FORTY-SIX: Life

“What is this ugly thing?” Kibby asked, wrinkling her nose at the results of an entire morning’s work in the kitchen.

“Kibby stinks. She’s mean-mean,” Alden said brightly, jabbing a few of the sacred burning chopsticks into the top of his concoction.

“You stink! Humans stink the most. Go climb in the launderer and wash yourself!”

Alden laughed. Insults were coming along nicely. Kibby really liked being friendly-mean.

“———-! ———- ——! ————.” Sometimes she got a little too into it though.

“This is my special birthday meal,” he said. He didn’t know ‘cake’ yet, and anyway, it was more like a seven layer dip made with colorful vegetable mash. “Yum! Delicious! It’s a human custom.”

“Why are you putting my promise sticks in it?”

“For beauty.”

“You’re dumb. Promise sticks aren’t ————-. They’re important.”

Alden paused. “Are you feeling bothered? Seriously?”

Seriously was a good word. Kibby would stop joking around to answer him thoughtfully whenever he used it.

“No. It’s fine. For your birthday. Your shirt is —————.”

Alden held out his arms and spun so that she could admire the garish Hawaiian shirt. Oh, she really does like it, he realized, examining her expression. That must have been a compliment then.

“Today we eat on the top of the building.”

“Roof,” she reminded him.

She’d shown him the way up there about a week ago. They’d both agreed that it was a bad place and a good place.

It was good because the lab lacked windows, and the only way to see the surrounding landscape and not feel a little claustrophobic was from the rooftop. And it was bad because the landscape didn’t look like it once had. The endless sea of grass was all wilted, rotted, or just plain missing. It smelled funky.

And in the distance, visible through a set of very cool binoculars Alden had found, he’d spied some kind of trail through what was left of the grass. Like something about the size of the armored car had ambled drunkenly around out there. It was a pretty chilling idea. He’d asked Kibby about it, and she’d said one of the three words she liked to use for the demon bugs.

So…yeah.

The roof was good and bad. That had been a complicated conversation to navigate. But Kibby really enjoyed her new role as Alden’s language tutor. Managing his word choices pleased her. She had extremely bossy tendencies for someone who was the equivalent of eight years old by human standards.

Artonans aged a little more slowly.

Every day Kibby gave Alden brain-breaking “tests” by taking him around the lab and pointing at things, demanding he come up with the name. In addition to the three words specifically for the bugs, she’d made him learn six for what he thought of as simply chaos. He’d memorized them, but he wasn’t sure what the nuances were yet.

When the cake was finished, they headed up to the wide flat roof, where Alden had already set up the party spot. “Surprise!” he shouted, gesturing to the two reclining chairs, the ball-shaped lamp, and the table he’d hauled up while she was sleeping yesterday afternoon. He’d called it strength training and counted it as his workout for the day.

A pitcher of the same blue tea Joe had served him on his last evening at LeafSong was on the table along with cups. Kibby examined it all thoroughly.

“Why are we eating on the roof? It’s ——— ———. Do humans have to do it for their birthdays?”

Alden resisted the urge to make up some insane tradition on the spot.

“No. I just thought it is happy to eat outside while we can. There aren’t many demons now, and night is coming.”

They’d been living in the lab for twenty-eight days. By his math, give or take a few hours he’d lost track of on the first day, he was now sixteen. And in a few Alden-days the real Thegund day would end, and a very long night would come. The light shining through the cloud cover seemed like it was already growing dimmer.

He was a little hung-up on it. Kibby, who’d lived here her whole life, thought it was strange that he was nervous about it.

“There are lots of ——— everywhere,” she said, pointing at the tall lightpoles on the grounds of the complex. “Some of them will be broken, but not all of them.”

“You’ll keep me safe,” Alden said.

“No.”

“You will. Inside, you’re all friendly.”

“You are the Avowed. And you’re old. You have to keep me safe. ————- ———— ————— embarrassed.”

Alden held out his mushy veggie cake. “Make fire for my promise sticks,” he demanded.

She groaned and stomped like it was a terrible imposition, but she pulled her little lighter disc out of her pocket and lit the makeshift candles. Alden set it on the table and sat beside it in his recliner.

“Now, I’m going to say lots of words together for beauty,” he announced. “It’s part of the birthday custom.”

“Say lots of words together for beauty?” Kibby asked in a fascinated voice.

Alden cleared his throat and belted out the happy birthday song. He was not a gifted singer. Kibby looked stunned and horrified.

But since he’d said it was a custom she didn’t stop him or cover her ears.

“That is… a nice custom?” she said when he was done. “You don’t call it ‘saying lots of words together for beauty.’ You mean ——. I think?”

“Singing?”

“Maybe,” she said doubtfully. “Now what?”

Alden leaned over and blew out all of his sticks.

“Oh, I understand,” Kibby said confidently, whipping out her lighter again.

Alden watched her light them all. And then she blew on them, too.

“Was that right?” she asked.

“Perfect.” He pulled one of the sticks out and licked some mushroomy-tasting paste off the bottom. “Now we eat it.”

#

After the meal, Alden attempted birthday parkour around the grounds of the laboratory. When Kibby had asked to watch him exercise after their first baby magic lesson, he’d tried to turn the simple laps around the facility he’d initially planned into something more entertaining for her.

It was a bit of a failure, but with his trait active it was at least a high-energy one. He’d decided to keep at it. Plain old running wasn’t as much fun as launching himself with unnecessary force off of expensive-looking equipment and buildings that belonged to a corporation that was indirectly responsible for his presence here.

He wouldn’t call himself good at it, but he was definitely improving. Even when he didn’t wear the coat. Usually he didn’t. It was in the vault, saving whatever magical oomph it had left for whenever he might really need it.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

He used the heck out of Joe’s ring, though.

Alden’s ring, he decided, letting it do the gripping for him for a split second as he hung from the edge of one of the huge pentagonal satellite dishes. Happy birthday to me. If Joe asks for it back, I’ll look him dead in the eye and say I lost it on the demon moon he sent me to.

He didn’t really blame Joe. It wasn’t like Alden hadn’t known something bad could happen here. But he still felt like he could have been a little more thoroughly informed. About everything. And if Joe had gotten him out of the party…

Don’t go there. It always pisses you off.