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LitW 10 - Gravity

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11-24-1005:

So, I have a new pet? Question mark, full stop. Bairith brought a stray dog into the house. Male, large, indeterminate breed, unspecified origin. Smells like a wet sock. Seems content and fully capable of letting himself in and out of my house at will, through means I have yet to ascertain. I don't know to what nefarious ends Bairith plans to use him, yet.

Last night I kept dreaming about these two goldfish that wouldn't stay alive no matter how hard I tried to care for them. It probably would've helped if I stopped trying to keep them in a pair of rubber boots. My dreams aren't notable for making a lot of sense. I haven't even owned a goldfish since I was a little kid, and then not for long—I think it lasted about a week? It was just amazing how attached I'd become to those little guys. You'd think they were my last friends in the world, and it broke my heart when I couldn't save them.

You know you've got it bad when your dreams get so traumatic that you have to sit up every few hours and take a break from sleeping. Over fish. I just said that out loud, and it sounds even crazier than it did in my head.


-10-

A flip-flap from the attic woke Barnath, who peeked out from beneath the bed and into the murky morning. Although the sky was taking on a cerulean blush, the tree outside the window was not yet lit with the sun's golden strokes. He cocked a listening gaze towards the ceiling and whispered, 'Something's up there.'

Bairith cracked one eye at him and then coiled back into his dormant form with a murmur. 'It's only him.'

Barnath sniffed at the lazy reply and his brother's superior gift of perception. 'Who? What?' He took a moment to alight on his best guess. 'Oh, that stupid boy? Isn't it freakishly early for him to be over here?'

'Mmn,' Bairith responded with what might be a shrug.

Barnath let him be and roamed the room. The house was otherwise silent, the wind that typically moaned through the rafters abated, and not even their charge was breathing loudly enough to be overheard (Lucca would insist she doesn't snore, besides.) Tiny, scratchy footfalls tracked overhead, all the way to the flimsy hatch over the indoor balcony. When Barnath heard it being pushed aside, he slid to the door to peer underneath. He glimpsed a mop of yellow-brown feathers dropping to the floor and then the breezy flare of thunder-bright flame heralding a transformation spell—the whole transition was just quiet enough to be graceful.

In another moment the door edged open and a red-headed young man slipped into the room, tip-toeing around the clutter and whatever illusion of privacy the bedroom's occupant might have had. His sly gait didn't go unnoticed by the rapier, who spun around his feet and asked, 'The hell are you sneaking around for?'

He naturally went unheard. Barnath was halfheartedly hoping his charge wake up to spoil the proceedings, but the question roused Bairith instead, who crawled out into the open to wonder the same thing. They watched the young man stalk around the bed, his expression breaking into a crafty grin as he spied the girl snoozing under the covers. He reached into a pouch at his belt, withdrew a piece of crumpled paper blotted with ink and then gingerly placed it on her pillow, right in front of her nose. When Barnath squinted, he saw that the paper was artfully folded into a bug-like shape, with eight little legs and a red spot scribbled on its back.

Bairith narrowed an incredulous look that rolled into a scoff. 'Oh, for the love of...'
Barnath hushed him with a serpent's grin, suddenly invested in the ruse.

He paced to the opposite side of the bed, wincing as an open book crackled beneath his foot—fortunately to no effect. He then crouched to the floor as if to hide, reached over the top of the blanket and nudged Lucca in the back. After a few more prods the girl shifted and yawned, coming around like a sloth. She blinked slowly, drinking in the odd dark shape on her pillow until it sharpened into focus.

Two beats later, she shrieked and jumped, falling off the bed and on top of the boy ducking for cover. He gave a winded cry and scrambled free, propping himself against the wall and rubbing his bruised shoulder. Lucca recovered a moment later, throwing her back against the side of the bed and trying to size up the body-shaped cushion that caught her. "You!?"

He returned a goofy smile that shortly bubbled into cackling, and it took a second longer for Lucca to realize she had been tricked. Outrage dawned and she grabbed her pillow, slinging it at his head. "You...!"

He tumbled out of the way and bolted for the stairs, and Lucca shouted over his laughter as she gave chase, "Crono!! You freaking jerk...!"

'Gwahaha! Oh, bravo,' Barnath lauded, tickled by the successful prank. 'I take back whatever I've said about that boy. I like him.'

