heritage - two

"Lady, that was completely amazing," Haraan said, getting off the steamer.

"What was that one thing he did after the helix?" asked Jasti, going after Haraan.

Amina swatted the back of his head, lightly, to preserve whatever there was inside. "How could you forget that? He started flying upside-down."

"Oh yeah. Ow."

After the show, they'd said their goodbyes to Kaileen's group and boarded a Sapphire steamer to Sunset Marina Landing, right on the bay. The title said everything: whatever didn't ply the canals cutting between and even through the various islands in the Bay moored here, from pleasure boats to rusting tugs to fishing charters to huge, looming tankers bearing oranges from Kamania, beef from Lipar, and many other luxuries destined for Da Santra.

Haraan's eyes found a certain, empty berth in the dyling sunlight and scowled. He never could decide what he liked more: seeing his dad's berth unoccupied, or not. He motioned his friends over to the ferry line, a snake of depleted exhibition attendees recovering under a heated glass canopy.

Like them, Haraan was exhausted. But the ferry would stop by his neighborhood first, and a part of him didn't want to call it a day just yet. He polled his friends and they agreed with him right away.

"Where would we go?" Jasti yawned, stretching his arms.

"What about the Purple Moon?" Haraan suggested. "Do you guys want to go there--"

Stompstompstomp "YES."

Haraan knew if he turned around, someone was gonna get kissed with eyes wide open. He put his hands behind him instead and pushed Jasti and Amina away, slowly.

"Do they still have those chocolate lava cookies this late?" demanded Amina.

"I think so."

"Will your mom be there?" asked Jasti.

Haraan sighed. "I hope not."

"If she's there," said Amina, "will she bake us free stuff again?"

Haraan wondered if some hidden part of him reveled in this masochism. "Has there ever been a time she was there and didn't?"

"Aaaah!" Amina hugged him. One time, an Iron glimpsed her hugging Haraan and almost arrested her on assault had Haraan not explained to the officer that was how she showed affection. "Let's go, let's go let's go letsgolesgo."

"Amina! Which one of us is really your boyfriend?"

"Stop being so insecure, you big lunk. Nothing could ever tear me away from you."

"I'm not insecure. What'll happen after you end up crushing the chef's son to death?"

Amina let go immediately. Cool, sweet air surged back into Haraan's lungs. "Thanks, Jasti," he coughed, "I owe you one."

Jasti grinned like a wolf, canines and all. "I know."

A woman's voice crackled to life over speakers placed at the front of the line, inviting all passengers to board the ferry.

Talery Bay's ferries were not ostentatious: transportation being their primary function, the ferries gave passengers a bank of forward-facing benches to sit on, with a hard top arcing overhead for weather protection. Reinforced windows allowed the passengers and crew to look out over the water, while protecting them from the city's autumnal crushes.

Incidentally, today had been a fine autumn day.

Haraan and his friends fed their student passes through the turnstile and picked seats on the ferry's starboard side. Jasti sat in the middle to act as a pillow.

The crossing to Eslina, Haraan's island, ended within ten minutes. Some passengers got off, others got on. The ferry continued on, making stops at Champelo and Gierdi, the Market Island, and then --

"Acitamel Island," the captain declared over speakers. "Stop here for Twin Hills, Ogea Theater, Temple Complex, and Orange Prospect. This is Acitamel Island."

Haraan rubbed the sleep from his eyes -- he always hated how dry they were waking up -- and poked Jasti and Amina on their heads. "Hey, you guys, we're here."

They bounced awake.

"We're racing there again, right?" asked Jasti.

"Don't even start," Haraan growled.

The ferry pulled into the tunnel leading to Acitamel Island Landing, following a narrow canal into a larger tunnel laid out much like a conventional steamer station. Once the ferry came to rest against the landing, Haraan led his friends onto shore.

"Up those stairs, bear left, keep going until you see the Purple Moon on the right," Haraan murmured to himself.

A blue blur sped past him, yelling, "First one there gets a sweetbun! Last one pays for it!"

"Amina, I swear I'm gonna--" Haraan's threat was cut off as Jasti followed suit. "Shbyk, those two..." He had little other option than to take off after them.

He burst out of the landing into an electric night. Strings of lightbulbs criss-crossed Orange Prospect up and down its length, working together with ancient, gas-fired lampposts to glaze the street in its namesake's color. Rich couples strolled over the cobblestones in bodices and lace. Whatever reason there was for wearing such itchy and uncomfortable clothes eluded Haraan, though he did make sure to say "Excuse me" as he thundered past their displays of indignation.

The Purple Moon Bakery lay less than a block ahead — its sign stuck out further into the street than the rest of its competitor imitators. Jasti and Amina were too far up the slope for him to catch up in time.

He thought about turning around and going home. The very special Friends of Haraan discount didn't apply when he wasn't around (Amina would clean out the store in days), and the possibility of leaving his friends laden with custards and pastries and no money was a delectable one.

