"Well?" Eve crossed his arms. "Are we going to climb?"
"Obviously not," Kanitha rolled her eyes, but still threw a giggle at the end of her sentence. "We can just steer the boat to one of those minuscular caverns at Titanius' side and there would be people who pull us up."
"People are going to pull us up?" Eve awed. "Like, with the boat?"
"Nope," Kanitha breathed, dipping her arm into the sea. The boat moved slowly towards a free spot, where two servants sat on cables and waved their glow-in-the-dark sticks, guiding them in. "I think there's a machine up there."
The two servants dropped the sticks and started hooking cables around the hull as they got closer. Then they blew a kind of whistle, the wires vibrated a little, and they rolled up slowly, pulling them away from the sea's surface.
"Wow," Ralph exhaled when he came back out of the cabinet, peering down at the sea that started to distance apart. "I didn't even think boats could go up this high."
But eventually, Ralph felt his legs getting softer as they arrived at a specific height. It felt like he might fall at any point and get crushed, the boats and people beneath were shrinking into the size of ants. The horizon stretched further, and the clouds seemed like they were rising from the sea.
He felt beads of sweat forming at his forehead, his palm growing colder as he gripped the railing for support. Acrophobia? That was never a problem for him. Why does he suddenly feel like that now?
"High, right?"
Ralph nearly screamed as Kanitha's hands were firmly set on his shoulders. She beamed.
"We might crash, you know?" She mused.
"Stop it." Ralph rubbed his nose and backed inside, looking away from the sea, feeling greatly embarrassed.
Suddenly, the boat jerked and Ralph tensed, but fortunately that they had just arrived at the Titanius' platform.
Biting his lips and not looking down, Ralph heaved up the bag of sea food and scuttled past the metal bridge that connected their boat from the Titanius' deck, followed by Kanitha and Eve.
On the deck, stalls and arguing people were scattered all over the place. Hundreds of aromas mixed together, even the strong, sharp scent of the ocean beneath seemed faint now. Ralph handed the bag over to Eve, who volunteered to sell it for them. He watched as she sat herself down at a corner in the market, unraveling the bag, she pours their catches across the deck, where customers come by to bargain with prices.
Kanitha instantly set off to look at a stall where an old woman watched over strange herbs and specimens. Ralph wandered off towards the kitchen area to look for knives and vegetables as Eve had instructed him to.
It really wasn't his fault. He stood wind-blown under the sun frowning at Eve's hand-drawn grocery list. Why is it hand-drawn he doesn't know, but he barely recognizes a thing. Assuming that the circle is an egg, he was instructed to purchase two eggs. Something in his pool of common sense nagged him that this doesn't make sense because the next thing he saw he was told to buy ten knives and twenty sesame seeds.
With doubts and confusion swirling in his mind, he unconsciously strolled over to Kanitha since Eve's stall is still crowded. He looked up from the paper, his heart skipping a beat when he realized Kanitha's walking toward him.
"Tonight. Six. At the Café." She mumbled hastily when she bolted past Ralph back towards their boat with her small paper bags packed with herbs and medicine bouncing against her arms.
Ralph stood deadlocked in the middle of the market, turning away as a smile slowly creeps up to his face. He skidded through the Titanius, looking for the café she mentioned.
He ends up finding it at the back of the boat, away from the busy merchandized areas. Only one, small café stood by itself on the boat deck. There were a couple of colored glass tables laid out beneath the sunlight scattered by the vines of flowering plants that flourished in pots lined against the detailed bars of the second floor.
He gazed unconsciously into the stormy overcast forming around the distant sea, feeling an eerie peacefulness accompanied by pure excitement engulfing his mind.
His mind darted through the list of cloth he has and fails to find any that might do for tonight. Because literally, all his garments are the same- trouser, sweater, coat. He can't make out anything fresh from that.
The major trouble that stresses. him, apart from the fact that he had never dined with a girl before, is the realization that he and Kanitha haven't exactly talked ever since the first night she joined. He is afraid but excited at the same time for the conversation that could be coming ahead. He's heard that the way people converse with someone they liked should come naturally, while in reality, he's anything but. Both of them start conversations with Eve a hundred times easier than they do with each other, and Ralph's not even sure Kanitha feels a single thing about him. She smiles at practically anything anyways, and he still hasn't gained the experience to tell apart her sarcastic smile, mocking smile, true smile, and the 'I have nothing to do so I'll just smile at you' smile.
As if being too deeply submerged in the trance, his fingers around Eve's grocery list lightened. Along with another gust of wind that swept by, away it goes over the edge of the ship towards the dark, colorless sea.
Ralph attempted to snatch it back but caught nothing more useful than a handful of brine-scent air.
Well, I guess I could actually ask Eve what is it he wants now rather than guessing it from scribbles, thought Ralph, giving himself a quick sigh-shrug, he turned and started his way back.
Then all of a sudden, a flash of green zapped through his vision, then he is, again, standing on the same spot he did a few seconds ago with the grocery list between his fingers, same as before and perfectly intact.
When he lifted his head in hesitance before he looms a tall, unfamiliar figure.
Dressed in pure black with a polished walking stick tapping inconsiderately on the deck, he took off his hat and the first thing that caught Ralph's attention is his catfish mustaches twice the length of his own face.
The second thing that nearly made him chock on his own spit is the stranger's eyes and hair in the exact same shade as Kanitha's.
The third him that sent his amazement plummeting into a zone that could not be described by words is when he spoke-
"I'm Monk of the Government. I have come to retrieve my daughter, Kanitha. You are... Ralph Ling, aren't you?" He bent down a little to inspect him, sending an unsettling shiver down his spine. "The Government wanted you dead, you should know. I think I'll just kill you now so Lucy could stop bothering me about it," he shudders as he spoke her name. "Bye, I guess."
Casually sweeping his stick through the air as the stranger walked by, Ralph's head was parted from his body the next second.
YOU ARE READING
Alasla: The New Age
Fantasy"What killed him isn't me. It's the world." Ralph had never asked for much. Not even his own identity. But when his best and only friend got murdered by the man he calls father, he was forced to set off on an expedition to unravel the truth of this...
