The ride back to the apartment was shorter than I would have expected. I wonder if it was because of their familiarity with this place, or the fact that they kept each other preoccupied. Sky, played the radio on blast. Some tunes with twangy instruments, grizzly voices, and copious amounts of percussion. Some tunes with gentle strings, hefty drums, and fluttering woodwinds-- they seemed to talk through the back window when these sorts of songs played. Val, seemed to act similarly to when we were out on the road that one night. What meaning does he have to keep his identity concealed, when the one I am seeing right now brings him such great joy?

He doesn’t risk a deadly fate like I do, does he?

When we get to the apartment, no one is in a rush. They do, in fact, pull the motorbike off of the truck and get it back onto the ground in a timely manner, but once it is parked in place they just… loiter. They have such a nice time together over just words. No drinks, or dances, or flings, necessary. Just two gentlemen talking about whatever comes to mind during the short moments of empty air.

Why does this seem like such a foreign concept to me?

I just stand with my back against the truck, watching. They have tried to bring me into the conversation a few times, but I insisted on sitting back and taking everything in. I am at peace during the night time, so I find no need to detract from its beauty. They meet in an embrace, faces buried in clothing, hands patting backs, and suppressed whispers. Neither Sky nor Val pull from it, they just stand there… wrapped inside of each other.

Why do I feel flushed all of a sudden?

When they do eventually detach from each other, it feels anything less than anti-climactic: their arms fall to their sides, and their heads rise from the other’s shoulder. Sky rises a hand to Val’s face, and seems to wipe away tears. They exchange a few more words with each other, and walk to the stairwell, side-by side. Val ascends the stairs, a hand on his cheek. He seems to be considerably flushed.

As I move myself towards the passenger door, Sky jogs back to the truck. He quickly pulls a bag up from the truck bed and nods to me.

“Val forgot his bike stuff,” Sky huffs, a bead of sweat dripping from his forehead. “I’m gonna bring it to him, you wait in the truck.” Before I can give him a nod in response back, he zips up the stairs two steps at a time. What a tank of a man.

I get into the truck and pull my bags onto the dashboard before sitting myself down. What was it that I just saw in front of me? I shuffle through my shopping bags, sifting through the new clothes and books and trinkets that I bought to bring home with me. It feels familiar, but I just can’t pinpoint what it is. I pull out a little trinket from my bag. It is a woven doll, wrapped in dozens of colors but having a plain, white face. Kinky, blond hair sprouts from atop its shiny white dome, a metallic hook poking up from the mass of gold.

Did I experience this once before?

My door slams close and I flinch, only to look over and see it is Sky. “You can’t be gentle with ‘em,” he says before sliding across the hood and pulling the door open. He slips into the truck with just as much grace, slamming the door behind him. “Brutus is a big boy and can take what you throw at him. Hard door slams is the only way these doors stay close.” He snaps his seatbelt on and turns on the ignition. Brutus, roars as the engine turns on, and the radio as well.

The casters’ loud complaints over the radio make Sky jump, and with a flick of the wrist the screams turn to whispers. “Oh, sorry; forgot to turn it down before shutting the truck off.” In no time at all, he backs the truck up and starts driving out of the apartment complex.

Unlike the drive home with Val, Sky immediately tries to start up a conversation. “So, ah…” he mumbles, giving me a moment of eye contact before bringing his attention back to the road. The emerald gaze, albeit short, looked genuinely kind. “How do ya know Val? It’s been a while since I’ve seen him, though I know fairly well that he isn’t much of a social butterfly, if you know what I mean.”

“A bar,” I respond bluntly, gazing down at the doll I’ve been fiddling around with since I took it out of the bag. He gives me a quick look-down, and stifles a chuckle-- likely as a sign of shock for having met me.

“Right, right. I don’t see him being the type to strike up a conversation in a bar, but hey-- maybe that’s a good sign. The guy’s been awfully alone for a while now.” He taps his hands on the steering wheel. “It may be morbid of me to say it, but I’m glad he’s got a friend with a bar. Who knows where he’d be without a safe place to drink away his sorrows.”

I cock my head in curiosity. “What had happened?”

“I’m not at liberty to say here--” his words are immediate, and stern-- “and I don’t know how long he’s known you, but he’d definitely wouldn’t want me spilling his business out here. Especially since he isn’t here to clarify, or defend himself.”

Guess I will have to find out more about him some other time. “Fair. What about you, though? He has told me a bit about how you guys grew up together, directly and otherwise. You two even used to live with each other for a bit, I heard.”

“Yeah…” A drolling love ballad starts to come on the radio, and he switches the radio off completely. “Living with him was one of the saddest moments of my life.” I raise my brows at him, but he quickly reiterates. “Not because of him, no; it was mostly the events that caused him to be there. Again, I’d rather not go into depth about his life with him not present, but… yeah, I kind of aged out of the system.”

“The ‘system’?”

“Foster care.” The car sits silent. He taps on his steering wheel again. “I am totally okay with my experiences in the care of others, but I can understand the hell out of anyone that is thrown there… seemingly out of nowhere.”

