Olive Heights is not a central enough neighborhood to be suitable for university students or any non-motorcycle riders working downtown. However, it is well known for its carefully curated brick houses and rooftop gardens, and includes a few hidden gems of the city…
—So You Want to Move to Ēnnuh? A Brief Guide on Local Neighborhoods
Moral Systems is finally wrapping up for the day and Elīya’s heart is racing. God, she wants to just open the door and burst through and get her motorcycle and make it to the meeting place they’d all decided on and—
“That concludes today’s class,” Dzanbela finally says, and Elīya jumps out of her seat faster than she knew she could—faster than anyone else in the room. That she’s already standing before most other students have even put their pencils away draws some looks, but she doesn’t care. She just rushes for the door.
Tamar. She’s finally going to see Tamar.
Well, it’s time.
Yenatru’s walking his motorcycle across campus, glancing down at it in doubt that it’ll even still work. He hasn’t used it for months. There was a time, at the end of secondary school, when he and Tamar would ride side by side, careening into the desert, walking into the river and splashing each other—but no, that’s the past.
Unless it isn’t. After all, he’ll see her again today.
He’s already in his travel clothes: light tan robes that cover most of his skin, hiding it from the sun. He has sunglasses on, because they look a little less silly than goggles. But fashion is a losing battle today, one that’s going to get worse once a helmet gets added to the mix. He sighs. At least it’s some consolation that everyone else will be wearing the same thing.
He passes aloe and sagebrush, grass and pine, not sure what to expect, but glad that at least Lucifer will be there. Friend. Why did it feel so much more for her to feel his soul against her hand than it did for Elīya to feel the same? It’s not a romantic feeling, but he cares, he cares.
For now, though, there’s a figure on the path ahead of him, waving at him. A figure with suspiciously spherical hair. Lucifer.
He waves back, as widely as he feels comfortable doing, and hurries down the path.
She’s not wearing traveling clothes at all. In fact, if anything she’s wearing a slightly longer black skirt than usual, and though her circlet this time has white trim, it’s still mostly black. Not fair.
“Hey,” she says, waving again in a much smaller movement with one hand. Her other arm’s resting against her motorcycle. There’s several bags and backpacks by the motorcycle, too; she’s brought all the supplies for the trip.
Yenatru looks down, trying to imagine what he must look like in these silly loose-fitting robes and sunglasses. His hair’s tied back for riding, too, although at least the tie’s sealed with a nice silvery clip.
“Something up?” Lucifer says, leaning down a little.
“Do… angelic bodies not feel heat?”
Lucifer laughs quietly. “They kinda do, but we don’t generally overheat, and well… let’s just say I get to wear a lot of black.”
“Ah. That sounds nice.”
“There are ways to make manifestations that cool you off, you know. Breeze-surrounding-you type of things.”
“Do you have one?”
“Nah.” She shakes her head. “’S not really me.”
Yenatru nods. He could imagine himself having something like that, easily, but it really might be a problem if someone came into contact with it without meaning to.
“How are you doing?” she asks him.
He shrugs. “Alright, I think. This trip…” He sighs.
“I know what you mean. Elīya and Tamar. This should be interesting.”
“It generally was, in the past.”
No sooner does he say that than he sees Elīya. She’s dressed similarly to him, but pulling off the color much better. Figures.
He sighs again. in the corner of his eye, he sees Lucifer shift form to someone thinner and lighter skinned. Wearing no less black, though.
Right. This is going to be really weird.
This is the first time Elīya’s actually seen Yenatru and Lucifer in the same place. Lucifer’s leaning against their motorcycle, of course, but Yenatru’s looking almost straight ahead.
The sun’s bright as flames in the sky, almost directly overhead. It’s afternoon, but not by much. Elīya’s definitely glad for how much these clothes reflect heat.
“How are you?” she asks as she approaches, motorcycle in tow.
“Alright,” Yenatru says quietly.
“Fine enough.” Lucifer shrugs.
She, of course, is quite well, not that either of them ask. She’s no longer quite vibrating with pure excitement, but she’s close.
Because yes, yes, yes—Tamar.
She takes a deep breath and smiles on the exhale.
This is going to be great.
If Elīya’s excited, Yenatru’s apprehensive. Terrified. This is really happening; he’s about to get on his motorcycle and this is real.
Apparently, weird things happen when you become friends with Lucifer.
“We should probably get going,” Elīya says, thinking that Yenatru looks a little small under all that fabric.
“We’re picking up Tamar, right?” he asks.
“Yeah,” Lucifer says, turning to Yenatru when they do and shifting right before Elīya’s eyes to someone she’s never seen in her life, a woman with light brown skin and curly hair forming a sphere around her head. “Dropped her off yesterday at her parents’ house, you two probably know where that is?”
Yenatru nods.
“Right,” Elīya says. “Because you—had to go to Eden to pick her up, you said?” She’s not sure how much her eyebrows are raising.
Lucifer inclines their head, shifting forms again. Flames, this is going to get distracting.
Yenatru’s eyes dart between the two of them. Elīya’s confrontational, her arms crossed; Lucifer’s just leaning back like normal, despite having a different body.
And when Lucifer’s eyes catch Yenatru’s, they’re the grey he’s used to again, not the bright green of her other form. Then she looks at Elīya again and her hair shortens, her skin lightens.
Yenatru rubs his forehead; he’s hoping this isn’t already giving him a headache. Her clothes have been switching back and forth, too, he notes; they’re probably manifestations too.
Elīya’s arms are still crossed tight. “You going to tell me what Tamar was doing in Eden?” she asks Lucifer.
“Nah.”
