather large crate, which I made a panicked note of as it fell to the ground with a crack louder than I could’ve expected, splintering and setting a pile of vegetables rolling across the dirt. They exclaimed something I couldn’t understand in that moment, but I didn’t know what had happened and my head went fuzzy and as I whirled to see them and to try to move out of the way, my hand swung out. Two fingers brushed against their skin.
They screamed. Loud. Out of shock I almost fell backwards, off-balance as we both were, but as I fell away, through the rough hand clutching their arm I saw it. Two short, blackened streaks of flesh, seared, almost smoking.
With horror, what I just did dawned on me. I stared, no idea what to do. Oh no oh no oh no no no. I’d almost been able to convince myself I’d been doing alright, too.
The stranger cried out again, gasping, before turning their broad face towards me, glaring through their dark hair.
“Pûva té!” they shouted.
I realized I’d never had someone with whom to compare my height before (not the most urgent takeaway, I had to remind myself); but by all indications, they were large. Stumbling over the dropped crate, they took a pained, heavy step towards me. I took a step back in turn. My mouth was dry, devoid of words. I’d messed up so very very badly.
“Qe’çelsema?” shouted the stranger, again, even more urgently. I didn’t know the language, but the meaning was coming across well enough.
Agonizingly slowly, still retreating, I found my voice. It was hoarse, and cracked, and I stuttered, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d used it, but I managed to force the words out. “I– I’m sorry. I didn’t… mean… to harm you. I’m sorry.”
“Lí mêrva? You are sorry?” they said, at least switching to words I could somewhat understand through the accent. “How do you do this?”
“It’s… I don’t know,” I said carefully. “I let myself get out of– out of control. I am kind of under a lot of stress right now, and I– I was maybe doing well, all things considered, but–”
“What’s that suppose to mean? You are ílûmorà? Uh… pûè, gi’nèlia lí úo e Lumil…”
I didn’t know what to make of that, but they didn’t allow me a chance to answer. With the hand unattached to a burned arm, they reached out at my own, or the sleeve of my dress. Quickly I took another step back, then three. They kept advancing.
“Nèia cirçet,” they growled, then thought. “No sigil.”
Quite honestly, I said, “I don’t know what you mean.” But they wouldn’t ease up. Their skin was still smoking, and I did that. And, as far as I could tell, it was getting worse, not better, like I thought it should have. That gave me pause. What? If they’re like me...
They were angry, and confused, and as best I could tell from the faint beating of their heart, they were scared, too. I couldn’t blame them. I kept retreating, but there was nowhere to retreat to. The track was quiet, the nearest busy street a field away, and there was nothing around but us. All I had was me.
Against my better judgement, sending my own heart dropping into my stomach, I held out a hand towards the stranger, and as I guessed they stopped dead in their tracks.
I extended my index finger toward them, palm upward, and with great care to stifle the flow of energy through my body, I let a single tiny flame light on my fingertip. That was enough; they took their own step backwards then, dark eyes fixed on the orange flame. They dared breathe only lightly, as did I.
They weren’t going to retaliate, so inch by inch, I moved towards the wall of leafy stalks at the other side of the road, towards the centre of town.
“I’m sorry,” I repeated, warily. “I’m not… going to hurt you. I’m not.”
“Pûveì ílûmorà,” they hissed. Then their eyes flicked up to mine, and then over my head to the lights of the town, and then over their shoulder, to the other dark field they’d come from when we collided. They shouted something into the darkness.
I stepped back into the field and extinguished the flame, and they were gone. I ran.
Crossing the field, enveloped in the musk of earth and the dry crunch of the plants all around I was trampling, it still felt like someone was following me. Every so often I checked and found that they weren’t, but every part of me was on edge nonetheless. My mind was back to racing, and with that came the dull throbbing in the back of my head.
Then, as suddenly as I’d entered, I burst from the wall of plants to be thrust into the light and noise of the city.
Ahead of me, over a fence and a silent garden, I saw a stretch of paved stone between two dark buildings, and on it, more people. People tall and short dressed like I’d never seen, strolling between hot electric lamps and manicured trees and bustling awnings. Automata wound up and let loose without any regard for me.
When I saw a gap in the flow of people past where I’d arrived, I braced myself and stepped into the street. I didn’t know how they made it look so easy; I stumbled a bit on the stone, mangled my gait as I tried to mimic the people ahead of me, but as out of place as I felt, overwhelmed by their collective energy… they didn’t notice.
Their many eyes slipped over me, if they looked at all. Even the ones I almost bumped into, the ones who surely thought I stuck out, would only give a brief glance over my clothes and my hair and my face and the locket before dismissing me and going about their business.
