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Page 36.
26. Dawn
 Nothing can bring back the past and its lost dreams…
Dawn was just beginning to discolor the night a cold gray when Jared softly laid the little dead torch down before the iron gate leading out of the Arch of Triumph.
The gate was rusty and fall into the sand with a sound as Jared pushed on the iron.
The sand. There it was again, the sand on Victory Avenue. Arena.
Jared stared in the grim, dirty light. Once long ago they had waited for him here by the thousands. Millions had thronged the gate, and other millions had borne him on their shoulders up Victory Avenue to Olympic Avenue.
But what had become of Victory Avenue?
The wide street had been divided into three narrow alleys running between great, ugly tenement houses showing their raw, stained rears. Rusty fences penned in narrow, sterile lots of sand and wisps of trampled grass.
Behind Jared, the Arch leapt into the sky. It too was starting to show wear and neglect.
Where the hinges of the broken gate had been, a long, thin red line trailed into the sand. Jared leaned the gate against the doorway.
He walked out onto the former street of glory, now a wasteland of poverty, crime, and hopelessness, and soon to sink further as the galaxy’s capital city fell under enemy assaults yet to come. He walked toward the waiting ground car. Behind him came his djia. He kicked the litter on Victory Avenue with his foot.
Sand, washed by rain, formed long, damp lagoons that extended into the street, with gritty humps where sand ran over discarded papers and over rocks. Children’s footprints were everywhere. Children who ran barefoot here, because they never had shoes.
Parked by the curb were three powerful and impressive looking black cars that had officialness stamped all around them. Outside the middle of these armored cruisers stood Lyxa, who might once have been queen of all this. Beside her stood the ghostly figure of Lelli. Arrayed on either side were armed guards in merlot and brown livery, flaunting dark weapons and wearing black helmets.
“I’m glad to see you,” Lyxa said with a broad, welcoming smile
He was, for once, happy to see her as he had not been in well over a year.
She waited to embrace him.
He slowed as Stella walked straight past into the presence of Lelli, who stepped forward. The two enigmatic figures stood face to face, screen to screen, and held hands communing in their silent world.
“You brought me my Stella back,” Lyxa said fondly.
Jared stepped into her embrace, relieved and happy to be there. Whatever had happened, whatever was going to happen, nothing could be as grim or to run from as what he had been through the past day or two. In the short time since he’d returned from Alda Meina III, the world had fallen apart around him. Everything had changed.
Lyxa embraced him. She wore a luxurious wine-dark cloak for this nostos, this homecoming, which she draped over his shoulders so they were both smothered in its warmth and communion. “I have never stopped loving you,” she said looking up at him with that dazzling girl smile, a look of innocent joy that was in the moment and not to be translated any further. Jared knew that, she knew that, and they accepted their fate together.
“Will you come to Arcturus with us?” she whispered.
“Yes,” he said, squeezing her tightly to him.
The cloak fell away, the princess turned and raised her arm to command, and all the soldiers and officers around them snapped to attention. “Take us to the ferry port. We’re on our way.”
Jared turned for a last look at the Victory Arch. The old man had stumbled along to collect the Torch that Jared left for him. When Jared waved good bye, the old man waved thanks. The night was over, its deeds done, its compacts sealed, and the stars were veiled from revealing the fate of those who stood down below.
Lyxa kept a firm, loving grip on Jared’s arm. She guided him into the rear lounge of her land cruiser. Footmen helped Lelli and Stella aboard. The two djia sat together with their veils down, holding each other by one hand, as they continued to handshake terrarrets of information. About what, Jared could only guess. Maybe they sang songs of eternal calculus together, in an ocean of exogravitation, the key to eternal time and infinite space where countless universes pulsed their brief lives before fading and making way for more short-lived universes flicking with auroras and compass point lights like the two demi-girls’ digitally beautiful features. No matter…
All boarded and bristling with defensive weaponry, the three land cruisers rolled through the slums of Mercury Free Port City. “I think these will be the last places bombed,” Lyxa said in a melancholy tone.
“The least desirable,” Jared said as he watched people sitting intoxicated on doorsteps from the night before, doors marked with street art and violent signs, and always the half-naked children running innocently amid the trash and ruins of their broken dreams. Ahead lay the ferry port. Lyxa’s private dock could hold six orbital courier ships.
“We’ll outrun it,” Lyxa said. “Outrun the end of the world.”
“You’re good at that,” Jared jibed as he sat pressed close by her, thigh against thigh, like a pair of schmoozing djia. They held hands, very much like Lelli and Stella who sat opposite on benches. That’s mostly what the coach was—benches, nicely upholstered in a faded royal blue, and a rich carpet, on which a dark mahogany table gleamed under a thick, green-edged glass top. Glasses, a vase with one yellow rose, a case for Lyxa’s opium and pipe, and a decorative fauxbook or two made up all the moveables.
“Queen on the run,” Lyxa said with a comfortable giggle as she burrowed her elbow and hip closer, as close as she could. He felt the old want for her, the heat. “I could make you a prince,” she said. “Or no, a baron. How’s that? A count. A duke.”
He squeezed her hand. “We’ll take it a day at a time.” He was in the moment, while knowing nothing would ever change. At least he’d found some sort of status amid a disintegrating world. “Maybe I can just be your military attaché.”
“Hmm,” she said, which was a deep, sexual groan of interest and anticipation. “How attaché do you intend to be?”
He played with her net of conceits. “How close can I get?”
“I will let you into my secrets.”
“I’ve seen them, and I always come back in to look again.”
And so they bantered, holding hands, until they kissed and began passionately petting in the privacy of Her Royal Majesty’s personal coach. The djia continued to hold hands and sit side by side across the compartment. If they noticed or cared, they did not let on. For all anyone knew, Lelli was chattering to Stella about the birds on Melliform IV, or Stella was regaling Lelli with algebraic formulae regarding the opening of rose blossoms on the first day of spring.
For now, Jared felt safe and contented.
For now…
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Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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