Chapter 2 – If You Wish

  Scorch Market – Drift 2

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  Inhale. One, two, three, four.

  Exhale. Five, six, seven, eight.

  A steady pattern, competing with the rhythm of her heart. Her feet hit the packed red sand of the desert path. At each step, a small puff of dust rose, sticking to her boots.

  Iron-rich and sun-baked, the ground was worn by countless sols of carts, electric runners, and organic threads, faintly imprinted with the ghosts of yesterday’s footprints.

  Inhale. One, two, three, four.

  Exhale. Five, six, seven, eight.

  The Scorch was quiet this early, before the twin suns climbed high enough to burn.

  That was why she ran in the early morning. Why she always had. No one to see that her stride was wider than it should have been or her pace so much faster than most. She could really run—fly across the ground. Fast and faster, follow that ache in her chest, that pull toward the wild side of the desert.

  It was a rhythm more ancient than thought, always pulling her to move like a prayer she didn’t know the words to. Some mornings, it seemed like a voice trying to break free. Other times, it was just peace and quiet. This place, Devon Five, sang with the wind and carried whispers over dunes and dead trees. The people here had learned to live slowly, peacefully, in the heat. She did not.

  And so she ran.

  She ran because it was the only way she knew to listen to her body and the desert within and without.

  One day, she would gather her own medicine. One day, she hoped to understand why stillness scared her more than the sand.

  Inhale. One, two, three, four.

  Exhale...

  A shimmer appeared far to the left, just above the dunes. Light, dust, and movement mixed together.

  She forgot the count.

  She blinked, and her breath caught. Her legs kept moving, but the rhythm was gone. She hated when that happened, when her body reminded her she wasn’t ready.

  Slowing to a jog, then a walk, she let the moment pass, calming her breath.

  The shimmer was gone. Or maybe it had never been there. The desert loved to play tricks, especially at sunrise.

  She blew out through her nose, frustration growing.

  She hadn’t missed a count in weeks. Not since the last storm.

  She adjusted the bindings on her thighs and rolled her shoulders before picking up her pace. The shimmer was gone. The count was gone. All that remained was—what her father called—her mountain-sized ambition and sweat-drenched hair.

  By the time her boots reached the old market stone—half-buried and still cool from the night—the first sun had begun its climb. Hikari. Pale and yellow, her light sliced across the horizon, casting a single long shadow behind her, sharp-edged and certain.

  She preferred the days when Nero rose first.

  She liked the purple shadow better. But Hikari’s golden light brought a softer kind of joy. It felt calmer, almost magical.

  The air flowed, dry and electric, bringing the scent of the coming heat.

  Below, the market started to take shape at the foot of the Monastery. Booths opened slowly, like petals blooming, their colors dull in Hikari’s early light. They seemed to wait, almost holding their breath.

  The real brightness would come later, when Nero also cleared the ridge with his blue light. His light was colder and heavier, and he always rose more slowly when the orbit favored Hikari, like today.

  She looked up, searching.

  There he was.

  “Nero,” she whispered his name like a greeting.

  He was just a sliver now, curling over the northern ridge like a knife’s edge.

  He would rise soon, flood the Scorch in violet shimmer, and split her shadow in two.

  She would watch it from her booth, as always.

  With tea, with silence, and with the quiet ache of wanting more.

  Ahead, the Monastery loomed. Square and solemn, its bare white stone walls rose straight from the red desert, like an aching molar.

  Its shadow stretched before it—long, dark, and consuming.

  No windows. No banners. No doors, save one: a narrow slot at the base, just wide enough to send things in or let the silent ones out.

  Red sand clung to its foundation, as if the desert had tried to claim it and failed. It appeared abandoned, the upper levels vanishing into light, lost in Hikari’s glare, unreachable even by sound.

  Only silent monks walked those halls. Silent and strange, with their monochrome robes and slow paces.