-10-

At the northwest corner of Outlier, where the woods loomed thicker and darker over the picket-wire fence than it did the village's other boundaries, a chicken coop stood beneath the listing girth of a great oak. It had thin, flimsy planks that were spaced just widely enough for the hens to wedge their obtuse heads between them. Glenn discovered one such fowl screeching in distress while a young boy and gargoyle huddled over it, watching the entire shack tremble with the bird's thrashing.

The pair of kids—ten or maybe twelve years old—were rough and spindly-limbed, dirt and grass sticking from the frayed patches of their clothes. The gargoyle was sporting a straw farmer's hat that nearly dropped to the ground as he doubled over with laughter, while his companion gnawed the end of a reed, as unmoved by the spectacle as a cow. Between the hen's racket and the gargoyle's braying, no one noticed Glenn approach.

"Eheheh, eheheh, eeheheh!"

The boy cuffed his friend's shoulder. "Quit laughin' already and do somethin'. Stupid thing's gonna break its neck and Chitter'll whip us."

The gargoyle caught his breath and stood back, massaging his sore ribs. "I'm not gettin' my finger bit off again! Dumb chicken already got me once."

"That's 'cause you didn't grab 'er right."

"Well then you do it," the gargoyle sneered back.

The boy screwed up an impish scowl. "Fine, maybe I wi--"

"Hey there," Glenn interjected, watching the two whirl to him with mixed expressions of guilt and surprise. Glenn gave them a humored smile and nodded at the writhing head attached to an obscured chicken. He discerned ripples of dusty white and red through the gaping slats, where the walls shed sun-dried flakes of paint over the other hens. "Got a problem, there?"

"Ahh... maybe," the boy grudgingly admitted. Without another prompt Glenn opened the door to the shack and snooped around, minding his step around the addled birds. The chicken in distress was hard to miss—it was the one churning up straw like a fluffy, furious eggbeater. When Glenn clasped its feet and neck the hen kept drumming its wings against the wall, issuing another downpour of dust and paint. He couldn't help recall that the wolf he handled recently was a lot more cooperative, and when he plucked the chicken free he worried for a moment that its head had popped clean off. After a reassuring cluck, Glenn set it down and left the coop in peace.

Back outside, the boy was sizing him up with one squished eye, while the gargoyle flashed a canine in what looked more like a nervous tick than anything aggressive. The former crossed his arms, affecting a cocky sort of nonchalance that probably didn't amuse his elders. "We coulda taken care of it. Thanks anyway, mister."

"It's Glenn," he offered along with a friendly hand. The boy reared back with a critical demeanor that was taught not to trust strangers. The gargoyle, on the other hand, surprised Glenn by reaching past his friend and returning the gesture with an eager grin. "Thank you, Mister Glenn! It's nice to meet'chya."

Once his cohort accepted Glenn, the first boy seemed to mellow. "Hey. I'm Bert, and this here's Alf. You're new here, huh? Never seen you around."

Glenn looked the pair over and smiled again, more and more bewildered by everyone he met in this village (and to think, if any of the other knights back home saw a human and Mystic child fraternizing like so, they would've gone into bloody convulsions.) "Ahm, that's right. I am a newcomer. So..." He scratched his neck and looked around for a natural segue—he only came over because he was curious and still exploring, not because he particularly wanted to chat it up with a couple of kids. "You two watch the chickens, huh?"

Bert gruffly spit on the ground. "Nothin' to it, really."
Alf wrung his hands and shrugged, still too skittish to look Glenn in the eye for more than a second. "We just make sure they don't all kill each other."

"You're a soldier, huh," Bert jumped to that conclusion. "'s why you got that sword."

Glenn nodded, unable to deny it (admitting that he was actually a knight, not just a soldier, still didn't feel like a safe option.) "It's true. I served King Guardia XXI back in the war."

"Yeah, our folks fought in the war, too," Alf related.

"Really?" Glenn asked, shifting his feet as if he could literally walk around this touchy subject. "And now you live here with them?"

"Nope. They dead," Bert said with a cool sobriety that shocked Glenn.

"Oh." What could he say? He'd seen men and Mystic alike fall in the tide of battle, and the parents of these two could have been any of them. Even if he had, by the slightest chance, encountered the gargoyle that fathered Alf, he wasn't about to feel responsible for making him an orphan—everyone loses to war. Still, his sympathy couldn't be so easily suppressed. "I'm sorry to hear that."

