Callista wrinkles her nose at the sharp scent of perfume mixing with the softer aroma of cooked meat. Somewhere to the side, several children shriek and chase each other around a battered stall selling glass figurines. The wrinkled old woman behind the stall–presumably the vendor–offers a polite nod when she notices Callista looking, and she nods back in return, wanting to get the whole trip over with.

Somebody’s elbow drives into her side. She grunts, gritting her teeth. She hears the beginnings of an apology, but the crowd’s chattering drowns out the rest. She barely makes it to the outer edges, panting and bruised from too many others bumping into her, when a robed figure pulls out a printed card and shoves it at her.

“Come by our stall and take a look at some hand-woven clothes. We’re having a special today,” they say, before they turn and pounce on the next potential customer. Callista shoves the card deep into her pocket. It doesn’t matter. What matters is more food and medicine.

Through the din of the market, Callista singles out a vendor on a wagon, far away enough from the bustling crowd that she reaches him by skirting around the central plaza. Gold earrings dangle from his earlobes. A slight nod of acknowledgement is all he gives when she pauses before his wagon.

Loaves of bread are neatly stacked and separated by waxy paper. Her mouth salivates at the thought of sinking her teeth into one of the loaves, but the way the vendor inches closer to his products, one arm draped over the loaves of bread while his eyes train on her, disrupts her daydream.

“Do you barter?” she asks. During her childhood, one of the lessons her parents taught her was about the day-to-day activities of the unfortunate tre-titled individuals. Without a job, they had to trade. Or as her father put it, barter.

It’s those blurry memories that Callista leans on for support. She straightens her back. Her eyes are level with the vendor’s. She resists the urge to look away, instead focusing on a small mole near the corner of his eye.

“Depends on what you got,” he grumbles. Everything about the man repels her, but she has no choice.

“Elikanders. Ripe and recently cut from the vine.”

He strokes his chin in thought. “Those are damn common in Endralova. Not here. You recently arrived?”

“Yesterday, actually.” Which isn’t a lie, so the words come out easily.

“Look, usually I give two loaves for an elikander. Impossible to grow here but I’m hungry and they’re my favorite. How about three?”

All she must do is hand over one elikander and get three loaves of bread that will last them a full day, which is enough time for her to find someplace to work. The temptation, for any other person, would overwhelm them.

But she recognizes the tactic: giving off the impression that there is a bargain to be won when she is being robbed blind either way. She might be inexperienced, but she’s not stupid.

“Ten,” she says. They like to raise their demand so there’s a greater chance to reach a better deal than the one offered, her father tells her.

The vendor snorts. “I’d be blind if I agreed to that. Three. No more than that.”

Callista frowns. The vendor is proving more and more unlikeable. “Not for a wild one?”

The confident smirk on the vendor’s face drops off. He threads his fingers together and rests his chin on top, squinting at her. “There’s not much left of those. Last I heard they were almost extinct.”

She stops herself from breaking her calm facade. She knows they are rare, or at least they were pre-Fall. But almost extinct? “I may have had a little help getting these out,” Callista says, lowering her voice. She props her backpack on the wagon and unzips it. She pulls out an elikander and leaves it beside her. “Ten. No less than that.”

The vendor reaches toward the elikander, but she flashes him a warning glare. “Do you agree?” she says.

“I need to see if it’s true,” he responds. Reluctantly, she hands him the elikander, keeping her eyes trained on his every movement. He inspects the surface of the elikander from top to bottom. With every practiced rotation of the fruit, the corners of his eyes crease, and a satisfied smile tells her all she needs to know.

“The real deal,” he says.

He gathers four loaves of bread and passes them over to her. She waits for the other six, but the vendor rolls the fruit behind the stack of bread and clasps his hands together.

“You’re forgetting something,” Callista says. She points at the remaining loaves behind him. He smiles again and leaps off the wagon. She moves back, palms growing clammy. The top of her head reaches up to his shoulders, and even back home she is considered tall by Endralovan standards.

The vendor touches his earring with a finger. “As are you.” He takes a step forward. Callista lunges, grabs the backpack, and slings it over one shoulder. Her other hand aches to protract her claws. “Relax. I won’t hurt you.”

