Episode 172: Kilns (Weston)

Weston Akhan was short. Not actually short, in adulthood, but twelve-year-old short. The crowd towered over him as he wove his way back to the kilns, where he hoped Ari was still waiting for some version of him he had given up.

It was strange to be walking toward someone who meant so much to him, that he didn’t know. He needed a plan for her. Twelve was young, but it was a good age to be friends. He’d gone hundreds of years without intimacy, so he wasn’t concerned about that aspect.

He was more concerned about her ability to bond; any day now her bond would become a possibility. If she bonded to him, that was one issue. If she bonded to someone else, that would suck. If she took tea he’d just wonder endlessly. He didn’t like how vulnerable he felt to her already, but this was her show. He was along to see where the instinct took him.

His mind had carried him to next to her. “Hi,” he peeped up. “You have my thing. Your thing. I was supposed to remind you it was yours.”

“Oh, thanks.” She looked at him, her blonde hair just starting to show some darkened strands. He liked the way it hung, in heavy dreads.

“I think your dad…” she said, then stopped. “Can you tell him I said thanks?”

“Sure,” he said with a grin. The person in charge of the kilns set her pot, the saucer, and her twin’s pot down. “Can I carry those to your room?”

“That would make it easier, except I was going to stop by the greenhouse first. Do you mind?”

“No. I don’t mind.” He put the pieces on a box and picked that up. When she talked to him as another kid, she was softer and more feminine. Maybe he just hadn’t noticed she was feminine before.

“What are you getting?” he asked.

“I don’t know, something mossy and green.” They took a few steps, before she said, “I’m Ari.”

So she did like Ari, over Ariadne.

“Weston,” he replied. “So you like plants?”

“In my room, yeah, they make it more relaxing. Especially when I’m doing homework at a computer, I feel like they make it easier to focus. Do you?”

“They’re okay,” he replied. He hadn’t thought of plants that way before. He could try having one near him when he did homework. He was going to have to do the homework anyway.

“I like outside stuff,” he added.

He wanted to rub his face, because why couldn’t he say I like being outdoors, and I spend so much time there I don’t know if a plant would survive being indoors around me. He would have been happy with I enjoy horseback riding, fishing, hiking, and camping.

Whatever was wrong with him, it had to be because he was stuck young again.

“Have you thought about the school here at all?” She asked. “It’s really good.”

“I’m starting in a few weeks. The advisors track.”

“Me too.”

So, she was going to be an advisor too. They could have all of the same classes, even if their schedules were different.

She opened the greenhouse door for him. “Wow. I can’t believe you know your track already.”

“Well you know yours,” he replied.

“I do?”

Weston laughed. “I bet you do.”

She started looking at the plants, one by one. She stopped at some to consider them then moved on. “Do you want a tour, since you’re coming here?”

He wasn’t sure if he had annoyed her and she was being polite, or if she liked being around him.

Either way, he wasn’t going to pass it up, even if he knew the palace backwards and forwards. “Yeah. I’ve snuck around but a real tour would be nice.”

He saw her smile while her fingers lifted the wide petal of a leafy plant.

“So you’re a princess?” he asked. If he asked, then he knew by her telling him. He needed to establish base facts so he wouldn’t be caught knowing too much later. Unless he was going to tell her more about himself, like the luck. He didn’t want to hide it. He’d decide later, he wasn’t sure what way to go yet. Base facts, though, was good. He didn’t know her on a personal level anyway.

“Not really. I mean I am, in terms of being really lucky about who my parents are, but I’m not ever going to rule or anything.

That felt wrong, but he didn’t know why.

“Why not?” he asked.

“That’s Talise’s problem. Lucky in parents, and lucky in birth order.”

He had no idea if she wanted to rule or if his luck was saying an opportunity would arise. Talise was safe, the coming days aside.

As they walked, he saw a plant he thought she might like but the way she moved through the greenhouse had avoided it so far. He trusted his luck to let him know if it mattered, when they were closer. He was enjoying the pace.