Elīya rolls her eyes, not caring whether or not her sunglasses hide the gesture. “And I take it you’ll just be sitting back and watching when I finally confront her?”
“Do I have a choice?”
Yenatru twitches, wanting to run forward and push them apart. But he probably shouldn’t. Instead, he watches a small white butterfly flit around among the aloe.
Elīya scoffs. “Guess we better get on these motorcycles, then.”
“Sure,” Lucifer says with a shrug.
And once they pick up Tamar, she wonders, then what? She won’t have a motorcycle of her own, being blind and all. Does that mean Elīya will get to take her as a passenger? Is that even what she wants?
God, she can’t even tell if she’s excited or if she’s sick with fear. Maybe both.
“R-right,” Yenatru says a bit late, tearing his gaze from the butterfly that’s so much more pleasant than the rest of this situation.
To make matters worse, he has to put on his helmet now.
Lucifer has no helmet, of course, because angelic bodies just aren’t fair.
Now there’s something Yenatru would like to see after the Resurrection: bodies that are durable enough that people don’t need to wear stupid-looking things to stay safe.
So they get on their bikes and start heading down the road to their shared old neighborhood: Olive Heights.
The air rushing past Elīya is kind of like wind. Not exactly. Not enough. But at least kind of.
Not that she has the slightest idea why she cares.
They’re not going all that fast: there’s plenty of pedestrians here, even if they do stick mostly to the sides of the street. There’s no absence of sharp turns, either; after all, these roads were built long before motorcycles were invented.
Elīya’s eyes dart to her sides, at the low-lying homes and storefronts that block the horizon. Though she’s lived in Ēnnuh all her life, the bright blue of the sky in summer still almost surprises her. It’s beyond open, it’s blank, holding nothing at all in it other than the sun.
It would calm her to look at, if it weren’t for the annoying fact that she needs to focus on where she’s going.
At least she is going. She’s moving forward, each second and centimeter bringing her closer to Tamar and resolution both.
Still, it would be nice if someone could just tell her why she wants there to be wind.
Yenatru can finally see Point Rock to his right, which means they’re getting close to Olive Heights.
Point Rock itself is just a rock—an amazing one, a large one, completely natural and never removed in the construction of the city. People climb it, sometimes—but mostly tourists. Yenatru’s never actually done it himself, something about it being so obvious that it’s just never happened.
It’s a really nice landmark, though.
Even if today it means meeting Tamar again and probably listening to Elīya yell at her and maybe not being able to handle anything. He’s been between those two before, on too many school lunches, and when they got to arguing, sometimes he made excuses to step away.
But most of the time they got along well enough, Elīya greeting Tamar at the beginning of each day and peppering her with questions about how she’s doing and how she spent the previous evening. They planned weekends together sometimes, the two of them and Yenatru, and one afternoon on the rooftop after school on their first year of secondary…
Let’s promise to always tell each other anything interesting that happens.
Yenatru and Tamar had nodded, and they’d said yeah, and that was the end of it. So he thought, then.
But now he knows quite flaming well that it meant a lot more to Elīya.
And it doesn’t help that he hasn’t even figured out how he feels about the way Elīya’s felt his soul.
Just thinking about it makes him blush intensely. He can feel the blood rushing to his face; he’s not sure that’s safe when motorcycle riding is involved. Especially not when he’s riding up the very incline to Tamar’s old house.
At least he manages to remind himself to breathe.
Elīya knows this part of the road like the back of her hand. Maybe better, given that she’s not exactly known for paying attention to unimportant things like hands.
There’s buildings of faded stone of subtle warm colors, succulent gardens growing down their walls. At the edge of the street there’s gardens of aloe and agave.
And here’s the pine tree she always liked, its long needles arranged in spirals, towering over the rock garden next to it despite barely being taller than her.
There’s almost no plants just outside of Ēnnuh, but here—here is something else. People have made this place, built it from desert stone and the knowledge of heat with no expectation of rain. Here the only water is from the river or an occasional snowstorm. Here there is only harshness, but it’s harshness that can be understood and lived and loved. The few things that do grow here can be cultivated, made strong—so people have done so in force, covering the streets and walls in them.
And any rooftop that doesn’t grow trees and grass is instead covered in solar panels, gathering the harshness of this place and turning it into power. This city has once again become a center of human innovation over the last few centuries as people here have learned to store solar power in batteries and export it, have made motorcycles and elevators and beyond. One of the first cities in the world, and now again at the center of trade.
Elīya smiles, breathing in the hot air. She is of this place, apparently more than Hannuša is with all her talk of forest floors, maybe more than Yenatru too.
Though there is another possibility. Maybe her love of this city and its surroundings isn’t just because she’s used to it. Maybe she would have loved it even if she wasn’t from here, and just got lucky. Maybe how much she cares about it actually tells her something about who she is, about what she’s supposed to be learning, about her soul.
But flames, they’re close. They’re turning a final corner, one where grass grows between the cobblestones, where she once looked for grasshoppers with Tamar.
Because Tamar lived here. Right here, right at that house—
Yes, she remembers that ombre tone of the building, that tall pine… and that girl, standing there under the pine. Or is she a woman now? Her face is sharper than it once was, though her hair’s just as tousled. Her skin’s dark, her hands are on her hips, and—though Elīya’s trying her hardest not to focus on it— there’s her eyes, pure white with the flame flickering out of them.
God, it’s bright.
She really is one of the Holy.
And she’s right in front of Elīya. Right there. Alive and real and a person, not just a memory.
Elīya stops her motorcycle and gets off, trying not to gape. “Hello, Tamar.”