A Place To Bloom

mɪyaŋi

I couldn't get that girl out of my head.

Miyani.

God, how I loved the way her name rolled off my lips.

mɪ-ya-ŋi, emphasis on the first syllable.

Her face was like the hearth, that perfect moment when it's a blizzard outside. The storm is so hard you can't go out for firewood, and it hasn't been so bloody cold in living memory. But there's a soft, plush leather chair beside the hearth, and you've just started a book that grabs you, right from the get-go, but you had to do chores, and this is the first time you've been able to get back to it. You've got a pint of that thick, brown beer, the one that tastes like maple syrup, and Sarina's cat has made her home in the nook between your leg and the chair. You prop your feet up on the hearth, with a thick, woolen blanket.

If you gave me one word to describe her, I'd tell you infinite words wouldn't suffice. Just the smell of her, like jasmine and coconut wrapped tendrils around me and pulled me in. Seeing her with that lizard, she was so tender, they had such an easy rhythm, I envied his place in her life.

I'd met this girl twelve hours ago.

We exchanged... five? Six words?

This was silly.

Dinner that evening started off with a mixed fruit thingy, with orange and yellow chunks and dark berries mixed in, swimming in some fruity kind of alcohol. The locals—natives and some Herali soldiers who'd been there a while—all gathered around to watch as a humongous platter was carried out by two people. On it were packages the size of my fist wrapped in snake skin.

We didn't have forks. We had spoons, some thing like a long spike but with two prongs, and a sharp knife. Make that very sharp; Rock cut his fingers on it, and they had to wrap it up. He would eat left-handed for the foreseeable future.

The crowd was thick. Those two sekiwa girls I'd seen earlier were there. One of them was particularly fond of watching as Davod cut open his dinner. He slid the knife across the pouch, and a thick, red sauce oozed out like a gravy with heavy chunks in it. Her smile grew as she watched him take a bite. He opened his eyes wide, he reeled back in shock, and he devoured it.

There was another native girl who helped her mother with the goats. She sat talking with Geraln for a long time. And I mean long. They got into some serious stuff, too. I overheard them speculating on how the Imperial Zeppelins worked. He told her about how the shape of the balloon affects wind shear, and she told him about how the gas inside is lighter than air.

We met some new guys, too. Rock, the Saeni man I'd met at laundry, had arrived with a tall, lanky Saeni man named Northstar who didn't talk much, mostly he just smiled and nodded, and a Herali on the short side of average with baby fat still on his face. His name was Kelint, and there were words spoken about who was a better shot. Apparently he'd won some kind of competition somewhere like that mattered. He'd never had any real competition, surely, and so Davod, Geraln, and I agreed to give him a demonstration at some point.

Like that mattered. Really.

Father Yewan always forbade me to compete.

Two fingers tapped between a pair of people. They split, and Miyani walked in. My chest tightened. My whole body froze, I couldn't believe it. Just the sight of her face set me on fire.

Faren was looking at her, too. He sat up straight and traversed her body with his eyes. Then he glanced at me for a brief moment.

She was dressed as the others, naked head to toe but for a white silk flap with gold embroidery that hung front and back from a silk belt down to her knees. Dark-green skin like a shade of black. Her eyes were a lighter yellow than the others. Some of the natives had amber eyes, others like a deep yellow, but hers were the rising sun. She wore her white hair in a pixie cut, while the others mostly wore it long.