Undefined - The Zephyr Book 1 ? (completed)(#Wattys2016)

Chapter 12 - Cello

12 - Cello

I don't know how some people would respond to being told that they were born to be a slave, but I don't like it. Risa has a mobile phone and it chirps in her pocket. She veers away to answer it. I take this opportunity to scramble to my feet, leaning over I help Fellin to stand up.

"Are you alright?" I ask him, keeping my voice low.

He shrugs. "Are you?"

I shake my head in reply. "I'm not sure." A moment ago, standing at the gate with Risa and Fellin, I felt more or less happy. But now a surge of homesickness overtakes me. The city feels like a cage, a prison for innocent people. It's beautiful, but a man-made beauty that could never surpass the fresh and icy wildness of the mountains of my home. My mother's eyes swim in my memory for a moment and I wonder how her day went yesterday. How does it feel to be the person left behind?

Risa finishes her conversation. "Fellin, if you don't leave now you will be missed," she says. "I'm sorry about what I did to you."

"Well, no, actually, it was interesting. So that's what it's like?" He smiles widely at her -- I should take a leaf from his book and learn how to be this easygoing.

"I think green would be best for you Fellin," Risa says with a smile.

"You think so? Oh well, I really should go." He nods at me. "Bye."

"See you at lunch."

"Yeah, good idea," he says as he leaves.

Risa turns her attention to me and sighs. "If only you weren't an Undefined, people would be much less inclined to try and challenge you." She shakes her head. "Whatever am I going to do with you?"

I don't have anything to say. I feel like telling her that I can look after myself, but that's a blatant lie. In the free world of my youth, I was my own lord, but here, in the Zephyr, if the past 24 hours have demonstrated anything to me it is that I am helpless.

"Teach me to do things like you just did."

"I can't." Her eyes are filled with sorrow as she lightly taps the diamond on my forehead. My body starts to tingle again. "Undefined are like an empty box without a lid, nothing to hold the power in, nothing to keep it contained. You're the greatest mystery of our world, the biggest question we ask ourselves, why does the Zephyr need you? Why so many of you? That's what everyone will tell you."

"Everyone, except you?" I ask hopefully.

"Except me and a few others," she agrees. "But they won't listen to me. If what they say is true, if you're nothing but baskets like they call you, why then do you always surprise us with extraordinary things? Why do Alprines only ever choose from among the Undefined?"

"Maybe we're meant to ride the Alrpines and visit distant lands like in stories?"

Her eyes shine, and I realise one thing about Risa Medrick.

She's a lunatic.

Maybe I like that.

*

A stream of visitors suddenly arrives at Risa's study and she has to attend to several things. She casually asks me to put things back in order and for the next twenty minutes I'm placing books back on shelves and stacking papers. It's rare to see books outside a library today, so I shuffle through them. They're all old fairytales and fantasy novels. The papers are all handwritten, poems and stories, she has hundreds of them.

"Those belong in the drawer, don't read them," Risa yells at me from the door, for a moment sounding like an anxious teenager. I smile and quickly stuff them in one of the already overcrowded drawers.