Plum sat cross-legged on the grass with her hands resting open in her lap, which was how she sat when she was about to explain something carefully.
Burajiru lay on his back beside her looking at the sky.
"Are you listening?" she asked.
"Yes baby, I'm listening."
"You look like you're sleeping."
"I can listen with my eyes closed."
Plum filed this away under things she was choosing not to argue about and continued.
"My power isn't like other Amazons," she said. "Most Amazon abilities run through the earth line, strength, endurance, pressure combat, physical dominance. Mine comes from above." She paused. "I descend from the Moon Lion."
Burajiru opened one eye. "The what."
"The Moon Lion." She said it the way people say things that are simply true and have never required anyone's permission to remain so. "An ancient creature that lived on the surface of the moon before the first skylands were raised. It didn't hunt. It didn't need to. Its presence alone altered the gravity of everything within its radius, changed tides, restructured the emotional state of anything that came close enough. It pulled things toward it not physically but essentially." She looked at her hands. "That's what I carry."
Burajiru was fully awake now, both eyes open.
"Scytherians," she continued, "all have access to XY state, Y state and X state. XY is the primary combat form, full physical amplification, heightened aggression, reinforced bone density, speed increase. X state is the defensive inversion, redirecting force, absorbing impact, turning an opponent's strength against itself." She closed her hand slowly. "But the highest state is Z Bones."
"What happens in Z Bones?"
"Everything." She said it simply. "The skeletal structure fully transforms. The Moon Lion ancestry comes forward completely. In that state I won't just pull things toward me, I'll control the gravitational field of the entire battle. Nothing moves that I don't allow to move." She looked at the sky. "I haven't reached it yet. But I will."
She said the last part without drama. Just fact.
"When you do," Burajiru said, "nothing will stop you."
"No," Plum agreed. "Nothing will."
They were quiet for a moment.
Plum shifted closer, tucking herself against his side.
"SunBear... I don't feel scared when I'm with you. I just... feel safe. And happy."
Plum was beside him, but his thoughts had already wandered to something that had been quietly lingering in the back of his mind.
And that thought was......
The Problem of Promise Rings.
Shortly after he spent time with his Girlfriend Plum the problem, he discovered after three shops and one misguided visit to a place that sold exclusively decorative gourds, was that Dragon Hive did not stock what he was looking for. The island was well supplied in most respects. Jewelry with intentional romantic symbolism was apparently not among them.
He stood on the street outside the gourd shop and considered his options.
Tatsu landed on his left shoulder.
Tatsu was a pigeon who carried himself with the authority of someone who had been right about things before and planned to continue.
"We can take you to the Leet District," Tatsu said. "They have jewelers. Good ones."
Renchi landed on his right shoulder. Smaller, warmer in color, with the specific maternal energy of someone who came along on errands to make sure they were done correctly.
"We know the routes," Renchi said. "It won't take long."
"That sounds..." Burajiru began.
And was asleep.
Tatsu and Renchi looked at each other across the back of his neck.
A passerby crossed the street to avoid the man sleeping standing up with two pigeons on his shoulders.
"He's asleep," Tatsu said.
"I see that," Renchi said.
"In the middle of a sentence."
"I know."
Silence.
Then, in unison, at full volume directly into both his ears:
"WHY ARE YOU SLEEPING."
Burajiru's eyes opened. He straightened immediately, expression sharp, completely present.
"I heard you," he said. "Leet District. Good jewelers. Let's go." He looked down the street with the focus of a man who had been engaged the entire time. "Lead the way."
Tatsu stared at him for a long moment.
"Right," Tatsu said.
The Leet District.
He went as a red pigeon because it was simpler, and because he liked the altitude, and because Tatsu and Renchi flew better in formation than they walked in any direction.
Tatsu: "Hey, I gotta ask... how come you look different from other humans? Your nose is bigger, your lips are bigger, and what's with that wild fluffy hair?"
Burajiru: "I dunno, I was just born this way. Why do pigeons poop while they're flying? It's such an inconvenience for the entire human population."
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Tatsu: "Point taken."
Burajiru: "I'm not ashamed to be an Afro man just like you guys shouldn't be ashamed to be pigeons. Now shut it. And why the hell are these other birds following us?"
Tatsu: "That's just what we do. So, how come you're so fast? Are all bronze-skinned humans fast and strong?"
Burajiru: "I said shut it, bird brain."
Renchi: "Please, forgive my husband. He doesn't have all his feathers."
The Leet District assembled itself below them as they descended, older buildings pressed close together, the kind of neighborhood that had been functional for a long time and was still trying to stay that way. Market stalls on the lower streets, residences stacked above, the ordinary texture of a community that had made its peace with proximity.
Burajiru landed and shifted back and stood on the main street.
The first thing he saw were the posters.
LUX WIGG INFRASTRUCTURE CORP: BRINGING PROSPERITY TO THE LEET DISTRICT.
They were everywhere. Walls, posts, vendor stalls, the side of a building that looked like it hadn't received any other form of attention in years. Lux Wigg's face looked out from all of them with the carefully constructed expression of a man who had decided to be seen as generous and had allocated significant resources to that project.
The second thing he saw was the machine.
It stood at the district entrance like a gate, which was, Burajiru understood slowly and then all at once, exactly what it was. A meter. Floor to ceiling, mounted and sealed, monitoring the oxygen flowing into the district through the regulated channel. The display showed current levels. Below that, a rate. A price. Per cubic unit. Adjustable based on demand.
