VIII — Lighters

A few days had passed.

The clouds above revealed a vast sky so light in its color blue that it looked like it was painted on, either by a very professional artist or some child who was gifted at drawing blue skies. Either way, it looked pretty and humble, both qualities that made it safe to view. There was no haze clouding the clearing or any place, and the breeze was as cool as the autumn winds could get them. Perhaps the seasons have begun to change, and so did the people in the refugee town.

Roger was still recovering in the tent, and had asked the uncles in the watch group not to make him work; Ellen made sure of it. In times he couldn’t play cards with other kids, he spent his days drawing, perhaps the same blue sky that looked like it was painted on, or something a lot deeper like the vast sea he had seen through his travels with Ellen, saving people or selling lanterns.

The latter of which Ellen had set out to do.

Sam had been somewhere else in the clearing, fashioning arrows. He had lost all of those he had—he never used magic arrows, only infusions to his normal ones. He was content with sticking by, and now knew that there was something he was protecting.

Someone he will continue to protect.

He was in the blacksmithing area, forging arrows for as long as the blacksmith had allowed him, which was nearly every time, since he had fashioned them out of bird feathers they slaughtered for meals, and forged with metal the blacksmith had an abundance of.

Ellen prepared herself to go and sell the completed lanterns, but decided to stop by around the blacksmithing area to meet Sam. The blacksmith, unaware why Ellen had come to visit him, greeted her with his usual boisterous gesture.

“Well, well, if it ain’t the lettuce girl.”

Ellen pouted. “For the last time sir, I am not a lettucehead.”

He laughed. “Haha! Sharp as ever! Don’t worry kid, it was just a joke.”

He offered her a chair as Ellen glanced around. The blacksmith had thought she was going through some of his finest forged materials for self defense, but for someone like Ellen who possessed wind magic, it didn’t seem like she was looking for any particular weapon or staff.

“So, tell me young miss,” he sat in front of her. “What brings you to my shop? You don’t look like the type of person to mosey around my shop. If anything, that brat Roger would be here often.”

Ellen ignored him but the blacksmith didn’t seem to mind. The young miss, as he called Ellen, seemed preoccupied. Ellen rose from the chair the blacksmith had offered her as she finally came around to meeting the person she wanted to meet, and pretty much the only reason why she was in the shop in the first place.

“Sam,” she walked towards him, calling his name, now with an air of familiarity. Sam, who wasn’t particularly hiding from anyone, revealed himself as he placed the last of his arrows on his quiver.

“Ellen,” Sam began. “What brings you here?”

Ellen paused. She didn’t think she’d gone this far. She clasped her hands behind her back and leaned toward Sam, her face looking towards him, meeting his eyes.

“So,” she started, a voice now full of whimsy. “I’ve been thinking.”

“About what?”

“Remember when I told you that we sell lanterns for profit?”

Sam nodded. He had learned about it when he first arrived in the town.

“I was thinking,” Ellen started before pausing, herself bashful as she tried to form the words.

Sam tilted his head. “Thinking about…?”

Ellen turned around. Her back faced Sam, and her hands that were once clasped behind her back, now were held in front of her, the tips of her pointer finger she touched as she blushed. The blacksmith, who had been witnessing this whole exchange, saw Ellen’s face and became more amused.

“I was hoping,” Ellen started. “If you wanted to join… you know…”

Sam set his quiver down and smiled.

“I’d love to.”

Ellen jolted and turned around in surprise. Now sporting a smile that anyone could swear was spilling sunflowers around her, she smiled gleefully toward Sam.

“Great! I’ll be at the edge of the clearing!”

Ellen steadily walked towards the edge of the door and quickly closed it. Her face, unseen fully by Sam but noticed by the blacksmith, very flushed and looking more excited.

Sam looked at the blacksmith and smiled back.

“She’s quite a handful, sir.”

The blacksmith sighed, smiling. “Ah, young love.”

“I’m sorry what?”

“Oh nothing.” He waved his hands. “But lemme tell you kid. That kind of sweetness in that young miss? Be sure you wouldn’t break her heart okay? She’s already fragile as she is.”

Sam couldn’t quite figure out what the blacksmith meant but he was sure that he’ll make Ellen happy anyway. He replied to him with the only knowledge he knew so far.

“Don’t worry sir,” he bowed. “Thanks for the area.”

“Gah, don’t worry about it! I’m glad to help a kid like you.”

The blacksmith tapped him hard from behind. Sam felt the pain, but it was more like a reassurance. The blacksmith had treated him like a son he never had after all.

“Try not to die out there.”

Sam nodded. “I will, sir.”

He left with more stacks of arrows on his quiver than he had intended to fashion.