  She looked away. She didn’t like looking at it. Something about the size of it. It looked like a prison.

  Her gaze slid down the slope to the waking market, where color stirred in motion.

  Vendors adjusted awnings. Cloth banners snapped in the first gusts of heat.

  The clatter of glass jars and the soft thunk of baskets settling into place sounded like home.

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  At the far end of the second row, a figure was standing at the edge of her father’s booth.

  He was just visible from the top of the dune. Tall and draped in dark cloth, he stood out while the rest of the market was washed in muted colors by both Nero and Hikari.

  It wasn’t Hayam, her father. He never stood so still or so sharply, like a shadow left behind by the light.

  The shadow shifted from foot to foot, impatient and tense, like someone waiting for a verdict and rubbing his hands together.

  She slowed down, her instincts catching on something she couldn’t name but knew by heart. The desert shimmered again — the same shimmer, she realized, still there. Not a trick. A small craft was headed for the docks.

  Ven’pa lux, she muttered under her breath and kept walking, pressing her hand against her thigh, feeling the reassuring pressure of the wrap, making sure everything was still hidden, still safe.

  The hooded figure didn’t look up when she arrived, huffing and drenched in sweat.

  Hayam was already inside the booth, bent over an open crate, his hands moving too fast, as if speed could make up for helplessness. His voice stayed soft, murmuring to the man with apologies and hope. That kind of hope slipped too easily from someone kind.

  “Thank you, thank you,” the stranger was saying. “My child will be safe after this. My boy will be better—”

  His tone was careful, almost trembling. It sounded truthful on the surface.

  But she felt a pull start at the base of her spine and climb up to her neck. A violent little current. One she hated. Useful on days like this. Instead of leaving her apart, it set the liar aside.

  She stepped around the edge of the booth and came to stand beside Hayam. Her boots brushed the matting in a slow, steady rhythm.

  She already knew how this would play out, and she hated every second of it.

  She reached for his shoulder and gave it a gentle, meaningful squeeze. He turned to her, hopeful, but she shook her head once, just enough to warn him. His face fell, and so did his hands. There was no anger or protest, only understanding. He hadn’t heard the lie. But she had felt it.

  She turned to the man, walked to the front of the stall, and leaned forward, letting her shadow fall across the table. The heat of her exertion radiated around her.

  He blinked as she stepped into view. “My medicine,” he said quickly, eyes darting. “It’s for my son—”

  “I’ve worked this booth since before I could read,” she said, her voice mild and unthreatening, her breath becoming less laboured. “I know every face that passes through these dunes.”

  She brushed her hand over the counter, feeling soft fabric catch on her glove. “Every cough that lasts more than two days, every child who limps, and every parent who prays over them.” She paused and looked him in the eye, unblinking. “And I’ve never seen you.”

  The man glanced toward Hayam. He said nothing.

  “We don’t sell on credit,” she continued, drawing his attention back. “Not to ghosts who borrow names and trade on pain that isn’t theirs.”

  His lips curled. “You’re cold.”

  “Thank you for noticing. And if you have a son, he deserves better than a liar for a father.”

  A flash in his eyes — then his hand moved to the back of his cloak. A weapon. She'd seen it a beat too late.

  Her fingers dropped to the binding at her thigh, pressing it hard, hoping it wouldn’t unwind. “Leave,” she said. Her voice stayed calm, but the air around her seemed to change. Danger was pulling at her body to react, making the fine hairs on the back of her neck and arms stand on end. She couldn’t. She could, but she wouldn't. Not for a tug or thief or whatever the stranger was.

  It was enough to make him pause. She nodded past him. “We have an audience.”

  He turned. Vendors had begun to glance their way. The market was waking.

  He cursed softly and stepped back, his boots scraping dust, then vanished into the rising heat. She watched him go. “zen spa u,” she said quietly, at his back.

  Only then did her fingers relax and let go of the binding. It was a habit she couldn’t shake, always reaching for it.

