15-29. The Normalization of Miracles

The moment didn’t last.

If Elijah had to guess, he would’ve said that Imal was willing to take things further than a simple dinner between friends. However, the problem turned out to be him. The last thing he wanted was to jump right back into a romantic entanglement. He’d tried that with Kaela, and things had not ended well.

Not for him, and certainly not for her.

So, he’d refused to take that next step with Imal, even if his entire body screamed at him to do so. To her credit, she picked up on that, pulling back and playing the role of a friend, rather than a romantic interest.

But that killed the spark between them, and after enjoying their hippo-steak dinners, they parted ways. She went to rejoin the others in the city, while Elijah ducked into his tent, where he stayed for the duration of their time in K’kayix. The very notion of exploring the city twisted his stomach into nauseated knots, so he was more than happy when the time of their departure came.

That was how he found himself back atop Mona’s back and sitting a few feet away from Tisk as they left the yard. Elijah looked back at the small garden he’d grown, only to see that it had already begun to wither. In a few more days, the world’s distance from nature would reassert itself on the area, killing any evidence of the life he’d tried to foment.

He sighed.

“What?” asked Tisk, her hand resting on Mona’s pebbled scales. Even Elijah could feel that the ekolases wanted nothing to do with the city, so it took Tisk more than a little ethera to keep the creature on track.

“I don’t know. This just isn’t what I expected from this little stop,” Elijah admitted.

“Is this about your girl troubles?” Tisk asked.

“Uh…no?”

“That’s a lie.”

“What are you talking about?”

She shook her head, stifling a giggle. “Do you really think you can have a little lunch together in the middle of all this and nobody would notice?” she asked. “For what it’s worth, I thought it was cute. It also made me hungry. Why don’t you ever offer me dinner from your homeland? I thought we were friends.”

Elijah let out another sigh, but despite his embarrassment, he couldn’t keep himself from smiling. He ran his hand through his hair and began to respond, but Tisk cut him off.

“And that. Right there. Stop doing that.”

“What?”

“Running your fingers through your hair. I’m not human, but even I can’t help but stare when you do that.”

“Seriously?”

She shrugged. “I don’t have hair, and I’m definitely not attracted to people who do. But if I was, I’d want to run my fingers through yours.”

Elijah felt his cheeks heat up.

“It’s so silky. And layered. How do you do that? Is it some special hair tonic? You said you have an Alchemist friend, right?”

“Uh…”

The reality was that Elijah barely even thought about his hair. He certainly didn’t use any hair tonic. Instead, he washed it the same way he washed the rest of his body – with his homemade soap. But then again, he’d always had nice hair. Outside the times when he’d had it burned away, either with fire or acid.

“Don’t need to tell me your secrets,” she went on. “But I wouldn’t say no to one of those meals you gave the girl.”

She waggled her eye ridges at him – which was a weird effect to which Elijah would never grow accustomed, no matter how much time he spent around drakes.

“Fine.”

With that, Elijah snatched one of the prepared meals from his Arcane Loop and handed it over. He’d mostly had rations made from the hippopotamus, but he still had a few hundred full meals in there. Enough that if he ended up stranded somewhere again, he’d have plenty of food for a year or so.

Of course, he’d supplemented it with grove fruit pastries and whatever else Ironshore had on hand. Mostly pork or poultry, but there was some beef and whale in there as well. And plenty of macaroni and cheese. Because obviously.

Tisk enjoyed her meal as the caravan gradually wound its way through the complicated interchange that would lead them to the next gate. Along the way, she remarked on the city itself, noting that despite its appearance, was considered quite urbane.

Mouth full of potatoes, she added, “They’re very famous for their fancy parties.”

“I think they’re called balls.”

She shrugged. “Whatever. Not like I’ll ever get invited to one.”

“Sounds like there’s some regret in there,” Elijah remarked.

“Not really, though I’d love a chance to get dressed up. Plus, they’re supposed to have all the best food.”

“Honestly, I thought the snacks were mediocre at best,” Elijah pointed out. “At the ceremonies attached to the tournament, I mean. They weren’t bad, but I’ve had better.”

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“What was it like?” she asked.

“Stuffy.”

She groaned. “You are absolutely no fun,” Tisk stated. “Details!”

Elijah grinned, then did the best he could to describe those balls. He knew he didn’t do them justice, but the fact of the matter was that he had found them disappointing. And looking back at them inevitably brought Kaela to mind, which stripped some of the shine from each affair.

Even so, he gave Tisk the best descriptions he could muster. For her part, she ate it right up, ooh-ing and ah-ing at all the right points. Elijah amused himself by imagining her wearing the ball gowns he’d seen.

It wasn’t so much that Tisk was unattractive. From what he could gather, given the flock of male drakes she attracted when she left her post atop Mona’s back, she was considered quite good-looking. The problem was that her appearance was alien enough that his mind just didn’t go there.

And she was rough-and-tumble enough that the idea of her wearing a dress brought a slight chuckle.

Which he hid.

Because if there was one thing he’d discovered, it was that nobody liked being the butt of someone’s amusement.

Regardless, it provided just enough of a distraction that the trip through K’kayix faded into the background. Sure, Elijah still saw all the iron pipes, ugly buildings, and slouching people. And he definitely felt the nature vacuum. But with Tisk’s help, he managed to avoid thinking about it.

So it was that they finally reached the gate. Unfortunately, there was a bit of a traffic jam because a wagon had overturned while its train was halfway through the gate. The result was that half the throughway remained blocked, stranding Elijah and company for more than an hour.