I was surprised, somehow, but I didn’t need to burn any more passersby by accident.
I kept walking, caught up in the flow, but I clung to the sides of the street and the occasional darker alleyway running alongside. The dark was a welcome relief from the headache, after all. I swept around the crowds of people like water, dodging among them as they pushed and ran and called to each other like birds. I heard snippets of their collective conversation, in languages as good as nonsense to me. I avoided those crowds.
Even in their midst, all I had was me. I wrapped my arms around myself, tried to block them out and search for something I recognized, but it wasn’t there. There was nothing. I was so far from home.
I tried not to let anything show on my face, surrounded by them, but I felt it. Still alone. Completely and unfairly and unreasonably and utterly alone. I didn’t have any idea where to start looking for answers. Again, I thought of the ship, but who was to say where it could possibly be?
Wandering nowhere in particular in my haze, listless, I paid no heed to the merchants and cackling animals on the corners, the people sitting together on open patios and open gardens, the delicate arrangement of sounds and aromas drifting from every open door and mixing in the muddled air overhead. Something cried out behind me, the sound ringing.
But… it was louder than everything else, which was saying something. And it was words I recognized, even if I wasn’t sure what they meant.
I turned to look over my shoulder, and I saw the stranger. Flanked by two others.
They were wrapping cloth around the finger-marks burned onto their arm, and all three had their eyes fixed on me. There was no doubt about who they were following, even if I didn’t know why.
I picked up the pace, and so did they. I broke into a run, and they ran after me.
The three of them shouted over the cacophony of the street, not at me, but at all the other people between us. Some seemed to ignore it, or not to understand; but the ones who heard, at their direction, started to run in the opposite direction, pointing and pulling others along with them. They all reacted differently, at first, their faces blurred together and inscrutable, but they all began to clear the way.
Animals flee when hurt, mitigating their pain on pure instinct, but not them. They chased me. Like monsters. They thought I was dangerous? What were they going to do to me?
Their calls spread faster than I could run. The townsfolk ahead of me were rushing to clear a path, shuttering their doors and windows. A few of the braver ones joined the small group after me, still lead by the stranger I’d burned. They wouldn’t attack, though; they didn’t even seem to be gaining any ground.
They were trying to push me where they wanted. Whether that was outside of town or deeper into its centre, my sense of direction was too fraught to tell, but I couldn’t just run and leave empty handed. Nor would I attack them – I could probably hold them off, but I wouldn’t lay a hand I didn’t need to. I demanded that of myself. That didn’t leave me many options.
I took the one my instincts most preferred and turned a corner left, down a dark side street, brushing aside drying cloth hanging from ropes in the eaves in my path. Behind me, I heard them shout, maybe follow, but I didn’t look back.
The entire town was built like a living being. The courses of heat and energy radiated outward in amorphous tendrils, carrying its people along their branches to their presumed destinations; but they all started in the centre, the core, beating heart. Before I even got close I could feel it more strongly than anything else. I knew it wasn’t really alive – well, it probably wasn’t – but in my mind I could still hear it beating on the wind. I might as well have followed its call.
I kept dodging down alleys, always heading towards the centre, and I tried along the way to lose my pursuers. Step by step, they dragged behind.
It wasn’t difficult to gain ground; it was the kind of exertion I couldn’t remember ever feeling before, burning through my legs as I ran, but I didn’t let exhaustion faze me. My muscles would be stitching themselves back in shape in no time at all.
That was the least of my problems, though.
This, I realized the moment I turned the next corner, to be bombarded by a whirlwind of heat and light and a low roar like the waves. So much light it was hard to look at, so much heat it was impossible to pick a thread from the atmosphere.
There was a square at the centre of the city, and it was drenched in golden light and rained upon by twinkling ribbons, and it was blanketed by deafening noise, because it was full of them. More people. They stretched from the alleyway I found myself in to the buildings at the distant opposite end and filled every space in between, some talking or laughing or yelling indistinctly, others simply hopping up and down or bumping into each other. Many of them were dressed in long robes and masks.
At the centre seemed to stand a stage, and upon it an orator in garb even more flamboyant, flanked by others, all twisting and waving wildly like they were leaves on an unseen wind– but I couldn’t make out a fraction of what they said.
If the people were this place’s lifeblood, the metaphor was much more apt than I’d imagined. There were so many of them my eyes couldn’t pick them apart. A single mass. So much worse than a monster could have been.
I froze, but there was no time to turn back. The hum in the air from the mass ahead was nearly overwhelming, even from such a distance, but back the way I’d come, my pursuers were still advancing. I didn’t need to look at them to know. Every second spent standing there was a second I was losing.
I ran the distance between myself and the gentle bleeding edge of the crowd and I dove into it head-first.
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