“Happy birthday, Vinny!!!” Aluna set off an essence popper that exploded with a bout of flute music and purple light that, for a moment, overpowered the ambient green glow of Shelby’s interior. Toaster chimed excitedly by his thigh next to where he sat cross-legged on the metal floor. Dominique produced a cake box and set it in the center of their circle.
“You get the first piece!” Aluna said to him, a glint of mischief behind her eyes.
He stuck the fork through the frosting with a suspicious glance and put it in his mouth.
“It’s…” he said around the crumbs.
“Stale!” Aluna exclaimed.
“We bought it three days ago and left it on the counter,” said Dominique. “She insisted.”
“For old time’s sake!” said Aluna.
“Oh. Lovely,” said Vincent with a laugh. He handed her a fork. “You’re eating it too.”
“You bet I am,” she said, scooping the fork out of his hands. And for a little while, with Aluna and Dominique crowded around him in the tiny space of Shelby’s cab, it really did feel like old times. And for a little while, with green light glowing around him and Toaster warm against his knee, he felt like he was home again.
***
Late that night, a little drunk and a little sad, Vincent unlocked the door to his apartment, shifting to support some of the weight of the presents clutched in his left arm with his hip. Toaster followed at his heels, shutting the door behind him, then scampered over to the cabinet under the sink that he’d claimed and shut the door behind himself.
Vincent shoved a stack of plates to the center of his coffee table to set the packages down, then surveyed the little room. Leafy wallpaper. Hardwood floors. A nice little lamp on the end table. He’d lived here for nearly three weeks now, but it still felt a little foreign whenever he walked inside.
It wasn’t that it was a bad place to live. It was structurally sound and heated and clean, except for the dirty dishes and laundry he’d already accumulated himself. He didn’t know anyone back in the Perfectorate living in Tier 1 tenements and doing half as well, and he had more square footage in this place than he’d had since he was a kid living . He was lucky, in his own way, to have ended up here. He ran a hand over his face, kicked off his shoes in the middle of the living room floor, and rounded the curtain that separated his bed from the rest of the room, tumbling into his blankets, comfortable and very alone.
***
The next morning over breakfast–toast. It was always toast–Vincent stared at the gifts from his friends, a pit of apprehension growing in his stomach.
He remembered Aluna and Dominique beaming at him the night before as he’d torn the paper off the easel and the set of paints and canvas they’d picked out for him.
“Oh come on, we all saw how jealous you used to be of…the art students,” Aluna said, the name she’d left out louder than the words she’d spoken.
“I really appreciate it, but I don’t know how to use any of this,” Vincent had said.
“So learn,” said Dominique with a shrug. “We aren’t in the Perfectorate anymore. You aren’t legally obligated to be a pirate like mum.”
“Very funny,” said Vincent. Besides, she was more of a smuggler anyway.
He’d gathered up some enthusiasm for the art supplies, and thanked Shelby for the set of harmonicas she’d given him. He’d never even considered having one for each key. Now he had two days off in a row and no excuse not to figure out how to use his very thoughtful gifts but his own cowardice.
Nothing’s stopping you but you, kid. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever heard such terrifying words.
Finally, as he finished his last bite of toast, he squared his shoulders and set his jaw. He was a Coastrunner. If he wanted to paint a picture, he’d paint a fucking picture. He undid the twine holding the package of paintbrushes closed and pulled one out, staring at it with fervent determination for a moment before he remembered that the easel wasn’t even assembled yet. He set the paintbrush on the table between a half-empty potato chip bag and a stack of junk mail and went for his tool kit. Assembling an easel, at least, was something he was confident he could figure out.
***
It was late. Three more empty energy drink cans had joined their brethren scattered about his living room floor, and he had nothing to show for it but slightly shaky hands and a childish oil painting of Shelby that looked more like a dead crab that had had several of its appendages yanked off by seagulls.
Perhaps his first subject had been a bit ambitious. Perhaps he should have tried a bowl of fruit or a stick figure before he went all-in with the eight-legged, two-clawed piece of machinery he knew and loved, but it had seemed like a good idea this morning, and Coastrunners weren’t quitters. He dipped his brush back into the silver paint and tried to even out Shelby’s claws, but the more paint he added, the more comically huge they became.
“Screw it,” he muttered. He rinsed the brush out, dipped the biggest one he had in black paint, and painted over the whole canvas, a few swirls of half-dried color swirling with the black like a faint nebula. He added a few pinpricks of light to serve as stars, then crossed his arms and nodded once. Good enough. It wasn’t like Mom was ever going to show up here to be disappointed in him about it.
