I knew the day I met Tay that loving her was an inevitability, not a possibility. Tay, on the other hand? She takes her time. Life is never a straight line for her. It’s a circle, a squiggle, a loop, a heartbeat pulse that bounces wherever it wants. That day, it bounced across my path. And my life was forever caught in her eddies.
I was eleven. My whole school was on a field trip out to the villages, some summer month where the heat only grows thicker, never lesser. It was the furthest I’d ever been from the capital. No skyscrapers in sight, just endless paddies of grain dotted by the occasional house. A tang of salt on the air. Pure blue sky, the kind of blue that recalibrates your entire measure of the color. And then the people and their homes. Warm, spartan, homely. Paper walls and wooden roofs, everything built in squares. An entirely different world than the capital. I loved it all.
Early afternoon, on the edge of the village main, we sit on the platform of an ancient train stop waiting to ride back to the village’s one highrail station. Little Cal’s hand presses small and soft inside my own. Two years younger than I, my little sister is always my equal in studies, though the heat and travel have both taken their toll. She dozes nuzzled against my shoulder while we bask in the sun. On the horizon, a technological comet of steel and magnetics rockets towards the village on rails that tower two stories above the fields. One more hour and I will be on it and on my way back to the capital, this paradise just a memory.
“What’s that?” Cal murmurs, sleepy eyes just barely cracked open.
“Hm?”
She points one pale finger out across the ocean of rice. “The train.”
I squint hard and shield my brow with my free hand. The distant bullet train glimmers as it breaks out from beneath a white cloud, racing towards us. But that can’t be what she’s talking about. My sister is nine, not a dunce. So I squint harder. Even nearer now, the bullet train makes to pass our small station without stopping, tearing through the countryside at mach one. But it does not fly alone. A comet of slipstream light snakes over the paddies hot on its tail, matching the train turn for turn. Its golden trail disappears behind the last cabin as they hit the straightaway to the station. My mind races to identify the trail. Someone using a low-altitude flying class? No way. No one can go that fast, even with a JOY.
A roar of triple-digit velocity barrels down on us. Heads start turning on the station platform. My heart clenches. And the moment before the train passes, that golden comet swings out from behind the last car, blows the sound barrier with a stuttered clap of thunder, and slashes from the train to the station then a hundred meters beyond like an arrow of light. In front of me and gone faster than a blink. So fast that all I can see is the lighttrail it leaves behind, seared into the atmosphere.
The golden line fades as a supersonic wake washes over the platform, blowing through my dark hair like a summer tempest. But I remember what I saw inside the comet. Two things, burned into my memory forever: a girl whole stole my breath, and the wild grin she shot my way.
Wind like a giant’s broom kicks over the fields. Blinking quick, I crane my head to follow the comet as it curves ninety degrees into the sky, burning off its momentum until it comes to a floating stop high above the station, then lazily drifts down towards the distant farmlands like a guiding star.
The train races on, undeterred. My classmates gasp in wonder. Our teachers murmur about dangerous joyrides, arms crossed in disapproval. Only Cal saw what I did. When I glance down, she’s watching the star sink into the fields too. She squeezes my hand. Knowing my heart.
I slip off the platform and onto the sun-baked road, leaving her my schoolbag and JOY to hold. “Cover for me, Cal.”
And I take off running.
By the time I find the comet’s impact crater. I’m too far from the station, too deep into the rice fields to start regretting my rashness. If I didn’t have the mountain range to the north as a landmark, I could be tricked into thinking these paddies go on forever. An infinite plaid of square plots, muddy water, and cracked black asphalt. The heat is ungodly. Rapacious sunlight beats against my shoulders, so thick and humid I find myself ripping off the buttoned school uniform and shoving it into my waistband. I keep going till a lone landmark rises from the fields in front of me: a small copse of trees, a weathered wooden bench, and an illegible yellow sign for some kind of ancient public transportation that’s at least a couple centuries old.
That’s where I find the crater where she landed. And just beyond it, munching on an apple in the shade at the edge of the grove, I find her too.
Leaning against a blooming tree, one battered sneaker kicked up against its trunk. Lean and angular, a leopard hide of freckles smeared over every inch of her. Kinetic power ripples through her tanned skin, which glows faintly even in daylight. A wavering aura of invisible wind stirs the leaves around her, billowing her long hair outwards in a little lion’s mane. It shimmers like mercury and golden twine. Silver and gold, shining in the sun like an unsheathed blade, a crown of flower-petal bangs cascading down to frame her face.
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To eleven-year-old me, she was stunning. A vivacious girl through whom the world’s pulse beat. What could I do except stare?
