Displaced

Chapter 95

Quickly, hands moving with practiced precision, Pari spread the warm, pliable wax around the inner surface of the small cylindrical container, making sure that the wax lined the sides evenly and without even the tiniest gap. The outer shell of each candle had to be made with care, as its integrity ensured that the contents sealed within stayed fresh. Once she felt satisfied with her handiwork, she placed the tiny wick into the center of the wax pocket and poured the last of the sleepcandle mixture around it. Finally, she covered the whole thing with a bit of extra wax so that only the wick still touched the outside air. With a snap of her fingers—a trick that Bazzalth-grandfather had taught her; he said that repeatable motions might help her with her Observations, and he was right, as always, because he was her grandfather and he was always right—she created a tiny flame and carefully melted the top to the rest of the candle, sealing it up properly.

Picking up her cloak from the floor by her feet, she proceeded to tie the candle by the wick to one of the many thin strings that hung from the inside of the cloak. A patchwork creation made out of the scraps of clothing that Bazzalth-grandfather had lying around, the cloak covered her whole body and head and could be used to hold her arsenal of various candles. She'd added the strings from which the candles hung all by herself with her new sewing skills, but the cloak itself had been created by Pyr-teacher before... before that time.

Pari didn't like to think about that time if she could help it. It made her feel bad inside, like something tiny was chewing away at her tummy. Pari had liked Pyr-teacher. She had found the way he would get angry to be very silly. But at the end, he'd said things that confused her and even frightened her. When he'd said the word "slave", she'd felt a sudden surge of sheer terror spring forth from somewhere deep inside her. She had no idea where that feeling had come from, but it had thrown her into a frenzied panic, and the next thing she knew she was waking up much later. Pyr-teacher was dead again, and he couldn't come back this time.

Pari missed Pyr-teacher—the original Pyr-teacher that is, the one before that time. He had helped her a lot. She'd learned many things from him, from useful things like how to sew to weird, silly things like something called "table manners". Why would crawlers wait to eat their food when it was right there in front of them? Food was meant to be eaten, not looked at!

This cloak was the last thing she had to remember him by. So she would keep it and use it to hold her candles for the journey ahead. She had accepted by now the fact that she had to leave this place, this cavern that had been her home for her entire life.

She didn't want to go. It was warm here, much warmer than the world outside. She'd ventured outside a few times when Bazzalth-grandfather had left to go do some task. It was cold outside. Cold and bright and so very open. She liked the inside better. Bazzalth-grandfather lived here. But she had no choice. She would have to leave. Soon.

Pari didn't know for a definitive fact that her journey on her own would begin soon—Bazzalth-grandfather had yet to tell her such—but she could see how he had changed since returning home just a few days ago. She'd noticed stress weighing him down and slowly building up over the last few seasons, but the difference between the grandfather that had left that day and the one that had returned just half a day later had been like night and day. Something had happened that day. Something that meant her time here was almost up.

So, as she waited for her grandfather to return from another of his patrols, Pari crafted candles. So far, she'd created enough bangcandles to fill the entire right side of her cloak, as well as nine smokecandles and now two sleepcandles.

The different candles did exactly as their names suggested. The bangcandles exploded with a violent bang; though the range and power left a bit to be desired, her and Bazzalth-grandfather's tests on crawler bodies suggested that they were still strong enough to dismember and kill crawlers close enough to the blast. The smokecandles would burst forth with thick grey smoke that would make it hard for anybody to see and would be useful if she needed to run away. The sleepcandles put anybody who breathed the smoke to sleep and had already saved her once. They were her greatest surprise. Unfortunately, they were also her most uncommon candle.