It took very little time for Dhret to add her stamp to the little apartment after she moved in. She took him to a junk dealer on one of their days off and found a small dresser she made him carry up to the room. She picked up clothing and toiletries, all cheap, which she filled it with, and moved his piles of books until there was a stable platform in front of the window for the tiny potted plant she purchased from a cart filled with them at a corner market down the street.

When they weren’t at the tower, they spent most of their time in the bed,usually naked, or close to it. They played cards on the sheets or he read to her while she ran fingers through hair he’d let get too long, and in their second week he sat atop a utility box on the roof of the apartments and blew hair at her as she cut it with a pair of scissors from her toiletries kit.

They flew their routes together during their courier duty, sometimes at an officer’s request, other times simply because they could, despite only one of them being sent on the route in the first place. Even when they were with the rest of the couriers, on top of the towers outside the playground or in the dirty saloon that was theirs, some part of them always touched. A hand on the other’s back, shoulders pressed together around the saloon table, or feet tangled up as they sprawled in the gravel at the top of the tower with the other couriers.

“You fly like you haven’t slept.” Pod told Marroo after he came dead last in a race with Tetha and Imlay.

Marroo grinned and Dhret swatted him as she flushed.

“Shut up,” she told him. She didn’t try to hide her own grin.

“You have to be careful not to get in trouble,” Betmo warned him when he pulled Marroo aside a few days in. “It’s okay to ride routes together even when you’re not asked, but you don’t want to get on the family’s bad side. If someone gets the idea you don’t care about protocols or orders, things won’t go well for you.”

Not everything was peaceful. She left when she got upset at him. The first time he thought it might be for good, but she returned an hour later with a new potted plant too big for the apartment. He carried it up to the roof for her as a peace offering, and the second, and by the third time she stormed out when he refused to understand what she was trying to tell him, he met her at the foot of the building in order to carry the plant up for her.

Plant by plant, her garden grew in the months that followed until she’d filled the narrow crevice between two utility cabinets where the core’s light reflected from them to warm the air and the other women of the tenements hung their laundry on long strings to dry.

They found a rhythm together. He rose with the night-plains, when the shadow moved turnward up the wall of the horizon to continue its orbit of the core to let the light of day shine in. He made noodles or eggs on the hotplate while she pulled the blanket over her face and groaned until he put a plate of food in her hands or a cup of tea on the stack of books that occupied one corner of the narrow apartment. She used a rag to clean up at the wash basin then vacated the cramped apartment to visit her plants on the roof while he cleaned up and eventually came up to join her.

In nice weather he did his breathing exercises on top of one of the utility cabinets where he could look down and watch Dhret putter amongst her little pet garden until it was time to start their day. Sometimes he brought a book as well.

One morning she clambered up next to him and sat in the sun while he cycled his breath in and out of his meridians with his eyes closed. She looked down at her plants, then across what could be seen of the city from the low roof of their tenements, then looked at him. “What do you do up here every morning?”

He opened one eye to peak at her. “Breathing exercises.” He replied.

“You mean, like cultivating?”

He nodded and closed his eyes to draw his breath in. Even with his eyes closed he could see her sitting next to him, dress folded under her legs, hair blowing in the breeze that came off the wake of the passing Night Plain. She was quiet for a minute and he allowed his breath to fold itself around her as it moved through the channels his father’s manuals called “externalis” and that he always felt as an aura.

The sword icon always hovered at the edges of that aura, halfway to manifesting since his father forced it on him before he died. It dissipated as his breath wrapped around her though and it flowed back into him warmed as though by a bonfire.

“Has it gotten you anywhere?” Dhret asked.

“What?” Marroo asked. “Breathing?” He opened his eyes and grinned at the look she gave him.

“Cultivating stupid.” She replied.

Marrroo closed his eyes again and shrugged. “Feels odd not to start the day like this.”

Dhret made a non-commital sound and looked at the iron sheet of the roof beneath them to push a speck of rust around with a finger. “Do you think you can teach me?” She asked eventually.

Marroo didn’t answer her immediately. “Have you ever tried before?”

She shrugged. “Sure, who hasn’t. One bedtime story about the adept who built the world and everyone spends their nights thinking about their breathing. How many actually clear their meridians though?”

This time it was Marroo who made the noncommittal sound, a bit of her mannerisms rubbing off on him after a few months of time together.

“There’s not much to it.” He said. “Everyone has a bit of breath in them. Cultivating is just a process of, expanding it, like blowing on a flame. It’s called breath because it follows your breathing, at least at the start. It follows your focus, so if you focus on feeling it moving through your body it will open up your Core. After that things get a little more complicated. Not much more complicated, for your limbs, but the Sensorium meridian makes you see differently, and Mentalis requires you to think differently. Externalis is the one that makes you different, it, opens you up to the icons of the world, lets them change you. Not always for the best.”

He felt his own breath swirl and eddy around them both as a living aura. It followed nothing like his normal breathing pattern anymore, but still responded when he cycled it through his channels and meridians to keep them open and his spirit flexible. The sword icon pressed at him through that breath, through a thousand sharpened points in the world around him that made his spirit resonate with their form.

“How do I do it?” Dhret asked.

“Easy,” Marroo replied, “You close your eyes, and listen to your breath moving through your body.”

They sat and breathed together. He drew in and blew out and felt his spirit respond in kind. Her spirit responded as well, not with any noticeable growth, but after twenty minutes it was a brighter flame that dwelled at her center, a sharper outline of the meridians she would have to open if she wanted to become a full cultivator.