And then I had to go and scuff my foot.
Her head whirls around. Soft red eyes, face flushed red from her run, mouth parted in surprise. I stand there stuck, shirt off, scrawny, and sunburnt. I hold up my hand to stop her, trying to explain, but her mouth just forms into a competitive grin when she recognizes me from the station. She shuts off her JOY and curls two fingers in silent challenge. The invisible wind that surrounds her slowly fades. And then she’s gone, laughing whirling back to the road, taking off at a dead sprint. The half-eaten apple splashes into the paddies.
She’s as fast as the breeze. Her hair trails behind her like a dragon’s twisting tail, taunting me to catch up so I can see the face beneath one last time. Bare feet slap hard against the grassy shoulder of the road. I barely stop to lose my shoes after a quarter mile. She spins around and slows down while I tear them off, skipping backwards to taunt me. Watching me from meters away, eyes dancing with amusement, daring me to catch her. The moment I look back up, she’s already taking off again.
That next hour under the high noon sun is one of the worst in my life. I run harder than I ever have before, pleading with my body to keep going mile after hellish mile as she leads me on an aimless path across wooden walkways and down long empty roads that make up this backwater. Despite not using a JOY, she never slows. My only choice is to move faster.
A subtle change overcomes her intensity as we bank left onto a long straightaway and a low estate rises in the distance. I’m close enough behind her then to hear the ragged gasps of her breath, see the individual droplets of sweat wicking off her lone left arm. Her stride lengthens as she senses me finally draw astride. I give everything left in me to match her pace all the way to the white-walled estate at the end of the road, trading step for step.
In the end, I think she lets me win.
Running straight from the road down the tiled driveway of her home, she flies through a wide-open wrought iron gate towards the black supercar idling just inside. I stop and collapse at the border between the asphalt road and driveway, watching as the driver’s door flies open, and from it, a legend in the flesh swings out to sweep her up in a loving, crushing embrace.
She squeals as the man swings her in a circle, ignoring the sweat staining his designer suit. He holds her close and lets out a booming laugh. From these fields at the end of the world to the skyscrapers of the capital, there’s not a soul who wouldn’t recognize the sound or the man who makes it. He’s a figure and a half. Broad in the shoulders, powerfully muscled, a wide chest framed by the shoulders of a hero who carries the hopes of an entire world. Crimson hair rages to his shoulders in a russet mane, matching the petals of his daughter’s hair in length. Eyes dark as ocean depths gradually find me in turn. Everyone knows the color from the streams, but there’s a different feeling entirely to witnessing the passion of a hurricane up close and personal when it decides to examine you and you alone.
I swallow hard, wondering if I should kneel or bow or simply wave. He lets out another laugh as he ruffles his daughter’s hair and crouches beside her. Those terrifying blue eyes focused on me all the while. Emotion I don’t understand stirs within his face as he looks me over more intently. An understanding, a pained realization, the long look of a man watching the first word of a prophecy he never believed come true before his eyes.
“I didn’t know you were bringing friends back, Tetsuka!” he chuckles, suddenly burying that look beneath a façade of cheer. “You should have told me. I would have bought something nicer for dinner.”
The girl shrugs and bashfully tries to push him away. “Wasn’t meaning to. We got caught up runnin’ together.”
He tugs on the girl’s cheek until her freckles turned red with embarrassment. “He made you run hard.”
“He just wouldn’t quit,” she says. Her head tilts to the side in a quizzical manner. In the moment, it makes my heart skip a beat. It’s honest and simple and tinged with a hint of a grin that invites me to come down the driveway.
My lingering unease from the man’s first look scatters to the wind. I scratch the back of my neck and stagger down the tile as best as I can, ignoring the one pant leg that comes unrolled as I do. “Beat you at the end, too.”
“Did not. I was running to the house, not the driveway.”
I cross my arms and grin. “Should’ve said so, then.”
Her father pushes her forward in gentle reprimand. She turns even redder in the face as she steps up to introduce herself. Scant inches shorter than me, still panting for breath like I am, flowerlike hair matted to her forehead. She’ll grow taller still, though the difference between us will never change for long.
“Go on, Tetsuka. Your aunt taught you manners, even if you don’t use them,” he says.
She growls and sticks her left hand out to shake. I stick out my right, fumble to no small delight of her father, then switch to the left. She wilts a bit at the gaff.
“’m Tay…” she mutters, doing anything she can to avoid looking me in the eyes.
Her father watches with cautious curiosity as I take her hand and hold it till she looks up.
“Thane,” I say, adding a smile at the end. “Let’s go again sometime.”