He read it twice to make sure he'd read it correctly.
He had.
Around him the district moved with the specific economy of people managing something invisible and constant, shorter breaths, measured movements, the unconscious recalibration of people who had learned over time that air was not free and had adjusted their bodies accordingly. A woman stopped at a stall and counted coins before buying anything. A group of children sat in a doorway not running around the way children are supposed to run around.
Near the base of the meter, two pigeons lay still in the gutter.
Burajiru looked at them.
He stood there for a while.
"Come," Renchi said softly, settling on his shoulder. Her voice had the particular gentleness of someone who knows anger needs a direction before it becomes useful. "The bracelet first. Then we'll see."
The Item Shop.
The jeweler was an older woman who looked at the pigeon Renchi escorted through her door and made no comment about it whatsoever. She had been in the Leet District long enough to have stopped asking certain questions.
Burajiru the red bird, looked at what she had, he first noticed a ring "Hmmm, maybe but a rings too cliche."
and found it in under a minute, a gold bracelet, clean and simple, the kind of thing that communicated everything it needed to communicate without requiring additional explanation. He purchased it, said his goodbyes to the jeweler who nodded as if pigeons bought jewelry in her shop regularly, and stepped back into the street.
He looked at the bracelet in his hand.
He looked at the oxygen meter at the end of the block.
He looked at the two still pigeons in the gutter.
He looked at the woman at the stall counting her coins again, slowly, then putting something back.
"Tatsu," he said.
"Don't," Tatsu said.
"I'm not going to do anything unreasonable." Burajiru said.
Burajiru put the bracelet carefully in his pocket which was hardly a pocket it just went into his feathers. He rolled his shoulders once. He looked at the oxygen meter with its display and its rate and its adjusted pricing and its photograph of Lux Wigg on the side panel, smiling the smile of a man bringing prosperity to the Leet District.
Burajiru "Destroying that thing seems like a drag."
However he felt something in his soul pulling at him.
"Everyone stand back." he said.
"Burajiru—" Renchi began.
Burajiru looked at the machine.
At the sealed valves and the regulation panels and the backup controls and the entire careful architecture of something that had been built to make breathing a transaction.
"I MUST LIBERATE," he shouted loud enough for the entire block to hear him.
The red light came into his eyes.
He reached for Tatsu and Renchi and the re-imagination moved through them instantly, two small birds becoming something vast and celestial, green and blue abi blazing from their wings, light filling the street from wall to wall.
The district went silent.
The birds dove.
Green and blue collided with the oxygen meter simultaneously and the machine came apart in a burst of celestial abi that took the housing, the regulator, the backup panel and every sealed valve with it. Clean. Complete. Final.
The block erupted.
Cheering from windows, from doorways, from people who had stepped outside without deciding to because the sound had pulled them out. The old woman on the second floor put her face in the open air and closed her eyes.
Burajiru, still a red pigeon, hovered above it all. "LIBERATE!!!!
He lifted one small wing.
The celestial birds dipped in response.
He lifted the other.
They rose.
He bobbed his head and they swooped low over the cheering crowd and back up again and the crowd cheered louder and Burajiru conducted the whole thing from above with the complete commitment of a red pigeon who had decided this moment deserved a proper finish.
Tatsu soared through the sky as a new evolved pigeon.
"Unreasonable but liberating," he said.
Burajiru shouted "LIBERATE!"
The Bench. Sunset.
The light came in at the angle it comes in at the end of days that have been full, golden and unhurried, making everything it touched look like it meant something.
Plum was already on the bench when he arrived.
She didn't ask where he'd been. She'd learned that Burajiru's days were sometimes things that required telling in order, and that he'd tell her when he was ready, and that waiting for the telling was its own kind of intimacy, the specific trust of someone who doesn't demand the story before you're ready to give it.
He sat beside her. as the red bird.
He reached into his pocket.
He held the bracelet out on his open palm. Simple. Gold. No presentation, no buildup, just the object and his open hand and the weight of what he'd decided it meant.
"I'm not good at speeches," he said. "You probably know that already."
"I know that," she said.
"I just..." He looked at the bracelet, then at her. At the specific way she was looking at him, which was the way Plum always looked at him, directly, completely, without the careful management of someone performing an emotion rather than having it. "I want you to know that I'm here. Whatever that's worth. However long this goes. I'm here and I'm not going anywhere." He paused. "I'll be loyal to you. That's the promise."
Plum looked at the bracelet sitting in his palm.
She looked at it for long enough that the looking felt like something, not hesitation, consideration, the difference being that hesitation comes from doubt and consideration comes from wanting to receive something properly.
Then she held out her wrist.
He put it on carefully. The clasp closed with a small clean sound, the kind of sound that is small and precise and somehow exactly right for what it's marking.
Plum looked at her wrist. At the bracelet catching the last of the evening light.
"I'll be loyal to you," she said. Her voice was quiet and certain in equal measure. "Whatever comes. However long." She looked at him with the direct unhurried attention of someone who means everything they say completely and has never needed to practice meaning it. "That's my promise."
Burajiru lifted her into his arms, spun her once, and carried her up into the sky.
She kissed him back.
The bracelet caught the last of the light.
Behind them the city breathed its evening breath and the Leet District breathed its newly unmetered air and somewhere above all of it a red pigeon had become a boy on a bench who had made a promise and meant it.
The light held as long as it could.
Then it let go.