Sunrise

Zal opens their eyes--lying on the ground, under canvas walls, but they feel surprisingly warm. There’s a girl resting her head on their chest. They reach up and run their fingers through her long black hair. This is nice, they think. It’s too warm, though. They carefully extract themself. They find the only thing they’re wearing is a grey bandana around their neck. They lay the warm blanket back over Razha’s body and try to slip away. She turns onto her back and reaches up to grab their hand, opening her eyes.

“Good morning,” she says, in her cute sleepy voice.

“Good morning!”

“Gods I missed you Zal,” she says.

“I missed you too.” They relax, letting her hold their hand, guiding the fingers of their other hand down the curvy path of Razha’s tattoo, feeling the softness of her cheek, the side of her neck. “This is nice, every once in a while. And it’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

“Too long,” she says. “Stay with me Zal.” She reaches up to pet Zal’s head, their short hair as chaotic as ever.

“But I gotta say good morning to the sun, too.”

“Of course. Just, let’s not split up again for a while.”

“Sure, I’m part of Helbender crew now, I ain’t going anywhere.”

Razha squeezes their hand tight before letting it go. “Best comrade.”

“Best comrade!”

Zal rises to their knees. There’s no room to stand in Razha’s little tent. They crawl over to the exit flap and step outside with a few little pouches in hand. The sun hasn’t quite risen yet, and the sky is a deep blue. It’s not so cold out, it’ll probably be a warm day. Outside, the soft moss feels good on their feet. The cool misty air feels great all over their skin. It’s been too long since they were in a safe enough place to do this. They raise their arms and stretch them to the sky.

The fog has lifted. They look up to find the tops of the huge trees growing staggered about the field. Their branches stretch wide and keep the field shaded. Most of the giant trees are thriving here, but one is only a shell of itself, dead, dry, strangled by thick black vines. They walk up to one of the healthy ones, a strong white oak, must be a thousand years old. They feel its bark. A beetle crawls up the tree by their hand, paying them no mind. It’s great to be out of the city.

They sit down and lean their back against the tree and roll up some katal and hazeweed from the pouches in their hands. In between draws of their smoke, they close their eyes and listen to the growing chorus of birds joining the fading song of the cicadas, they feel the rough bark on their back, the soft moss under their thighs. This is the best time of day, before anybody else is awake.

Near Razha’s tent are many other small weathered canvas structures like it. The trees would conceal the camp from above--Razha would think of that, of course. Dense shrubs tangled with green vines close in the other edge of the shaded area. Beyond the trees, the field reaches a gravel path, leading to Krev’s tiny cottage and the stable, with its drakes. The house is the last standing structure among the remains of other stone foundations, houses long vanished. Some Length away are three old barns. At the other end of the path, near the old stone wall, smoke rises from the fire pit, surrounded by a few larger makeshift canvas structures.

Back at Razha’s tent, Zal reaches in and finds their travel bag, pulls out a pair of tattered grey shorts, and dresses themself a little. They put on their new leather boots--stolen just last week and finally getting broken in. As they finish lacing them up, they hear a scream, and spring to their feet to run toward it.

Kurri bursts out of his tent--the young medic Zal brought all the way here from the capital--wearing only white cotton pants and holding a small knife. He points his weapon back at his bedroll, where a millipede--flat and grey and the length of his arm--works its way into his blanket. He lets out a disgusted sound as his whole body shudders.

Razha pokes her head out, and Zal answers her with a sign, spreading their fingers apart with their palms facing out--”all clear.” She retreats back into her tent.

Keeping the knife up, Kurri creeps back over, takes the corner of the bedroll, and slings the whole thing out onto the moss around his tent. The bug crawls out, going on with its life, until Zal kneels down and lets it crawl up their arm.

“What’s the matter? They’re completely harmless--Hel, they’re adorable,” Zal says as the creature spirals around their right arm up to their shoulder, across a tattoo of a centipede wrapping around their upper arm.

“It was...crawling on me.” He runs his hands across his chest as if trying to cleanse his skin of something, even though giant millipedes are really very fastidious.

They reach up and pet it with their finger as it investigates the grey bandana tied around their neck. It loses interest and crawls down the front of their torso, climbing down a tattoo of a tree stretching across their chest. “You mean like this?” It climbs across their shorts, down their leg, and over their boots. With no acknowledgement of them it scurries off across the ground. “Friendly little guy.”

Kurri lowers his knife. “Where did it come from?”

“The feeder barn, I’d imagine. Takes a lot of insects to raise drakes, good source of calcium. They don’t really taste that good to humans, though.”

He has a strange look on his face. Suddenly he shields his eyes. Zal turns around to see the sun emerging over the next peak. “Oh, good morning!” they shout, waving.

“It really is beautiful here,” Kurri says.

“Hey, Kurri,” Zal says, walking over toward the brush line. “Come look at this.”

Zal stands by the old dead tree. When he reaches them, he freezes in awe.

Through a gap in the bushes the two stare out over the valley of lush green mountains, trees in bloom and mountain flowers covering the openings between them like paint randomly splattered on a canvas--green and white and purple and red, against the blue sky above. Below, the steep mountainside stretches down to the river--its dark, polluted waters like a wound on the valley. The corruption of the blight spreads outward from the river like black veins on the green flesh of the mountains. From somewhere out of sight around the bend of the river, black smoke rises into the blue sky.

“I-I’ve never seen anything like this, it’s...I feel so...”

“Small?” Zal says. “I’ve been up on a lot of mountains, and I still feel that.”

He stumbles back, looking like he will lose his balance, but he catches the dead tree behind him with his forearm. Zal suddenly shouts, waving their arms frantically.

Kurri straightens up. “What? What’s wrong?”

“You can’t just touch a blight-vine, Kurri!”

“Oh no, did I--”

“Fuck, stay in the shade Kurri, hold on.” They take the bandana from around their neck and tie it around his arm where he had touched the fuzzy black vine. “There you go, the medic has become the medicked.”

“Thanks, I’m sorry...”

“I don’t guess they have many blight-vines in the city. You gotta watch these, they secrete a horrible toxin that destroys your skin’s ability to protect itself from the sun. It’s weird to find them so high up, though,” Zal says.

“Let me see, do I have something to treat a phototoxin? Oh, I don’t know, what do I know about blight mutations of mountain plants...” Kurri says.

“Just ask Filla or Perra, one of them will be in the medic tent. They’ll be the experts on mountain medicine here,” Zal says.

“Filla and Perra, got it. Oh, I thought you said there would be only one other medic.”

Zal shrugs. “Guess I misspoke.” They walk off back toward Razha’s tent. “And get yourself dressed properly, it’s dangerous up here you know.”

“But you’re not--oh never mind, you’re Zal, you’re invincible,” Kurri says.

“Now you get me!”