Seven Years Ago- The Hotel Room
"I don't give a shit! You go back there and get your money back!" Chan yelled, pointing her pink acrylic nail towards Samori. She was at the stove mixing a pan of what she called This n That and only paused when Samori admitted he'd been robbed. That was her last five she gave him to get some Juicy Juice for dinner for everybody, and somehow he got jumped? Yeah, nah, she thought, it's time he learns how to survive.
Turning back around to the pan, she exclaimed, "I'm not going to be here forever you need to learn how to protect what's yours!"
'Protect what's mine,' Samori thought.
Back To Present
Two hours had passed since they left the hotel. Samori and Bean were sitting in what was supposed to be a place for the citizens of Howl to enjoy the outside. Benches were spread along the chasm's floor and statues of unrecognizable people were scattered across the space. They had only stopped here to give Bean a break from walking. We're going to need food soon, Samori thought.
If they were going to escape Howl, they would need to figure out a plan and that would begin with escaping this level of Howl, and then the next, and so on. The sky their mother used to talk about felt like a foreign language to both of them. She even claimed there was something beyond the sky called space, and in it, balls of fire called stars.
Samori wanted to believe what she said was true, but Bean thought it was a sick lie. She not only could hear thoughts, but feel them deeply. When their mother Chan spoke about the sky, the stars, and the above, the images didn't come from her own memories. They came from what her mother's mother had told her, mixed heavily with Chan's imagination. To Bean, the surface was a lie. But to Samori, it was their mother's last dream and now his.
What a gift, Samori laughed under his breath. Bean spotted smoke in the distance. She tilted her head, a soft ringing blooming in her skull.
'A boy and girl went this way…fucking arsonists. These lowlifes don't have any decorum. I might not even bring them in. Just throw them in the water. It'll be here in a few days anyway.'
Bean's body stiffened. The man's thoughts came closer with grim confidence.
[Samori, we have to go now. Someone's coming,] she warned, locking eyes with him.
Without looking away, he thought back, 'How far?'
[Three minutes. You'll see him.]
Back in the Hotel
"I know telling people about themselves ain't fun, and I know hurting people ain't fun either. But you can't let people walk all over what's yours. It's disrespectful not only to you but to them. By letting them do that, you're hurting them, ya know, and yourself. You gotta do something."
Chan's voice had been firm but full of compassion. Samori sat at the table with a black eye behind his long locs, struggling to feed himself past his swollen lip. The fork scraped the plate while Chan's eyes lingered on his bandaged knuckles. Just twenty minutes ago she'd cleaned his wounds herself. He hadn't said much, but Bean had told her what was going on inside his head. He found each of the people who jumped him, fought them with his fists, and lost every time.
Bean looked at Samori and then at the pan of 'This n That', smiling. Samori was her favorite person in the world since the day they met. His mind was the most vivid place she'd ever visited: clear, imaginative, and alive with calculations. The world through his eyes, according to Bean, was even better than their mother's singing.
"Now I might not be your real mother, I didn't birth y'all or nothing, but y'all gonna listen to me. You don't have no choice. Who else gonna take care of you, huh?" She raised her glass of the brown liquid she always kept nearby.
"Answer me!" she barked, though a smile flickered in her hazel eyes. All three of Chan's kids knew exactly how to respond.
"We will! We'll take care of each other," they mumbled in unison.
"That's right!" she cheered, finishing her drink in one gulp. Through the corner of her eye Bean glanced at her mother.
'We all gonna die soon. Might as well give these kids somebody to look up to,' Chan thought.
She set her cup down, winked at Bean, and Bean giggled. Chan never hid her thoughts; she wanted Bean to know her, wanted someone to know her even if they were a child.
Bean kicked her feet and looked up at Samori. [Go ahead and tell them,] she encouraged.
Without looking at his siblings or Chan, he said clearly, "Y'all want some juice?"
Chan laughed so hard she nearly fell out of her chair. "I know that's right, Sam! Pour me a cup."
Back to Present
Samori left Bean on the bench while he waited for the man to meet him beneath what was supposed to be a tree. It was made of a strange fusion of metal and dirt. Their mother had said real trees could breathe. This one clearly didn't.
He was looking up at the lifeless structure when the footsteps slowed. He could feel eyes on him.
"Sir, who do you think created these metal figurine combinations? I like to call them combos," Samori asked, his voice full of distracted wonder.
The footsteps stopped about four meters away. A grunt. A chuckle.
"Don't care about that," the voice growled, rough and irritated.
Samori's eyes flicked to the man. Pale-skinned, swollen-cheeked, jagged teeth always showing like his mouth couldn't quite close. At nearly six feet, he was almost Samori's height but far wider, his well-fed body a sharp reminder of Samori's own hunger.
Samori furrowed his brow. "Are you trying to hurt my sister?" he asked, squinting, trying to see if this man had the balls to say it aloud. The man shoved his hands in his pockets, stopping a few feet away.
"Y'all are going to come with me. Please don't make this difficult. I got an event to go to later," he said, confident but impatient.
"Then let me make this fast," Samori replied, nodding once very purposefully.
A groaning sound rippled through the metal tree. The man glanced toward it, distracted for a breath and that was all it took.
The stiffness began in his feet. It crept into his bones, up through his skin. Panic surged, but his body refused to move. His mouth parted as if to speak, to threaten, to beg but no sound came.
Samori held his eyes locked with his until the change was complete, until the man was fully encased in the same metal as the tree. Still but not dead. Only then did he turn his back to walk back towards Bean.