Burning Man

This story's theme is No One Else.

The moon was a burning pink sore behind a ragged veil of smoke and ash. Below, a midnight wind howled through a ravaged city, where untold millions had lost their lives – and where many still would. I watched yellow and blue lighted explosions flicker and fade into the ashy darkness of that metropolis, and I almost thought I could hear the screams. There would be a lot more of that before this was over; a lot more pain, a lot more death, and too little hope for any of us to go around. It was cold that night. Up in the mountains, we were sheltered from the war and bloodshed, but we could not escape that cold.

I shivered and returned to the tent, finding everyone fast asleep. I moved soundlessly to the far corner where my girl was sleeping and slipped into our sleeping bag. I felt her jolt awake as we touched.

“R-roshi…” she murmured, not opening her eyes, “you’re freezing! Why’d you go outside again…?”

“Shhh, warm me up, baby.” I kissed her and hugged her tight. She mumbled something indistinct, but I knew what it meant: ‘don’t wake the others, please’.

She was all I had left. King Piccolo had taken everything else from me that night he attacked my master’s school. I sometimes dreamed of that nightmare, Piccolo’s demon spawn attacking us and slaughtering us. I remembered the shouting and the blood. I remembered the look on my brothers’ faces as they grew pale and fell to the ground. I remembered when it was just Shen and I who remained, and Master Mutaito appeared and rescued us. But master couldn’t save anyone else. We three escaped, and it wasn’t long before the shame of our defeat forced master to leave us in exile. Shen was gone not long after. He begged me to give up the fight. He said it was hopeless. There was nothing we could do to stop King Piccolo. Our martial arts school had been the last best hope to kill that demon, and once he had crushed us, the Earth’s fate had been decided. Shen had wanted me to give up, like he had.

My skin was warming against hers. I remembered when I had found her amongst a group of refugees fleeing King Piccolo’s destruction. I remembered seeing her eyes for the first time – so blue they looked violet on a sunny day – and forgetting who I was. We hadn’t been allowed to be with women in Master Mutaito’s school. She was my first. She was mine and I was hers. We were all we had left in this rotten world. King Piccolo could have the rest. But she was mine.

I brushed my hand across her breast and down her thigh, and the wind blew all night, the green nylon of our tent flapping against the rusting steel pole skeleton that came together over our heads.

I slept later than most, and when I woke, I found myself alone in our sleeping bag. The morning had been punctured by a light summer rain by the time I stepped outside. Our group of refugees, forty or fifty strong, was congregated along a winding river, some fishing, some huddled under umbrellas mingling and playing games. It was almost as if we weren’t fleeing King Piccolo’s terror. I guess it was better to pretend.

Her name was Myori. Might’ve been twenty-two years old for all I knew. I didn’t care; I knew little about her, and she knew less about me. I’d known her all my life, or, rather, three days, but it felt like all my life. It felt like I was whole while I was with her, like that part of me that had died the night King Piccolo attacked us had been reborn anew. All that mattered now was that she made me feel happy, made me forget that I had once been a warrior forbidden from even looking at girls. I ran my fingers through my hair. It was starting to grow back. Soon, I wouldn’t look any different than the rest of them. The last bits of my warrior life were slowly fading away.

As I stretched my legs and left the tent, scanning the camp for my girlfriend, an old man with a wispy white beard stumbled up to me and smiled.

“We’re leavin’ in ‘bout five minutes, eh? Pack your things if ya got any,” he spoke, before hobbling off to spread his news to others still. I smiled back. The warm summer rain felt good on my face.

Her dyed pink hair was the giveaway. I spotted Myori across the encampment sitting on a cracked boulder. She was holding a half-eaten peach in one hand and she was laughing so profusely that her cheeks were glowing rosey. Standing next to her was a willowy man with black curly hair. His hand was on her shoulder.

My insides froze and my mouth twitched. What I was seeing was wrong – she was mine, not his. I ran forward. She was mine. I would not let her go. Myori was what had made me normal again, what had made me fit in with the other refugees. I wasn’t about to let some man take her from. Time seemed to slow down as I ran, yet before I knew it, I found myself standing before them. Panting, I broke into their conversation without care.

“What’s going on here?!”

Myori stopped laughing and stared at me, coolly. She took a bite of her peach. “Oh hey Roshi, glad you finally woke up. I was afraid we would have to leave you behind.” Her voice was sweet like rosewater.