For a sadist.

It wasn't in him to leave. Sure, his allowance would burn for buying that extra sweetbun, but he chose to come out here instead of going home for a reason. From Acitamel Island Landing until he turned the knob on the Purple Moon's front door, he never dropped his speed.

The smell of glazed dough, coffee beans, and butter bloomed inside his nose as he came inside. A glass counter sat on the right side of the bakery as the only barrier protecting the pastries, pies, tarts, and buns from Jasti and Amina. Tables and chairs lined the left side for customers, but fortunately, they were empty. Nailed on the wall above the tables were loaves of bread shaped into letters, spelling "Moon" with a heart at the end.

BANG.

The door in the far wall behind the counter flew open, expelling a middle-aged woman in a chef's jacket and apron. All attention went straight to her eyes — of all the eyes floating around Talery Bay, hers had the greatest chance of someday glaring literal daggers by unofficial consensus. "Blazing blue" appeared in editorial columns throughout the city whenever she went in front of the City Council, most recently to defend the bakery she loved.

She was the aggressively slender, pastry-making sous-baker of the Purple Moon: Pattissiere Lyra Siarke.

"Hi, mom."

"Hey, kiddo," said Lyra, dusting off her hands on her way to the counter. "Are these two going to clean me out again?"

Jasti suddenly shrank two sizes and opened his eyes as wide as he could manage. Presumably, he was trying to look pitiful.

Lyra averted her face. "Oh, Lady, is that the best you're bringing me tonight?" Then she lunged over the counter and stared Jasti down. "Is it?"

One of the chairs groaned across the tiled floor after Jasti lost his balance and fell backwards into it. "No, mam," he said, coming to rest under the heart of bread.

"I'd hope not," she said, cracking a grin. "That was terrible."

"I'm bringing this," said Jasti, grabbing Haraan around the shoulders.

His mom was a potent force, Haraan knew, but why did she have to bring out the violent side in everyone? He barely managed to keep on his feet.

"Fair enough," Lyra conceded, rising from the counter. "I'll be right out with some things. Have you had dinner yet, the three of you?"

"Not yet, mam," said Amina, taking the seat next to Jasti's.

"It's a good thing you chose to come here tonight, then." Lyra pushed the kitchen door out of her way. "I wasn't sure why, but I decided to try baking seasoned meatballs and marinated peppers with sliced mushrooms and roux inside a sealed dough and made four instead. Does that interest anyone?"

"That sounds amazing, Mam Siarke," exclaimed Amina. Jasti was quick to chime in with a "It does!" and even Haraan had to say, "Sure."

Lyra smiled. "Meatball pouches it is, then! It'll be about two more minutes until they're ready, so Haraan, if you could pour our guests some hot chocolate?" She disappeared into the kitchen.

"The regular kind?" he called after her.

Her reply, echoing from the kitchen, was, "What are you, crazy? Give them the DeLaurenti's!"

Orange Prospect, and Acitamel Island in general, was so well-suited for the well-off and well-to-do that even hot chocolate had its own cultural following. Asking for a DeLaurenti's was the hot chocolate equivalent of going to a nice restaurant and ordering that bottle of champagne resting on the velvet pillow in that locked glass case with the two hand-blown and embossed wine stems commissioned specifically for drinking with that one bottle and that one bottle only.

Haraan went behind the counter and pulled out three round mugs from a cupboard. He passed the regular hot chocolate dispenser for the Delaurenti's next to it: a seven-sided, one-gallon tank made of hammered silver with a gold tap on the bottom. When he turned the valve all the way on, a full second elapsed before the tip of the stream oozed into the bottom of the first mug. The chocolate was so thick, he could lay a spoon across the top and it wouldn't sink. Somehow, using only the freshest cream and richest cocoa beans from Kuala Norwi and all that and more, the makers of Delaurenti's ensured every seven-gambit mug left a warm glow in the drinker's stomach leading into the next month.

Haraan plunged a cookie straw into each mug and carried them back to the table. "Bottoms up, guys," he toasted.

"It's so heavy," Amina laughed. "I can't handle this! This is intense!"

"You can do it!" said Jasti. "Drink it for me!"

Haraan had to set his mug down before he snorted it all over the table. Strangely, the best part about it all was his sudden and genuine anger at them — why were they keeping him from drinking the best hot chocolate in all of Sosara?

"Just drink it already!" he snapped before realizing his voice got a little too serious. Even still — the best hot chocolate in all of Sosara. One controlled gulp flowed and swirled over every surface in his mouth before it slid down his throat, massaging his esophagus along the way. Science had proved bad days and drinking DeLaurenti's were mutually exclusive, and Haraan and his friends were laughing with each other when his mom came back from the kitchen.

"About that chocolate," said Lyra, "if one of their cows wanders off and doesn't drink from a specific stretch of the Pangalaar River at sunrise and sunset for even one day, they deem its milk unusable and burn the animal."