A Place To Bloom

Up on the Roof

I ascended a spiral staircase shrouded in darkness—my mind was a slurry of emotions.

Rolf gave me zero clue as to why he abhorred me so much, neither would his friends speak on it. That bothered me. I hadn't interacted with the man enough to justify his hatred towards me. With his experience, I should have been learning from him, instead he despised my bones. Why did he hate me so? When they told him he was on watch duty with me, he begged to switch with someone else.

I passed by a small room with tall slits half-overgrown with moss that were responsible for what little light seeped into the staircase. Then I tripped on a step that was much shorter than it should have been and bashed my knee against the hard stone. It took nearly a minute to rub the pain out and continue my ascent.

Geraln was up there. The same kid who'd hidden me in his wardrobe when Father Yewan came to ask why I'd smashed every bottle in the church wine cellar. The same man who'd abandoned me and Renou to die in the jungle.

It didn't help that the interior of the tower was like a furnace—a dank, muggy furnace that made the weather outside seem pleasant. I was drenched in sweat, the bruise on my knee punished me with every step, yet the dark staircase continued further up. The next flight offered a piquant bouquet somewhere between rot, piss, and body odor.

I had to forgive him. Scripture said I had to forgive him. Perhaps it was my fault anyway—I'd forced him to make that choice.

A square of light in the ceiling broke the darkness above. I ascended towards a heavy wooden hatch soaked through from the rain earlier, then slipped on some wet algae when the next step was much higher than it should have been. I smacked that same knee against the stone and had to sit down for a minute to try and rub the pain out once more.

Miyani. God, how I loved her. Every minute I spent with her, I loved her even more. I'd never felt this way, not with anyone, not even Sarina. She looked up at me while we guessed which word meant what in each others' language until daylight receded and she kissed me. I fell harder and harder with every adorable blink of her bright yellow eyes.

I couldn't blame that boy in the cafe for appreciating her sublime figure, but that 'æmiʃʌði tradition made my skin crawl. That I'd been too big of a coward to broach that with her twisted my gut into knots and made my soul feel sour.

Scarcely a month prior, she was the enemy hunting down men like me and killing us. ɣozʌ'ʌ, they'd called her. That Bitch. Kylen said he'd had nightmares of her tracking him.

I really, really, REALLY needed to talk to her.

I hoisted the hatch overhead, and the wood clanked onto the stone floor above. The excited voice of a Herali man called out, "bye!" and a guy I'd never seen before sporting a bare chest with a bear-clan tattoo on his right shoulder maneuvered past me before I could climb my way up completely.

I was in a stone circle about ten feet in diameter with crenelations like massive stone teeth as high as my chin separated by gaps a foot wide that gave a commanding view of the world outside. At the center were the burnt remains of one of those tube weapons like those at the Lake of Doom.

Geraln stood to one side and stared blankly at me. The chubbiness of his face returned, though his shirt still hung loose. His eyes met mine in silence, his face frozen in time. He blinked. His chest heaved. He swallowed, then turned his gaze out through one of the gaps in stone.

"Helo!" A voice came from the opposite side.

The man who greeted me was Na'uhui. Same dark-green skin with bright yellow eyes, though he kept his white hair cropped short. He was well-built, about my age, about average height, and wore a white bat's wing tattoo on his bare shoulder. He smiled and stepped towards me with his fist out in front of him. "I... nem... izzz... 'ude."