"Nothin' to be sorry over. Miss Grim take us in. You met her yet? She's the flower lady." To that point, Bert spit on a dandelion. "Beats us all proper like a regular parent, anyhow. Now we're bona-fide chicken-watchers."

Alf shrugged. "Beats working in the gardens, at least."

"Tch. At least the farmers an' Chitter n' Scarab get their big share at supper, you know? 'cause they do real man's work. There's no respect for a couple'a chicken-watchers. We get treated like some scruffy kids."

"Hey, guard duty is important," Glenn tried to give their work some credit. "It takes a lot more skill and dedication than you might think. Chickens can't fend off the foxes and jackals by themselves, after all."

"I suppose," Bert relented. "Not that there's a point. Don't see much'a those types in the daytime, anyhow."

"They come out at night, the bad critters," Alf explained.

"Yeah, like the damn wolves," Bert cursed, and Alf threw him a wild, cringing look.

Glenn wasn't about to mind their language, either; it really wasn't his place. "Right, Miss Jenna told me about your wolf problem. Do they trouble this village often?"

"Every week or so, who's to say. Some nights they come and some nights they don't. Leave a bloody mess every time, though."

Alf twitched to a high-strung tune. "They come in groups, like, like an army or somethin'."

"Shut up Alf," Bert censured him. "Armies are big—lot bigger than the wolves got. You've never even seen a real one, so how would you know?"

"Neither have you!"

Glenn was struck with an appalling thought. "It's just you two boys watching the chickens all night?"

"Nah," Bert assured him. "They make us kids come in at night. Me, Alf, Lily, everybody."

The chickens' security wasn't all that crucial, Glenn knew, but a nagging sense of duty pressed him to ask, "The adults watch the chickens at night, then?"

"Nope, nobody watches 'em." Bert nodded at the shack. "We bolt that door right there real good and leave 'em. They don't need watchin' while they asleep."

That was somehow more disconcerting. "Really? That doesn't sound like a very sound idea, leaving them vulnerable like that. I'd imagine chickens would make a prime target for wolves. Don't you ever lose any?"

Alf passed a subdued look to Bert, who treated Glenn to a hard pause. "The wolves don't come for the chickens."

-10-

'Tonight we're going to learn to defy your perception of gravity.'

Bairith's next lesson took Lucca back to their usual time and place: the alley by the shop after hours. Lucca crossed her arms and looked down at him, intrigued if forever skeptical. "I'm listening."

'That's good, because you'll need those ears,' Bairith said slyly. 'Tell me, which part of your body controls your sense of balance?'

She took only a moment's thought before answering, "The vestibular system. It's a group of sensory organs that make up part of the inner ear. They're filled with fluid that shifts when you move. If they're upset too much, you get dizzy and lose your balance."

'Precisely,' Bairith chimed. 'That's the very system we're going to be fooling.'

Barnath smirked. 'How do you damn nerds know all this?'

"Because it's science, and science is always fascinating," Lucca retorted. "I've been looking into artificial vestibular systems so I can build a robot able to maintain bipedal locomotion." Gato came the closest to success in that aspect, yet still wasn't satisfactory. That robot couldn't surmount any drastic incline (stairs, for instance) without toppling over, making it a real 'pushover' (as Crono would say, in his own special manner. She remembered throwing a boot at his head to get him to stop knocking the robot down while she was working on it.) Studying Robo's design had helped a great deal; she only needed to take the time to seriously apply that knowledge. She was just too easily distracted with too many ideas of late.

Bairith made a noise like clearing one's throat. 'Hrmn, yes, anyway, we're going to give new meaning to the term "center of gravity." In fact, you're going to define your own in ways you never imagined. You can use the veins of darkness all around you—and even the ones inside you—to negatively channel the fluids of balance and maintain equilibrium no matter your orientation to the ground. Once you've mastered this, you'll be able to achieve perfect balance no matter where you are.'

Speaking of distractions, Lucca shuffled in place uncomfortably. "Uhh, talking about bodily fluids like this reminds me that I have to take a break."

'That isn't conducive to this lesson,' Bairith chided.

"Yeah, I know," Lucca said emphatically, giving him a hard look that glinted violet in the dark, and the rapier took a hint.

