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

Chapter 13 -- Syianne

13 - Syianne

No one follows us. Cello takes my backpack from me and swings it over his shoulder, we cross the corridor and down the spiralling stairs, out into the silent white streets of the Zephyr, through the gate and stand on the street corner watching the rail-cars zoom by.

"Where do we go from here?" he asks me. I look at him and he seems fine. Fine about everything that just happened. He doesn't look anxious or worried and he doesn't look surprised to discover that I too was born in the Darabin like him, that neither of us are truly considered Medanese. I have no memory of my birth parents, I never thought it would be such a significant detail to anyone but myself. Does Cello think that it doesn't matter anymore because it's all in the past?

But it mattered to them so much they had to ask about it repeatedly. They wanted to know everything, without leaving even the smallest detail unattended. And that leads me to wonder – what are they so afraid of?

"I don't know," I answer.

He sits on the bench by a rail-car call-board and opens his battered old bag pulling out a battered old leather-bound journal. He opens it and leafs through the crisply yellowing pages. "There's a cheap room we can get for twenty Modes a week. It has a kitchen and everything."

I stare at him, how could he be so calm about this? And how long does he think it'll last? "They're not going to come after us," I suddenly realise. "They're just going to wait until we run out of options and have no choice but to go back."

He looks up from his journal. "Then let's not run out of options," he says to me, as if it were that simple.

"And when we do come back, they're going to punish us," I say.

He sighs and closes the book, putting it back in his bag. "What can they do to us? Put us in jail? Sentence us to a life-long term of servitude?" He shakes his head. "We're already slaves, Syianne, and this," he waves his hand toward the forebodingly high Zephyr wall behind us, "this is a prison."

His words make my skin crawl. I've been a prisoner to the Zephyr even before I came here. I couldn't live among others freely, I have no aspirations, I have no dreams. My only objective in life has been to survive the separation from my family. "Solitude," I say without thinking. "They can find us something to do that will ensure we will always be alone. It's alright for you, you can never be alone, you have her."

I look at the Alprine he stupidly named Risa, and know how I painfully long for her. It's a strange unexplainable pull, as if there's a hole in my heart that only she can fill. I didn't acknowledge this feeling when I saw her the first time, I didn't understand that this yearning had existed in me my entire life. It's powerful enough to send me plummeting into depression, and wild enough to fill me with desperate energy.

I'm consumed by jealousy. I don't have an Alprine and thus I am missing a part of myself, and this boy, Cello Riles, defiles my imperfection by being so utterly perfect, so utterly whole, because he has her.

He rises off the bench and looks down at me. My comment doesn't bother him, by the look in his eyes he knows: by having an Alprine he's more than just a Jewel. "If you want to go back now, I'll come with you," he says. My eyes narrow in suspicion, why is he so generous to me? He doesn't look like he actually wants to go back there. He doesn't look like a boy that wants or needs to be part of anything. "Maybe our point's already been made."

I hesitate. What do I want to prove to them? Is this the way to do it? If we go back now, if I choose that, how weak will it make me? Did I spend all this time trying to become strong only to find myself too scared to go forward?