“Then why are you approaching me like that?” She calls on the threads of simmering energy inside her. They pulsate and respond to her touch. She holds her gift of strength in one metaphysical hand. All she must do is release it. One. Single. Movement. But the Transients are always watching. She can't risk them finding out somebody escaped the Fall.

The vendor doesn’t stop. Callista stares him down. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because–” Suddenly he leaps back into the wagon. The wagon groans under the force of his landing. He topples loaves of bread, falling in droves around his squatting form.

Around them, passersby mutter amongst themselves. The closest ones pull their youngest away. The rest deviate from their path and stand at the sides of the road. The crowd Callista had avoided has dispersed, leaving the central plaza empty save for heads peeking out of stalls and a patrol marching towards her.

Every instinct in her screams for her to run. She holds her ground and breathes in and out. Deep breaths. Just the way she was taught. Meanwhile, the vendor hastily gathers the fallen loaves and rebuilds the pile, hiding the elikander.

The lead Transient’s eyes narrow once he reaches them. The scales on his face glimmer a deep azure. “Is there a problem here?”

The gift of language. She isn’t surprised, considering they’re in an immigrant city. Callista bows–proper etiquette–and trains her gaze on the leader. “This man was acting strange after I bartered with him. I had reason to believe he was going to attack me.”

The vendor bows as well. The difference is that his head remains bowed down. Her lips twitch in revulsion. “I was asking her to return a loaf of bread, that's all." What? Callista exhales. Inhales. Gently enough so that nobody else notices. "The conditions were that I give her three, you see, but in my foolishness I gave her four. She refuses to return the extra loaf."

Incredible. Callista has to find a way to defend herself. Anything. The trap the vendor sprung makes her want to scratch herself until she bleeds. I'm so incredibly stupid. "He gave me four loaves.” She can’t help it. She raises her hands and points at the vendor. “As I understand it, the bartering was done and he had no reason to come after me for a mistake he made."

"The terms we agreed on were three loaves, not four. I made an honest mistake and you refuse to honor your end of our deal."

"Enough." The Transient casts a bored look back at his patrol group. Two of them give a silent nod while the third runs a hand over a baton strapped to her thigh. "Should the female Endralovan return it or not?"

"She should keep," the third says. "The vendor made the mistake. It's on him."

"She should return it," the other two Transients say. They cross their arms, but otherwise keep silent about why Callista should cater to the disgusting vendor.

"Very well," the leader says. He spits on the ground before motioning towards her. "Return it, then."

Callista wants to scream, to tear apart the patrol and vendor alike. But those fantasies are just that–fantasies. She has no power other than the gift of strength, and it is untrained either way.

She is lucky the Transients don't see her as a gugent, or their calm interaction could've escalated into something far worse. She stiffens as she hands over a loaf to the vendor. He takes it and sets it atop the pile. The elikander, she realizes, is gone from its spot.

"Is everything okay now?" The Transient asks.

"The issue is resolved," the vendor says, patting the loaf of bread that is supposed to be hers. The threads threaten to snap. Callista drags down the simmering river of power fueling her limbs into a tight ball of energy.

The motion is too much. Her head spins, fingers and toes tingling as she forces out the pent-up energy by grinding her heel into the pavement. The Transients nod and leave, back towards the innards of Duproseis.

When she finally dares lift her foot, the pavement has a foot-sized indent, the sole of her boot worn down to her bare sole. Quickly, she plants her foot back into the spot, glaring at the vendor who yawns.

“That’s quite the mark you left,” he says, gesturing at her foot. The one hiding the indent. “Let me tell you something. You may have tried to one-up me in my own business of all things, but I’m lucky you tried. You have something that’s luxurious. Well-made. Prohibitively expensive, and you don’t look like the type to have gotten it… normally.”

“What are you trying to get at?” she growls. All pretenses of politeness are gone. She is sick of the vendor. Sick of herself for being so naive as to think she would outsmart somebody who sold and bartered for a living.

