Activity

BURN

“There was but…” Ax-Punk says.

He doesn’t finish.

Instead he sighs, wanders back inside the Ma’n’Pa store.

Hm. To spy or not to spy.

“Hey punks.” I said, politely. “We’re leaving Ax-Punk behind.”

There. Now I’m not spying. I’m waiting impatiently for him.

“Excuse me ma’am. Could you tell us where the port is?”

See, here’s the weird thing about me – I have GREAT hearing. I hear eVeRyThInG. All the time. So. So loud.

But don’t ask me where a noise is coming from.

And if too many noises or certain noises are clamoring for attention, I. will. be a horrible person to be around.

“Got to skip town huh.”

This place is as noisy as the Hives! But… But I have a nice little focus point…

“Unfortunately, I am not blessed with… the uhm most civil companions.”

Well, that’s just rude.

I mean, he’s not wrong. But still. Rude.

Oscar’d fuss at him. But, Oscar ain’t here, and he can’t give anyone the Glare of Disappointment™.

(I like Search and Grimme because that expression doesn’t work on them. To give you a proper frame of reference, dear listeners, it turns me into pliable mush. I’ll do whatever he wants so that he isn’t disappointed in me.)

(Well, for a few minutes anyway. And then he makes me mad or it’s suffocating and I do what I want and the cycle begins anew. Dads, amiright?)

“Well son, the closest port is Whitehall. But mind you with the jetstream about, no one is heading north.”

Jetstream…

“And what in this clearly gods-forsaken land is a jetstream?”

Search – who waits for me, like her nice punk self always does – slaps me over the back of my head. “Don’t blaspheme.”

“I wasn’t talking about your deity!” I protest. “I was talking about all deities!”

Search grinds her teeth. I can hear that very clearly. And I’m practically the only person that makes her do that. (The other two are Oscar and her mom.)

“Look, if they do me a fair turn, I might believe in them. But they haven’t yet.” I point to my non-eyes. “So why waste my extremely limited time?”

“Your time might be less ‘limited’ if you weren’t constantly putting yourself in danger.”

“You sound like Oscar.” I dismiss. Which is the perfect thing to fly from my lips because that will make her madder. Hm. How do I recover? “Hey, I like to feel alive! And you never feel more alive than when you’re almost dead!” Welp. I messed up again.

She slaps me on the back of the head again. “Done spying yet?”

Hm. Usually she’d be fussing at me a while over that. Guess this place has her unsettled too.

“Bold words coming from you!”

“Really? You notice you are the only one I use psychometry on regularly? Hm? Ever notice that?”

Here we go again.

“You use it on Grimme too.” I protest.

“Yes. Your mom.” She deadpans. “It’s almost like you picked up that despicable habit from her.”

Can I head off the lecture?

“Oh look! There’s Ax-Punk!” I say.

 

SEARCH

And then the idiot’s off.

Now, now. Be nice. He’s had a rough time of it…

I look up at the … what am I even seeing?

Okay. This is bad for my mental health …

Is … is that sky?

Dad has stories of sky. Legends passed down in the family for so long I never actually believed

No. that’s a lie. I do believe them. Or I want to.

I want to believe that ‘sky’ and ‘stars’ and ‘countries’ are real. But that means believing ‘war’ and ‘devastation’ are real.

I guess there is some truth to that one religion. “There can’t be light without shadow. If there was no good, there would be no evil.”

Stop daydreaming.

I grab Burn as he almost tumbles face-first. There is a strangely-strong wind here. It’s blowing away his smoke.

But if I take his arm and keep a good pace, he’ll be fine. We won’t have to worry.

Caleb stops at a signpost, hiding his face from the bar-windows.

“Where are we going?” I ask.

Burn, with a huff of frustration, starts openly manipulating the smoke. His fire-opal is in his hand, and he coils the smoke in threads around it, creating a geode-like shell over the stone.

Caleb is staring.

“Where are we going?” I reiterate. While Burn swears under his breathe at the why is the wind this strong?!

 

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