Phoenix

I awoke early, early for me. It was odd, I had always slept all day, but suddenly I didn’t need as much sleep. Maybe it was because I wasn’t put through the stress of being tortured last night. The sky was bright, with a red glow. I squinted at the brightness.

I had only ever seen light before I became a part of the Shows, and I couldn’t believe how beautiful everything looked with the light. We were in the middle of a desert, with dust on the ground and small bushes around us. I could see every rock jutting out of the ground and every spine on the cactus a hundred yards away. It was beautiful.

I got up off the ground, my bones aching dully from sleeping on the ground. I tried to flatten down my hair, but it still stuck up in odd angles. Sighing, I licked my lips. They were dry. As was my mouth. I needed water. I rubbed the back of my neck, tired. Looking around, I didn’t see Jazz, which worried me a little. Even if I had escaped with him, I didn’t quite trust him. I suppose I trusted him as much as I can trust a person who wore a Guard uniform.

My ear twitched, hearing the sound of water nearby. I started walking towards where I heard the water. A few hundred feet away, there was a part of the desert landscape that dipped down, into a river. Jazz was drinking from the river, splashing the water on his face. I crouched down beside him, drinking from the water as well. Loving the way the cool water felt on my dry mouth, I drank a lot.

“We should start heading for the town if we want to get halfway there today,” Jazz said after I finished drinking.

I nodded. “Let’s go,” I said. I stood up and started walking, following the river upstream.

“Um…Nix, town’s that way,” Jazz chuckled from behind me. I turned on my heels and saw him pointing in the opposite direction, still following the river, but downstream instead. Ignoring the blush rising in my cheeks, I started to walk that direction.

At first, we just walked in silence. We didn’t have anything to talk about.

“So, tell me about you,” Jazz said as we walked.

I laughed. “What’s to tell? I have wings and red hair and I don’t know what color my eyes are and I’ve got nearly two hundred scars.”

“Your eyes are blue,” Jazz said. “And I meant like your life, growing up and whatnot.”

I was silent for a moment. Then, with no traces of humor in my voice, I said, “I’ve lived in Shows since I was four. I’ve been beaten daily ever since then. I don’t like talking about me.”

Jazz turned to look at me. “I’m sorry. So should I talk about me instead?” he asked.

“Sure, whatever floats your boat,” I said, still not quite happy. I didn’t even like thinking about my past. It always depressed me.

Jazz laughed as he started to tell me about his childhood. “The settlement where I grew up was peaceful when I was young. I had a lot of friends, Daphne and Kaleb and John and Samuel, and we always ended up getting in trouble,” he said. He continued to tell me about his childhood antics, which I admit, I laughed at. I think some of the things he’s done are pretty funny, though I suspect he might be making some of them up.

Before long, we came to a pool of water. It was like an oasis in the middle of the desert, surrounded by small boulders and bushes. We stopped to drink, and I realized exactly how hot it was getting. My long clothes were making it even hotter, and I was getting sweaty. I saw the cool blue water and wished I could just jump in. But, I knew that if I jumped in fully clothed, I’d be doused with water, then when we went back to walking, the dust would stick to my clothes. I didn’t want that.

Jazz was also looking at the water like he wanted to jump in. “Okay, we should go swimming, it’s really hot out here.”

I was silent for a moment. “I can’t swim,” I said shyly.

Jazz sighed. “I’ll show you how to swim then,” he said. He pulled off his shirt, then walked into the water, until he was about ten feet into the water, where it was up to the middle of his chest. “Come on,” he said, floating on his back. I waded slowly into the water, till I was where he was. He took my hands and pulled me deeper into the water. I was afraid of sinking, but I didn’t show my fear. I mean, it's sink or swim, right?

“Don’t worry,” Jazz said, clearly picking up on my apprehension. “I won’t let you go beneath the surface of the water. Lie on your back, try to float.”

I leaned backwards, trying to ignore the feeling of fear rising in my chest. Jazz put his arms under my torso and my legs, giving me a sense of security. Soon my feet weren’t touching the ground and I was floating on the surface of the water. I smiled, feeling weightless.

“Now just float, and you won’t sink. Kick your legs to move, and then you’ll be swimming,” Jazz said, letting go of me. I did as he said, excited when I managed to do it. It’s not that I never learned to swim before, it’s just that I never had a chance to, growing up in the Shows.

“I’m doing it!” I said excitedly, swimming across the lake. Jazz smiled at me, then swam towards me.

He splashed me, so I splashed him back. Quickly enough, we had an all-out splash war. Eventually we tired of playing in the water and got out of the water. We laid on the stones beside the water, letting the heat of the air dry our clothes.

We laid there in silence, enjoying the way the warm glow of the sky felt on our skin. After awhile, I started humming the song my mom used to sing to me when I was little.

I never meant to be the one who kept you from the dark, but now I know my wounds are sewn because of who you are, I heard my mother’s voice in my memories. I sighed. Some days I really missed it. It wasn’t really fair that I lost my mother. I mean, in my earlier teenage years, I was always searching for her love but I never found it.

Eventually, our clothes were dry and we continued walking. Jazz told me about his life, growing up in the settlement. He told me about the Razzi.

