Third circle of the Empire
Destruction District
After the agreements were decided, me, Kadi, and Korrok returned to the clearing where the ship was. Kadi reached out to Korrok, who handed him a bag of starstones almost bigger than his hand.
"That was fun..." Korrok hissed.
"Go to hell." Kadi muttered words I didn't know as he counted the stones.
"What is this, Phaga? I thought we were friends."
"Friends? You told the columbas that we were with you!" I growled and Korrok bared his teeth to contain them. "Where I come from, captains fight for their ships; and don't drag them to the bottom."
"Where I come from, the seas are made of the blood of those who have sunk... So that ships can float." He growled, filling me with flames. But before I could retort, Kadi put his hand on my back and led me to the ship. This was not a battle worth fighting. But then Korrok jumped between us and Hasta, smiling. "Going so fast? Don't look at me like that, so stressed... I know a great place where you can relax."
"We have something to do, Korrok." Kadi replied. Good thing he knew.
"And how do you hope to do whatever you plan well so stressed?" The vorrampe provoked. "Accept this as a thank you for your help..." And then, looking at me, "And as an apology for drowning you."
Kadi took a deep breath and I immediately knew he had surrendered. He sent me a sidelong look and muttered:
"The core is not going anywhere..."
And then I was the one sighing.
• • • ֍ • • •
We landed in the Destruction District, in front of gates as colossal as the entrances to the amusement parks my mother took me to when I was a kid – maybe back then they just looked so gigantic because I was so much smaller... But now they really deserved that one adjective.
Kadi parked his ship in one of the last parking spaces, and before we entered, Korrok grabbed transparent glasses from a pile in front of the gate and handed them to us. They weren't made for humans – mine had 3 eyes, Kadi's had 3 pairs of them – but we could see through.
"The lenses will account for everything, but don't worry. It's on my tab." Korrok explained, leaving me more confused than before. "And don't forget about the party afterwards."
"Won't you come?" Kadi questioned him.
"I'm not stressed."
Then the vorrampe turned and left.
On the other side of those gates, hundreds of houses and vehicles with the most diverse shapes and colors stretched to the horizon, in a kind of alien suburb; and I couldn't think of any reason why we were there. Kadi, who seemed to know what he was doing, picked up two torture tools that were hanging near the entrance and placed one of them in my confused hands. Were those houses empty?! I could only wish.
When he saw the fear on my face, Kadi broke into a dangerous smile that didn't comfort me one bit and approached one of the houses. He tested the firmness of his feet on the ground, lifted his tool, which was a huge 4-blade axe, and, with a precise and swift movement, slammed it into the wall. The entire house shuddered on its foundations for an instant like a jelly tower and, in the blink of an eye, exploded in a shower of glistening sand that took the night.
Kadi turned to me with a grin from ear to ear.
"This whole world is for that." He said, pointing to the similar tool that was in my hands. "Enjoy. Just try not to hit me."
"But that would be the most fun part..."
The dangerous smile he opened made me regret having said that, if I wasn't so curious as to what he would do with it.
"Do you think you could?" He purred, taking a step closer.
"Are you underestimating me or overestimating yourself?"
"The reason that bothers you least."
"What if both of them bother me?"
"So you have to learn to lose."
"With the best, apparently."
He started to grab a handful of that sand from the ground and I immediately raised my hands:
"All right! I surrender!"
"So quickly?" He laughed. "If it's that easy, we won't get even near to the galaxy's..."
And then I kicked a cloud of sand that covered him from head to toe with. I ran before the cloud lowered, over the sound of my laughter and his curses yards ago, and, when my breath failed me, I stopped. I looked back to where the dust had settled, but Kadi was no longer there. Where had he gone? I bit my lip. I could feel him stalking me from the shadows of sand hills, hunting me, waiting for just the right moment to attack... And devour.
When he kicked a cloud over me, I was covered in glow. We had become two specks of stardust, emerged from star ovens and pressurized until we were pure diamonds. I lunged toward him and pushed him over a soft mound, but before I could laugh, Kadi wrapped his arms around my ankle and yanked it, knocking me over as well. The sand floated around us and I could barely see him as he flew at me. I tried to grab a handful of sand to throw in his face, but he grabbed my hands and pinned my body to the ground, overpowering me as if I hadn't even resisted as he buried me in the sand until only my head was above the surface.
"I surrender!" I yelled, laughing. "And this time for real!"
He chuckled and, satisfied with the work he had done on me, he fell down beside me with a breathless smile. I let myself hear his breathing, so weird to hear one other than mine... And I couldn't shake the thought that I wanted to leave him panting like this more often.
"There's nothing that would get me out of here..." He closed his eyes, very comfortably.
"Are you sure?" I urged, reaching out with my arms to dig myself up. He opened one eye and sent me a smile as bright as the dust that soaked into every corner of our bodies. I got up and slapped the sand off my body, throwing it in his face. "What if I said I'm going to open a hole in Korrok's account?"
Kadi jumped to her feet.
"I'd say I'll open a bigger one."
• • • ֍ • • •
We destroyed the houses until the sun began to set, competing to see who screwed up Korrok the most. When I looked at Kadi's bare back, glowing like a starry sky, I thought the sand was so much a part of us that it was already inside our cells. At some point, when he couldn't take the heat any longer, Kadi took off his shirt, only to have the specks of sheen cling to the sweat and glistening in my eyes with every movement of his muscles. But now that the night was beginning to fall, he had his shirt back on.