“Who is this?” I asked, pointing to the man. His hand had fallen from her shoulder the moment I had arrived, as if that meant it had never touched her in the first place.

She giggled. “This is Nimon. He’s a fisherman. Look what he caught for me!” She reached behind her for something and then produced a good-sized salmon still hanging on its hook. “We’re going to cook it for dinner!”

“You can have some too, if you want,” Nimon offered to me. That made Myori giggle again. She punched him playfully in the arm. “Oh, Nimon, you’re so generous!”

I felt heat rising in my face and I wanted to scream. “That’s kind of you, Nimon, but I need to talk with my girlfriend. Do you mind giving us some privacy?”

He raised his hands, shrugged, and walked off.

“Hey, don’t make him go! We were having a nice conversation,” Myori whined.

I moved to her and put my arm around her shoulder. “Myori, what are you doing?” I tried to keep my cool.

“What are you on about? I was just talking with–”

“Don’t you see how it looks?” I tried to explain. “He gives you fish, puts his hand on your shoulder…” I paused. “You’re my girlfriend, Myori. You can’t be letting guys give you gifts like that. You’re not single anymore. You’re mine now. And I’m yo–”

“I’m yours?!” Her face flushed and her eyes narrowed. “What is that supposed to mean? You think own me?”

“N-no, that’s not what what I meant. We’re together now… two parts of one whole. I don’t want anyone to come between us.”

“I’m my own person!” Myori shouted. She stood up and pointed at me. “I can talk to anyone I want. It doesn’t mean anything. And you can’t tell me what to do, Roshi. If I want to eat fish with Nimon, I will!”

“I wasn’t trying to tell you what to do!” I shouted back. “I’m just saying, it looks bad when you talk to other guys like that. We all know what he wants, anyways! We all know what he’s trying to do.”

“What he wants?” she repeated, a twinge of outrage in her once-sweet voice. “You mean, the same thing you want!” The color drained from my face. I tried to speak, but Myori raised her hands in the air. “No, no. I’ve heard enough. I know what you want. I heard what you said. But what I need right now is some space. So leave me alone, Roshi.”

With her chin held high, Myori marched off. I didn’t understand what had just happened. I had tried to speak to her, tried to reason with her, and it was her who had yelled back at me. I realized then just how stupid she was. Dozens of people had stopped what they had been doing to stare at me, their cold eyes boring though my skin, trying to glimpse into my brain. I realized how small I was then, how normal I was.

I found the old man on the far side of the camp. He was the one leading us up the mountains, to the promise of a temple shelter, safe from King Piccolo. “I’ll take the rear guard, make sure nothing sneaks up on us,” I told him.

In truth, I took the rear because I couldn’t be around people. The embarrassment of my last conversation was enough for me to want to be alone to mull over my thoughts. If I had stayed in the group, I might have punched someone. And I could not bear to see Myori amongst the crowd, there, but not there, with me, but not. We soon set out, up the mountain, and all I could think about was how Myori had betrayed me. Why had she talked with Nimon? What did I do to make her pursue him? I had been faithful to her. For three days, I hadn’t looked at other women. We were in love – or so I thought. What was she doing, playing with my heart like this? And Nimon, that snake, should have known better. What kind of man pursues a woman in a relationship? I wanted to kill him then. The rage inside of me wanted to see him suffer. I thought back to the blood and the screaming that had filled our temple so utterly when Piccolo’s minions had attacked. I wanted nothing less for Nimon.

The mountains rose in three peaks before us, like three wrinkled old men. Far ahead, I saw a waterfall descending from a wound in the central peak and wondered what it would be like to jump from there. Misery made me think a lot of things. By midday, the drizzling had stopped, and the sun shone hot and bright above us in a pock-marked sky. We trudged up the mountain trail at a snail’s pace. The longer we went, the larger the mountains looked, the more they seemed to sneer over us little mortal things trying to climb them. Above, in the grim-blue sky, an eagle circled us and cried.

By evening, the group had made it past the waterfall, across an old wooden bridge, and begun making camp on the far side. I stood on the other side of the bridge, watching the sun sink out of sight, its last fleeting rays shimmering orange and pink. The roar of the waterfall kept me company.