“So you don’t like the idea of ruling?” he asked, trying to sort things out.

“I don’t know,” she said casually. “Not here, everyone’s already so happy.”

No, it wouldn’t be there. But where.

She pointed toward an area in the back of the greenhouse where some chairs were set up. “Sometimes classes are in here.”

“Like what classes? Math?” he joked.

She laughed, and it made him feel happier. Pathetically happier.

“No, like plant classes,” she replied. “Why do you want to be an advisor?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I should take king classes,” he said. There was potential there – maybe he would rule again, but this time a country that he didn’t feel bound to beforehand. Maybe just somewhere new. Somewhere he could build up, instead of repair.

Ari laughed again. “She’s married.”

His skin prickled. “Ew. I meant everyone’s so happy here, and there’s so much else out there. Why not learn from the best?”

“Yeah, but then you have to take somewhere else over and people probably die, and how do you know if that makes it better.”

“I don’t know.” It felt like the new place would be very new, without other people there. How would he even find people to come there?

It didn’t matter today. What did matter is the plant he had seen earlier was right in front of him and he had stopped working. He set the box down then picked the plant up. It was coated in moss and only about four inches tall. It would fit well in her pot. “This one?”

Her eyes lit up. “Ooh, yes! Thank you!”

She reached for the box and started potting the plant. Her fingers lifted it out and pulled at the roots so they could stretch and grow in their new pot. He got her a scoop of soil from a nearby bin.

“Normally my mom’s in here a lot, but the festival has her pretty busy. Are you having fun?”

“Yeah,” he replied. He was with her. “I love the festivals. I was going to spend all day by the water, but my dad told me I should come here.”

He was glad he had, even if he would have to relive the most confusing years of his life and sort the Chatka situation out later. He still didn’t know what it was about the princess and her plans that kept the timing from being right.

“What’s at the water that you like? Did you see our dam lake?”

“Will you show me it? I like fish,” he replied. He was eager to do more things with her. Whatever they could do to build their friendship up, to see the world in her eyes. He liked her eyes, not just the soft blue hue but the way she tried to be helpful and was delicate with her environment and sister. She wasn’t soft though, she seemed strong and capable.

“Sure!” she exclaimed. “It’s nice, isn’t it? Just before the sun comes up, the water is evaporating right after everything’s cool and still. I never catch anything – almost never – but I like to sit and think.”

That was his favorite part too. He didn’t even cast his line half of the time, unless he felt like someone was coming. When he did need food, he liked to fish though.

“I could teach you how to catch things,” he offered.

“Where do you normally fish?”

“Wherever,” he replied. He didn’t want to say everywhere because while it was true, he shouldn’t have been free to travel so much. It felt like lying a little, even if it wasn’t. “I move around a lot,” he added, anyway, because he felt bad for not being more detailed. He was sucking at detailed.

Her eyes turned toward him, focused and glowing. “Really? Like, where.” She tucked her hair behind her ear and waited.

“Like, Nivern and the Chatkas and I’ve sailed all over the world.”

“I want to travel,” she stated, pleaded, there was some deep longing there. He wanted her to travel too.

She shrugged off the intense feeling and tucked the remaining supplies away. She stacked the now vacant pot in a pile of other empty pots, and they were off again.

“I was supposed to go with Nim,” she said, words flowing with a new level of openness. “But they decided we’re supposed to train first and I know they’re going to say we need to sort school, when it’s finally time to go. What’s your favorite place?”

Iogauz Falls. He could see the water crashing down over the cliffside, the rocks jutting out toward the edge and making a thin path you could follow. The area was a clearing in an otherwise dense area. Jungle tangled around the falls. Down the path, there was a cave that you could stay dry inside. They were in Jarboria, which was a small country not too far from Nivern.

“Want to go somewhere right now?” he asked. He pulled a travel pack out of his pocket and showed it to her like a prize.

She watched it, and he could feel the desire pouring out of her. “I should tell my mom first,” she said. “Two of my siblings are missing. Or my dad, I could tell him too.”

