Planet Omega

Chapter 11

The desert osirie was easy enough for us to find in a pressed flower form, but we'd have to extract the powder ourselves. The extraction process is delicate and tedious, and Mateo had told us he didn't care which form we'd find it in, as long as the option was cheaper. Emma stuck that paper bag into another bigger plastic bag for extra safekeeping, then tucked it all into a secure pocket in her pack.

We looked around at the other trinkets and exotic foods being sold on the streets of Artehm but didn't buy anything else. Oh, no, wait, that's a lie. I did buy something else, but Emma hadn't seen me purchase it. A seller had some aezettle plant, and I specifically bought the dried leaves, knowing I could use leftover corn husk for paper to roll the crushed leaves into. Why deny myself the small pleasures of this world if I'm going to forced to live in it, after all?

Nightfall came sooner than expected, mostly because I forgot that the farther south anyone is means a longer night. Artehm, however, didn't go to sleep that early. In fact, the city somehow became more alive at night than it was during the day, with bonfires all over the place and multicolored lamps lining streets. Music plays everywhere we go, and there's laughter and overall joy radiating from taverns and shops that open late.

It's a different sort of world here in Artehm, and though Emma warned us to blend in, I don't think we're in the same sort of danger here as we were back in Spectre City. There's less to worry about here in this melting pot of a city. I'm not a wanted criminal here, I'm not a "witch's apprentice." Humans, and pawns, and all other kinds of beings just exist here in the desert, away from the toxicity that Zenon Omega produces.

It gives me hope for the future.

"I'm going to go join in on the dancing," Will tells us from where the four of us are seated on our jackets, watching the bonfire's glow from a near distance. Will puts down their plate, almost completely empty of dinner, and shifts into their ring-tailed lemur form to jump around with the others. While Emma and I nod over at Will's determination, Mateo doesn't even notice, busy drawing something in his sketchbook of inventions across the way.

No one even bats an eye upon suddenly noticing a lemur in their midst.

I smile and lean back against the pile of logs at our backs. I wish it could be like this all the time, every night. No killing, no worrying about getting caught. Just having dinner with a bunch of strangers who don't really care who you are. It's a lot more rugged out here, a lot less high tech and advanced, but I like it. It feels...real.

I finish off my dinner, and then pull out the jar of the aezettle plant and the corn husk I had tucked away. I can feel Emma's eyes on me, but she waits until I pull out my lighter to ask, "What is that?"

The smirk on my face should tell her everything there is to know about what this is, but I wait until I light the end of the roll and breathe it in slowly to look her way. Oh, there it is. There's that feeling I've been craving for so long. The anxiety within my bones starts to fade away as I breathe out the smoke up towards the sky. "Something that's better than a cigarette," I answer, then offer her the rolled up aezettle. "I know you don't eat or drink, but you do breathe air, which means you have functional lungs, right?"

Emma looks down at the roll being offered to her, then at me. She studies my relaxed features for just a moment before taking the roll from me. My face lights up at this, and I lean in closer to light the butt of it for her. The scary part is she breathes it in like a pro, no coughing or anything, before offering it back to me.

"So you can't sleep unless you're shut down, you can't enjoy food, but you can do drugs?" I laugh at the concept, shaking my head. "They had a fucked up way of making you, I'll give 'em that."