He felt when she stopped and opened her eyes and he opened his own to meet her gaze.

“Do that for ten more years and you’ll be a cultivator.” He said.

Dhret snorted. “Right.” She looked away, out at the city. After a while she looked back to him. “How long have you been doing it?”

He looked down at his shoes and picked at a stain. “Too long.” He replied after a moment.

“It would be great though,” she said, looking out at the towers, “to be an adept. To control your own destiny instead of being controlled by it.”

Marroo looked at the towers that cut off their view of most of the city around them. He shook his head. “Better not to have any destiny at all.”

She gave him a weird look. “Would you rather have people telling you what to do with your life?”

He shook his head. Looked at her, then out at the city again. “That’s not destiny. That’s just, employment.” He picked at a bit of trash crusted to the sole of his shoe. “Destiny seems like a, bigger thing, to me. No one could ever make me someone I didn’t want to be just because they offered me a paycheck. Destiny though, in books, it doesn’t really give you a choice.”

“But if you could choose your destiny,” she said.

“No one chooses their destiny.”

They looked at one another then he looked away.

“Why are you a courier Marroo?” She asked after a moment of silence.

“Why does everyone ask that?” He asked. He looked at her. “Why are you a courier?”

She looked down at her plants. “It doesn’t fit.” She said. “You’re not like… the rest.”

“How so?”

She looked at him, gave him a half smile. “Well, you’re a trog for one.”

Marroo snorted, flicked the trash crusted to his shoe off of the utility cabinet into her plants. She gave him a dirty look for flicking it into her plants.

“I like being a courier.” He said.

“You talk like you’re from one of the schools.” She replied. “Or like you’ve spent time there.” She leaned forward. “If that’s true then my… she paused and looked away as she looked for the right words. “You wouldn’t have to be a courier.”

Marroo nodded but just looked down at her plants until he felt her eyes on him and turned to look at her. “I’m not even legally an adult.” Marroo replied. “Neither of us are.”

She shrugged and looked away. “No.” She admitted. She chewed on her lip as she studied the city scape around them and thought. “I’ve heard stories though.” She said eventually. “Everyone knows them, of people, advanced beyond their years, who decided to work for the family. Kids who join the red squads, or who fight in the underground.” She looked at him.

“They don’t have a choice down there.” He said.

“But, that’s my point.” Dhret said and leaned forward. “No one hires useful people to be a courier. They’re the screw ups… we’re, I suppose.”

“That’s not true.” He snapped before he’d really thought about it. He scowled and she gave him a pitying look.

“You’re not a screw up,” Marroo said, “and what about Betmo?”

She looked at the ground. “Exceptions,” she said, “Betmo is from one of the other sects and is courting one of the officer’s daughters. He needed a place to prove his loyalty.”

“And you?” Marroo asked.

She looked up at him, then shook out her hair and looked away. “Admit it, everyone else there is a mess. No one would miss them if they…” A look of desolation crossed her face and she stared at the city beyond them. “If they died.” She finished quietly.

Eventually she turned back to him. “You though, if you really know how to cultivate, you could work at one of the schools, or in one of the barracks. You could be more, even if you pretend you don’t want to be. We’d get paid more, anyways.”

“I don’t want more,” Marroo muttered, and looked down at his chest.

She looked away again.

“I do.” she said quietly. “I think it would be nice. To choose, instead.”

Marroo tensed but held himself still until the words forced themselves out. “I never forced anything on you.” He told her.

She looked at him as though not really seeing him but said nothing.

He pushed himself to his feet. “Fine then.” He said. “Keep at the exercises and maybe you’ll be able to bring yourself to choose.” He leapt from the top of the box as she woke from whatever stupor she’d sunk into and scrambled to the side of the box after him.

“Wait!” She called after him. “Marroo, stop!” But he’d already let himself down the fire escape and was clambering into the apartment through the window.

She didn’t come after him immediately. He had time to stew in his room, their room. It wasn’t his room anymore. The space that had once smelled of dust and second hand books had been flavored by her arrival with the must of her potted plant and the lingering smell of her in his sheets. He thought about leaving, not forever, but the way she did when she got upset, only to return an hour later with a new potted plant. He could do the same, return with a book or something instead, but he had plenty of books. He didn’t need to go anywhere.

She found him an hour later sprawled on the bed with his nose tucked into the pages of one of the books he hadn’t yet finished. He ignored her, even when he heard her clothes fall to the floor, until she pushed his book down and kissed him.

“I’m sorry,” She said.

When he looked at her she didn’t meet his eyes.

He tried to lift the book again but she yanked it out of his hands.

“I’m trying to apologize,” she snapped, “won’t you listen to me?” She glared at him, but when he looked at her again she looked away.

“Look at me,” he told her.

She did and he ran a finger down the side of her face. She looked down, and took the hand to place it against her cheek, though she still didn’t meet his eyes.

“I love you,” he told her, for the first time.

Her face scrunched up and she sucked her lip into her mouth to chew on it as she held his hand.

He waited.

“I, want to love you.” She said, without looking at him, she looked at the floor of the apartment. “I do. I really, really do, but, how, if it means living like this forever?” She looked at their apartment. Their, apartment. Little more than a closet space big enough for a bed. “How can we live like this?” She asked again.

“It’s not so bad.” Marroo replied. “We have each other.”

He tried to smile, but it hurt, and the smile she gave him in return hurt just as bad when it didn’t touch her eyes. What they did, afterwards, tangled up together on top of the sheets, only drove that hurt deep below the surface of their lives to resurface when the currents of their destinies shifted to bring it back into the light.