He was twelve. Desires to run off and not tell parents were natural. If they were going to trust him with her, he had to avoid them. Maybe she could just remind him often.

“That’s a good idea,” he conceded.

She picked up the box and they continued on their way. She seemed to have an almost skip to her step. It brought him back to the memory of his first time travelling, thousands of years ago. He was with his mom, headed toward Angmaan. He was about the same age as he was now.

She glanced back at him. “Have you met them? Sometimes they do interviews and sometimes other people do them.”

“Yeah, I have,” he said. “We should set those in your room first.”

“Okay. That’s this way, then one of my parents, then… where?”

“Jarboria,” he replied. “Iogauz Falls.”

It felt almost too intimate, saying it aloud, but it was just a place. He was likely not the only person who had found the cave beneath the waterfall.

No, his luck told him it was his alone. To get there was too treacherous and the locals had a fear of the top of the falls.

“And my camera,” she belted out. “ I need my camera.”

She opened a door, and inside he saw her bedroom. It was full of plants on every wall, draping down over the edges of the black metal stands that held them. The walls were plain – creamish white.

“Whoa. Why do you live inside?” he asked.

She clearly enjoyed being outdoors far more than he originally guessed. Her desk was cluttered with a camera and film, but there weren’t that many pictures around. He guessed she had been waiting to travel, and he knew he could help her discover the world. In some ways, it may not have been fair that his luck had drawn him to her, but he was too familiar with that feeling: it was fair, because his luck knew that he had something to offer her. Others would be helped by others.

“Security, I guess,” she replied. As she looked around the room he found a spot he thought would serve the plant well and began clearing a few pencils and an empty pot.

“I like that it’s just mine, outside is everyone’s.”

“I bet it thrives here,” he said. He wasn’t just talking about the plant, he could see how her own place was good for her.

He’d called her an it. Even for the sake of being clever, it was pathetic.

“I hope so.” She set the plant down and picked up her camera. “Nim gave me this, it’s her old one, she got a new one for her birthday.”

Ari should have gotten one for her birthday. Never mind, he would get her a nice camera for her next birthday. “It looks worn,” he commented, like a jerk without a filter. “She must have taken it to a lot of places,” he added. That seemed like a good comment: old, because of experience.

He was old, because of experience.

“She goes wherever she wants,” Ari said, pining after what Nim had. “Basically,” she added, to make it sound less like she cared. Weston could tell she cared, and he wanted to give her everything.

“You should take the travel path at school,” he joked.

“I might. I was thinking of it, but you’re right, there’s a lot of places out there that need help. What if I can’t help them because I majored in the wrong thing? I thought about advisor track too, because you learn the most there. Anyone can travel.”

He realized, more than travel (but with lots of travel), what Ari needed at this point in her life was someone to listen to her and all her thoughts and worries, and to be there. The good news was, he sucked at talking to her but he seemed decent at listening.

“What if you did both?” he suggested. She had long enough to live to be useful when it was needed and to travel the other times. That’s what he did.

“Both? I don’t know if they’d let me.”

She walked to the door then looked back at her room. She looked more lost in thought than contemplating her surroundings, so he let her think.

She shut the door and they headed down the hall. She paused at the corner, and seemed to be debating. He tried to figure out what.

“We should ask your dad,” he stated. Meldrick was going to have an easier time with this, he suspected. Aadya was too busy to understand how she felt about it.

“So your dad travels a lot. What does he do?” she asked.

“Advising,” Weston replied. “Well that guy does. But my dad is here. He just hasn’t mentioned me a lot. Probably.”

He hated lying to her, not just because it was complicated and difficult but because he wanted her to know the truth and not feel like, at any point, he had led her to him through deception. And really, it was her choice if she wanted worn and experienced. Not at romance, in the past seven hundred years.

It was just how it would go, for now. He hadn’t thought the hanging out with her thing through enough to have the capacity to sort out what he should do next.