  She let her breath settle, shaking away the encounter. Beneath the table, a small shellkrat the size of a coin shifted the sand in slow circles, the faintest motion to burrow deeper. Its pale, matte shell vibrated gently in the heat.

  She crouched beside it, her knees brushing the matting. She gently ran her fingers over the shell, tracing its spiral ridges. She liked that about them, the different patterns, each one unique. She always had.

  The shellkrat pulsed once beneath her fingertips, gentle, just like a heartbeat buried in stone. A rhythm more tremor than sound.

  “You caught that too, didn’t you?” she murmured. The creature didn’t answer. Its stillness felt deliberate to her. Listening. Knowing. “Keep the secret, little one.”

  She stayed a few moments longer, watching the spot where he had stood. She needed to make sure he was gone and let her heart settle.

  It didn’t. It wouldn’t for a while.

  The market sounds returned in pieces: the clink of glass, the flap of canvas, the murmur of early trade.

  Then the scents: crushed pepper and dried mint, boiled roots steeping in metal pots, leather warmed by the suns, and some faint curl of dry orange peel from someone’s spice basket. Una, the young girl in the next stall, arranged fresh tree cuttings in tall, blue glass water containers. They would bloom by midday, their scent pulling in curious customers. Nero’s light bounced off the glass, spreading violet reflections across her skin.

  Serendipity looked down at her thigh, checked the wraps, and got up. Hayam hadn’t moved from his spot, but something in his posture had changed, like a knot had loosened inside him.

  “I’m sorry, Serendipity,” he said.

  She stared, quiet and surprised. He’d stolen her words. “What for?” she asked. “I’m the one who...”

  “Nah,” he cut in, already shaking his head. He looked tired. “I should thank you, really. And thank the stars for the monks who brought you to me.”

  He didn’t push away from the crate. He just leaned there, bracing himself with both hands, as if letting go would make him fall straight through the earth.

  He wasn’t old, not even close. But he was kind, and real kindness always seemed to weigh on him more than it should.

  “I am grateful,” Hayam said, softness in it that startled her. “Though Nero knows I never thought I would be, to have been given the responsibility of raising you.”

  He smiled then, not the sharp smile he gave customers or the dry one he used for lectures, but a softer smile he probably hadn’t shown in many sols. He let out a long, low breath and rested his head against the crate. His eyes still smiled, but his shoulders hadn’t quite relaxed.

  “You handled that well,” he said, almost like he was commenting on the weather.

  She straightened, brushing a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “I didn’t do it for praise.”

  “I know.” He turned a sealed jar in his hands, not meeting her eyes. “That’s why.”

  She frowned. He rarely spoke in riddles, and he usually didn’t talk this much at all.

  Hayam set the jar down with a soft clink and crossed his arms. “Maybe it’s time you started collecting your own ingredients, if you wish,” he said.

  Just like that, with no preamble and no ceremony.

  She blinked, silenced.

  He glanced at her sidelong, like he was testing the ground before stepping out onto it. “You know what’s needed. You know what’s useful. And clearly, you know how to keep people from robbing us blind.”

  “I...” She opened her mouth, then shut it again.

  She didn’t know what she was going to say. That he was wrong? That she wasn’t ready? That she’d waited sols for this?

  Instead, she nodded once, a small movement to show she understood.

  Hayam didn’t smile this time, but he gave her a look she had only seen once before—the day he let her stand behind the table, not just beside it.

  It wasn't pride exactly. She couldn't have endured that. It was trust. And somehow, that was more terrifying.

  She swallowed her own pride, picked up a heavy crate and began arranging oversized jars on the back wall. "Did the leap gate open today? Any news from out there?"

  "Not yet. Maybe tomorrow — I heard there's a wine shipment coming in for the monastery." He paused. "Waiting for something?"

  She shrugged, not quite answering. "Just wondering what's moving."