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“Sure, you can call me Lola, Tulip.”
The sun begins its descent below the horizon, signaling the approaching end of the day. Considering everything, we’ve been making good progress. It has surprisingly been a quiet day. The weather is hot, but nothing we can’t handle. I even managed to catch a rabbit for dinner tonight. It’s slung over my shoulder, leaving a trail of blood behind me.
When I first slit its throat, a vivid memory of Amio bleeding out in the cave flooded my mind. It took a moment to push that image aside and see the rabbit for what it was—an innocent creature. As I cradled its bleeding, dying body in my hands, its history unfolded in my mind like a fleeting vision. The small burrow it would hide in, surrounded by pretty yellow flowers. I felt its fear as I chased it.
Killing Amio seems to have heightened my empathy, as strange as that may sound.
As twilight descends, I discover a cave nestled just outside the valley. It’s a stark contrast to the first cave Max and I stumbled upon. This hollow feels cozy, surrounded by lush greenery. It’s like a little oasis in the Summit, almost deliberately crafted for a respite from a difficult day. I couldn’t have asked for better if I had to design a resting place. I feel so fortunate about our sleeping locations these past two nights. Although we can’t stay in one place for long, it’s crucial that we take breaks to avoid exhausting ourselves to the point of injury, and a comfortable place makes that so much easier.
Max heads off to gather wood for a fire, leaving me to skin the rabbit. Tulip sits beside me, her soft eyes and frizzed hair giving her a deceptively simple appearance, but it’s clear she possesses more intelligence than meets the eye. It could be a crafted look for survival.
I can relate to that.
“Max says your parents left you in the Race,” Tulip begins, her voice gentle. A lump forms in my throat. No matter how much time passes, the pain still lingers. “Mine died when my brother and I were younger, before our Ascension,” she continues. “Mom first, and then Dad the following year. I think he just couldn’t bear to continue without her, you know?”
Grief tugs at my heart. Tulip has endured the loss of her parents and now her twin brother, Twig. How does she manage to keep going? “Tulip, that’s awful. What did you two do?”
She shrugs, dragging a stick through the sand in front of her. The lines she’s tracing begin to form the shape of a tree. She avoids eye contact, but I can see the tears welling up. “We were taken care of by a few members of our alliance pod. But in reality, it was just the two of us.”
“An alliance pod is not the same. I understand that intimately,” I say quietly. Something in me yearns to comfort her, so I pause in my task to rub her back gently, careful not to get any blood on her clothes. “I know it’s not the same as losing a sibling, but I’ve lost someone in the Race too,” I say quietly.
She tilts her head to the side, looking at me intently but not speaking. “His name was Link,” I tell her. “I… we were in love. As in love as you can be as teenagers in a world where you can be ripped away from one another in the Race.”
“It’s hard to love when you think you may never see them again. What happened?”
I suck in an inhale, dropping my elbows to my knees. “We don’t really know. He left on his Ascension year to Race. I was fifteen, so I was left behind. He just never returned.” The last two words stick in my throat, caught on the grief I have long since suppressed. Tulip nods, the silent acknowledgment that her brother and Link have met the same fate.
I clear my throat and, with it, the memories of Link, and ask, “Which village were you from?”
Tulip is kind enough not to call attention to my swift subject change. “Pran.”
Pran, a small village on the eastern border of Krillium, was primarily a fishing village known for the craftsmanship put into its fishing nets. Popular opinion is that nothing can escape them once ensnared. Its inhabitants were among the poorest, even by Lowlands standards, with hardly anything worthy of trade outside of the nets. I’ve heard tales of multiple families squeezing into a single home, surviving on whatever they could catch from the ocean.
“Max and I are from Dalery,” I tell her.
While Dalery is far from a wealthy town, we fare better than the smaller Lowland villages. Additionally, we don’t face the disadvantage of having to travel for extensive periods to reach the Summit each year for the Race.
“How come your family never moved closer to the Summit?” I ask as Tulip looks up at me.
She shrugs as if the thought never occurred to her. “It’s home. We have plenty of food even though we don’t have much else. It’s not so bad sharing a home with other families. At least I’ve never gone hungry.”
I couldn’t say the same for myself. Dalery is crowded, and we’ve rapidly expanded towards the Tella desert, so food is getting harder to come by. You can only pluck so many fish out of the ocean before they learn not to come to your shores.
Though our paths to being alone are starkly different, the result is the same. Both Tulip and I find ourselves alone but together.
Max returns with the wood, and we start building the fire. We roast the rabbit and lazily consume it, our gazes fixed upon the starry night sky.
As the crackling flames cast eerie shadows on our weary faces, Tulip leans forward, a mischievous glimmer in her eyes. She breaks the comfortable silence with a challenge. “So, what do you two know about the Gods?”
Max and I exchange confused glances. What is she on about? “Just, you know, everything,” I laugh.
Max joins me with a titter, “Yeah, the Gods bless the land and help us thrive and eat, the fae get their power from them, the Race is to recharge them… You know. The standard stuff.”
Tulip’s lips curl into a wicked smile, her voice lowering to a conspiratorial tone. “Oh, that is hardly all there is to it. The Gods are not the benevolent entities the fae try to convince us they are. After all, would you consider the life we live thriving?”
“Oh, you mean the magic beings who require us to die in order to feed their power may have ulterior motives?” I drawl sarcastically.
Tulip laughs, nodding. “I know, right? It seems obvious when you think about it. Lucky for you both, I happen to know quite a bit about the Gods and the history of our world. Namely, how they have abandoned us.”
