Dust

VIII

         

To my surprise, Mother did not argue when I told her that Gael and I were not staying for dinner. I told her he should see the city, especially after being in the house the whole day, and she agreed, so the night is ours.

    Of course, the inner city is not the safest when night falls; all sorts of dangerous and illegal activity happens in seemingly harmless night clubs, dark alleys, even in the middle of the park. I have already made a plan, as I drag Gael onto a subway train, that I will avoid as much of that as possible.

    Gael grips onto a steel pole to balance himself, while I sit in a chair in front of him, anxious to breathe the night air. Gael is very conscious of himself and his surroundings; he looks around with wide eyes at everyone and everything about him, tapping at the pole in his grip with his index finger. He's strange to me, and not just because he's human. I watch the way he moves and listen to the way he talks, and I wonder...if he was one of us, would he even be any different?

    "You know where we're going, right?" asks Gael in a low voice, leaning his weight into the pole, resting his head on his hand.

    "We're not wandering around Maris blindly, no," I say, crossing my legs and leaning forward. I rest my chin in my palms, looking up at Gael with a smile. "But we might get lost."

    His eyes narrow. "Is that figurative?"

    The subway rumbles a little underneath us, and I turn my gaze out the window; we are traveling on a bridge above the main highway. Cars pass in blots of red and white light, like a splatter painting against a twilight sky. The skyscrapers of the inner city rise, dark monoliths underneath the moon.

    Gael is still talking. "Are you saying we will get lost in a 'it's useless to be found' kind of way, or are you saying we physically might get lost?"

    "Gael. You over-think things."

    "So it isn't figurative?"

    I turn away from the window and face him again, shaking my head for a moment. Again, he's strange. "It's what you want it to be," I say.

    "Okay, now you're just trying to make my brain explode," Gael comments. The train lurches to a stop, and he makes eye contact with me, but I shake my head. We don't get off for a few more stops, and I have told Gael this, but at every single stop, he still feels the need for some reason to check with me. I am beginning to see why Finn fell in love with him so quickly; he acts like a child, even if I would never tell him that.

    "Gemma."

    Gael has come to sit next to me, since the seat beside my own has recently been freed up. He watches the wizard that had been sitting there vanish into the train station we're stopped at before he looks at me again. "Thank you," he says.

    One of my eyebrows arches, and I pivot a little to face him. The train begins to move again, the lights of the city streaking in Gael's eyes like reflections on glass. "For making your brain explode?"

    He smiles, all teeth. "No. For saving me."

    I stare at him, the quiet serenity in his expression. His grin pulls up at one side, and there's a blush against the bronze skin of his cheeks. His eyes watch me as if there is no reason to watch anything else; the curls of his hair are ebony ink strokes falling across his forehead. I can't imagine not saving him, looking at this face of innocence and leaving him in that forest. I don't know what he was running from that night, but to me, it doesn't matter. "It wouldn't have been fair if I'd left you there," I say, and grin. "It's in my nature to help the mentally unstable."