Suzy was my first and only love. In the morning I'd see her begging on the street for coins, in the schoolyard she'd pluck the fronds off of a dandelion, one by one, until its head was a bare white knob. I thought she was mute at first. She didn't have any friends. A nameless deformity in her left foot meant she couldn't join the rest of the kids in games of tag, and it turned out she had a way of talking that put her at odds with other people. She never made eye contact with you, and spoke at length about things that could not keep her peers' attention. A favorite hobbyhorse of hers was about the smoke: where does all of it go? When it journeys up and out of the factories' smokestacks and into the sky, how far does it reach? Does it gather in a ball at the edge of the sky? Do the elves in Elsewhere get to see it? She'd continue this train of thought with or without you, if you left in the middle of this thesis she'd still wear that same faraway look, only difference is she wouldn't be talking.

There was one day it somehow got around, that Suzy told someone that she could fly. This suited our preconceptions about her, that her mother's occupation had not only effected the limp, but a serious mental defect as well. We all knew she was crazy, this only served as hard evidence. And what could have caused it, other than the likely dissolute circumstances of her conception? She never felt the need to prove a thing. She wandered around the schoolyard, done with dandelions now, talking and talking to whoever would listen about the clouds, the kinds of birds she saw, the chill wind that lashes your skin so high up in the air. She even saw where the smoke went: the elves set up great crystal decanters which pulled the smoke from the sky and turned it into diamonds. Next thing we knew, the class is gathered at an open window, the biggest kid in the class making to push her out, and we're all chanting "go on Suzy, fly then, fly!" The schoolteacher, a nervous old string bean, caught before we did anything drastic, and gave us what for. It must've been the angriest we'd ever seen him, and we had amassed quite a rap sheet by then.

We all thought Suzy would finally stop talking altogether after such an ignominy, instead she sought to double down. She knew better than to tell everyone this time; one day when the two of us were at the edge of the schoolyard, she stops her treatise on the smoke and becomes very grave, even more so than usual. She tells me that her mother is a famous jouster, Every night when she puts on her best dress, paints her face, and leaves the house, she goes to the castle grounds of Albion to joust with the greatest knights of the Southern Lands. Tasseled, heavy armor gleaming in the torchlight, horses garbed in trailing gay colors, one knight after the other knocked down effortlessly by Suzy's mother. She wears no armor herself, apart from a a long cloak which conceals her identity. The Red Devil, the Lancer of the Wastes, the biggest names in jousting all topple before her.

Their consternation grows night after night as they're sent from their steeds, and she refuses the glory of her countless victories by choosing to remain anonymous. Until one night the Lancer pulls a devious trick - he aims his polearm directly at the head of his rival in order to pull the cloak off by the hood. She dodges the blow in the nick of time, but is revealed nonetheless. Far from being embarrassed about her true identity, however, she addresses her spectators and opponents with a haughty raised head. "That's right", she begins, "your tireless foe, which harries you every night, and proves so indomitable in combat that even the greatest knights are bested is none other than a woman!" Suzy's eyes were sparkling as she recounted this tale.

I was over the moon. I laughed in her face and said, "they don't joust at night, Suzy!", then went over to every other kid in the class and told them what Suzy had just told me. And they thought it was hilarious, twice as hilarious as I had thought it for some reason. They fall down laughing and go to tell their friends about it. Eventually I reach the teacher, and decide to tell him, too. He stiffens up, loses for a moment his faint air of authority, then tells me to see him after class.

He avoids addressing the issue directly, instead informing me that Suzy has it more difficult than other kids, and that if she wishes to indulge a fantasy I should let her, within reason of course. What I shouldn't do is make fun, and act like every kid in school needed to know about something that was strictly Suzy's business. I was confused. I knew I was doing something wrong telling the other kids about her fib, but I couldn't make out why I was getting this speech from the teacher.

You could say that I was slow on the uptake. That I learned about things, perhaps later than I should have for a kid in the slums. Suzy's mother worked nights, that much was true.