Silence, once more, echoes throughout the air. I take it as an opportunity to change the subject. “So, your name… is your actual name Sky, or is it a nickname?”

“Yes, that is a nickname,” he drums on the steering wheel again, “but it isn’t too short from my legal name-- it’s Skylar, by the way. Soon after aging out of the system, I gave myself that name: the old one I couldn’t tell you, I don’t remember it. Legally binding, too. I wanted the entire world to know how much I admire soaring above the clouds. Makes everyone take a second glance when they see my aviator license, too.”

“Aviation…” I think back to the conversation I had about The Wall, and Kat’s parents. Maybe he would know more about it. “Have you ever gone past The Wall?”

He makes a quick stop and stares straight at me, as though he’s seen a spirit. Normally I would not jump, but the red streetlights beaming down on his tan skin gave him a more sinister look. “Did Val tell you about that, or is this a huge coincidence?” When I give him the most fearful, confused look, he composes himself. “Oh, sorry. No I have not, but I’d like to.”

“Sorry,” I apologize myself. “I asked about the pictures, in the bar, and Val told me about Kat’s parents, who did in fact go beyond The Wall. I was just wondering why that area is blocked off in the first place, and why it is deemed as hostile land.” The streetlight turns green, and instead of proceeding forward, Skylar turns to me.

“Before you continue, I gotta know where we’re going,” he tells me quickly, looking around him to make sure he isn’t backing up traffic. “I’ve been instinctively driving back to my place this whole time and forgot that I promised to take you back home, not me.”

I pause in thought. Telling him that I live on a secluded island far away from here would be a terrible idea. “The beach?” I say with equal parts confidence and confusion.

“The beach.” His brow wrinkles as he repeats my reply. “You know, you could not have given me a less vague answer. Which beach?”

“The east one..?”

He takes a quick right turn before we get caught at the same red light for a second cycle. “You’re getting closer, but that’s still too vague for me. You want me to just drop you off at the easternmost beach and leave you there, or something?”

I sit in silence, my face flushing as I tightly clutch the doll in my hands. “Yes.” I come up with a quick excuse as to not sound like a total buffoon. “I like to see the beach before I walk home. Toes-in-sand kind of thing? I am not from here.”

It takes him a moment, but he buys it. “Okay…” Skylar turns on the radio once more: drums and woodwinds whisper into the air. He clears his throat. “So you’re curious about what lies beyond the Zelotian Walls, huh? Didn’t pay attention in history class or something? I’m pretty sure this is something taught in all schools east of the wall, unless you’re an islander or something.”

I interject with a “Yes!” and, again, I get a confused stare. 

Too enthusiastic, I guess.

Nevertheless, he continues. “Well, an awful long time ago, our ancestors befriended the original peoples of this land. None of them looked remotely like us: some had fur, some had scales-- hell, some, arguably, had both. We were living with each other in harmony, exchanging technologies and integrating cultures, when all of a sudden the Central City exploded.”

“Exploded?” I question. I do recall hearing about the city turning into ruins, from some ancient texts I stumbled upon as a child, but I heard nothing about an explosion.

“Yeah so apparently, one of those sects of people put the blame on us humans, for some uncalled for reason. I think they misinterpreted a restoration gone wrong as an attack on their governing bodies. Either way, things got heated between us and them, and then came a war, gracelessly called the Race War. You’d think historians would’ve gone with something more elegant, like The First Strike or something.”

This sounds unsurprisingly familiar.

He continues. “So after the war-- which we won by a slim margin, they say-- we decided to put up a wall. I think it was because the lands on that side got poisoned with radiation or something to that degree, and they didn’t want to let it seep through to our civilizations. The wall goes several meters deep, and around a hundred meters tall. Land on the east side of it was scorched to keep its spread minimal. I think that’s why there are so many deserts on this side of the wall.”

Something doesn’t sit right. “But what of the people who were here first?”

“That, is something they didn’t go over,” Skylar shrugs, “but I have a feeling that there is more to that story. It seems too vague, especially for a great war that apparently lasted for centuries. You would think that there would be more detail put into it than half a chapter from a history book as thick as my arm.” The music shifts to shrill strings and tinny drums, a vocalist belting out to their heart’s content about… fish? The dialects merge into a cacophony of meaningless drivel. Skylar fiddles with the radio dials a bit before landing on an oldies station.

“Commercials these days,” he laughs. “Anyways, Kat’s parents went to figure out the truth behind the texts, and went missing. Unlike Kat, I am not satisfied with a simple ‘we found some people’; that isn’t a clear enough answer for me. The sudden radio silence of theirs would drive me absolutely mad. It sucks that I can only fly around 33% of the globe just because people are scared about being proven wrong.”

“Maybe I can take you there,” I say without a second thought.

“How would you manage to influence The Board to let you-- us-- do that?” I look at him. His face is shriveled with a mixture of disdain and contemplation. Back to the tapping of the steering wheel. “Unless you’re insinuating that we cross it illegally.”

I stay silent, and he takes it as my true intention. He laughs. It is truly amazing how he goes from hard-cut to smooth in the turn of a hat. “I have heard things about the First Peoples,” I tell him, “and they deserve to be listened to.”

“Right on ya!”