They left the large palace doors and headed into the festival. There was music and dancing and everyone was moving like bees feeding off of a large flowering plant.

“Who is it?” she asked.

“Konrad,” he said. “And Nell.”

He was twelve, and they had been together for eighteen years about. Nell would have to be his dad too.

That felt weird. Nell was younger than he was an hour ago.

She laughed. “And they hid you? They don’t travel.”

She scanned the crowd. “There he is!” she took his hand and pulled her toward the him, through the crowds of the festival.

Since he didn’t know how to feel about that, he chose to ignore it. Meldrick didn’t seem to either, because he took in their hands then a somewhat deep breath and smiled. “Ari, Weston.”

“Hi, Dad, this is my new friend Weston,” she said in a gush of air and words. “He’s going to school here in the fall, I guess you’ve met before. Can he take me to the big waterfall in Jarboria?”

Her skin filled with pink as she took a breath.

He tried not to admire her excitement, to like it.

“Sure,” Meldrick said, his eyes shifting between them. It made Weston want to promise he wasn’t up to anything suspicious, they were twelve and he could hardly form a sentence. He just wanted her to have some fun seeing the world.

While he was thinking, Ari had built a whole new level of excitement. She jumped a little and his hand fell from hers. “Thanks!” she hugged Meldrick and turned to go without him, then turned back. “I’ll be back before bed.” She took his hand and turned away again and they were off, the camera swinging from her neck.

“Be safe,” Mel yelled after them.

“We will,” Weston promised. Ari kept dragging him somewhere, and he wasn’t sure where. He let her lead him toward the edge of the crowd, where she stopped and looked around. He took a travel pack  out, an image from the edge of the waterfall held in his mind. He closed his eyes and let the pack fall away, and they had transported.

He could smell it first: fresh running water piercing the heavy aroma of plants and mosses. Dirt, perforating the canopy, and air. Even the Dells had nothing on the untouched air of Iogauz falls.

He opened his eyes and took in the white tipped waves as they splashed against rocks at the foamy basin of the fall. Their feet were perched on the largest rocky ledge, inches from the edge.

He still had Ari’s hand, held tight in his own. He glanced at her, eyebrows raised and curious.

She sighed joy.

“So you like it?” he teased.

“It’s so much bigger in person. I love it.”

“Good. I can take you all over the realm because they know I’m good at this stuff.”

“How many times have you been here?” she asked, her eyes peeling away from the drop off and toward him.

His favorite place in all the realms… never enough. He estimated well over two hundred times.

“Two,” he said, because he had hardly been alive two hundred days by her knowledge. “So this is three,” he added.

He was going to have to tell her, soon.

Hey, Ari, on a hunch I deaged, I hope it doesn’t panic you.

It would panic her. It was an idiot plan and now he was a boy. His voice didn’t even work right, it was stuck pitchy between octaves.

She leaned out over the edge, as much as she dared. Considering her lineage, he suspected she could have learned much further, but he was glad she didn’t.

“I don’t know why you ever left!” she exclaimed.

“Because there are better places, but this one is my favorite.”

The falls was his place to hide from the rest of the world, and no one could find him except his family and Konrad.

“Come on,” he said. He pulled Ari through some stones and down along the edge of the waterfall and down behind it. The path was narrow and hard to find. Weston only knew it because he had luck, and he could feel out each step across the slippery stones.

“This is amazing.” Ari said. She tucked her camera into the bag and held his hand, her body close to him the whole way.

“I want to know all about you and everything you’ve seen,” she stated, in a demanding way, as they crossed behind the water and their bodies were free of the water. Her camera would be safe back here.

“That’s going to take some time,” he promised.

She stepped away from him, into the dark cavern. Sunlight leaked through gaps in the water and the edges, just enough to give the room a low glow.

She faced him, her dreads swinging with her head. “Wow.”

He held back his smile, so she wouldn’t see just how happy it made him that she liked it here. Instead, he walked toward the back of the cavern and ran his hand across the bumpy wall until he he found his old collection of small stones on the ground.