She has to get out of here. But she has to salvage what she can of her dignity, too. “Give me your backpack,” he says, “and I won’t report you to that patrol for having an illegal gift and poaching wild elikander.”

The backpack. That is one of the first things Callista had noticed when she first met Cora. Callista’s breath catches in her throat. She can’t lose it. She can’t lose at all. Cora put all her trust in her to get additional food and medicine for Liam.

Throngs of people are returning to the stalls. The central plaza gradually comes alive again, hands exchanging goods and the local currency, though the liveliness of before is reduced to a quiet atmosphere. Lowered voices reach her ears as an indecipherable mashing of sounds, and more than a few people glance over at the wagon, at the smirking vendor, at her, who grips both backpack straps.

“You’re insane,” she mutters. A break has yet to appear in the returning crowd.

“I will. I’m giving you a last chance. Hand it over.” Several people break away from the throng. A middle-aged man displays a series of framed artworks propped on a table. More people flock to the new vendor. “Are you paying attention, stupid girl?”

Callista imagines herself calling on the threads of energy again, this time letting it flow over her body. She imagines shoving the wagon so it topples. She imagines nobody coming to help out the vendor as he lays on the ground in pain.

But of course, they’re fantasies. She melts into the crowd, wading deeper into the center where she spots the vendor a final time. He gives her a cold stare before the crowd blocks him from sight. She bumps shoulders with too many people. Elbows fly into her sides again and feet step on her own, but she bears it all without reaction, focused on the street that she took first.

At last, she breaks free, hurrying down the street. She passes the old woman with the glass figurines, turns several street corners, passes the Transia-themed cafe, enters a narrow alley and walks on the grimy floor.

Her bare foot steps on a rotten fruit. What it once was she can’t tell, but the cool mush smears over her foot. She gags, stepping around garbage and weed-infested areas. At last she reaches a plain wooden fence that reaches up to her chest. She clambers over the fence and lands on a soft patch of grass.

From here, the beaten dirt road hugs Duproseis, most of the city surrounded by either dilapidated shacks or wooden fences. The three main entrances are transited by Transients the most, and the last thing she wants is a patrol questioning her.

Several other people pass her, most of them as dirty and haggard as she thinks she looks. She appreciates the short distance she travels on the dirt road, as her bare foot doesn’t have anything rough or sharp biting into her sole.

But once she steps off the path onto the beginning of a wild field, she winces. Duproseis sits to the side of the bay, the city a sprawling mess of buildings and farms that otherwise would have consumed the surrounding land were it not for the numerous boulders dotting the land, strains of invasive plants native to Transia that pricked people and left burns, and the jagged rocks jutting out the rest of the harbor that prevented ships from docking.

The abandoned community the node left Callista in sits far down the coast. Her boots protected her from the plants just fine on her walk to Duproseis. But if only she had been more controlled and reigned in her gift of strength. If only she’d met a different vendor instead.

She pulls on the threads for comfort. They respond similarly to how her fire used to respond. Warmth floods her insides, washing away the shadows accumulating day-by-day in her mind. The trek back is going to be longer and harder, but she has no choice.

***

Beaten, weary, scratched-up from falling into a patch of nithens–luckily not poisonous–Callista groans in relief when she crosses the threshold into the abandoned neighborhood. Several shadows peel away from porches and patios to reveal other displaced people, skinny and haggard with gaunt faces, whose eyes linger on her for a moment before each person looks away.

She’s too tired to care. Her temporary house is several blocks down across a decaying park. What makes the house special is how intact it is compared to the little remains of neighboring houses. Half of the homes are burnt-out husks of what must’ve been somebody’s dream home.

The other half are in various states of disrepair. Broken windows are normal, and her house is no exception. After she passes the second to last block and glimpses the corroded statue peeking above the park’s trees, she runs her hands through her cropped hair, letting herself relax.

Next time, she will avoid the central plaza entirely if she can help it. What worries her, though, is the vendor’s wagon. Almost everybody had their own stalls. But he only had bread and wheels to take his business from place to place in pursuit of the crowd.

I’ll have to get lucky, she thinks.

The house comes into view. She decides to sneak around the back, since the front door is warped and drags along the ground, making it near-impossible to open it.