He fell down into the loveseat next to him–it was still weird having his own couch–and tried to decide what to do next. He could try out the harmonicas, but without Shelby to play accompaniment, he didn’t see much point. He could go lie down, but with as much caffeine as he’d consumed trying to become the next Gladyssa Brushdipper, there was no way he would fall asleep. He opened the little coat closet by the front door. His hand hovered over his mother’s old leather jacket for a moment. His gaze fell on the tailcoat Michael had tailored for him. Finally, he decided on his old second-hand, purple captain’s coat. He shrugged it over his shoulders and went out, locking the door behind him.
Most restaurants and shops were closed. The bars were still open, but he’d hit the point where he’d rather have a quiet drink with friends than try to drink cocktails that weren’t mixed for his species and try to fit in places where he was a stranger at best, a nuisance at worst. He kept walking until the lights of barlights faded to closed office fronts, faded to a city park, until the brick sidewalk gave way to a dirt path that he followed almost as if he’d walked it before.
As the trees rose up around him, he felt a sort of peace wash over him, and he found himself stepping in time to his heartbeat, in time to some pulse he couldn’t define. It wasn’t that he could hear it. It wasn’t that he could feel it through the soles of his work boots. It was just that he knew it was there.
After some time, he spotted a familiar green glow in the distance. He hurried toward it, briefly, insanely thinking that he’d happen upon Shelby waiting up for him. Instead, he found a building. It was small and made of plated metal. An antennae rose from its roof like a steeple, and the green glow spilled out through its windows. He slowed his pace, but kept walking forward.
He tried the door when he reached it, and it was unlocked. He pushed it inward and peaked inside. Half a dozen Etelutians sat inside of it, cross-legged in a circle around a column that blinked with red and yellow lights. Several looked up when he entered, though a few remained in meditation, their eyes closed, their lips reciting words that Vincent would never be able to pronounce.
The woman in the center of the building turned to him and spoke, her voice a strange whistling but her large eyes cutting and kind.
“Welcome, Gift-Bearer,” the pillar translated. “Have you come to meditate on The Giver?”
Vincent swallowed, unsure of how to answer.
“He is human.” A man was speaking now, though the pillar translated the words in the same voice as it had used for the first speaker. “He is forbidden from the Gift.”
“The citizens of the Perfectorate are forbidden from the Gift,” the woman countered. “If he is here, he is one of us, and the temple is for all of us.”
The man gave him a dirty look, but reluctantly straightened his back and went back to his meditation, the alien words passing between his lips a little louder than they had been before.
“I’m sorry. I’ll go.” Vincent hadn’t even fully closed the door behind himself. He made to leave.
“You are free to go, or to stay.” The woman again. While the others were dressed in street clothes, she was dressed in white robes adorned with a small emerald around her neck and another on a silver belt around her waist.
Vincent hesitated.
“I can feel that you want to stay,” she offered. “Can you feel that I want you to stay?”
Vincent shook his head ‘no.’
“It is because you have not learned to listen. Come. Join the circle. Offer your meditation.” She patted the ground beside her. He noticed that the temple wasn’t floored. Though the walls looked sturdy, the ground was open to the dirt and rocks of the island itself.
“I wouldn’t know how.”
The woman offered him a kind smile. “Let the Giver teach you.”
Vincent swallowed, but the terrifying thing welling in chest felt more like hope than panic. He made his way toward the pillar and sat down next to the priestess. He tried to arrange his legs how she had hers, then closed his eyes. He felt like a fool.
“You need not close your eyes unless you wish to,” the priestess murmured.
He opened his eyes again, unsettled by how she seemed to know what he was thinking on some level, but it was nice to be able to look at the lights blinking up and down along the column instead of the backs of his own eyelids. He’d become too acquainted with the backs of his own eyelids lately.
He took a few quick glances at his new companions to make sure they weren’t still staring at him, and when he was satisfied that they were all lost in their own meditations, he let himself study the column in earnest. It was a strange mix of technology and intricate carvings. There were tiny words etched into the middle between the art and the lights. He couldn’t read them, but he followed them up from the floor to the roof until he was staring at the ceiling. He caught his breath. Above him, the pillar narrowed into the antennae that he’d seen sticking up through the roof from outside. He could see it from inside, too, as the ceiling was made of crystal clear glass. Green light ran up the antennae and out into the void, a feint swirl of color against a night sky glittered with stars.
“Do you feel the Giver yet?” the priestess asked.
“I feel something,” whispered Vincent. He sat in the circle, cross legged inside the metal walls, until his knees ached and his eyelids drooped. By the time the first traces of morning light colored the sky, he and the priestess were the only ones left. Finally, she touched his shoulder and stood.
“It is time to rest.” It was strange, how he’d come to think of the voice of the pillar as hers.
He nodded and stood, started the long walk home through the quiet dawn, somehow darker than the night.
Crawling the Edge: The Coastrunner Chronicles 