'Ahem, very well. Take a quick break.'

Lucca hurried around the corner and back into the shop while Barnath complained loudly, 'How do you humans get around, leaking constantly? Fleshbags, ugh.'

Five minutes later, after locking the shop back up again and returning to the thickest, darkest part of the alley, Bairith resumed his lecture.

'The most important attribute of the darkness to keep in mind is that it is nothing. It is neither matter nor magic, but in-between. You cannot push or pull it, only guide it. To possess it, you need only void your spirit and let it flow in, and the more darkness you have, the more you attract. So you see, it has a gravity of its own. A so-called field of darkness can put you at the center of your own gravity.'

Lucca mulled over the abstract physics of the idea. "Interesting in verse, I suppose, if pretty vague..."

'You'll see what I mean. Let's start. Take off your shoes again, close your eyes and get on your knees.'

"That just sounds wrong," she heard herself say in an echo of Liquel's voice.

'Just do it.'

"Okay, but I'm not falling for any creepy stuff." She brushed away a bottle cap before settling on a (mostly) clean spot.

Barnath snickered as his brother frowned. 'You've been listening to those perverted vagrants out here too long, you know that?'

"It's either them or you two," Lucca grumbled.

'Touché,' Bairith conceded, and then, without qualifying a thing, 'Do you know how to stand on your head?'

"What?"

'Well?'

Lucca fumbled for a response. "I... sheesh, I don't know. I haven't tried it since I was a little kid."

'Do it here, but before you do, recall our first lesson. Focus on the threads of darkness deep inside you and let them branch out until they surround you, like a bubble.'

"I don't know about this, but I'll try..." she uneasily agreed, only grateful that she was wearing her helmet. The pavement was cold, abrasive and slightly sticky, an inert stream of what she prayed was only soda snaking between her fingertips.

'Always know, always do, never try,' Bairith said, his placid confidence never faltering. 'Don't let any other thoughts or senses intervene.'

It was impossible not to feel ridiculous, attempting inept half-tumbles in the middle of a shady dump at ten o'clock at night, although if she was going to let a petty thing like self-consciousness stop her, Lucca would have walked away long before now. Bairith stood by, snipping at her for trying too hard and then not enough, until she wanted to stuff him in a trash bin and be done with it. At length she found his point, somewhere between the lines, and let go of the physical—the ground, the sky and every bottle cap in-between. She shut out the world and relaxed, watching her breath drift away on the pulse of something darker, no longer bound by the earth. The darkness is nothing; it has no weight.

Her feet tingled with frostbite, her arms felt like rubber stilts and it smelled like her own sinuses were burning, yet when she opened her eyes Bairith was beaming at her from the underside, backwards and wrongways. 'There, you see? Beautiful equilibrium.'

"Ahhh... wow," she whispered, leery of breaking the trance. Across the street she could see a lamppost stabbing into the star-strewn ground from a sidewalk ceiling. "I'm doing it. I'm upside-down, but it feels like I'm right-side-up."

Barnath's sardonic voice came from behind her. 'You have no idea how stupid you two look.'

Lucca couldn't care less, at the moment. Giddy with her disoriented state and eager to go further, she gingerly pulled her hands off the ground and paddled her feet, treading the inside of her 'bubble of darkness' like walking on the belly of a cloud. She could feel something magnetic rippling beneath every step. "Heh... Not that this isn't cool and all, if pretty weird, but what's the point of this, again? What does this have anything to do with the blight?"

'I've told you before. The better your mastery of the darkness, the more resilient you'll become to its effects, including the blight.' Bairith archly wound around her elbow and down (up?) her back, tracing her spine with goosebumps. 'However, if you'd like a more novel application of tonight's lesson, we can give it a twist...'

"Oh, kay," she warily consented. "I'm game."

His voice carried on behind her ears and beneath her skin, 'Stay just as you are a moment. I'm going to help you this time. Close your eyes again and follow my directions, no matter how strange they may seem. Do not stop to consider whether or not it's possible, or you will lose your balance for certain.'

"Oh boy..."

'No groaning. Negative thoughts won't help. Ready?'

"Positive, Captain Smokey." A sense of humor (even a lame one) was her only crutch now, lest her dread take over—there was always an inkling of fear with the pain.

'Mmn-hmn,' Bairith barely humored the moniker. 'Put both your feet on the wall.'

