Quiet Victories

Her words lingered in the air, not heavy, but present, like the faint warmth left in a chair after someone stands. I traced the rim of the bucket beside me with one finger, watching the light ripple faintly across the soapy surface. Somewhere down the hall, the faint drip of a leaky pipe kept time, unbothered by the weight in my chest.

Aeris didn’t press further. She simply sat there, legs folded, her gaze somewhere far away, as though she too was following some invisible thread of thought. I wanted to say something, anything, to break the quiet before it turned on me. But the truth was, it didn’t feel like a silence I needed to escape.

The air in the corridor had grown damp and faintly metallic, the smell of old stone seeping into my lungs. My fingers had begun to wrinkle from the water, though I hadn’t noticed until now.

I wrung the last drops of water from the rag and tossed it into the bucket, the scent of soap clinging stubbornly to my hands. For the first time all day, the Vault was quiet, not the oppressive silence of a prison cell, but the soft stillness of a job nearly done.

Aeris was perched on the edge of a low shelf, sleeves rolled to her elbows, brushing a loose strand of hair from her face. She had the kind of poise that made even a break look deliberate, as if pausing had been part of the plan all along.

“That’s the last of it,” I said, leaning on the mop handle. “I think the floor’s clean enough to eat off of.”

“I wouldn’t test that theory,” she replied dryly, eyes sweeping the room. “This place remembers more than you want to taste.”

A low hum rippled through the marble beneath my feet, like the tremor before a far-off quake. Then the shadows between the shelves began to shimmer, soft at first, like heat haze, before erupting in a rolling wave of light. It poured down the aisle with impossible speed, a tangle of whispering voices and fractured images.

I staggered back as the wave passed through me. In an instant, I was drowning, not in water, but in lives that weren’t my own. A person's laughter swelling into a scream. A hand gripping mine in the dark. The smell of rain on paper. Triumph. Regret. Loss. A thousand emotions crashing and dissolving before I could breathe.

Then it was gone.

I gripped the mop like an anchor, heart pounding. “What... what was that?”

Aeris hopped lightly off the shelf, brushing imaginary dust from her hands. “Memory purge. It happens sometimes when the archives get clogged.”

“That...” my voice cracked, my breath still ragged, “happens sometimes?”

She gave a small shrug, almost apologetic. “You get used to it. Like stepping in a puddle.”

I stared at her, in shock. My legs still felt like they didn’t belong to me. “A puddle? That was...”

“...the prison reminding you you’re not alone here,” Aeris said, starting toward the far door. “Come on. We’ve still got to sign out the supplies before the next shift.”

"Wait, so we don't do anything about that? We don't clean that 'puddle'??"

"It just cleaned itself... I'm confused. Anyways." She tilted her head at me before continuing off to the exit.

It took me several beats to follow, my gaze flicking back to the empty aisle as if it might rush through again. The marble floor gleamed under the lamplight, dry, clean, as if nothing had happened at all.

“We should take inventory, before returning everything actually.” she said.

I nodded, more to give my legs an excuse to keep moving than out of any sense of responsibility. Together, we began counting what had survived the flood or whatever that unclogging was: two buckets dented from age, a mop handle splintered near the base, a few unopened bundles of cleaning cloths that had somehow stayed dry. The rest would need replacing.

“Think they’ll care we lost half of it?” I asked hoping that they'd wouldn't and that there'd be less work to do.

Aeris gave a small shrug. “Not really. They can just make more, I even could but...” She stopped herself, looking downwards.

When we returned the tally to the supply clerk, we were handed a slip of paper stamped in deep red ink.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“Desert voucher,” the clerk grunted without looking up from his ledger. “For finishing your shift.”

I looked at Aeris, half expecting her to tell me it wasn’t worth much. Instead, she smiled faintly. “Let’s not waste it.”

The dining hall wasn’t crowded this time of day. The air smelled faintly of spiced root vegetables and something that might have been meat if you were feeling generous. We took a table near the far wall, where the noise was a low hum instead of a roar.

The portions were modest as always, a heap of those string-like things Aeris had mentioned before, the ever-present citrus scented bread, and a cup of color changing drink (tm).

“It’s better than it looks,” Aeris said, twirling the noodles with her fork before breaking her bread in half and sliding a piece toward me.

I wonder if she's catching on to my favorite part of every meal, God do I love you dear O' bread.

I smirked. “That’s not a very high bar.”

She tilted her head. “And yet, you still ate every crumb at lunch.”

I hesitated, then tore off a piece. The citrus scent was there again, bright and stubborn, like it had no idea it was trapped in a prison kitchen.

Incidentally, I don't think I've ever questioned why the bread smells like citrus but now I know, it's just how it is.

We ate without speaking for a while, the quiet not entirely uncomfortable. My shoulders gradually loosened, the tension of the flood and the cleaning fading into the background.

Halfway through the meal, Aeris set her fork down. “You worked hard today.”

I shook my head. “You’re just saying that.”

“I’m saying it because it’s true,” she replied, her tone gentle but certain. “You think effort only matters if it changes the world. But sometimes, it’s enough that it changes you.”

The noodles went down easier than I expected, and the bread’s stubborn citrus tang almost worked as a dessert in itself. But as we finished, a guard stopped by our table and held out his hand.

“Compensation,” he said flatly, then left without another word.

Remembering the whole "desert voucher" thing from earlier, I handed mine over and so did Aeris.

Aeris’s face lit up in a way I hadn’t seen before, like whatever was going to happen next would be so grand she could die instantly and be happy.

Just then two plates appeared before us,

“Every other Friday, back at the school… they'd have these little moonlit pear tarts in the teachers lounge. The crust was soft enough to fall apart if you so much as looked at it, and the filling… well, the pears were grown in gardens blessed under the full moon. They shimmered when you cut into them. It sounds silly, but no matter how stressful the week was, those tarts made it feel… lighter.”

She dug into hers without hesitation. Savoring every bite.

Mine took longer to appear on the plate, when it did I saw for the first time in a long while castella sponge cake. 

My parents used to bake it whenever we had a quiet weekend at home. Simple, soft, with that faint honey sweetness that lingered in the air long after the plates were clean. I hadn’t tasted it in years. The last time if I recall correctly was back when my sister finished junior high. Things were better then, between all of us.

When it arrived, Aeris leaned forward, intrigued. “I've never seen that before...”

“Guess that makes sense, it was handmade by my parents.” Seeing it again was bringing back more memories than I knew I had. All of which where far too happy for someone like me to deserve to have.

She tilted her head like she was about to ask more, but the next bite of her tart stopped her. I saw her shoulders relax, eyes softening in that strange way people look when the past catches them in the best way possible. Whatever suspicion she’d had melted into the pastry’s glow.

For a moment, we both just ate in silence, me savoring something simple and familiar, her caught between two worlds in the shimmer of a pear’s light.