“You should do your homework here sometimes,” he suggested.

When he turned back, she was just releasing her lip from biting it. “Yeah. Definitely. You, too, because this is not a place to miss out on. I can’t believe this isn’t your favorite place.”

“It is,” he told her. He dropped the stones by the lip that fed to the waterfall. “You asked me where my favorite place was, so I took you.”

It felt more, now. He hadn’t just shared his favorite place, he had given her access to the cave. It wouldn’t just be his anymore.

“Yeah,” she replied. “But you leave it.”

He laughed. “Do you want to live here?” Before seeing somewhere else?”

Her face was far more serious than his own. “Live here?”

“You said I leave. You don’t want to…”

She studied him for a moment, their eyes locked in this small muggy space. The waterfall didn’t fail to fill the air with sound, but it might as well have been silent; he heard nothing but his own heart pounding.

He had no idea why. He was just teasing her.

At last, she laughed. “I did. But I have to go home.” She focused on her camera, and playing with the settings so she could take some pictures. “I guess I leave too.”

“I can show you somewhere else, tomorrow. Unless you want to go now,” he replied. He didn’t know what to say to that, because part of it sounded sad, and part of it sounded amused, and he was lost.

And he was pushing her, too fast, too far into a life with him. He wanted her to choose him not just end up with him because he could show her the world. Plenty of people could show her the world. If it were about that, he would have remained an adult.

He could feel his adult washing away with each minute, being replaced with the energy and hormones and life of being young. He could feel himself falling into a place of enjoying his time with her, and not feeling out of place or odd about it.

This was why Bentley had insisted. Each minute felt more natural, but harder. He was solidifying them, by sharing this place and himself. It felt good, too. Like this was where  he belonged, and like things would work out in other areas – like the Chatkas. He would have to sort out why his age change mattered so much.

“Just here today,” she stated. He liked how firm she was when she made a choice, like she believed in it and she wasn’t going to go back on it.

“I want to remember everything so I can write about it tonight,” she added, her tone softer and more like her mom’s. “Is that okay?”

“Can I read what you write?” he asked.

Her hands felt like his insides: dropy.

“What?”

“Can I read it,” he pressed. If he read it, he could take the pictures and what she said and write her fun stories back, with his own thoughts mixed in. They’d be like the guide books Nim and Soren made but more playful and fictionalized.

“It’s a journal,” she said.

“So I won’t show anyone,” he countered.

She fiddled with her camera, so much he was even more curious what she was going to write. “I can copy what I write about this, I guess.”

He shouldn’t have been so curious. It was her journal, and he should have respected that privacy.

He was a jerk. And he was dying to read it.

“Okay,” he said. What she wrote would have to be enough. He sat beside his pebbles and began tossing them toward the top of the water. He watched them fall down, toward the pool at the base of the falls.

He heard her camera taking pictures.

“I’m not going to, but I bet I could survive jumping from here,” she said after a while.

“Do you like being Dragon?” he asked.

It was a gift to be hard to kill, without the cumbersome nature of luck and how wrong it could be at times. Even now, he could be wrong about his place in Ari’s life. Maybe he was just there to be her friend, to help her see the world.

He didn’t believe that, but he had been wrong before.

“It’s kind of cool,” she replied. “It comes with a kind of guilt package though.”

Just like his luck. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

The clicking stopped, and maybe her breathing stopped. They were two people existing a space with thoughts and silence and he wasn’t sure if he had done something wrong. He wasn’t sure what he could do that would be right, even though he had a million ideas thanks to his luck.

“You do?” she asked.

He settled on one answer: She enjoyed the space that silence offered, the opportunity to gather her thoughts and respond with a simple set of words that bought her even more time but conveyed she was experiencing emotions.

He liked her emotions. They weren’t riptides wanting to sweep him away. Her emotions were gentle currents ebbing toward his toes mixed with bursts of sunshine through thick clouds.

