Undefined - The Zephyr Book 1 ? (completed)(#Wattys2016)

Chapter 25 - Cello

25 - Cello

For breakfast, we crunch Zribble in silence. Syianne's glassy stare shoots straight ahead. I try to fall into her line of sight but she has an uncanny ability to look exactly where I'm not. I guess that at some point last night she changed from faking to actually sleeping, but it was absolutely clear that she didn't want to talk to me. She's going to give me the silent treatment until either I get angry at her or she decides that I'm conversation-worthy.

I don't care. I'm not going to get angry or play at her game; I'm not even going to ignore her back. I continue to skim through the articles in today's edition of The Rockdem Word, my finger flying as I whisk away article after article. I bite the nail of my thumb, searching for anything more about the riots. I sense her eyes on me; I know she's curious as to why I'm reading the paper with such intensity. I pick up yesterday's paper and show her the article.

"Look at the photograph, looks familiar?"

Her lips move slightly as she reads, she looks at the photograph and looks directly at me, "the Lemming?"

"Yeah, and Corabana Square, that's right next to the Zephyr. Can you imagine something like this happening and no one so much as mentions it?"

She gives a little shrug of her shoulders, as if not quite ready to discuss anything with me yet, even though her silence had been broken.

"Something's going on." I begin to rub my chin and stop, realising that I've grown a fair amount of stubble, "I feel uneasy."

"Something is going on, but it has nothing to do with us."

"It has everything to do with us," I shake my head. "We've already been played, Syianne, they only want us in a team to keep us under check."

She doesn't seem surprised. "Is that such a bad thing?"

"You mean, you're alright being controlled by other people?"

She sighs, "Of course not. Of course I want to be free. But I'm not free, we're trapped here forever and we can't escape. And that's how it is, and that's what we've got. I don't want to live a dismal life and I don't want to be alone."

I lean across the table knocking over a box of Zribble and grabbing her hands. "We can leave, we can just go. We can do it you know, and survive. Someone already has, and you won't be alone, you'll have me."

She looks at me for a long time, her brown eyes still and quiet. For a moment I think she's considering, a part of her wants to take off, a part of her is rebellious. Then she smirks and pulls her hands out of mine. "I'll have you? Until you decide that I'm not worthy enough to confide in. And where will we go? To Tagrya? The Darabin? Rockdem is as foreign as I'm willing to go, this is my home. Besides, we'll be in hiding forever, do you think the world outside will accept us if they know what we are?"

My lips press into a line, "I'm sorry about yesterday, I just — "

"It's my fault for trusting you," she cuts me off. "At the end of the day we're each in this alone, isn't that the truth?"

Her words sting and I shift in the chair, wishing I could find a switch to turn off her anger. "That's not how it is," I say defensively, "I was wrong yesterday..."

"No." she says drily, "You weren't wrong, you opened my eyes." She looks at the clock on the wall and rises to her feet. "We better go, it's getting late."

*

"Syianne," she's sitting next to me in the rail-car, our shoulders rubbing occasionally when there's a turn. Her head is turned away, directed at the window, at the city that's zooming by. There's always something to look at while driving through Rockdem, every neighbourhood is a little bit different. But I've already established the fact that I don't care much for cities.