———————————————

Sam arrived at the edge of the clearing, now equipped with his new arrows, and his bow slung through himself. He carried the strap of his quivers as he normally would. Ellen had been standing there, behind a carriage she had paid to ride them, looking wistfully down on the ground at the edge of the clearing. Sam had been familiar with the left edge from where he had walked aimlessly, but now it seemed they were headed towards the right side, where Sam had heard from the townsmen the harbor was stationed at.

Ellen looked up at the clearing. He stood there, and she ran towards him, just a few steps.

“You made it.”

“Apologies,” Sam replied. “I had to do some things.”

Ellen grabbed his hand. “Don’t be. You’re just in time.” She pulled him close, directing him towards the carriage. She went onto the carriage first. Sam got in soon after. As they had felt the weight of their collective burdens lift slightly after the ordeal they had just experienced, they looked onward as the carriage rode them through the right, both looking back as the clearing faded into view slowly.

The landscape changed.

For Ellen, she had already become familiar with it but she wanted to see what Sam would see.

For Sam, it was still worth seeing.

Sam’s eyes slightly raised in bewilderment at what he had seen. As soon as dusk came around towards nightfall, little dots filled the open space. They floated like little fairies in the sky, about a million of them coated the space with their tiny sparks, enough to fill the area around them with light.

They illuminated the path the carriage driver had intended to go through, and he and Ellen knew that this path looked cliché with its whimsy, but Sam was completely mesmerized by how active they were. He gazed down to the non-illuminated lanterns, and wondered how much they’d light up someone’s day if all it took to illuminate a usually dark road was a million of these little spark-like dots.

Sam felt the warmth coursing from the spark of these creatures, as flew like bees with a lot more speed and a whole lot of grace. He hadn’t felt that warmth in a long time, and was further compounded by Ellen’s peaceful smile. The same Ellen who had saved him twice from certain demise. The same Ellen whom he had been cautioned to protect. The same Ellen whom the blacksmith had told had a fragile soul.

The same Ellen who had fallen asleep peacefully, leaning on his shoulder.

She’d wanted to see Sam’s reaction to the whimsical creatures that filled the carriage and the dark road beyond, before they could reach the harbor. However, seeing Sam’s peaceful gaze towards the creature-lit road made her melt into contentment. Before she knew it, she had fallen asleep: not out of exhaustion, but out of gentleness that filled the breeze and was accentuated by the appearance of these little things.

They slowly faded away as light returned to the road, signalling that they had reached the harbor. As if right on time, Ellen had awoken from her slumber, her head still resting on Sam’s shoulder.

“Good morning,” Sam joked, hoping she would understand.

Instead, a wave of red rushed through the top of Ellen’s face and she covered herself with her robes, embarrassed that Sam had seen her sleeping face.

Inside the covered robes though, Ellen gently smiled, still blushing at the fact that Sam had seen her sleeping face, right until the moment they had arrived at the harbor. She secretly hoped she’d savor the sensation a bit longer.

But the carriage had come to a halt.

Ellen and Sam eventually came out of the carriage and, with a wagon full of hopes, set up the stall before dawn broke.

———————————————

Dawn had been itching to break through the mystical night sky, the sun noticeably settling up from the mountainous area against the seascape horizon in the port of Melusina harbor.

The harbor of Melusina was a small spectacle. It was a lot like Hertina, except only a few merchants lined up the only straight set of stalls. Customers come from either land or sea to trade with the merchants in Melusina, and so it was believed that the merchants who had abandoned Hertina due to the economic shock the decree had caused them instead sold to unmarked, fellow merchants and other types of customers by this harbor. In whatever situation, the harbor itself was lively despite its status as a freely operating pirate harbor: if sought by the empire, they would be branded as illegally trading mercenaries or traffickers of unmarked goods.

Sam had once believed these pirate harbors were the cause of all pain and suffering like he and his sister had been subjected to in the slums.

But others, like Diana, Ellen, and the Lantern Children proved to Sam that they were the shining lights beaming hope and love to anyone who had come across them. The Lantern Children illuminated the only street of Melusina. Ellen had set up the poster for the Lantern Children and Sam set up the wagon carrying the finished lanterns. More wagons were stationed by the carriage close by, in case they had sold everything that was in the wagon. Ellen knew that they wouldn’t sell like produce, but she knew that if she sold the lanterns to some people, she would help them make their days a lot brighter.

And for Ellen, that much was enough.

People from land and from sea ultimately coalesced and Melusina’s signature thriving environment became more vivid. Sam had heard from his sister’s tales that Hertina, the slums they were from, was bustling. He could only imagine how much of it was like Hertina if Melusina harbor was just only a tiny fraction of what Hertina once was.

Sam turned toward Ellen, who had tried to grab his attention.

