Chapter 8: Strive For

  Twisting and clicking two pieces of metal, Bix kept scolding herself for not waking up before the sun rose, taking the leather-bound bag and leaving before anyone noticed her.

  Leaving was the entire goal.

  She didn’t want to be here.

  Bix, though, had rolled out of bed and found herself staring at the bag, and Lodovico’s words echoed in her mind. "I hope you’ll join me in the library tomorrow."

  Bix found it impossible not to comply. Bix didn’t even know how to describe it exactly. She glanced up from her tinkering, looking across the dark wooden table. Lodovico was curled up in a large chair, a woven throw tossed over his legs, a large book laid over top of it as he read.

  It was odd. How comfortable he looked. How at ease… even as Bix could identify a weight in his eyes.

  That was it, Bix realized. Lodovico was the only person who she saw carrying a similar weight to the Olders and Elders of her home. Of herself.

  Maybe. Just maybe he understood.

  Lodovico turned a page. He didn’t fill the silence. He didn’t ask her questions. He didn’t pester her. Yet he brightened when she ducked through the doorway and took a seat at the study table.

  If he did understand. If she was right about the weight. Lodovico baffled her.

  He seemed as if he were fine with the world just existing.

  Lodovico never looked like he was in a hurry. He looked to have a never-ending patience.

  He was never alone, at least not for long.

  Bix looked up as Nalo stepped out of the wall, swiveling a chair and dropping into it, the vastly oversized book thunking onto the wooden table.

  Lodovico lifted his head, looked at Nalo with a steady warmth, then looked back at his own book.

  Nalo glanced up and caught Bix looking the volume over. His eyes dropped to it and he let out an airy chuckle.

  “Mystic Agriculture and the Lasting Effects on the Surrounding Land, the third volume,” Nalo offered his tone dipping as if just realizing how long the venture really was. “Most of it is documented species that are native or have been here for generations but some of them are things left by the Faerie Portals.” Nalo explained flipping through clumping a section together.

  Bix paused feeling a mix of uncomfortable and ever curious. How often did things find their way through the Faerie Portals? And how did they know they were from the Faerie Portals exactly?

  As if reading the interest on her face, Nalo brightened, “Orack, Omari and Amal have been tasked to oversee the research, identification and defense focused on the Faerie Portals,” Nalo looked to Lodovico as if confirming.

  Lodovico looked over nodding.

  “It was the deal Cirillo made in order for us to come here,” Lodovico told them. “The over-activity of the Faerie Portals has been steadily growing since before either of you were probably born,” Lodovico mused. “And as the threat of unknown dangers came with it, specialties were developed to handle it. Seeing as something as little as a coin caused an entire building to crumble,” He warned.

  Bix raised her brows and could think of a few things smaller than a coin, that in the right situations could cause more than just one building to be destroyed. Bix pieced together in her mind, that the piles of things that Deverie was tasked with figuring out were most likely from the portals. That was why it took time for him to figure them out and why she so often found things that seemed utterly fascinating in a disposal pile.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  Bix’s mind trailed to whether things from Detritus ever tumble their way through. The idea intrigued her. Then Bix wondered if the beasts that came from areas, said to lack any life left beyond even Detritus, didn’t actually come from those areas but found their way through a portal.

  The thoughts were rather fascinating.

  Like flame blown out though her excitement dipped. How often did things find themselves places they didn’t belong.

  “How often do people find themselves through the Portals?” Bix asked her next thought. The clear stiffening in Lodovico’s posture surprised Bix. She watched the weight, add depth. And she watched what it must look like when she folded away her own emotions. It was uncomfortable to recognize it so truly.

  Nalo looked to Bix as if just remembering Bix found herself through a Faerie portal and was connecting it to something else. There was caution in his normally open face.

  “Unprompted, travel of people through the portals, only have records from the ancient times,” Lodovico explained. “That doesn’t necessarily mean it doesn’t happen but just that it is hard to keep record,” He breathed. Bix felt a twisting stab of disappointment. It sounded as if there wasn’t anyone else like her. The thought felt lonely. Then though Bix waved that away why would she wish this on anyone else? The wording though called something to Bix.

  “Unprompted?” She asked. Lodovico’s eyes ducked back into his book blanking. Like the light was switched off. Bix was going to pull back her question when Nalo’s tone softened.

  “There are the Fae Spirits…beings born from magic itself. They are the only known creatures that can be…” Nalo trailed off glancing at Lodovico cautiously.

  “Summoned. Only a Summoner bloodline can do it though,” Lodovico hissed out swallowing a lump in his throat. “Anything that comes out of the Portals are always a risk,” he stated, then flinched and looked to Bix.

  Bix sat straight and still. Air was suddenly hard to pull into her lungs. That didn’t make sense the air of this world was too smooth that it was normally easier.

  Was she equivalent to the things, Beasts, Plants? Was she as terrifying in their mind as these Fae Spirits? Was that why they were so insistent in her staying was to ensure her dangerous-self—able to make strange weapons didn’t become some invasive species?

  Her mind kept flickering between knowing that’s not what he meant, that he’d been lost in his weight, and drowning in her own.

  After all why would the patrol have guns that could vaporize ten residents at once if there wasn’t some fear of what Detritus could do?

  What they’d been planning to do?

  Even if it might mean death?

  Faces flashed in Bix’s mind not how she’d drawn them but in the moments they’d found, or when they hadn’t.

  Bix took a deep breath and bit by bit folded the swirl carefully and reached forward going back to clinking metal together. Not looking at anyone.

  “I’m trying to delve into environment studies,” Nalo exclaimed, his quick rambling tone causing Bix to jump. She met his eyes that flashed with passion. “You see I have this image in my mind of a large terrain in which I develop to support the creatures and plant life that makes its way through the portals… Mostly plants,” Nalo breathed looking over the pages. Then he laid over them groaning. “Though there are so many hoops you now have to go through to be trusted anywhere near any of the unidentified plants,” Nalo complained looking at her through his hair.

  Bix looked at him and his whiny pathetic act and realized when Lodovico laughed. Brightening again what Nalo was doing.

  “Well Nalo we all need something to strive for,”

  Through Bix’s concern and interrupted panic the question echoed in her mind.

  What did she strive for?

  In Detritus she could give a never-ending list. How she wanted to etch the faces they were told to forget over the man from the city ‘that did so much’ for Detritus though no one from Detritus knew his face until after he died and the city insisted a group of them give up valuable collecting time to put his memorial on a wall.

  A memorial that went up days after she’d watched a brother die, the silence of his existence that came even before she watched a nameless child be given his name.

  Bix opened her book of thoughts.

  1- Find a steady resource of parts to tinker with and make creations. Faerie Portals?

  After all if things were always coming through the Faerie Portals that seemed like sorting through them and using the parts was perfect for her.

  2- Find those who would be interested in purchasing her creations for herself.

  As much as she believed Deverie had been very fair to her, she made things, Deverie paid her and sold what she made. So, even if he was the most fair to her that was a disconnect between her and knowing the entire process.

  3- She would need somewhere all her own. Somewhere she could work. Somewhere she could sleep.

  Bix started to draw one of the pods after all she didn’t actually need three separate rooms. Then Bix paused. If this was something to strive for, after the pod she drew a space with a place to sleep, an area to ‘live’, a room of books and the strange little room for functions.

  She looked over it.

  Bix blinked as her mind leapt to maybe something else.

  And for the first time in a while it felt like Bix was moving forward.