Of Caverns and Casters ✓ [TLRQ #1]

Chapter 25 - Sean

I'm tired, and the clothes I've borrowed shift awkwardly as I walk up the stairs. I'm out of my element, reduced to using my intelligence for little more than snappy comebacks.

Nearly useless.

By the time I'm halfway up the flight, my legs tremble from two months of hard travel, plodding from dawn till dusk with a too-empty stomach and, as always, a too-full head. A week of travel across stone-scrabbled land that shouldn't exist gave me too much time to think. I left Xela hardly more than a kid. I thought I found my place in Vahlikeirre, the underground city my great uncle sent me to obtain my education in. But after my lab partner stole my work and convinced everyone I was the one plagiarizing, the small city of scientific elites weren't so friendly. Now, even Karsix, the dingy town I was thrust into to complete my professorate, is unavailable to me. Sean Rahkifellar is wanted nowhere.

I shake my head, topping the rise. I refuse to be useless. This is an inn—there has to be more to the Outerlands than a strange couple and their cat. More than just one town, maybe even a whole group of refugee villages.

And here, I have a stable roof over my head. A bed. A generous landlady. A full stomach. Things I haven't had in over two months. And even though this inn likely isn't my final stop, I can learn here. I can find out how this place works, how life outside of mountains exists. I'll have to; I'm not getting back to the Valleys, back to normal. What is 'normal' to me, anyway? My life is a pattern of being thrown into the deep end and expected to swim.

I can swim here.

I push open the door to my new room and immediately take a step back. This place looks like an orange alkemitic mixture exploded in it. Four marigold curtains on one carrot-framed window. Two dreamsicle-and-cream rugs. One cantaloupe bedspread. Nine tangerine throw pillows.

I move one pillow to the floor, behind the bed and out of sight. Make that eight tangerine throw pillows. Climbing onto the mattress, I slide beneath the plushy blankets. They're soft and a little scratchy, like the ones at our house in Xela.

Mama was tucking me in. "Your birthday's tomorrow, sugar," she whispered.

I held back a smile and nodded. She brushed the hair from my forehead.

I push the memory away. There's no use in thinking about what's gone and passed. That train of thought doesn't lead anywhere good.

Instead, I scrounge in my bag and pull out the presswrite. If I want to do well here, I need to learn, to understand this place. I start describing the things I've seen since leaving the mountains. Recording what I know is the best place to start if I want to know more. The past doesn't matter anymore; I can remember the lessons I've learned without having to pay heed to how I learned them. I can. I'll put it all behind me, forget anything that'll get in the way of learning to swim once more.

The sound of glass breaking shattered the air. I scrambled beneath my bed. There was nothing I could do, nothing I could do—

The sound of yelling spilled into the air. I shoved my hands against my ears. I didn't want to know what he was mad about this time, didn't want to know—

The sound of a strike rang through the air. I flipped open a textbook. Life will fade in the face of facts, fade in the facts...

Put it all behind me.