Fallen, Scene 2

"Fallen, Scene 1"  [ASR]



FALLEN, SCENE 2



“You’re going too fast, Uncle,” Nolan whined from his hunkered down position in the back seat as they rounded yet another curve. “I’m gonna throw up.”

Ryan grimaced. Why did his little cousin only ever find the courage to speak up when he wanted to whine about something? Ryan bit his tongue, trying not to let the idiot ruin his day. He sighed, thrilled with the wind in his face despite the wailing.

“You are fine, Nolan,” Azrael assured him. “I am going not a bit faster than your young legs could run. Why don’t you sit up and enjoy the scenery, boy?”

“Yeah Nolan,” Ryan piped up, unable to help himself. “And quit your crying. You are such a cry baby!”

“I am not a cry baby,” Nolan insisted as he sat up, his face turning red. “I’m fifteen; you can’t call me a baby!”

“Oh, yeah? Well—”

“Enough!” Azrael thundered. “I ought to throw you out and make you walk. Now let’s have some quiet, shall we?” A thoughtful look crossed his face. “Neither of you has ever been to town.” Azrael slid a glance toward his son and added, “Right?”

Ryan shook his head, answering truthfully. Of all of the trouble he had made in his seventeen years, sneaking into a human town was not one of the antics he had managed to pull off. I should have tried harder, he thought.

“This will be an adventure,” Azrael announced, savoring the sense of fun. “Stay close to me—you do not yet know the ways of humans, and you will not fit in among them. Do not draw attention to yourself, and you may get to see some interesting things.”

“What kinds of things do they do differently, Father?” Ryan inquired.

“They do everything differently from us.” Azrael revealed his toothy grin—one, despite his agedness, as intimidating as a Serohan as it was as a Zevt. “You must learn for yourself.”

The road steadily became more open as the land settled into hills instead of mountains. Ryan’s heart raced as the first few buildings popped up on the horizon.

The first was hardly more than a dilapidated wooden shed. Rustic. General Store, Ryan read on the sign. The Serovts rarely used written language, but all cubs were required to learn to read and write the human language.

“Time for your first lesson,” Azrael told the boys as he pulled into the parking lot.

Rocking chairs sat empty on the front porch. A cheap plastic sign hanging on the shabbily screened front door announced “WELCOME” to anyone who might bother to notice. The door creaked when Azrael swung it open to lead the boys inside.

Ryan noticed the staleness of the air first. This building had no extra opening to move the outside air through—and none at all once the door slapped shut. The only enclosures Ryan had ever had to endure were the dwelling caves they sheltered in. The refuges cut a c-shape into the ground, and they had two openings cleverly designed to direct airflow through the tunnel while shunting precipitation away. The holes could be sealed up in case of a heavy rain or terrible storm, but Ryan preferred being wet to feeling like he was suffocating.

As they ventured further in, Ryan had to shield his poorly adjusting eyes from the harsh artificial light thrown by several overhead lamps.

“Good day to yah, sir,” drawled a large bellied man in rough denim overalls. He did not bother to rise from his seat behind the register, but his bulbous face crinkled up with a grin that revealed brown stained teeth. A machine whirred quietly next to him, creating a slight breeze that sent his stale, sweaty stench mixed with something both herby and acrid straight to Ryan’s nose. The young Serohan felt bile rise slightly in his throat. “And you young ‘uns, too,” the man said, eyeing the boys curiously.

Ryan gaped at him more openly than he meant to. How did a man get so large? Did he never run through the woods after prey? Did he not stroll by the stream to take in the scent of fresh water? Perhaps he was attached to that chair that held him rather precariously.

“And to you as well,” Azrael replied, his consonants incredibly crisp in comparison to the shopkeeper’s.

“You’uns in town visitin’?” Ryan struggled to understand any of the man’s words.

“Yes sir, just passing through,” said Azrael amiably.

The man on the stool took out a small bag and stuffed some of its contents into his lip. He must have seen Ryan and Nolan staring curiously, because he motioned towards them and uttered, “Yahna-chawuh-backee?” and thrust the bag their direction.

Ryan mumbled noncommittally, not all that sure what the man had been trying to tell him. He shifted, uneasy beneath the scrutiny of the beady eyes. He wondered if the man’s bulbous nose could sense nervousness. Nolan was oozing it, and Ryan smelled it on himself, so he was sure his cousin had rubbed some on him.

“No sir,” Azrael firmly told the man, coming to the boys’ rescue. Once he found safety behind his father, Ryan’s curiosity got the better of him, and he leaned forward, catching the same acrid and herb scent from earlier and reading “Red Man” on the bag before the man shrugged and put it away.

“Would you happen to have any office supplies?” Azrael asked.

The man pointed him toward a shelf on the far side of the store, but the group’s walking away did not stop the shopkeeper from keeping up a drawling commentary that Ryan understood virtually none of. Nevertheless, he followed his father dutifully around the store with Nolan trailing closely behind him.

Ryan felt the wooden planks beneath his feet give slightly as they screeched complaint of bearing weight. Curiosities lined the few shelves of the small store. Much of it smelled edible and not completely unpleasant, even if was a bit aged. He reached out and touched one thing that caught his eye, delighted that its crinkling package was not unlike the crinkling of autumn leaves. The one he touched smelled faintly sweet, reminding him of a springtime apple blossom, so Ryan started to pick one up to put it in his mouth, but a sideways glare from Azrael stopped him.

Ryan would have asked why he could not have the sweet, but the creaky door announced there was a newcomer.

“’Bout time you got here, Orla,” the shopkeeper snapped at her, brown spittle running down his beard.

Ryan tried to inspect the newcomer from behind some shelves, enjoying the refreshing scent she brought in with her: a mix between a warm spring rain and a field of newly-bloomed daffodils, with an undercurrent of something wild and familiar. Her dark eyes narrowed in defiance at the older man.

“It’s Beth,” she spat at him. Ryan guessed she was about the same age as he was, assuming humans aged the same way of course.

Her light blonde hair reflected what little sunlight that squeezed through the dirty screen door. What Ryan found shocking was that every bone in her slight frame screamed hostility toward the older man, a disrespect that would never be found at home, in his camp. Although the pecking order allowed the young and strong to move upwards in rank over their elders, no youth ever forgot to show them respect.

The older man harrumphed and lumbered from his chair. He waddled out the door and was gone.

As Azrael browsed through the shelves, Ryan watched Orla—or Beth, he supposed—meticulously wipe down the seat, the countertops, and the buttons at the register before settling in. She looked up, and their eyes met briefly. She frowned at him, then pulled out a paperback book and pointedly ignored him. What barbarians these humans are, Ryan decided.

To her credit, she put the book away when Azrael arrived at the counter with his items. She did not make meaningless small talk like the big man—in fact, she hardly spoke at all—but she was polite to Azrael and gained favor in Ryan’s eyes for it.

“Come along, boys,” Azrael commanded after he paid.

“What was the paper and metal for, Uncle?” Nolan found the courage to ask after they reentered the car.

“That’s how humans barter. It’s called money. They assign values to the different pieces and make them universal. That way, the humans can collect some, and then go barter for what they want.”

The system made Ryan’s head hurt. “Why don’t they just trade for what they need, like us?”

“There are a great many humans out there that interact with each other. Not everybody is going to get matched up for the perfect trades. Our colony is a lot smaller—we produce most of what we need. And anyway, our needs are a lot simpler. Shelter. Food. Clothing.”

“What else is there, Father? What more could the humans want?”

“Everything.”



"Fallen, Scene 3"  [ASR]