Into That Wild Blue Yonder

5. Another Day, Another Trouble

Colm sat upright in his bed long before the sun could stab him in the eyes the next morning. Like any night he came back, he forgot to close his curtains, though this time due to his panicked escape. While he did get a light buzz, he hadn't drank nearly as much as usual, and woke up much earlier than his usual hour.

He swung his feet off the bed and started his day the usual way. Once he was limbered up and had some food in his belly, he contemplated what there was to do. Jerry hadn't contacted him. He had no urgent matters to attend to, no real reason for him to be rushing out the door this morning. It was an easy, early morning.

Colm dressed himself slowly, looking over himself in the mirror before donning his shirt. He looked over the magical ink on his upper left arm, tracing the lines of the symbol with his eyes. A symbol of his personal studies with the order he designed for himself, a symbol of the place he grew up in, and a symbol of what he believed to be the right way to live. Now, he was the only person in the world who understood what it said.

Colm finished getting dressed and leaned up against the windowsill to look out at the street below. He didn't typically see the early morning traffic. On the streets below, he observed countless people rushing about, most on foot, some in carts drawn by horse or electricity. Laborers with faded uniforms ignored the occasional sneer from executives and office workers as they went to do the work that let them do their work.

Parents walked their children to school for the day where they would learn what Colm assumed would be useless knowledge. Even the monastery suffered that problem. The only things the kids needed to learn were well outside the school walls, where experience dictates everything anyway. He came to understand that when he first arrived in Joustbergh.

On the other side of the street, a particularly haggard-looking mother struggled to wrangle her two little ones on their way to school. Colm watched mindlessly as she did her best to control them, but they kept insisting on something childish and resisted her attempt to guide them elsewhere. Colm sighed, knowing the kids didn't understand how much she cared for them to go through so much stress.

Not far from her, a group of unsavory young men leaned up against the wall smoking tobacco and laughing openly at her struggle. Colm frowned as he habitually counted them and noted their postures. People like that reminded him of why he ended up at the monastery. He hated people like that.

Colm figured it was time to find something else to do and grabbed his only hat and coat on his way out. It wasn't cold enough for a suede peacoat, but he knew it would help hide his identity on the street. A nice, generic look to avoid negative attention.

Colm exited out the front door of his building and took in his surroundings. The struggling mother made it maybe two hundred yards further down the street, nearly at the schoolhouse. The clowns against the wall had moved as well. Colm took one last look around, sucked in a deep breath, and moved in the direction of the school. He knew of a side street not far from there where he could get some bottles so he wouldn't have to spend another night sober in an emergency.

Colm didn't travel far before he laid eyes on the street "toughs" he saw before. They all stayed close to the wall, eyeballing the front of the school and started chattering quietly when the woman came out. She waved back at the school and walked directly away from the school down the street with the liquor store.

When she was out of sight, the men on the street started quickly making their way for the turn. Colm followed close behind as they hurriedly took the turn and spotted the woman. She must have heard them and turned around. She froze in place as the group started approaching her.