Scattered Fragments

Chapter Eight~ A Cause For Celebration

            Fay had never seen so many people gathered in one place. The road from the gates of the city to the castle was so congested that she felt as if she were suffocating. City guardsmen tried their best to keep the center of the road clear, but the mass of the crowd kept growing. This is ridiculous! Is this really what these people go through every year? Fay wondered in amazement.

            Alice held tight onto Fay's hand; a look of overwhelment and joy striking her features. Fay looked up and noticed people hanging out the windows and balconies of the outlying shops, flags from all the kingdoms waving with the wind.

            "Hey!"  Fay yelled, over the roar of the crowd. "We should get on top of a building, we'll never see anything like this!"

            "What?" Alice yelled back.

Fay gave a hard sigh and pointed a sharp finger up to the roofs. Alice replied with a hard smile and thumbs up.

They pushed through the crowd and rounded a corner, breaking away from the craziness. Both girls entered an empty alleyway. Fay looked around, looking for a building they could easily scale.

            "Would this work?" Alice pointed to a wall with a metal pipe running from the ground to the roof.

Fay put a hand on the pipe and began pulling on it, testing its durability. "It'll have to do. Do you think you can climb this?"

Alice looked at the length of the building, backing up."Yeah, shouldn't be so hard." Without another word she started running towards the wall; her strides powerful. She leaped, the bottom of her boots finding purchase on the wall. With one final leap off the wall, she wrapped her arms around the pipe  at the height of her jump and began pulling herself up.

Fay was impressed. She waited until Alice cleared the climb. Fay willed the dormant energy in her body to feed the muscles in her legs as she approached the wall. She let the energy swell for a second before leaping into the air, just enough for her to get over the roof. She landed with grace. When she lifted her head she noticed a group of kids staring at her in amazement. Fay blushed, not knowing what to do or how to react.

"Wow miss, you were flying!" said the smaller kid from the group, his face riddled with blemishes.

"How did you do that?" asked another kid.

Fay struggled to find the right way to explain Corpus Essentia to a bunch of kids. "Lots and lots of vegetables." It was the first lie that came to her.

    "No, she's lying! She's a Souldjier!"  Another kid said, smiling and pointing at her. All the kid's faces lit up.

Smart kid, she thought, feeling annoyed. "Ah yes, that's the right answer. You win!" She said, giving the boy a nudge on the head then walking past the kids and towards Alice.

    "Hey, what do we win?" Asked the final kid of the group.

Fay reached into her coat pocket and tossed the kids a silver coin. "Go crazy." She could hear the kids in the background, arguing and scuffling for the silver coin.

Alice, along with all the other people on the roof, looked down in amazement at the sea of people that came to see the arrival of the royals. The castle gates were open wide, the King of Miora standing at the center with his queen. Surrounding him were councilmen, guards, and other bigwigs Fay didn't bother to acknowledge. Then she noticed someone off to the side, in a brown coat, and jet black hair .

    "Looks like he's here too," Fay said.

Alice looked over to where Fay was looking and noticed James standing off to the side of the entrance, hands folded over his chest and leaning on one of the gates. She kept her eyes on him for a moment, not saying a word. It wasn't a face of glee or delight Fay had expected her to have, but one full of confusion and doubt.