She was drunk.

Marroo found her where Cathay said he would, sitting alone on the platform called “The Drakes Nest” really little more than a half a dozen shipping pallets strung together and hung from tangled cabling between the playground’s towers. She sat beside a padded cardboard box stuffed with the unmarked cans of Bzza most of the couriers favored and surrounded by empties accreted in the cracks of the uneven platform by generations of couriers partying while they watched their friends ride the obstacles around them.

He rode low in front of her, so that she would see him, before he banked overhead and came down on a pallet behind her. The platform shivered and swayed from the added weight as she stood up and they embraced when he dismounted and met her at the central pallet of the platform. A weight fell from his chest as he buried his nose in her hair.

Abruptly, she pulled away and hit him.

“Where were you?”

He smiled and backed away until he saw that she wasn’t smiling.

That shadows cast by the playground’s floodlights during the night made her look fierce as she hit him again. “I thought you’d left me!”

She’d always been a clean drunk, on the few occasions when Marroo had seen her drinking. She didn’t slur, but her eyes were wide and dilated by more than just the darkness, and she’d hit him hard enough that she would have probably bruised anyone else. There was no hiding the red in her eyes from crying.

Marroo spread out his hands as though to show they were empty. “I’m sorry.” He said.

She crossed her arms and tossed her hair out of her face. When it didn’t obey she swiped at it in irritation then raised her eyebrows when he didn’t go on. She shook her head at him and leaned forward. “Well?”

Marroo held up his hands. “I’m sorry.” He said again. “I just, stopped to play some cards at the tower.”

She quirked her eyebrows as though to mock him and tilted her head. “What if I don’t believe you?” She demanded.

“It’s the truth.” He met her eyes but after a moment she scowled and looked away. Other girls buzzed by in the spotlights and she huddled into herself as she watched them pass. She seemed to realize she still held her can and lifted it to take a swig.

Marroo watched her in the swaying shadows of the drifting spotlights.

“I would never leave you.” He said. “Not that way, not without saying anything first.”

“Of course not.” Dhret said with a snort. “No one thinks they would, but you were just, playing, cards.” She exaggerated the last to show how much of his story she believed and glared at him, or tried to. Whatever venom she’d meant to put into the look just turned into a look of pain that she tried to hide by taking another drink.

They didn’t say anything for a long moment.

“I love you.” He whispered. “I would never leave.”

“Stop it!” She jerked away from him and covered one ear with her empty hand while she hunched over as though to hide. “Stop it, I don’t want to hear it!” She stayed that way, breathing hard as she cupped her face in her hands. Eventually he touched her to pull her back into her arms and she let him. She buried her face in his shoulder and leaned her whole weight into him while the can still in her hand and pinned between her face and his shoulder bit into his collar bone.

“I wish you drank.” She said. “I’m not drunk enough for… for this.”

Marroo just held her for a while and didn’t say anything. The other girls from the pack must have sensed the moment taking place on the nest because they parked on a tower opposite and he heard them arguing about whether or not to send someone for another box of booze or head to the saloon instead.

“I found something you’ll like.” He told her.

Her eyes sparkled when she pushed away to look up at him. “What is it?”

Marrooo reached into his pocket and pulled out the flier he’d taken from the market. He handed it to her and she stepped away from him to angle it so she could read it by the light of the drifting floodlights. “A martial arts contest?” She asked she gave him a blank look. “Why is this for me?”

Marroo held out his hand and she returned the flier. A stylized, and inaccurate, technique guide had been stenciled into the top corner of the paper above the announcement in bold and the details printed underneath. Marroo folded it once and tucked the flier back into his pocket. “There’s a lot of prize money.” He said without looking at her. “Enough for us to get a better apartment. We could get away from the family. Start a new life.”

Dhret stared off into the half darkness of the floodlights that drifted around the towers of the playground. “A better apartment.” She said without inflection.

Marroo tucked his hands into his pockets and studied her silhouette against the city scape below.

“That’s what you want isn’t it?”

She looked down at the can in one hand, then raised it to drink but found it empty. She raised it over her head and hurled it off the edge of the platform with a scowl.

They watched it sail away until it disappeared in the darkness.

“I want…” She began. “I want....” She put one hand to her face, but pulled away when Marroo removed his hands from his pockets to try and pull her to him again. She marched to the cardboard box of booze and opened a new can with a savage twist of her fingers. “How can you even know that you’ll win?” She asked as she rounded on him.

Marroo regarded her. “I do.” He said simply.

She glared at him.

