Chapter 7
Chapter
Seven
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Not-Quite-Edict Two: The human world is not your world; do not become attached.
My shoes click swiftly down the sidewalk in the most human-muscled effort I’ve ever expended.
Sunny Day kissed me, the way human lovers kiss.
My heart pounds, and it’s not from the exertion.
I’m filled with longing and fear and warmth and lust, and I don’t know how to handle all of these emotions and sensations overtaking my body.
It took all my effort not to slip into the veil there in her shop.
But she would have seen me, and I was already breaking not-quite-edicts as if they didn’t matter. But they do.
I pass humans in the street, and they can see me.
It’s intoxicating to pretend to be one of them.
Some smile and nod as I pass them. I return all their gestures and barrel forward.
It’s reckless to appear to so many, but I…
I like it. They’re each a bundle of messy, competing emotions, and I feel more at home among them than I ever have with my compeers.
It was partly why I volunteered for this service, to meet these human souls who were braver than me, who felt things the Elders didn’t.
Besides, by the time I realized I wanted to take part in the universe and not just observe it, I wasn’t fit for anything else. But now I’m not even fit for this.
I slow down when I’m a couple of blocks away from Sunny Day and her soft kisses. “Hello,” I say back to a woman who’d just hailed me in kind.
“What a beautiful pet,” I say to the woman walking a dog.
I smile and nod at the men holding hands who walk past me, and they return the gesture.
Across the street, a man is buckling a child into a vehicle.
The child’s laughter sings into my ears.
The sun is warm on my head and a breeze slips past my face.
In a group of men near orange cones, a machine roars DUT-DUT-DUT-DUT-DUT and chips away at the cement.
The alluring aroma of spicy human food meets my nostrils.
What does that food taste like? What is it called? How is it made? What does it feel like to have a friend? A lover? What is like to have someone like Sunny Day waiting at a home for you at the end of the day? What is it like to have a human home made of wood and stone and metal?
I pause, watching diners at outdoor tables eat and laugh. And live.
I made the wrong choice, all those ages ago.
But if I hadn’t made that choice, would I ever have met Sunny Day?
But what if I had chosen to become human, and Sunny Day could have become my—what was the word?
I stop walking and tuck the flowers under my arm to pull out my notebook and flip to my notes.
What if she had been my lover? Or girlfriend? Or my…wife?
My vision is blurry. I press my finger to my eye, and it comes away wet.
Tears, just like a human’s. That thought makes everything blurrier.
I blink and wipe them all from my face so I can see the flowers from Sunny Day clearly.
There must be almost a hundred petals in one bunch—no, she called them sepals—just like I feel like a hundred emotions in one human-like container.
This flower is perfect. It’s like her in every way, and I am—
I swallow hard. I don’t know what I am anymore.
A chime sounds.
I have to go. What do I do with the flowers? All I wanted was to see her again. I didn’t expect that so few of the human oddments would purchase such a wealth or that one human would unlock my soul’s heart and break me open.
The chime sounds again, and I really have to go. I pluck a couple of sepals from the green and flowers from the white and stuff them into my breast pocket.
“Good afternoon,” an elderly woman says as she approaches me from the opposite direction down the sidewalk. She seems very tired, or very sad, but her pink hair is cheerful in spite of it. I make a quick decision as she walks even with me.
“Good afternoon.” I hand the flowers to her. “These are for you.”
She stops, her wrinkled eyes wide and suspicious. “For me? Why for me?”
I have no answer ready. But then she smiles, and I smile back. “To make you happy.”
She smiles bigger. “Thank you! What a thoughtful thing to do.” She smells the flowers, and my chest tightens. I didn’t even smell them before I gave them away. I vow to smell the ones in my pocket later, but I have to tend to my mission now.
“Good afternoon.” I nod to her as some of the humans who passed me before had done, and I rush past her and around the corner. I run into an alley and slip into the veil toward my next assignment.
But how will I comfort a soul who is leaving this place, now that I have felt why they grieve?