A Flight of Broken Wings: Aeriel Trilogy #1

Chapter 2

Ruban Kinoh jerked awake, hand flying out with practiced precision to hammer at his obnoxious, yellow alarm clock. It had been a present from Simani, and he still wasn't sure it hadn't been a gag gift. Every morning he thought of tossing it out the window; he had a perfectly good cell phone with perfectly functional alarms. And yet, every night he found himself flicking the familiar switch at the back of the plastic chicken to set the buzzer, too tired to fumble with the intricacies of the smartphone alarm app. It was a vicious circle he needed to break, he decided.

He groaned as his sleep-addled brain caught up with the rest of his senses, after-images of crimson flames fading from the back of his eyelids. His sheets were drenched, the palms of his hands reddened with the crescent marks of sharp nails etched deep into the calloused skin. It had been a bad night.

He sighed. He could guess what had triggered the nightmare. His ears were already ringing from the cacophony of firecrackers going off just outside his window, roaring like multiple thunder-storms gathering at the same spot, all at once. The prismatic shadows of multicoloured lights lit up the wall opposite the room's only window.

Gritting his teeth in annoyance, he pushed himself off the narrow bed. This wasn't a day he was looking forward to. It was like this every year, cacophonous firecrackers accompanied by even more cacophonous hawkers and vendors crowding the streets, clogging traffic; topped by the inane, self-aggrandizing speeches of the pompous politicos they'd be forced to listen to for the better part of the morning. Emancipation Day seemed to bring with it everything but what its name proclaimed – emancipation of any sort. It was an affair at once rowdy and dreary, from Ruban's point of view anyway, and he couldn't wait to get it over with and get back to his real job. In his profession, he could not help but feel a perpetual sense of being under siege. It was why he was so good at his job. Emancipation, to him, was the stuff of history books and political speeches, not the reality in which he lived and breathed every day.

Blearily, he stumbled into the washroom, feeling around blindly for his toothbrush and razor. Simani would laugh herself silly if she could see him right now. Perhaps she was right after all; maybe he really was clumsy when not driving a sifblade into some damned Aeriel's heart.

He grimaced at the sound of raindrops hitting his windowpanes. Great! That's exactly what was needed right now – traffic-choked streets overflowing with mud and rainwater. No doubt the drains would be clogged for days from all the littering of sweet wrappers and whatnot. A flooded capital was exactly what the country needed to commemorate its independence from tyrannical Aeriel rule.

Personally,he did not see why Emancipation Day had to happen in the middle of the monsoon.Intellectually, of course, he understood that the first victory of a humanplatoon against an Aeriel stronghold probably had to have taken place duringthe cloudy days of the monsoons, when the fog obscured the sun – the chiefsource of the Aeriels' energy – for the better part of the day. It did make forsome mighty difficult celebrating, though.