“What is it?”

“Nothing much. I just wanted to know what you thought of this.” She gestured across Melusina from a fish merchant arguing with a customer as he haggled; to the kids playing around with mechanical toys infused with slight mana crystals—she had wanted to hear from Sam what he thought of it.

“Back where I’m from,” Sam started. “My sister told me it was a lot more than this.”

Ellen perked up. She had not known Sam was from the slums of a fallen merchant’s town. She didn’t experience it herself, and felt a bit more embarrassed, her cheek glowing pink.

They stood in silence until a boy, who looked to only be an adolescent, no older than Ellen at most from the looks of it, asked how much the lanterns cost. Ellen had told him the price and just like customers do, they haggled until Ellen agreed to a price. Sam gave the lanterns as he bowed towards the boy who ran towards a ship.

Ellen tried to pick up from where they left off. Sam had told her about Diana, his sister, and now where he had been raised. There was a little gap that Sam didn’t feel right to fill in to Ellen, and she understood. Sometimes, there are wounds that refuse to close and it would take more time to heal from those. As Ellen had gone closer to Sam, she finally felt like she could open up to him. She trusted that he would be her lifeline, just as she was his own.

“When I was a child,” Ellen started, picking up a sky lantern. “My mother would create lanterns with me.”

Sam pictured every scene that Ellen had said, seeing a smaller Ellen with an older woman who resembled Ellen lighting up sky lanterns together. It was the exact image she had reminisced as well, as if their souls were flowing rhythmically on the same frequency.

“Every night, we would make these sky lanterns. She said she would carry all of our hopes and dreams, all the wishes that we wished for, up into the sky.

“It felt like a deliverance to the Great Mother,” she continued. “She said it was how the Great Mother blesses us.”

Then she set the sky lantern down, now looking more vulnerable and somber.

“After my parents died,” she continued, her voice starting to become shaky. “I thought I couldn’t light these things any more. The way I had witnessed their demise, it hurt too much.”

She turned to Sam and gently placed her palm to her chest.

“I was actually one of the more fortunate ones. Born in a family that cared about honor and service, boasting kindness and stillness over everything.

“I idolized Mom and Dad. They were my light. They showed me how to light. And when they died, I—”

Tears started forming on her eyes, and Sam listened intently, as Ellen wiped them with her hands, placing her hand onto her chest once more.

“I thought I lost my light.”

Sam had known a similar feeling. Diana was his light, but she had been more like a candle than the sky lanterns Ellen regarded her parents were. He knew, but it was still so different. He listened more closely.

“When I ended up on the streets of the capital, I found a broken one.” She gestured to the lantern she had picked up; it was an old one that had snapped its base, and repaired by one of the kids in town.

“I tried fixing it. And I did. I thought, then, if I could fix a lantern like this,” she trailed off, offering the lantern to Sam.

“Maybe I could be the light to others the way my parents had been for me.”

Sam took the lantern. It was sturdier than he thought. It had started out looking very fragile, but now it was a masterpiece of a lantern. Ellen reminisced of the millions of sky lanterns that lit up the night sky during her childhood, and the tears started to fall again. Once more, she unsuccessfully tried to dry her tears but they kept coming. The memory mirrored her own vulnerability and Sam had realized something else.

Ellen was the mightiest of all of the Lantern Children.

He set the lantern down on the stall table, and gently wiped her cheeks with his rough, calloused hands. Ellen had known this gesture already, so she sank into his hands, allowing Sam to cup her face for a few moments. Ellen smiled.

Sam lowered his hands from her cheeks and rested one on her shoulder. He smiled back at Ellen.

“You are very strong, you know?”

“How so?”

“I’m not sure,” Sam admitted. “But you’re stronger than you think.” He rested his hand towards her cheek again, and Ellen closed her eyes to touch it with her hands. “Your mother would be very proud of you.”

“Do you really mean it?”

“Of course.”

The acknowledgment alone lifted some more burdens off of Ellen’s shoulders. For a while she allowed herself to envelop around Sam, who had traced her hand through her gentle skin and towards her chin. Ellen gasped as she felt the caressing, melting on Sam’s touch. The two pulled each other closer, only centimeters away before a fellow merchant cleared his throat.

“Ahem,” he said, gruff. “Melusina is closin’, hurry up and fix your damn stuff, ya freakin’ lovebirds.”

Both Sam and Ellen’s faces turned crimson as they quickly packed what they had, Sam nearly tripping over the wagon, and Ellen nearly dropping a lantern. They made their way towards the carriage, going back to town with their faces flushed, unable to look at each other.

But they both knew that for the first time in their lives, they had connected deeper than anyone had connected with each of them.

For the first time in their lives, they were satisfied.