Auryn
I will leave the three girls. Pear, Ruffle, and Apples smooch like fucking teenagers. A sparkly tricycle with giggles on the handlebars. The muses having a threesome of discovery with the apocalypse pending right above their pretty little skulls. The sight of that unholy cloudburst makes me so angry. Nothing for the valley? Only wetting that godforsaken chunk of failed architecture?
“If the wind stays down,” I shout at the women, “use the staircase to get out. I will climb down and find Liora.”
Ruffle is clearly shaken by my anger. Apples and Pear seem better able to handle my dark cloud. None of them can use the ropes for anything useful. It’s best I go alone. I have what I need, so I run the walls, back to where the camp is, to my stuff turned to landfill.
I am running too fast. Slow down a little. I could trip. Things are turning sour here. Maybe me and my child soon have to find a home somewhere else. I must find Li, otherwise…
I hook the anchor, throw down the rope. Take a deep breath and try not to think ahead. To not expect the worst. This rain stirred me. The wound is still there. I didn’t drown. I wasn’t killed. I found my way here. Nothing will keep me safe if I don’t care. I haven’t earned this life. There is nothing to earn. There is just gratitude. Even if I don’t notice, or feel. There is the gift of every breath. But not without my child. I’d go first a hundred times.
I drop in one smooth, whirring slide. Slightly too fast. I leave the rope. Without a second, it’ll be a friggin’ hassle getting the anchor down. Run between the trucks, ignore the scattered collection, and go straight for the Pyrr. Even if she brings me halfway, it saves precious time.
I enter the cabin, strap myself in, check the vitals, pull the joystick back to reverse, and look over my shoulder through the small panoramic window.
Nothing. It reads restored battery on the display. Is it broken? Did it die on me? Now?
“Okay, if I drive, Kiko?” says Aphram in the slickest voice ever.
“You again?” I can’t help but say. “Here to slow me down, or what?”
He giggles. He actually giggles.
“I missed you,” he says, sliding backwards and kicking up large clouds of gravel and dirt. “So glad to be back in my old barge. Had to leave the Kemushi kinda hastily. The little Khan almost did the reset with ‘me’ still in the big bug.”
We are speeding toward the cathedral. He didn’t ask about our heading.
“I thought the woman might try,” he murmurs on, “but ‘me’ did a pre-emptive cut-and-paste during the heroic one-armed sword fight. A ‘me-gration,’ so to speak. Have we found Eldon yet? I am missing a few hours.”
“No, and I’m rushing to find Liora. She may have been flushed down the drain by that… that… didn’t you bring her across?”
“Wasn’t me,” he says. “Did see the inverse sky-fountain erupt, though. Quite the spectacle, huh?”
I’d forgotten how insanely fast the Pyrr can be handled by Aphy. Even at her age.
“We shouldn’t make it a habit. She’s no longer the young gal I used to know,” Aph says.
God, it really is him.
“I missed you too, Aph. Now shut up and let me think.”
“Okay,” he says.
“Kiko?”
I try to ignore him. Concentrate on the new rattle I notice somewhere at the back.
“What?”
“I know something you don’t.”
“Stop playing games.”
“What else but play is there,” he says, “but I am serious. I only learned just now. Something happened in that thunderstorm. Not sure what to make of it.”
“Jeez, could you be a bit more vague?”
He ignores me. We are now at jet speed. Going straight as a shot arrow. Rattling like an old-school time machine.
“That building over there…,” he says.
The cathedral is growing and growing in our front window. The digital man takes a deep breath.
“…that inflated, coppiced tree trunk can think.”
I open my mouth to say something cynical. But I know Aph; he means it.
“Why would you think that? You recycled clump of transistors!”
“Because it told me some important things. Some of it needs processing. She’s a bit… uh, different.”
“But…?”
“But one thing stood out.”
“Yes?”
“There is a human in the cathedral. A male. He’s being repaired, is what she said.”
“What? That can only be—”
I have a million questions. Being repaired? That means…
“Where?”
Aph’s taking the wide turn, almost on two wheels.
“She didn’t say. It was all rather cryptic. Like an alien oracle with a speech defect.”
My head is tumbling all the stuff in there. Spinning the contents. My thought-processor attempting a smoothie, but failing. It’s all blended to blubbery pulp. With undefinable chunks.
Then reality drags me out of my head.
Close up, it turns out it still rains heavily. A wider circle than just the towering artificial peaks. Water is still gushing down its sides. What looks like mist above the desert floor are curtains of rain landing hard on the houses and buildings. Splattering.
Aph slows down as we get closer. Water pours out of every gap. The streets are shallow rivers ending in rapids before they spread and dissipate on the valley floor.
Damn. I am thrown back in time. When the town was spared because of the elevation. Now it got a flash flood that probably damaged each and every house. A baptism that filled up the lungs.
We drive upstream into one of the wider streets. Decades of accumulated dust stick as muddy deposits against the façades. Further in, it seems cleaner. Like everything’s been through an aggressive car wash, hosed down like a mental patient. Puddles and wetness. In town, most of the water is gone already.
It seems lighter. A hazy drizzle persists.
A house has collapsed. Fell face-down onto the cobbles. Blocking the path for Pyrr. Further down, another ruined dwelling.
“Want me to find another river to paddle up?” Aph asks.
I have entered silent mode. The past is visiting. Has set up the projector and closed the curtains. We will watch old pictures. Unasked for.
“Thanks, Aph. This’ll be it. I’ll walk from here on.”
I get out, pat the door twice, and feel sad.