Unlike the wooden fence back in Duproseis, the backyard fence reaches above her head. She drags several chunks of stone and throws them into a pile, testing the weight with her protected foot. Finding it sturdy, she stands up and grips the top edges of the fence.

She bends her knees and lands too heavily for her liking. Pain spikes across her bare foot, but when she takes a step towards the back door, the pain dissipates. Inside, the hallways are empty, each door closed. To her left, the kitchen is as bright as ever, and a rectangular light glows beyond it, in the living room where the light struggles to creep through drawn curtains.

“Not even a hello?” Callista calls out. Relieved to be back. Cora squeaks and jumps up. The rectangular light goes out and the girl stands.

“You didn’t have to do that,” she huffs, crossing her arms. Her phone, Callista notices, fits perfectly inside the uniform’s pants pocket. “But I’m glad you’re back. Liam–he’s getting worse.”

Callista sighs and drops the backpack on the dining room table. Cora approaches until they’re nearly shoulder to shoulder. “I couldn’t,” Callista mumbles, not wanting to look at her, so she opts to pull out what she could barter for. “I’m sorry… I had a long day. I swear that tomorrow I will get the medicine no matter who tries getting in my way. It’s the least I can do.”

“What happened?” Cora lays a hand on Callista’s shoulder. She stiffens, then forces herself to look at her.

“I made the mistake of thinking I could barter an elikander for more. A vendor figured out my plan and was blackmailing me into giving him the backpack.”

“What? Why? What did you have against you?”

Callista sucks in a deep breath. “He called a Transient patrol and they came and took his side over mine. I almost lost control of my gift and he noticed. That’s why he threatened me, but I got away before something worse happened.” She unzips the backpack and yanks out all three loaves. For a wild elikander, she was ripped off. Badly. “I got this. It should last us a day while I try to find work.”

Their situation is bleak. Callista cannot fathom how she’ll find a job in Duproseis that will somehow support the three of them. She’s never worked before, not for another. The good jobs will require legal documentation. Bad jobs will require a desperate person. And she fits the latter description, no matter how she hates having fallen so far.

“I wish I could do more,” Cora says. Her hand pulls back to her side. She picks up a loaf of bread and gently squeezes it. “It isn’t fair that you’re doing all the work while I’m here doing nothing.”

“You saved me,” Callista points out. “That’s enough payment for a lifetime.”

“I don’t want that to be my payment. I don’t want any payment.” She sets the loaf down. “I didn’t do it as a service. I did it because I cared. I did it because I wanted to save you.”

What was it Cora had said again? Sometimes there is no rhyme or reason to life. Cora’s emotions had told her to save Callista, even when she’d tried to kill her. Is it true, then? Callista has to bear the weight, though. The responsibilities. She’s indebted to Liam and Cora for providing for her. Protecting her from the hunters.

“I’m sorry,” Callista says. She works her mouth open and then closes it. “If you show your face anywhere near Duproseis, you will be hunted down and tortured for information that you likely don’t have. The same goes to Liam. I have to do this alone.”

“What about things here? We can try to figure out how to move on to a better place. Somewhere where Liam and I won’t be as targeted.”

“It’s impossible. The whole grid is crawling with Transients.” Callista’s shoulders slump. Not the whole grid, technically. There are always those precious few worlds still fighting to keep themselves from being conquered. But then the roles would be reversed and it would be Callista whose head would be hunted after. “I appreciate you offering to help, though. Just… make sure Liam recovers once I bring the medicine tomorrow.”

“But it’s dangerous for you too, isn’t it? That vendor might still be looking for you.”

“I’ll go without the backpack. It should reduce the chances of me being spotted.”

Cora bites her lip. She looks like she wants to say something, but then the fight goes out of her eyes. She begins to unwrap her loaf and tears off a piece, offering it to Callista. “You should eat.”

That’s all Cora says. Callista lifts her own loaf. “I have my own.”

“Just take it. If you’re doing most of the work, then you should eat the most, too. I can manage.”

Callista’s too tired to protest Cora’s logic. Together, they silently feast on the bread.