King Of Bandit Jing Fan Fiction ❯ Zephyr ❯ Chapter 1

 

 

Zephyr

 

“Fly away on my zephyr
I feel it more then ever
And in this perfect weather
We'll find a place together
In the water where I center my emotion
All the world can pass me by
Fly away on my zephyr
We'll find a place together”

-RHCP, “The Zephyr Song”

 

 

“We're wanderers, you and I. It only makes sense that we found each other.” She would say to me, when we stopped for lunch in some remote location on my daily duties. Vermouth was always saying things like that-things that she really shouldn't have been saying, but would say nonetheless. Everything that came out of her mouth sounded too old for her, the words of someone who had lived for thousands of years and not really lived at all.

Although, I suppose that was Vermouth. The “Perpetual Movement Machine” or whatever she was calling herself these days. I never asked for clarification and she never gave it. She and I had an easy relationship, if you want to call it a relationship. We ran into each other more than we were apart and to Vermouth, it made sense for us to stick together. Soon, she was a permanent fixture on the back of my motorbike. For Vermouth, the last one of Reviva, it was a welcome relief from loneliness.

For me, the loner, it was suffocating. I made sure to lose her every time I had the chance. Of course, a perpetual movement machine does what a perpetual movement machine is meant to do-it moves forward, with time, with space, and with red hair and an umbrella and an annoying gait and voice that drove me crazy in more ways than one.

Sometimes, after we reunited and she hit me with the umbrella for abandoning her somewhere off the map, and after we made up and had dinner and spent some time together, I would sneak off for a smoke and wonder if maybe-just maybe-the only reason she stuck with me was to find him.

“You scared him off,” she would say sometimes, whenever a particularly melancholy sort of mood struck her gear driven mind. It was times like those that I think Vermouth realized that yes, she was alone, and yes, she had missed her chance. And, sometimes, I would be the one to blame.

“All I did was tell him I had never seen a death notice come outta that town.” It was always topped off with a shrug, and it always caused Vermouth's pretty face to flame red. “You and your King went off on that damned immortal tangent, you know. Don't blame me for what happened with Jing.”

“Don't blame you? Don't blame you! I'll blame whoever I want!” Vermouth would scowl and stomp off but she would always find me again, in a new town, a new place, with a new delivery or a new piece of gossip. And she would always apologize, and cry, and I would be saddled with her again for two or three weeks, her thin arms wrapped around my waist as we rode across the country, guilt shredding my insides. I may have scared him, I may have not. I'll never know-I haven't seen Jing in years.

“You deliver the mail?” she asked when we first met, on a hot summer day in the desert of Sungria, amber eyes peeking out from underneath her umbrella in interest. “You have a purpose?”

Purpose. Vermouth was always looking for the purpose in everything. “Yeah,” I had said, shifting underneath the bulging dark fabric of my bag. “As much of a purpose as a renegade messenger boy can have.” The second part was sarcastic. I never intended to become what I am, but Vermouth was fascinated.

“You wander, and you have a purpose.” It was that tone, so hopeful yet so guarded, so used to disappointment that struck something in me. I offered her a ride. She hasn't gotten off my back yet, but I'm sort of used to it by now.

“Not all those who wander are lost….” She began one fall afternoon as we rode through the now open town of Adonis. Vermouth always hated Adonis-maybe it was the clocks, or the happiness that people freed from time experienced that Vermouth saw and knew she could never have. “Do you believe in that?” she said into my back, arms clenched around my middle. “That we're not lost.”

“You're not lost. You just have nowhere to go.”

I felt her slight shoulders shrug without her letting go. “Maybe, I think. But you wander as well-and don't say you don't because I know you do!-and you're not lost.”

She's right of course-I have nothing to rush around for these days. My contract is over, and it really is a freelance job now. I have nowhere to go, nothing to do, unless I want somewhere to go and something to do. She knows this. And she doesn't hesitate to say she knows this, in typical Vermouth fashion.

I grin, that deeply sarcastic, sardonic grin that she hates and I love because it makes me appear more intelligent than I actually am. “Yeah sure. I'm like you, a wanderer.” She's been saying for months that we're both wanderers, but today is the first day I've bothered to acknowledge it. “Both of us are, I guess.”

“Do you think Jing is too?”

“No. And even if he's still alive, still no.”

“Why?”

“Because, unlike us, Jing had something to wander for. He's looking for something, I don't know what. Never asked. Gotta think though, that something that is that important, that you look for years and years…it must be nice, y'know?”

She squeezes my middle. “Something to wander for.”

“Yeah, something to wander for.” Vermouth settles her helmeted head against my shoulder, a reassuring weight on my back where there once was none. My mailbag is finally empty-it took my days months and years and everything I was supposed to deliver I did, save for one wrapped package and I don't know if I'll be able to hand over.

Something to wander for. I'm far from lost.