Idly I walked through my old haunt soaking in the atmosphere. I was in the courtyard of the Dream Custodian Academy waiting on Karen to finish her meeting with the jurisdiction coordinator. We had come to Vealt two days ago along with Thomas and Matt so that we were left with a week's time before we were expected to start heading towards the capital.

  On the day after we arrived the funeral for Rachel could finally be held as the military, under the direction of colonel Ray, waited for our own venture to transport the body. I felt that the delay, especially for the sake of convenience, was disrespectful, but at least it meant we were able to attend ourselves even if we hadn’t known her as long as the folk of Vealt. It was especially meaningful for Thomas who I believe was able to find some closure discussing Rachel with the people she had spent her life alongside.

  Just like Bennie, the major portion of her city’s population was in attendance. She was well liked despite the fact that we learned her personality was just as sour as what we had seen from her even on a normal day. She may have spoken to them with a sharp tongue, but she also spent most of her earnings as a scrubber on helping the city and its people in various ways and that was something they always remembered and were grateful for.

  Thomas had already settled his transfer before Karen and was currently busy exploring Vealt and familiarizing himself with the locals. In his words that he had spoken with slightly misty eyes.

  “I want to continue her tradition helping out these people.”

  I believed he meant it, but I couldn’t help but assume he would find himself in the pub by the end of the day. Vealt was in for a wild ride, but I imagined they would be able to see through him the way they did for Rachel.

  I turned my attention from my reminiscing to my immediate surroundings. The ground beneath me was a smooth obsidian marble that extended like a tongue from the mouth of a similarly colored archway. Overall, the architecture of the academy gave off a sterile impression that was likely meant to influence our imagination in such a direction, but in the courtyard the walkway opened up into a bountiful garden. A large tree draped with hanging ivy and ocean tinted leaves mixed in with its normal greens overshadowed a veranda containing a white marble slab table. Benches surrounded the table and behind them rows of flowers encircled the tree partitioned by reddish hedge bushes as tall as the veranda’s roof. Even in this season under a light layer of snow, their colors were kept vibrant with only hints of unusually colored foliage and no wilting to speak of. This was the place where we were sent to calm our nerves after they were excited from our time in the ether ways and today it would do much the same for me.

  My face was tranquil as I sat on that bench in the cool evening breeze, but underneath a sea of anxiety churned, and it would remain as such for all my days to come. If my heart was unwilling to look beyond the filth of humanity, then I would force the matter through my will and bury that ambivalent weight within myself. I had made my choice and crossed the line I have always kept to the other side of, so I was the only one who needed to suffer the crushing discomfort it brought me.

  But just like in the past, a meditative repose in the courtyard soothed the nauseous ocean within me if it did not erase it. How easily my mind molded despair into a dull ache just as it had done over the visions of the ether ways in the past.

  It was all the same in the end. It all had the same source. I had been a fool to avoid this for so long when I had already been trained to acclimate to the stress.

  I heard the clicking of heels against the marble with an echo that approached my location and I raised my head to greet the courtyard’s newest visitor. She wore an austere robe that somewhat resembled the costumes of the maiden stewards who lived cloistered away in the monasteries of the dreamless. The biggest difference between her dress and that of the stewards was that it was tighter fitting and had a crisp businesslike dignity imbued in it. Her hair was tied tightly back in a bun, and her eyes were deep brown. Her fading blond hair contained streaks of silver, and the beginning of crow’s feet could be seen beneath her eyelids, an image that I found to be drastic in its difference between now and when I last saw her nine years ago.

  “Mr. Draemin, your presence has been requested in Ms. Plumelied’s meeting with our coordinator.”

  I sprang out of my seat with an energy that ill suited me and nodded my head.

  “You can call me Douglass, Paula. The way you’re speaking you would think you weren’t my instructor for two years.”

  I had been speaking in such a chipper fashion since the night of Lullvienna. I wondered whether this might have been my natural voice without the weight of the ether ways hanging over me, but Puala’s response somewhat dashed that theory.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  “And you can call me Mrs. Wulfield as this fast talker is a stranger who bears no resemblance to the taciturn lad I taught nine years ago.”

  Her deadpan delivery as she adjusted her square glasses made it impossible to tell whether she was just taking the piss out of me or not. If she meant most of her words as sarcasm, then she must have managed to keep it a lifelong secret.

  She was right though. It wasn’t the influence of the ether ways that had made me withdrawn as a person, it was just what made me hide it. Even my more subdued friendliness of the past nine years might have felt unfamiliar to Puala.

