The Gemini Age: Book One

[3-1] Uprooted - Part One

    "Hey! Stop yanking me around so hard! That's my dirt-throwing wrist!"

    The alleyway dripped with water from the gutters overhead, and moss thrived in the damp that stuck to the walls of the apartment buildings. Puddles trembled in their potholes along the floor, sloshing a stream of black rainwater over the cold stone and underneath the wheels of sun-bleached skips and through the chewed holes of chain fencing. The other side of the stone wall shook with thunderclaps of bass.

    Marcus released Lloyd from his grasp and folded his arms, his sharp eyebrows lowered. "Was that part of your idea?" A lock of his comb-over fell into his face, lingering for a few seconds before he elected to fix it. "You said we'd be cleaning windows, not trashing them!"

    Adjusting his hoodie, Lloyd shrugged. "And we will be! It's not my fault that these people have the most pristine windows in the world! We had to do something!" Like always, he preferred to avoid Marcus' seething expression while he thought, instead glancing around the alley as if searching for something. When he found the remainder of his words, he met his brother's eye. "Look, we've cleaned hundreds of windows before! We'll get them as good as new, I promise. Now, where's our bucket?" 

    From behind a pile of dirty white rubbish bags, the thin handle of a black plastic bucket caught his eye. As he picked it up, the water inside rose and kissed the rim of the bucket, though Marcus ignored it as he stared spears through his brother's face. "And what if that girl recognises us? You think she's going to let the guys that trashed her window clean it up?" At the wave of Lloyd's hand, Marcus sighed and sparked a restrained fire in his hands, aiming its heat towards the base of the bucket. "She's probably told her neighbours about us already. We're wasting our time."

    "You worry too much!" Lloyd held the bucket in one hand and mixed the water with his other, ushering the heat through the glimmering liquid. Signalling for Marcus to snuff out his flame, he produced a used bottle of dish soap and coaxed its remaining contents into the bucket, stirring until suds threatened to streak down the outside of the bucket. "We're in a city! Nobody talks to their neighbours in cities, we'd have been tossed out of Greenwich within a week if they did. Even if they did, we need to talk to site managers, not residents, right? We're good." He winked and flashed a satisfied smile over the bucket.

    Marcus peered overhead as he flicked his flame back on. "We'd better be," he muttered under his breath, a thin tail of steam disappearing into the air before him. Above him, the first of the windows they had vandalised sat in the sun, a lump of gutter mud crumbling down the wall. Even if Lloyd could remove the earth from street level, the marks it would no doubt leave behind would take several cycles of splashing and drying to remove, and the sun would be settling into the cushioned horizon by the time they finished undoing their messes. "Are we starting here?" he asked, motioning up to the filthy window with his shoulder.

    Passing the bucket to his brother, Lloyd checked the security of his topknot and smiled. "If we can find a manager with cash in their hand, you bet we are!"

    Though some water splashed over its rim, the bucket dragged Marcus' limbs down as Lloyd led him down the alley. Marcus held the bucket with both his hands and watched the water swill around as he swerved past a missing chunk of the pavement. "Great."

    ***

    For such an important building, Edinburgh's City Chambers evaded the casual gaze. When following the sweeping currents of Wilfred's coat tails, Jade had let her eyes relax and absorb the stonework that dominated so much of the inner city's architecture. What was not cast in old brown stone was aggressively modern, so atypical of its environment that passers-by could not help but notice it.