It took a moment to remember which direction the walls were, especially now that she was considering an extra (inverted) axis. She slowly bent not-down-sideways until her toes touched the bricks, wavering on an invisible fulcrum, and then before she could look for her bearings Bairith instructed again, 'Now, start walking.'

Even as her feet moved, she felt like she wasn't going anywhere. With her eyes closed, she had only a disjointed, lighter-than-air sensation to guide her, and she was too caught up in her little weightless bubble to try to reach out with her extra senses.

'Good. Don't lose focus. Keep going... Stop here. Do you feel comfortable in your state of balance yet?'

"Yeah..." She swallowed a creaking note of uncertainty. The bricks felt as real and solid as she did, but that didn't necessarily mean anything anymore. "Yeah, I feel fine."

'Open your eyes, then.'

She suspected before she actually saw it—the lid of an upright trash bin, staring flatly back at her, and the ground spread like a dirty canvas behind it. She looked up, and there was the other wall. To the left the arrowhead planks of a fence were pointing her way, and to the right Barnath twisted in a knot, regarding her with a curious expression. Lucca laughed, choked, scoffed, and laughed again. "Whoa-ho-ho...!" She turned around, reeling at the open sky directly ahead. "I just walked right up the wall!"

Bairith appeared around her ankles, as if anchoring her to the mortar. 'You have. Neat, isn't it?'

"This is so bizarre...!" Lucca wandered a bit, leaving Bairith behind to explore the alley from a fresh angle. The whole world was sideways—it was strangely exhilarating. "Hahaha. This is fun!"

'Just be cautious; don't overdo it.'

She defiantly hopped in place, testing the false gravity that glued her feet to the bricks, and noticed Barnath flinching. 'Hey hey, watch it!'

"Hehehe. Relax, already! I think I've got this down pat!" She laughed again and twirled on one foot (suffering a scraped toe for her audacity, but it was worth it.)

She caught a look from Bairith, his hazy lips pursed sidelong in what could best pass for a frown. 'Be careful. You're pushing it.'

She kept walking higher, until she was standing sideways on the eaves. "I believe you underestimate me, good sir. I have this totally under control." Lift one leg, then the other, up and over—and then she was on the roof, pacing slanted across the steep shingles.

'Hey!' the alley barked up to her. 'Don't just take off!'
'Don't wander far, now.'

"Tch, I'm only having some fun! You guys are real sticks in the mud, you know that?"

'We're just looking out for you,' Bairith said, a sentiment she found hard to believe. "Huh, if you say so," Lucca huffed. She supposed she couldn't blame their reservations. This was a real, indomitable force of nature, and she was simply walking all over it. "You think I'm going to fall or something? I told you I can handle this!"

Walls and ledges once ponderous were now mere hurdles; Lucca never felt more free to roam anywhere, everywhere. She climbed over a hanging gutter, ran upside a second story house and jumped across a window box as if it were only a pothole. She couldn't let go just yet; she had to test this ability, as inchoate as it was, to see how far it could take her. Lucca was already imagining the possibilities—the impassable walls she could scale, the impenetrable fortresses she could waltz into... (She allowed her imagination to forget that she already knew a beast talent, something that could let her fly anywhere in world, since there was something more impressive about doing so without turning into a bird.)

"I bet I could walk right up the castle ramparts like this. Heheh, wouldn't Marle freak out if I just climbed in through her window one day? I am so trying that."

'Er, are you coming down yet?' Barnath caught up and peered at her worriedly from the street. His concern only irked her—since when did he care? "Yeah, yeah, in a minute! I'm not done yet." Lucca drummed her fingers on a jutting stovepipe and then skipped around to the other side of the building, where another back alley lay below.

Not too far ahead, she glimpsed a cart rolling down the open street, and Lucca thought better of getting spotted in the streetlight crawling up the walls like an overgrown spider. She stood up straight to survey her next oblique destination, somewhere with better cover, and brushed away some spots in the corner of her eye. Come to think of it, she was getting a little dizzy—just a little. Perhaps she should just... "Oh... ah..." Where was she going, again?

'Lucca, get down.'

A bolt of pain stung her leg, buckling her knees, and the perpendicular felt a little too real all of a sudden.

'Lucca!!'

The ground came back very quickly.

***

Chapter 9
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