  “Mrs. Wulfield it is then. And does Mrs. Wulfield still spend more time making sketches then she does instructing her students?”

  “Letting them sort out the balance between their imagination and anxiety on their own is a part of instruction, and at my salary the academy shouldn’t have any grounds to chastise my double tasking.”

  So she said, but when combined with her attitude, we couldn’t have been faulted for assuming she didn’t give a wit about us or her job. She clearly didn’t want to discuss the matter further and I never actually wanted to talk in the first place so we spent the rest of the walk with me lightly whistling with my hands behind my head and her with the hint of a scowl on her unreadable face.

  On the third floor after a walk through a narrow staircase and thin angular corridor, all made of the same black marble used in the courtyard, she knocked on a tall wooden double door. The claustrophobic distribution of the interior design was meant to accustom us to an environment akin to the ether ways. The ominous coloring was chosen to correspond to the feeling the ways gave off that its emerald walls and vibrantly colored splotches wouldn’t imply in a vacuum.

  “Come in”

  I walked inside and Karen’s normal grin felt sheepish when taken in conjunction with her bearing, a skill I have been slowly learning to read her expressions, as she smiled at me from the closer side of a desk that was mostly empty apart from the assortment of documents to the right and the displayed office paraphernalia I wouldn’t be able to put a name to on the left. I sat down as Paula closed the door on her way out to leave the three of us alone. Karen seemed slightly embarrassed, which I assumed had to do with the reason I was called into the meeting. There was only one reason my name could be involved in the proceedings, but I didn’t think it was something she needed to feel ashamed of. It was, in terms of our current relationship, far too soon for this, but the arrangement was established on practical rational. We had come to the decision organically and both agreed we at least wanted to try things out since it was convenient.

  At least from the words of the character I was portraying to her.

  “Hello Mr. Draemin. We’ve managed to approve Ms. Plumelied’s transfer with no negotiation and minimal paperwork due to the circumstances, but when we reached our final step, namely establishing residency, she claimed she will be joining an already established scrubber, namely yourself, in his lodgings. For the request to follow through we will need your signed permissions.”

  The woman took a parchment she had been holding hand pushed it towards the other side of the table in front of me. I did not bother with a, “you can call me Douglass” with her since, although I may have seen her walking about the corridors in my time, she was not someone I was familiar with. Unlike Puala, she wore a long sleeved frilled white shirt that felt as if it was a meeting between the outfit of an aristocrat and a merchant. It was tucked in to a pair of belted black slacks I could just barely see over the desk. She had a brisk air about her, but not a stern face, instead wearing the generically friendly, but professional face that might be found on the hostess at a restaurant’s front or at the desk of a lodging center for the wealthy.

  “Before you sign there are a couple of stipulations we need to address. By signing this contract, you are taking responsibility for a scrubber’s full time residency in their assigned territory. Should your arrangement fall through for any reason that does not fall under the responsibility of the transferring scrubber, then you will be expected to negotiate a new residence for her within the territory of Duskhovel with a fine up to three gold plats if you fail to do so.”

  The burden of the bureaucracy was entirely on my shoulders, but that was just a matter of disincentivizing any situation that could leave a scrubber displaced in their assigned territory. If for instance I was to kick her out, but there was no available lodging in Duskhovel for whatever reason, the threat of the fine would keep me from following through until something became available.

  “That’s no problem at all. It’s just as she said.”

  I easily signed the paper as if its legal weight was not but a feather to place in my cap as I walked by the issue, but the real weight settled deep into my gut. The discomfort, the guilt, and the anxiety. My…filth. They would become a constant presence in my life. It would be as if my working hours extend to a perpetual continuance, only opening up into a period of rest on the two nights I don’t work, when I can sink into the escape of real sleep. No…I don’t even have that. A demon waited for me in that respite, but it was for the best, I believed. It was the false sense of interim that confused me. I was never really looking away from the filth and I’ll be able to handle it all the easier once I’m keeping it all front and center.

  Besides…

  “I almost feel dizzy from how fast things are moving, but I don’t hate it.”

  As we left the office and began walking together back towards the courtyard, she leaned on to my side with her silken hair slightly obscuring her face and started poking my chin.

  “You tied me down in record time good sir, but somehow I only feel all the freer.”

  Besides, there was pleasure mixed in with the guilt and while I couldn’t feel happiness, I could at least feel the longing for it, a feeling my brain enjoyed when it grew drowsy and soft under her touch.

  “Can’t say I hate it at all myself”

  The statement that was rife with lies contained the smallest hint of distorted truth.