“It’s not the first time I’ve fought for money.” He tried to keep the scowl off his face but looked away.

She drank from her can and studied him then pointed it at him. “You don’t think other people there will be any good?”

Marroo’s lips twisted in a smile he didn’t feel and he shook his head.

For a moment, she didn’t say anything as she looked at him, as though she were rebuilding her picture of him in her mind. “Are you really that good?” She finally asked.

Marroo shifted an old empty can with his toe. “I’ve been cultivating for a long time.” He gave the can a boot off the platform to join Dhret’s can somewhere in the streets below.

“If you’re that good, then why leave the family? Why talk about starting another life?”

He looked at her. “I thought you wanted to start a new life?”

She stomped one foot and glared at him while the platform swayed beneath her. “I want to live like a human being, Marroo! Not abandon everything here. If you’re good enough to win some competition then show that to the family. Athesh would offer you a better job in a heartbeat if he thought you had some potential, my… the family, would pay you more, if you showed it to them.” She jerked away and hugged herself again as she stared down at the night.

Marroo looked down at his feet. “I can’t stay with the Iblanie.”

Dhret was quiet for a moment, as she waited for more. When he didn’t add anything, she looked around in frustration and stomped her foot again. “Heavens above! Marroo! You can’t just say shit like that and expect me to understand! You have to tell me more! Use your words! Talk to me! I can’t read your mind!”

Marroo flushed. “They… already offered me… better jobs.” He said.

Dhret waved her can through the air. “Then why are you still playing courier?” She asked.

He glared at her, then looked away. “They want too much from me.” He said. “They want me to be, something I don’t want to be.”

Airtraffic and the distant whine of the heart of the Midnight Plains miles upon miles above them whispered in the silence that fell between them.

“And what about me?” Dhret asked quietly. “Am I asking too much from you?”

He looked at her and thought of his own mother. “I…” He wanted to say that he loved her, but the response he’d received from her last time made him stop and look out across the playground again before he went on. “I want to make you happy.” He said. He looked at her. “I’ll do, whatever that takes.”

Her face twisted and she tried to hide it by lifting her can and turning away from him. Neither spoke again for a long moment.

“I’m too drunk for this.” Dhret said. She looked at her newly opened can then tossed it off of the platform then just stood there chewing on her lip while she watched it fall. Eventually she turned back to him, arms crossed over her chest. “What are you going to do when the money runs out? From your tournament?” She asked. “What will we do if we can’t go home, to the family, for help?”

Marroo shrugged at the unfamiliar discomfort of uncertainty. “I have a plan.” He told her, and looked away.

She did not cultivate with him during his breathing exercises the following morning, or tend to her plants. While he cleared his mind and probed for the venomous aura he’d chosen to ignore as he went to sleep that night, she sat and read from the two dozens pages he’d dictated into his familiar in the hours he’d been found between time spent with her and time spent working for the family since he met the author.

“People overestimate how hard it is to be a professional author.” Adavkin told him at the book shop. “It is hard. It takes time, but it’s not complicated. All you have to do is write, publish, repeat, and find a way to tell people about your work in between. Do it enough times and you’ll find that, like Meridians, doors start to open in your creative process along the way.”

Dhret finished the manuscript he’d spent hours working on in less than twenty minutes.

“Did you like it?” Marroo asked as his spirit returned to its usual shifting pattern through his meridians after the mild strain of the breathing exercises.

“It was terrible.” She said before he’d even finished the question.

Marroo blinked and looked away but didn’t reply while Dhret rubbed at her forehead wearing a pained expression.

She pulled her hand away from her face to look at him across the utility box they both sat on as the shadow of the Midnight Plains retreated up the face of the bottom to anti-turnward. “Is this how you plan to make a living?” She asked.

He shrugged. “I’ve met other people doing it.” He replied.

He glanced at her and met her eyes until she rubbed at her face again and turned away. “An artist.” She muttered. “Heavens above.” She closed her eyes and pressed her hands to them.

Marroo turned and watched the shadow of a night plain passing through the haze that obscured the southern rise of the horizon and tried to ignore the betrayal in her tone of voice. Pages ruffled and he turned back to find her gazing at one page near the middle of his work. She felt his eyes on her and dropped the page she was holding open to set her hand on it and give him a speculative look.

“Is this, really what you think life is like?” She asked eventually.

He shrugged and turned back to the brightening day. “It’s just a story.” He lied. “Just, something I thought up.”

She chewed her lip and looked down at the manuscript before sliding it back to him. “It was very sad.”