We sat on the roof of a vehicle when the first star became visible in the pink sky. In fact, that was the Oasis, so far behind a pore that it was no more than a grain of sand lost in the immensity of the universe. Looking at the stars, I wondered what past humans thought of the mysteries of the sky... If they knew that some of their questions would one day have answers. And that having them wouldn't ease any weight.
It was impossible to look at the night sky without getting lost in it, or in the questions it brought up when its infinity became incomprehensible...
"We've come this far..." I got lost in the darkness above. "I would never have guessed..."
"And we will go even further." Kadi sent me a look, with those green planet eyes orbiting me. "So far that later, when we look at the sky, we won't even be able to see this world where we step today."
"I never thanked..."
"Wait until we're at the core." He opened a carefree smile. "And then you can thank me however you want."
His tone made me think of some ways I would never dare to say.
"Ask me a question, then." I suggested. "The answer will be my way of thanking for what we have achieved so far." He raised an eyebrow. "Better than continuing the journey with a completely unknown person."
Kadi then placed a hand on his chin and thought for a moment, until he found something to ask:
"What's the story about that scar?" And he pointed to my right ankle, which hadn't been attacked by the vorrampes, where a white line danced across the skin. I raised an eyebrow.
"Are you sure that's what you want to know? I have many secrets below the surface..."
"I need to start from somewhere... To then get deep..."
He thought I was worth digging... I swallowed hard, averted my eyes from his and then told the story:
"I once sprained my ankle and had to have a leg cast for a few noxdiems. When I went back to the hospital to get it out, the iatric took a saw and thought the cast was thicker than it really was... So he ended up reaching my leg." I laughed at the surprise on Kadi's face. "I usually tell people that I survived a chainsaw attack."
"And it's not a lie. Who knew your scars would have stories to tell..." I shrugged, smiling. "But there's still so much I don't know..."
He wanted to dig me up more... And I wanted to be discovered.
"What do you want to know?"
"Why do you want to go to the core so much?" The question was already on the tip of his tongue. I opened my mouth to say what I had already said about the Queen, but he continued: "Deep down... What is driving you to it?"
Deep down... I didn't like the darkness that lurked in it when I stopped to pay attention. I sighed and revealed my weakest part to him, the point where he should stab the knife if he ever wanted to:
"At the Oasis, some of the patients were so grumpy that they could call me names just for saying 'good morning'... And it was much worse if I didn't." I heard Kadi laugh as my eyes lost themselves in the distant stars, blinking as if they also heard me. "But others were also sweet..." I still remembered. "I once took care of a weaver... Her family didn't visit much, so she talked to me about her youthful adventures, her mistakes, her dreams... And spent a lot of time weaving gifts for the staff." I opened a soft smile to her smile in my memories. "But one day she got worse... We tried to save her, but there wasn't much else we could do..." I sighed. "One day, she looked me in the eye and whispered: I'm sorry for not having finished your gift in time; I promise I'll deliver it in the next life..." My tears glistened in the night. "And then she was gone..."
Just like all... Some alive. Others not.
When I looked at Kadi, his eyes sparkled like mine, reflecting the lights from the stars above, because he understood what made my voice tremble. His hand reached out and took mine, warming it and caressing the skin like it was art. I felt the shape of his fingers with the tips of mine and traced every line of his fingerprints, every fold, every callus, in an attempt to get to know his hands and everything they had once done... We stayed there for an eternity, in silence below the stars, on that fragile bridge that made us so human... It was as if we were the last two people in the Milky Way, isolated between oceans of stars and waves of solitude, warmed only by that flame at your fingertips that wanted to touch so much more than should.
"It was a promise..." I whispered, drawing my fingers back. "That it didn't matter if she could fulfill it or not, because it was already fulfilled on the desire of that other life that I lived entirely in an instant..." I swallowed, thinking of the face that has long since faded from my memories, even though her words had stayed forever. "It was a gift... A life that didn't have to happen for me to experience it... Where anything was possible, even if it couldn't be here... And, even when she was dying, she thanked me. Just for make her last days a little better..." I remembered the countless others who also thanked me for fighting for them, even though I had lost so many battles. "I need to go to the core of the galaxy... To prevent them from feeling this pain and to make the Empire better so that the next lives in it become like the ones I dream of today..."
I would do anything for that.
"I've met a lot of determined people..." He commented, his eyes wandering the void above. "You have the same intensity as them, able to move minds, mountains, empires... People who look up at the stars like you; and who look at others as if they were stars..." His words were ambrosia to my ears. And for a moment I swore I had been dead all my life, because just now I felt alive. "If you want, you'll have the universe... Because it would be stupid if it didn't want to be yours.
I stared at him without words.
Never had I felt so seen... And the more I fell into his eyes on mine, the more I realized how good he was at making me feel that way.
"Thank you, Arkadi..."
"Arkadi?" He laughed. "Tired of getting my name wrong?"
"I'll stop bothering you with the other one..."
"Just now that I was getting used to it?"
I sent him a look to read him and saw that warmth the universe didn't use to give so easily... A comfort my life didn't use to have.
"So thank you, Kadi."
"You're welcome, Doxy."