She was the perfect day at the beach. He could feel just how much he liked her.

He was most likely wrong about her and soon she would become an erupting volcano or a meteor or shower or as lively as the pile of rocks in front of him. Judging people was too subjective.

She sat beside him. “Usually I just hear about how good I have it so I almost never say that.”

He wanted to promise to be her harbor, but it was lame.

“But it sucks too,” he agreed. “You’re way down the line, with probably all the pressure.”

“I try not to let it get to me. It won’t make it any better. Do you… never mind.”

He looked at her. “Do I what?”

“I was going to ask two different things and then I decided not to ask either.”

She was silent again, so he threw a few more rocks into the water while she figured out what she wanted to say next.

“Most of the plants in my room, especially the ones by the window, are vegetables. I cook them myself for snacks. Do you… like?” She paused, and he waited again for one more second while she added, “Cooking.”

He grinned. “I like cooking. What was the other one?”

“It’s just weird. You, I feel like… I don’t even know what. You’re different. I guess I’m asking why.”

Ahh, the big question.

“Probably because your sister is a twin,” he joked. He was different for too many reasons: his age, he had luck, and, his experience. He settled on the latter.

He made his voice as deep and bellowing as possible, his arms spread as he spoke as though he were presenting an emporium of some sort. “I’m a traveled man.”

She laughed, and as her voice settled he said. “It makes a difference.”

It was avoiding the big thing, but he wasn’t sure how to say it. Where she needed silence he needed her to not notice.

“Well if you’re a travelled man then I’m queen of this cave.”

He stood and laughed, then bowed to her. “Your highness. How may I serve you?”

He knew he was going to have to tell her soon, way too soon, but maybe he could buy himself a for more minutes of showing her he was someone she could talk to and be herself around.

Maybe he needed to just tell her, he knew he did. He was going to ignore his luck this time, in favor of buying more time.

It wasn’t going to be much time, though.

“You may travel over there and get me some more of those rocks,” she said. Then, she smiled and leaned back on her palms. “Do you think they even make a noise when they hit the water, or do you think the soundwaves from the waterfall push them back into the rock so nothing even comes out?”

He’d never paid much attention. “We should experiment.”

He walked toward the back of the cave and gathered more rocks for her, then sat beside her. “You have to be quiet though.”

He knew she wouldn’t struggle, but he liked teasing her and the challenging look she got. He would spend a lifetime trying to make her happy, as long as she was receptive to him.

“That’s so hard,” she replied with a shake of her head.

“Well, you just talked,” he teased.

“So did you.” She used her fingers to pretend to zip her lips closed and picked up a rock.

“So did you,” he teased back. Then, he mimicked her and zipped his lips too.

Her heard a small hum of laughter that she held back then watched as her face turned to a calm resolve. Then she dropped one, and he did, and they continued as they listened for little plinks or splashes of rock as they hit the water.

After a dozen rocks, he looked at her and watched her throw two more in. He was at peace with her there, in their place.

“You should take some pictures,” he said.

“You talked first!”

He laughed. “So you won.”

“Guess so,” she said with a proud laugh. “So… it’s probably time to eat soon. Do you have to eat with your dad who isn’t your dad, or are you hanging out at the festival?”

“Festival,” he replied. “Can I have your camera?”

“You can borrow it,” she corrected.

“For two pictures,” he specified. “Maybe three.”

She nodded. “Go ahead.”

He took the camera and found a good angle of the waterfall, and took one picture. He checked the screen to make sure it turned out well. Then, he went beside her and held the camera up. “Your first adventure?”

“Our first adventure,” she clarified. He didn’t have to try to smile as he snapped the picture.

“Thanks for it,” she said once he had. He showed her how it turned out then took her hand. “Next time will be Tēca,” he said without thinking.

“Tomorrow?” she asked.

“Tomorrow,” he promised, even if tomorrow felt too soon to go there.

He held her hand, and he took her home. He’d take her anywhere, everywhere, tomorrow and every tomorrow after.

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