New Patch (part 5)

This is longish...

You don't have to read the other parts to read this one, but part 4 is still in the green room, waiting to get the heck out, so if you're feeling charitable, look over that one too, please(and all the other installments as well...)!

To the animals and the earth below us, the sound of a human’s happiness must feel like a disruption. A harsh, shuddering noise that penetrates everything until it fades out with the air. But us, we can enjoy it for ourselves. We can cut off the harmony of the world and marvel at the beautiful chaos of our own making.

We laugh, and it lingers. Fueled by it’s own existence.

It’s a lot easier to make it up the ditch with shoes on, even with my foot stinging. Over the bridge, onto the road...

This road is pointed almost exactly where we need to go, so we’ll follow it until we get too off track, then switch to another.

Glad we’re going home.

“Have I mentioned how much I love this thing?” I say to the air, waiting for my voice to blow behind me.

“Compass? Yeah. I hate it. You’re so much more bearable when you’re lost. Less bossy. Ow.” Naz rubs his shoulder, where I’ve swatted him.“’I wish Kira were a worse thief.”

“I don’t. I don’t want to be be wandering around for more than a month like the last time we went searching. Now we can actually tell where we’ve been and how to go back home. And besides, Naz, if we didn’t have this, we might’ve been been running in mindless circles now and we wouldn’t make any progress whatsoever.”

“All who wander are not lost.” Naz says, faintly.

I glance over at him over my shoulder. “Hm… I like that. How simple. I... don’t think it’s true, though.”

Naz sighed, and pushed his hair behind his ears, where it falls back in front of his face.“All who wander are not lost.”He says, more strongly this time. “Ely used to tell me that.”

The lightness between us evaporates, and there’s nothing left then but a raw unspoken solemnness. I turn back to look in front of me. Not really seeing anything.

“You’re right. It’s probably not true,is it? The folks that have somewhere to go aren’t really wandering, are they? Even if that place is just in their minds. The only true wanderers are lonely and ...worthless. The only true wanderers are lost.”

I know that then, he’s thinking about himself. Getting all self pitying. It pisses me off. He can’t just look in front of him and see the view.

I wait for him to catch up from behind me, until we’re side by side. Then I sling my arm around his shoulder and yank his eyes into clearness.

“Well then, we must not be wanderers, Naz. because we’ve got a real life home. And a whole world to find after that.”

Naz smiles reluctantly at that. “Yeah,” he says. And shrugs my arm off.

The color of street gets more reddish as we walk. The Patch we had been sleeping in was poor, probably a regular low-end maintenance area, and wasn’t aiming to be showy. The red mixed with the brown of the dirt is crushed brick, a cheap substitute for gravel. It’s not a great place either, but it’s more...flamboyant, I’d say. The buildings get thicker together and are increasingly made of stone, wood, and brick, instead of the mud and canvas and salvaged metal sheeting from the last Patch. There are some flickering signs that I’ve seen around where we live. They aren’t beautiful, but they’re noticeable; Lit rods curved into simple designs like cats and flowers…and strings of letters.

Outside of the buildings are canvas tents, open to the street.

Grey, ragged people behind metal tables that bear beautiful things. Flimsy cups of tea, clay mugs, little wire sculptures. Jewelry.

I feel a tug on my jacket and look down. A pair of big brown eyes stare up at me underneath a shock of black hair. “Would you like to-”

I cut him off quickly. “I’m sorry, kid. we really can’t at the moment. We don’t have money.”

The boy looks at me, eyes narrowed and mouth set. “I-I don’t believe you.”

He probably does believe me. His stutter betrays that clearly. He was taught to be persistent, is all.

Takes one to know one.

I grab the boy’s wrist and pull his hand off my jacket. “You don’t? Look.” I put my hands in my pocket and turn them inside out, holding out the compass, a piece of string, my foldable knife, and a crumpled paper bag that were their contents. “See? No money.”

“What’s in there?” the kid asked, pointing to the bag.

I sigh, and smooth it out, turn it upside down. Three misshapen little spheres wrapped in wax paper roll into my palm, settling next to the compass. “No money. I’m sorry. ”

“What about you?” Now the finger is pointed at Naz, who shrinks into his sweater. He looks at me. What should I do now?

I shrug the boy’s inquisition off, as if it were passing, unimportant. “Him? He doesn’t have anything either. Nothing at all. Go home to your parents, kid. There’s nothing we can give you.” Naz scratched a stain on the strap of our supply bag.

“We can give him those…”

I swear I can see the boy’s ears perk up like a damned dog, through the hair that needed cutting, the hair that was stiff from the cold, and the frozen phlegm from the runny nose he’s no doubt been harboring for weeks. I push it all aside.

“No, we can’t, Naz,” I say, a little too sharply. Surprisingly, he doesn’t recede completely into the sweater at my tone. He straightens up, poking his hands all the way through his sleeves, and speaks more strongly now, as if he’s empowered by the sense of honest morality that I must have lost a long time ago.

“Can’t we give him those taffies? They’re probably rock-hard anyway. We ate most of them… He can have the last three. Can’t he, Ben?”

“I..guess he can,”I say. I put the contents of my pocket, besides the candies, into their said place. The boy snatches what’s left without saying another word and runs, back to a tent on the other side of the square.

Naz looks relieved, and, his work completed, burrows back into the sweater.

“Hey, you’re not getting off easy!” I almost shout at him.

“What? He’s just a kid. You would know what starving’s like, wouldn’t you?”

I snort incredulously.

“Yeah. I know exactly what it’s like, and because I know what it’s like, I can tell you a hoard of kids just like him are going to be on us by nightfall.” The kid probably told everyone he knew. Probably thinks there’s more where his share came from.

“That was very irresponsible of you, Naz. There could be some pickpockets in that crowd, and we can’t afford to lose anything now, we’re so low on supplies. Got it?”

“It was just some candy… ” Naz mumbled, his voice muffled by the wool.

“This time. Next time, they’ll go for the supply bag. And our pockets.”

“Got it,” Naz says. Defeated.