.
✧Ninyel✧
Energy thrums through Oa. It travels up the roots of One Tree and into town, powering the electric, the hydraulics, the greenhouses, fountains, pools, and crops that make our home livable. On papyrus, it's an ideal place to live, really.
It's just not bearable.
The gears grind until the tines wear away. Tires roll, then deflate.
Stagnation isn't death of old age. It's death of misery. Death of boredom. It's going your whole life without really living.
Tonight, I'm taking the bull by its horns. I'm squeezing the handlebars. Shideh's spreading her wings and together, we're taking flight.
... All while Pallo's gripping my waist and screaming like a little baby. "Where are we going!?"
"Anywhere!" I chirp, cresting hills and skirting dunes. I can smell Coruscant salt on the breeze. It ruffles Shideh's feathers: the matted ones beneath her chin. She lifts her beak to the sky, blinking slowly: content."North! We're going north."
"North?"
"To the sea!"
"What!? That'll take hours!"
A burst of speed. A squeak. A bruise on my waist. Wind that pulls at flesh and hair and fabric alike. I sing, "No, it won't!"
Immediately I'm pestered with daydreams. They hit so hard, I swerve off-course. Cobbled streets. Blue canals. Gaslamps. Cosmopolitan is a word foreign to my tongue, but it is in my vocabulary.
Peering through goggles and glasses, I glance over my shoulder and wink. I lied to my grandmothers. My pockets are stuffed with narcissite.
Shideh's wing lifts ever so slightly to frame our path. Wheels scream and spit out sand. I reach into my pocket for the crumbly, purple stone.
"Nin?"
Down the hatch.
Violet sparks fly from the tank, popping and dancing through the air, screaming, wheezing, hissing in protest. Fizzing like popyros. I grin. I laugh. I accelerate.
I faceplant in the dirt... without my glasses.
"P-"
Hands to handlebars. Mine plunge deep into the sand. Shideh lets out a gentle squawk and those wings no longer chart our course. I can barely see them. Purple smoke, thick as thieves in the night, obscures the cycle and its riders.
"Pallo! Stop the cycle!"
"Nin!"
He's looped back around. His blurry form is going faster, faster-
"Nin?!"
He's going to hit me. Or worse... my spectacles.
"Stop the cycle! I'm right here!"
"Get out of the way!"
"I can't! My spectacles! Just stop!"
"I- I can't!"
Can it be? Someone who's worse at driving than me? I have no time to relish the thought. My specs are gone, buried and scratched by the sand and Daniyal Abano's stupid cousin is approaching. The blob is coming-
Closer.
"Pallo! Stop squeezing the-"
"It's stuck!"
YOU ARE READING
Hide Your Fires
خيال (فانتازيا)Nations crumble when stars fall. ✧✧✧ PYRRHUS is the son of a tyrant and a captive of Kyadel, the Shining One's palace in the sky. To earn his freedom, he must compete against eleven fellow prisoners, many of whom possess kernels of the Shining One's...