“The Razzi were the original survivors of the apocalypse,” he explained. “The Government grew from us, actually. Razzi used to be a way of life. Before the apocalypse, they lived a “clean” life. They didn’t waste things, and avoiding using fossil fuels.”

“Fossil fuels?” I questioned.

“A power source that was not renewable, and polluted the air. Like the nuclear bombs that clouded out the sky,” he explained.

I nodded, then understanding. “The Razzi lived to celebrate life. They didn’t eat meat, believing that death was wrong, even for animals. And death is wrong,” he continued.

“After the apocalypse, the Razzi created whole cities. In schools, Razzi children were brought up in the Razzi way. But, some people other than the Razzi survived the apocalypse, and they created the Government. There was actually a war between the Government and the Razzi, following the apocalypse. The Government won. Most of our people were killed, and survivors fled to reclusive spots, creating settlements.”

“Why did I never hear about this?” I asked. I had never been able to go to school, but some of the older Mutants that were in the Shows with me had, and I used to ask them questions about everything, learning as much as I could.

“Because the Government erased it from the history of the world. Victors get to write the history books,” he answered.

“That’s stupid. History should be as it happened, not as the Government tells it,” I said angrily.

“I know. It’s part of what the Razzi is about now. Telling things as they are, not lying about things,” Jazz said.

He continued to tell me about his past, until the red glow had left the sky. “We should stop for the night,” he said. “We’re only about a half day away from the town.”

I nodded, then looked around. “There’s a cave over there,” I said, pointing ahead of us, towards a plateau I could see in the distance.

He looked in the direction I was pointing and squinted. “How can you see that? Do you night vision or something? Hell, I don’t think I could see anything that far away even in daylight,” he said.

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe my vision’s better…I don’t know what the vision of a normal person is,” I said slowly. I didn’t, so it was possible my vision was better. My hearing had always been better; I knew that because I was the only one who could ever hear Daniel in the Shows. And my strength; that was clearly better, because even as a four year old, I had been able to fight off a Guard, and nearly escaped.

“You know, I think your mutation may be more evolution than mutation,” Jazz said, starting to walk towards the plateau I had indicated.

I shrugged and followed him as we walked to the cave. “We should get a fire started,” Jazz said as we walked into the cave entrance.

I nodded, then went outside the cave, pulling apart a dead bush for the dry branches. Snapping one longer branch in half, I walked back inside the cave with the branches. I set them up in a cluster, putting smaller twigs and dried leaves in the center. Jazz handed me the lighter, and I quickly got the fire going.

I moved closer to the fire, sitting on the ground in front of it, enjoying the warmth it was giving me. Suddenly I felt my stomach growl loudly, meaning I was hungry. I realized I hadn’t eaten since two days ago, when I got the ration the night before we escaped.

“I don’t really know what we would eat out here,” Jazz admitted, clearly having heard my stomach. “It never was part of my training.”

I sighed. “Well I’m going to try to find something to eat,” I said, walking out of the cave, leaving the warmth of the fire. At first, I didn’t see anything, but then I heard a noise beside me. I turned to see a hawk beside me, looking at me intently. The bird cocked its head, studying me.

After a moment, it spread its wings and started flying slowly to a bush a few hundred feet away. It looked back and me and I understood. I walked over to where it was and saw berries on the bush. I didn’t know if they were safe to eat, but looking at the bird, I felt like I could trust him. As if to prove it, he pulled a berry off of the bush with his beak and ate it. I smiled and started picking berries from the bush, now assured that they were safe to eat. As I started to walk back to the cave, the bird followed me, circling slowly above me as I walked. I whistled a tune, and the bird mimicked me. I smiled, knowing that I had made a friend.

I returned to the cave, carrying a large number of berries. I set them on the ground between Jazz and I. “Are you sure these are safe to eat?” Jazz asked, looking at them.

I nodded, just as my new friend, the hawk, swooped into the cave and landed on my shoulder. “Whoa,” Jazz said, looking at the bird who was now fluffing his feathers proudly. “What is that?”

“A bird,” I answered, picking up a berry and putting it into my mouth. The flavor burst into my mouth, so sweet it made me want to cry. I hadn’t had such sweet food since before I was in the Shows.

“Yeah, but why is it on your shoulder?” Jazz asked.

I shrugged. “It trusts me. I don’t know why,” I said.

“That’s weird,” Jazz said, eating some of the berries. He looked thoughtful.

“Well, I’m going to call him Raphael,” I decided. Raphael made a noise, and I could tell he liked the name.

“That is just weird. Bird shouldn’t be able to understand people,” Jazz said. He raised an eyebrow, looking as though he was lost in thought.

“What?” I asked him, curious as to what he was thinking about.

He looked at me but didn’t answer right away. “I think that…maybe…since you have wings, you might be partially a bird, and therefore the bird trusts you, and can understand you,” he said slowly.

I thought about it. It was theoretically possible. Maybe. I didn’t know, so I stopped thinking about it. “I don’t know,” I said. “But I’m tired, so I’m going to get some sleep.”

I stretched out on the ground beside the fire, and fell quickly asleep, Raphael watching me with his golden eyes.