By the time I found out it was too late to do anything. The next day, Suzy tried to fly.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

What do you do, then? You can hurt all your life for what you've done to another person and it'll never be enough. It shouldn't be enough. The world would be worse off for it, if I could be redeemed for sins like mine. Maybe I was just a stupid kid. I didn't know what I was doing. To me, you could say that about every sin in the world. Does anybody really know what they're doing to another? The monotheists say that their god would take a murderer who repents just as readily as a man who never sinned in his life. In fact, they are in a sense greater for having strayed then returned. I don't know what to say to that. I'm making too much of this, maybe. I've had a little too much. It was just a stupid joke, the kind kids play on the ones they love.

I'd like to think that Suzy made it above the clouds. I'd like to think that she saw many strange and funny birds, and that the wind didn't make her cold, even in that sackcloth dress of hers. Maybe she even made it to the elven lands, and that the elves were gracious hosts. They served her fatted roasts on a big platter, lined with those famous elvish greens all basted in butter. Wherever she is, I hope she's happier there than the rest of us down here. Now she knows where all that smoke goes.

-

I'm counting down the days until I'm to set out with that adventuring party. Every cent I have, and some that I don't, have either been spent on sutures or at the tavern. The wound in my side seems to be incurable. The infection has spread too far, and every time I can bear to pull away the bandage, a weeping, gangrenous gash greets me. I go around on a set of crutches. Every morning I stop at the doctor-barbers' to get checked and have my bandages changed. When that's done I hobble over to the tavern and sidle up to the counter. I buy the cheapest thing they have - tubs of clear spirits, and I nurse those late into the evening until my appetite reappears. I leave and bolt down a plate of something, everything tastes good by then, then fall asleep shortly after.

Some days I have a walk in the park, a slender bottle of hooch concealed in a bit of sackcloth. The ducks have all flown, the lake is choked with dull green algae. The trees are surrounded by their fallen fruit, all swollen and flyblown. When the Wicked King was deposed Albion was promised a golden age: the new council of elders set up a series of public works projects to cut unemployment and make life more livable for the average city dweller. His old constructions still dot the town: fountains that don't run, dilapidated libraries, rotting orchards. He only proved what the Wicked King knew all along, that human rights are entirely too good for human beings. I know I'm being unreasonable. And politically suspect. All I'm saying is that there are only more taverns today, while the parks and libraries go to seed. I'm just as bad as other people, to be sure, with my handle of grain alcohol in my bag. I'm part of the rot.

The golden age is here and no one wants it. There are burgeoning factions now, one led by none other than the Wicked King's grandson, that promise an end to these dissolute times. They'll make the world into a chivalric parable, glittering cavalry rescuing maidens in flowing white garments while the peasants all starve. I guess it's natural for people to seek that sort of thing out. Of course it makes the same mistake as that of the golden age: I've met my fair share of knights and they certainly don't resemble any sort of ideal. We get all twisted up now. The powers that be only want the best for us and we don't know how to take that. You could offer them any amount of libraries and fountains and they still won't bend the knee - that's the one thing you can never ask of a human being. There are, of course, a number of people who support the new king wholeheartedly, and I think I almost respect them less. The kind of people who devour newspapers, who shush you in the theatre. Who think the knowledge of the ancients should stay in the past. People who can't recognize any constellations, and never look up at the stars at all.

I've become an old man. I sound just like my father in one of his more lucid moments. When did it all go wrong? It must have been Suzy. I've been looking my whole life for that unqualified, schoolyard love, and never found it. She passed me these little notes in class, intricate mazes sketched out in pencil. A treasure chest bursting with gold was at the center of each one. She wrote the words "you found it!" under them. I could never solve any of the mazes she gave me, I failed them all, except for one. At recess I went up to her and said I finally got to the treasure chest. She smiled and asked me what I would do with all that gold. I said first I would buy a mansion and a team of servants. I'd make my mom a queen and I'd say to my dad that he could live in my castle as long as he never went to the tavern again as long as he lived. She looked sad all of a sudden. She asked if she could live in my mansion. I didn't answer. The teacher came out to tell us that recess was over and we parted ways. Do you think things would have been different if I had answered her? I'm probably overthinking this. It was never more than a schoolyard crush and I've made it into my entire life. I can't get over her pale face in the morning light, and beyond her the facade of the schoolhouse, and beyond that the smokestacks, and even above those were the trailing lines of smoke, reaching to who knows where.

I look at my reflection in the duck pond and I don't recognize the face that looks back.