Dripping Away

Chapter 11: The Idea

        Nashirme gave me my pants but couldn't find me my shirt or jacket, so we ran out into the rain with my body exposed to the weather. We were extremely unlucky at this point, because lightning was beginning to strike the earth rapidly, and we had nowhere to go besides the path it was making. And that the electricity in fear of their own death. Nashirme, who could basically make the water manipulate her body through raindrops, kept basically teleporting in every single drop of water to get us to where we were going. My chest left a trail of blood in our wake, so it wasn't as if we could hide very well. I had the feeling we.... weren't.
     Nashirme suddenly stopped in front of an old, nearly collapsed building. She pulled out a set of keys, fumbling with the old lock until the front doors opened into a dusty room. The room had motion-censored lights, so a blinking light had illuminated the empty place. I stopped at the sight of it.
     I should expected this to be Nashirme's place of hiding. My hand grazed the dust of the counter top, the alcohol bottles both broken and very dusty from the abandonment of this place. I remembered the front Mantortek Vorlem had, the bar on the bottom floor that hid the underground, illegal drugs and trading on the upper floors. I had stayed on the bar floor mostly, and sometimes I was lucky enough to be Mantortek's personal guard for the day. It was a job. It gave me a place to stay. Nashirme sat on the old, crooked floor, catching her breath in hopes that it was going to get easier.
     I groaned in pain as my wound had opened even more, blood spilling on the old boards as my body shuttered. Nashirme, taking advantage of the water dripping in through the window, began to form it into a ball of this clear and pure liquid. Slowly, it approached my chest until it was right there covering the wound. It burned like water did against cuts, but then it began to do something I hadn't ever seen water do. The wound began to close, to heal in its completeness without so much as a soar to show for it. Soon, the water disappeared into the air by a flick of Nashirme's wrist, and I was in awe.
     "You never said you could heal," I commented.
     Nashirme shrugged. "You never said that you could take all of the power from the city."
     "Still!" I touched my chest, feeling the newly formed skin. "Healing people is way better than anything I have."
     Nashirme rolled her eyes, turning her head to the open window without another word. I walked over and sat down next to her, staring out the same window.
     "We get lucky," I said. "We're loose strings that the world has forgotten about, and now we're here."
     "Poetic," she rolled her eyes. "You have a lot of optimism for being the wildcard."
     "You claim."
     I wasn't just realistic, and all of this electricity powers and everything else were completely out of my zone. The way I did things was unconventional now, because every time the spark from my fingers returned, I wondered how to deal with it. Maybe Nashirme was going through the same motions.
     "When the sun rises, we'll head to the sewers," Nashirme said. "They're expecting us at night now, so it's the best way."
     I clasped my hands around my knees, expecting a response like 'you look like a child', but Nashirme had little to comment on. Like always.
     "Do you miss your dad?" I asked out of the blue.
     Nashirme tightened her hands into fists. "No."
     "I mean, I still miss my mother even if she was a lunatic, you know. They were still our parents."
     "Dad was... different. You know that."
     "But he's-"
     Nashirme stood up and began to walk towards the staircase. "We're not talking about Dad anymore. We're not talking about then either. I'm going to sleep until sunrise, so do whatever the fuck you want until then."
      She ran up the staircase with her head held low and her body arched in what looked like a defeated way. I understood somewhat. The impact her father had on the world was massive, and I had always known her to try and shy away from her father's... business. And I knew she never witnessed her father's death, because I was there to watch him being forced to drink the rain water and suffer Trelos like Mom did. I kept to myself rather than chasing her to the beyond.
It would not be worth the trouble.
     I approached the window that had lost its panes to time, hearing the lulling sound of the rain as it hit the roof top. There was an awning down the particular alley with the broken window, so I couldn't actually get wet. My chest was wet enough. My entire body was cold and calloused by what felt like the air conditioner of the building pressing down on my chest, but I knew it was actually the draft. The boards creaked in violence against my weight, and it felt as if this place was even older than it actually was.
     "I should sleep," I told myself.
     I pushed myself up against the wall where the broken windows were, and I made my body relax. The was over now, I hoped. My chest had completely healed, though I held my hand over it to make sure I was still together. Luckily, I fell to the lull of the rain without my mind too worried about where I was going.

     I thought about Mantortek enough to feel as if I was back in time to that time just before Trelos. The bar was in full swing. I was standing at the door, checking IDs and looking for some fights to break up. Mantortek was nowhere around at the moment, but everyone was expecting his return shortly. After all, he never left the tower if he could help it, and he was adamant about having his eyes on every person here.
     The truth was, only a select few of us knew that he was on an important business trip that involved something akin to betrayal. We expected blood. We expected Mantortek to be triumphant yet firm, and we expected a great story. I hoped. It would be something to talk about for the weeks to come since we had been dragging on with not even a feud to occupy us. For us uneducated, it was becoming boring.
     "One of you!"
     Someone shouted from the stairs, a man just as faceless as us, and he was also just as useless. His fingers gripped the railing so hard that his knuckles were white and bony. We, being the three of us, looked at him.
      "Miss Nashirme needs a babysitter," he continued. The three of us exchanged a glance that revealed that none of us wanted anything to do with Nashirme.
     "Why not you?' I asked him.
     "You know how I am with kids, man."
     I decided against my best judgement to be the one to watch Nashirme, so I broke away from the other two and attempted to ascend the staircase.

     I woke with a slight shake to my shoulders, Nashirme there covered in rainwater and what looked like blood. She never did look like her father. I had to say the only thing they had in common was the length of their shoulders. But right now as she stared down at me with blood and water on her lips, I saw Mantortek staring into my eyes instead. The powerful, crazy gaze of someone who felt as if they owned everything. I sat up to face her, and she turned away without trying to acknowledge me all too much.
     "Get ready to go," Nashirme said. "I'm sure Abers is worried about you."
     I stood up and followed her, but I couldn't get her father off of my mind.