The broken city was a tiny little thing when viewed from halfway up a mountain. I wondered how many of Piccolo’s spawn were in there at that moment, hunting and killing innocent people. The thought of that made me angry. Why couldn’t Myori and I just be happy together?

I fell to my knees and let out a low shout. Tears came to my eyes. No matter how hard I fought it, the obligation I felt towards those cursed, guiltless people in that city would not die. I tried so very hard to be normal. I fought it. And like the night against King Piccolo, I lost. I heard a bird squawk loudly, though when I raised my head, it was nowhere to be seen.

Reaching in my pack, I pulled out a long pipe and lit it as the day’s dying light fled from sight. I propped myself up against a rock and inhaled deeply, closing my eyes as I thought of what I had to do. It wasn’t easy having a conscious. It wasn’t easy being brave.

“We will never run from a fight! Honor, strength, courage! These things I will teach you, if you train under me!” my master had said once. They were nice words, but even he had run from King Piccolo. Even he had abandoned me after we escaped. Was it the shame that he could not defeat his enemy? I did not know. What I did know was that even if Mutaito’s school was in ruins, its members scattered or dead, its ideals lived on within me, whether I wanted them to or not. I couldn’t be like my master or Shen. I couldn’t turn a blind eye to the suffering before me. And I was scared as I was weak. I knew it would be a long road before I could challenge any of the demon king’s spawn. But it was a road I had to tread.

“Hey… it’s Roshi, right?” Nimon’s voice cut the silence like a delicate knife. I opened my eyes and exhaled.

“Nimon,” I nodded back. I wanted to hit him; I knew I should not.

“Right, yeah… look man, I just wanted to say – y’know, I didn’t know you and Myori… that you two were… well, what I mean is, she asked me to catch a fish for her. I didn’t know she had a boyfriend. She came to me. Y’know? When you showed up, I…”

“If you see her, tell her it’s over now,” I said slowly before inhaling again. I had tried to be normal, but that time was done. I didn’t understand it; it made me feel embarrassed. I wasn’t suited for that life. All I could see myself becoming was a lonely old hermit in a far-distant land, away from people. So be it. I exhaled.

“S-so, you mean… I can…” he shrugged, implying through gesture.

“Do what you want. I won’t be coming back.”

“Really? Why? I mean, even if it’s over between you and Myori, there’s still a place for you in camp…”

“Have fun with her, Nimon. Myori’s one hell of a girl.” My face was stony amongst the smoke. But when Nimon realized he could not sway me, finally said his goodbyes, and turned away, the tears came as if released from a floodgate and it took all I had to wipe them away without giving in to them. I had loved her once. It had been so easy to love her, so easy to give in to my emotions. It was so much harder to let go, to realize love doesn’t solve anything.

I watched him cross the old wooden bridge, humming to himself, oblivious to my pain, and it suddenly occurred to me how rotten the world was, and how powerless I was to change it. I dropped the pipe, pushed myself up, and ran after Nimon, my hand already hardening into a fist.

I came to the bridge at full sprint, and when I set foot on the first wooden plank, it splintered and cracked. I felt myself lurch forward, and then I was falling, falling down the mountain with water all around me. I don’t think any of them knew what happened to me. I don’t blame them. I don’t remember hitting the water at the bottom. I only remember waking up on the shore, alone and hurting and cold.

Honor, strength, courage – I had none of them. I was a foolish, overcome with emotion and pride. Those follies would be my end if I did not learn. But I would, I promised then and there. And as I lay at the bottom of the waterfall, an eagle landed next to me and plucked a fish out of the water fast as lightning. It swallowed the thing whole and then screamed, its yellow eyes fixated on me.

“You want to eat me too?” I asked it. “Well here, come on then!” I waved a bruised and pinkened hand at it.

The eagle broke its gaze and flew off.

I sat up, trying to get back onto my feet. The fall had weakened me further, and now my bones ached like I was an old man. That made me laugh. Me, an old man. I couldn’t imagine that. I ran my fingers through my hair and sighed. There was much to be done. And by the time it was over, maybe I would be an old man. Or maybe I would be dead.

I hobbled away from muddy shore and found myself a path away from the mountains. Once, I had walked that path the other way as a traveler among mountains and streams, turning a blind eye to the horrors of the world. And now, though still I was a traveler, I was going the other way. My journey had only just begun.