The Arkanist

Chapter Seventeen: Leaving

Chapter Seventeen: Leaving

We left at dawn, and it was raining.

            I might have managed half an hour of sleep, but that's being generous. Truthfully, it felt more like five minutes. Five incredibly short minutes. From the Silver Hall, Aryl led me back to his tower, wherein I experienced the brief semblance of sleep, and woke again to prepare.

            Although, it wasn't until we were packed and ready, waiting for the last of the packs to be saddled to the horses, that I thought of Alace. I hadn't told her where I was going, hadn't spoken to her in about two days. Would she miss me, I thought. I didn't really know. I didn't even know if I would miss her, or more so, why I was thinking about her. I suppose it was love, but I wasn't sure if I loved her. I was young and immature, and inside me I felt a strange feeling. Was it love? I don't really know. It didn't feel entirely like love, but what does love feel like? I hardly knew her, really.

            Whatever feeling I had for Alace, it wouldn't make any difference now. I was leaving and she was staying. She would go on with her life and I would go on with mine, two paths diverging when once they were the same. Maybe she would remember me someday, but more than likely, I was simply a way to pass the time for her during a lousy job in the library. Likewise, she was simply a friend, a person I could talk to.  Maybe that was the feeling?

            Either way, whatever the outcome of it all, we left at dawn, and it was raining. There was nothing that could change it. It was entirely irrevocable, ultimate in a way that only rain is.

            Through the early, light drizzle, the sun fell over the misted hills with the weight of a pale reflection, thin and gossamer, the clouds upon the sky grey as stone, a cold chill breathed from their shadows. It was, in fact, unnaturally cold, especially for the tail end of spring. The flowers had all mostly bloomed and the trees were shedding their garish gowns for a supple green coat; but in the rain, it all appeared quite drear and dour. That was rain's job.

            When everything was readied at last, and Viven spoke the command, we set out and no more than a minute out of the city walls, I was soaking. It was the kind of rain that did that. Not the rain that holds itself on your clothes, making your hair and face wet, but the kind of rain that sinks low and true, down to your skin. I didn't like it one bit. It made me feel like I was wearing someone else's skin, made me feel strange, uncomfortable, as though I was trapped within a false body.

            However much I disliked the feeling, the feeling lingered. It was like it knew it was bothering, and continued to bother me, relishing in my displeasure as though it was amused. It was when a friend pokes and prods you, knowing full well that it annoys the hell out of you. But only kind of. I couldn't punch rain in the face for annoying me. If I did, someone would probably question my sanity, and that was not what I wanted to introduce myself as. I didn't want to be the mentally insane, probably psychotic kid in the group. No, not even Aryl could help me if I went there. I would simply have to deal with it, so I shrugged the pack on my back and continued on.

            It wasn't the only thing nagging at my mind either. I think Aryl could tell. He always could. He possessed a strange understanding, that, at times scared me, and at other times, I admired. He didn't stare at me, didn't place a comforting hand on my shoulder, didn't try and talk me through my tribulations. He wasn't that sort of person.

            I would catch him stealing quick glances in my direction, but never toward me, never making full eye contact. He avoided those sorts of things as much as possible. But I knew he was thinking about me, concern creeping into his eyes as he saw me trying to calm my frantic mind, to quell the storm of thoughts I had wrought.

            Not even half a mile out of the city, I can honestly say my mind was a wreck. It felt as though my head had been replaced by a block of stone, and some fastidious mason was pounding away with his mallet, chiseling off the excess in an attempt to sculpt something. We had made our way through the streets, down the to the gates, and out of the city, and as I looked back, glancing over my shoulder at the shadow of Raenish, I didn't see towers, or walls or anything else, all I saw was my home. I think that was the hardest to handle, over everything. If nothing else, my mind was trying, and failing, to cope with the fact that I was leaving my home.

            Alace, well, she was a girl. There are other girls in the world. Plenty, really. I hardly knew if she even liked me back, or if I had just created this false delusion of a relationship. While my mind ached at the feeling of leaving her, uninformed, it paled in comparison.

            Alace was a girl, yes, but my home, well, you only have one home. One true home, anyway. And I was walking away from it, quite literally. Raenish's hard grey stone, something so firm, so grounded in my life began to muddle as I walked along the road, heading north, began to crumble around me like sand through my fingers.

            I was leaving the only place I knew, the winding cobble streets, the markets, the library. I was leaving the place my father had raised me, leaving the place I learned and grew and matured, the place where all my memories stemmed.

            Without it, I was alone, lost in a world far larger than I could ever imagine. Reading about it in books is a different thing entirely. In books, space and size and measure is all contained, its all held in the pages, and however immersive it may seem, at the end of it all, you close the cover, and put it on the shelf. You cannot put the world on a shelf. It's like trying to catch stardust, trying to sew shadow itself.

            I felt the stones under my feet as I walked and looked forward, the road disappearing into nothing, going on forever, infinite and eternal. For me, the end of the road was my father. That was what I told myself, what I told myself to keep the world smaller, focused. But yet I still felt small, still felt alone, even with Aryl, even with the eleven other companions I walked beside.

            I looked back once more.

            In the rain, the summer fog, the place I had lived in for my entire life faded like the sun into the sea, gentle and easy, without pain, without agony. It was there, a blurry silhouette in the distance, and then it was gone, pale grey fog claiming its place.

            I wondered if I would ever see it again.

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