In addition to the frustration of sitting still, it left Elijah to stew in the horrible miasma suffusing the city. Because of that, his reentry into the Coreway saw him in a terrible mood.

“I need a shower,” he muttered to himself. Though he was mostly clean, save for a bit of smog clinging to his hair and clothes, Elijah felt like his entire body was covered in putrid slime.

“Feel free. Give the caravan a good show,” Tisk said.

“I really don’t like this.”

“What?”

He gestured to her. “This new, more familiar you,” he answered. “And I definitely don’t like being treated like eye candy.”

“Oh. Then maybe don’t shower in the middle of a public place,” the slender drake suggested. Then, she added, “Just a suggestion.”

“You’re the second person to tell me that.”

She shrugged. “Or don’t. I get the feeling there’s a bit of an exhibitionist in you.”

Elijah opened his mouth to reply, but he didn’t know what to say. Certainly, he could deny her claim, but the evidence was stacked against him. After all, he’d frequently found himself exposed. He usually had an excuse, but the frequency of those events definitely suggested a pattern.

“Moving on,” he prodded. “How did you like the mac ‘n cheese?”

“Gooey.”

“And?”

“Salty.”

“Did you like it, though?” he asked.

“Eh.”

Elijah’s jaw dropped. “I don’t know if we can be friends.”

“Seriously?”

“No. But I do think you’re weird. Even more than I did before.”

“What? Why?!”

“You don’t like macaroni and cheese. That’s unamerican.”

“I don’t know what that is!”

“Another strike against you. Two more, and you’re out,” was Elijah’s grave response.

She fixed him with a withering glare. “You’re doing this on purpose.”

“Are you implying that I would rapid-fire a bunch of references you couldn’t possibly understand, all in an attempt to throw you off?” he asked. “I would never. That’s what’s known in my world as a dick move.”

She backhanded his arm, and Elijah’s serious expression broke into a laugh.

“Do you want me to explain all of that?” he asked.

“I’m not sure,” she admitted.

“Okay, so the first thing you need to know about is America. Which technically doesn’t exist anymore, but the spirit remains,” he explained. Then, he went on to describe his home country, making certain to mention bald eagles, hot dogs, and fireworks multiple times. Pointedly, he left off the more questionable aspects of the United States’ run as a world power, largely because he preferred to remember the good parts. When he’d finished, he said, “And that’s America. Obviously, unamerican means going against that objective ideal.”

“Uh…sure,” she said.

“Now, the next thing you need to know is the history of macaroni and cheese and how it relates to the American aesthetic,” Elijah went on. Then, he described the various types, ranging from the cheap, boxed kind to homemade recipes. “Got it?”

“One question.”

“Just the one?” he asked.

“What is cheese?”

“You…you don’t have cheese?”

She shrugged. “Not that I’ve ever had.”

Aghast, Elijah quickly described milk, then skated right past her objections and into the cheese-making process. “Now, usually, macaroni and cheese uses cheddar, but I’ve seen other kinds, too.”

“And I ate that?”

“Yep. Now you can appreciate just how much effort went into that seemingly simple dish. Wait, are your scales a little greener than normal?”

“I’m never eating food you give me again. Rancid…milk…”

“It’s not rancid!” he insisted.

“Nope. Never again.”

Elijah crossed his arms and resisted the urge to argue. Still, he did mutter, “Some people just can’t appreciate a good thing when they see it.”

“And some people eat weird stuff.”

“Anyway, now we need to talk about baseball.”

Over the next few minutes, Elijah described the game, which Tisk seemed incapable of understanding. She kept getting hung up on why the batter would run to first, and Elijah kept responding, “Because he must!”

It was a frustrating discussion, to say the least.

However, it did distract them both from the monotony that traveling through the Coreway had become.

“It’s funny, isn’t it?” Elijah asked.

“Funny as in odd? Because that fits for everything you’ve said over the past few hours.”

“No. Not that. You’re just incapable of grasping the nuances of American culture,” Elijah declared. “But that’s not what I meant. I was talking about all of this. The Coreway. When we first entered, I thought it was the most interesting thing in the world. But now? It’s just a fancy highway, isn’t it?”

She shrugged. “I don’t really think of it like that.”

“Then how do you think of it?”

“When I look at those arches, I remember how much work went into its construction,” she explained. “But it goes deeper than that. Do you have any idea how long this ‘fancy highway’ took to build? How much research went into it? And it doesn’t just stop there. Thousands of iterations preceded it. And thousands of iterations preceded those as well. This Coreway is the culmination of millions of years of development. So, no. I don’t think it’s funny. I think it’s a monumental achievement that affected not just the Empire of Scale but every major power within the multiverse.

“Because they all copied it,” she went on.

“So, the dragons built the first interdimensional bridge?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so. But we perfected it. That’s what matters.”

Elijah let out a laugh.

“What?”

“That’s the most American thing I’ve ever heard,” he said.

“More than macaroni and baseballing?” she asked, her eyes twinkling with mirth.

“Do you really want to get back into that?”

She held up her hands in surrender. “Not even a little bit,” she said with a small laugh.

After that, the conversation petered out, leaving Elijah to think about what she’d said. Over the next couple of days, he didn’t come to any further conclusions, but as they traveled through the Coreway, he tried to remember all the effort that had gone into its construction.

Along the way, traffic grew much thicker until the caravan slowed to a crawl. That added another half day to their journey until, at last, they reached their ultimate destination.

“And that’s the gate to She’evoth, the capital city of the Empire of Scale,” Tisk announced, pointing ahead.