A Tower for Desires

A Place of Little Fortune

A gray metal sheet, rusted by time, leaned against a fractured concrete wall. The wall had small cuts in its stone skin, its cement flesh pierced by dim rays of outside lamplights which led into the darkness of the room, leaving tiny pins of illumination across the several surfaces of the space. Like the yellowish dot on the sheets of Aniela's tousled bed, or the dim line on the other side of her bedroom, that showed the rugged details of one of her walls.

Aniela's hand gripped the slightly dulled edges of the metal panel. It dug into the calloused skin of her palm, and as noiselessly as she possibly could, she pulled it across the wooden boards. As it scraped against the floor her head turned swiftly back, to her shut door, as if to make sure no one woke and caught her in the act. Her ears trying their best to pick up any suspicious creaks, any sounds, or a heavy footstep slamming upon the floor above.

In the complete darkness of the night, faint city lights could be seen coming from the gaping hole previously covered by the metal sheet, like the glow of a peering kerosene lamp weakly held to stretch into the shadows of the night. Her oval eyes peeked through the jagged hole large enough for a person to seep through. Again Aniela glanced back, a fear snagging at her. As she crawled through the breach, her shirt harshly grinded against the surface roughened by her chiseling.

Turning around, the cover quietly slid back across the wood. Soundlessly she crept away from the small hovel where she lived, to be welcomed into a rundown city. Filled with homes made out of junk and tilted decaying skyscrapers covered in underbrush.

Mud and other waste enveloped the stone streets, but even at night the city still seemed so lively. People were hustling around. Merchants filled the narrow winding roads offering linen cloth, red powdered saffron, colorful jewelry which dangled from wooden displays. Aniela could hear people conversing and arguing. A group of drunken men pushed and shoved, swearing as sweat glistened down their brows out of the heat that emanated from the closeness of the masses, beyond them was nothing more than the frigid feeling of the night.

She looked up to the rafters of empty skyscrapers, lines of whitish- blue lanterns for the choosing weeks strung up. How old was she when she saw those beautiful fires flickering last, six?

In such an unkempt urban area, lights were everywhere, gleaming dots, roundish bulbs, floodlights which shed even into the deepest of alleyways were flashing in different colors. They played across her face in bursts, leaving a colorful imprint in her sight as she walked by, blue, green, and red swirled within her obscured vision.

An old gypsy tapped her shoulder, and Aniela in her confusion, spun around to gaze on to the woman.

She was wrapped in ragged garbs, a tattered hood covered most of her face, strands of brittle white hair peered out of the cowl. From what Aniela could see she was worn out and tired, an old gashing scar ran down her shown face.

The woman lightly touched her hand, and gibberish exited her mouth, as she spoke in a foreign tongue. She pushed on her an assortment of slimy, misshapen lizards on sticks. A mist of humid smoke rose from the bizarre deformed food, hitting the edges of her face like a warm sweat.

As Aniela politely declined the merchant's offer. The leaving woman's scarred face and glimpse of milky sunken eyes displayed disappointment, as she returned to her unremarkable shop; sunken blind eyes which were so deepened into her skull, it almost seemed more bone than skin, as though they would fall and disappear into her sockets.

Various merchants offered all kinds of food to her, fake smiles on their faces, as their hands reached out in desperation like the crooked fingers of trees reaching for a bit of sunlight in a clearing, a kind of act for survival.

The aroma of spices from the vendors filled the air, and a dense cloud of whitish steam lingered behind it. As if a semi-transparent white cloth had been thrown on her face, and kept there only to obscure her view. The layers of intense scents, held within the man-made mist, burned her nose, as the hot stenches navigated its way inside, singeing nose hairs. The humidity choked her breath, with every slight inhalation. She waved the smoke away, but as if that would help at all.

Shoulders jerked her back, Aniela's body twisted. Her arms kept cowered in, as she worked her way versus the prominent opposing flow of the crowd, like a swallow striving to go against the strong east gales of a midnight storm. Her head held high as she peered over shifting shoulders, making sure her brash steps walked down her wanted trail. The human stream, almost knocking her small self deep into the riptides.

Until baam, she pounded face first against the broad shoulder of an unexpecting man. Knocking her to the filthy floor. Rain had washed the roads a few days ago and although the mildewy smell that occurred after it was gone, the cracked streets still retained its moisture. A deep brown spot splashed across Aniela's clothing, as she landed in a puddle of cold mud, sullying her ragged clothes, she felt her forehead and nose go sore from the sudden assault.

Aniela looked briefly up, to see the vague face of the man, which she had accidentally run into, clouded by a puff of smoke that breezed by; the back of her cold hand wiped away dots of mud splattered across her cheeks, smearing streaks deep into her skin.

Lifting herself up from the ground, to get a clear view of whom she believed to be a merchant, or a stationary drunk, she saw instead two burly militia soldiers. Their faces lined with grim, and dripping with a cooling sweat which soaked into the stubble of their chin, black beady eyes looked down at her, disgust and contempt swimming in the glare. Their sharp rugged eyebrows furrowed inwards, as if they were glowering at a splotch of dirt on a canvas of white, and the thickness of those two lines of wry hair were seemingly intensified by that fact. They grew bushier as they closed in the small gap between them.

"Watch yourself outer mutt." One of the rough voices snapped. Their eyes glaring at her in a condescending way, their hands stuck on top of the sheath swords that they held at their waist.

"It will take you weeks to wash off stink like that." the other chipped in, while one scoffed, brushing away on the spots she touched. He stared at her as if he was about to reach out a hand to admire her features. "A face like that, must be another one from the red lights, I should really stop by again sometime." he gave a devilish smile.

They shamed her, shunned her, as if the militia would ever change their ways, as if she would ever be anything more than one of the many cursed to be born in the Outer wall, such a place sunken by disgusting darkness.

Staring at them both straight in the eye with a mark of detest, she couldn't help but build up a glob of saliva and spit at the two. Landing perfectly on top of one of the men's stubbled cheek. His rough finger dipped the edges of his bristly skin where she had wetted it, as if to confirm it had really happened. His sunken face soon after, grew a tint that made her both fearful and proud of what she had done. It had become a scornful red, a burning red, a reddened physiognomy only comparable to that of a slowly rotting tomato.

His eyebrows crinkled even further out of disrespect and anger, almost connecting the two brows. Aniela's heart descended down into her stomach, a plummet that made her do the only rational thing she could think of in the moment, run.