ALL NOVEL Book 3: 54. Choice
Her vacations ended as soon as they started. Aloe awoke at first light, already defeated by the idea of the day-long trek that still awaited her. Finally, having run out of options, the cultivator filled her many waterskins with the aphrodisiac amphora. The contents of the ceramic were enough to fill six waterskins, which quite literally now held their weight in electrum.
"Even if I sell Fatima a bottle for a drupnarun," the small electrum coin that was equal to one hundred drupnars, "that means I'll get at minimum three fajatun, maybe even two drupnarea with enough haggling."
Gold coins were plenty rare in Ydaz. Unlike other countries, they held more value due to their limited minting, though not all were artificial value as the Ydazi gold coin was the only coin with one-hundred percent purity in Khaffat. This was, of course, banker trivia Aloe had gathered along the years, as she hadn't tested the only drupnarea in her possession, let alone foreign gold coins.
Once all the waterskins were corked to a paranoic degree, Aloe moved the saddle and her luggage outside, where she proceeded to saddle up Fikali. The process was extremely complicated as she had to do so whilst sitting and still fighting her drowsiness. After an embarrassingly long time, she had managed to latch every belt together and fixate the luggage perfectly so it wouldn't fall during the journey.
She was a bit scared at the fact that she only had a single waterskin left with actual water for the whole journey, so whilst she stopped at the greenhouse, she ordered the dweller to gorge in the oasis as she wanted to avoid sharing her limited water with her.
"Alright," Aloe took a deep breath and faced upwards, "heavens bless me." Then she crawled her way into the greenhouse.
She was exhausted. Not only from her wounds, but from the travel, the constant usage of vitality through either Evolution or Infusion, and her work. Her body never caught a rest as she rarely dreamt – a thing she much preferred to suffer whatever sick dream her mind might concoct – during the night, meaning that as soon as she closed her eyes, she was already awake. All that accumulated stress was taking a toll on her, she wasn't blind. So Aloe knew that the weight of the wound on her pelvic area wasn't just physical but mental.
Perhaps outright healing the wound wouldn't heal her mind, but it would certainly remove a weight from her psyche, and that was enough for her.
Her desert garbs were a foul mess. Not only from the sand and dust, but also the soil and pebbles from all the crawling and her body fluids as she had yet to wash herself this last week. Yet in her dirty body and mind, Aloe pressed forward with hope clutched in a fist on her heart.
Hoping the Blossomflame would help her once more.
"Ah." Aloe's groan was a mixture of many emotions.
Her eyes were welcomed to the sight of a colorful flower, but even the strongest lavender would never be royal purple as much as the dead red of Blossomflame didn't achieve that of fire.
Nonetheless, Aloe crawled to the evolved flower, her hands caressing the petals.
"I know you are not in your top game, that you've spent a lot of power a few days ago, but could I ask of you one favor?" She whispered with her whole willpower holding up the damn that was her tears. "Heal me. Heal your ally."
She was well aware that her plants couldn't hear her, they never had reacted to her words, but she knew – somehow knew – that contact was valuable to them.
And so, the Blossomflame spurted her flames. They weren't as plentiful as the conflagration of the first day, but the blaze contained a myriad of sparks that would have been considered a catastrophic fire if they were made of real flames.
"Thank you," Aloe uttered as she was showered with flames instead of water.
Her body felt purified in contact with them, as if she had gotten her much-desired bath. Cleansed by fire, healed by flames. Aloe blossomed anew from the last embers, her body still a shadow of what it had been, but healthier than she had felt for months now.
With a deep breath, Aloe stood up. Her body protested, not being used to standing up. But it wasn't out of pain, and she considered so progress. The woman felt as if she was going to fall down at any moment now, so she shifted into acuity in the hopes that the internal infusion would recover her equilibrium.
She took a step forward.
Then a deep breath.
And another step.
Her legs were wobbly, she knew that her fall was inevitable, and even with that information in mind, she continued.
One more step. And another. A deep breath followed by one more step. And ano… fall. Her footing betrayed her and she tumbled to the ground, but with the enhanced senses of acuity, it was trivial to change into toughness in time.
"Okay, good. G-good." Aloe added between sobs. She was crying, not out of pain, but joy. "Progress. M-making progress." She laughed to herself until her stomach began to hurt.
Instead of going out of the greenhouse, she made a pitstop on the grace. The Grace's Exaltation portrayed a soft shimmer in its stem and a small scar where Aloe had repeatedly made an incision to extract its nectar. She had more than enough aphrodisiacs to satisfy Fatima for the moment, but in the future, she would demand more, so Aloe cut again on that scar and removed another flask's worth of sap. This one she wouldn't process until the moment was right.
Once done, Aloe shouted for Fikali to come back to her and very slowly walked her way out of the greenhouse, if her movement could even be classified as a walk. Even with acuity, her balance was lacking. So instead of walking upright, she had to encroach her upper body forward and move hunchbacked with her arms extended so that if she were to fall, she could stop the fall. Besides for the balance, of course.
By the moment she arrived at the door, Fikali was already there, but she couldn't bring herself to mount the dweller just yet and supported her body on the doorframe, slowly sliding on the ground until she was resting on her thighs.
"I hate this." She voiced out. She didn't know if she was speaking to herself, Fikali, or anyone in particular. "I am healthy, yet a single step drains so much of my being. I have equilibrium, yet I still fall. Why?" Aloe bit the walls of her mouth to hold off a sob.
"Huo?" The dweller tilted her head in a lack of understanding.
"Sorry, girl, I've just been mumbling. Let's get going, shall we?" The woman responded with a wry smile.
Her mind was fickle and wandering, but her paranoia was greater than her will, so just in case Aloe double-checked the doors to see if they were locked or not. After satisfying the dread in her mind, she and Fikali started their journey.
As the dweller lacked the haste infusion and was purposely going slowly, the ride wasn't as horrendous as it once had been. Aloe's vitality had grown, and even if she was far from an optimal state, that meant her toughness was stronger than ever.
For the first time ever, she fell asleep on top of the dweller, the stance numbing her senses to a high degree. Her body felt almost no feedback to the bumps and her mind purposely ignored the heat, making a calmer ride than the palanquin. However, that wasn't to say her sleep was deep. She continuously drowsed from time to time in exhaustion, never fully losing consciousness, but never being in an alert state of mind.
She felt her life being dragged, like always. Choosing was a fickle thing to people like them, a mirage orchestrated by others to make them think they had an inherent power.
That was a lie.
Aloe had never taken a choice in her life, it had been decided since she had been born. Her father decided for her to be a banker, so she studied to be one. It didn't help that she hadn't had any drives in her life besides money, and even then, her current job wasn't out of her own volition. Whatever people said, money bought happiness. That only became truer to her as the days she and her mother had to scrape by – living like the commoners they actually were – were the worst and most unhappy days of her life.
That had held true until she had been denied her most important choice as a maiden.
Sometimes she was still there, never having really escaped that room reeking of incense and flesh. The touches had been so ingrained in her own flesh that she doubted she could ever forget them, no matter how she tried. She avoided thinking about it with work or hate, even if the alternatives were always there.
Hashish and wine were tempting options.
Forgetfulness appeared so seductive in her mind, yet it always looped back to the same. Her mind. Those substances killed the mind. Those weren't the words uttered by people, but her own father and mother. She had barely seen them drink, let alone smoke, even if they had been wealthy enough to do so once. Her family was weak, always had been, so the only way to project strength had been their mind.
Her father, a banker to the biggest mercantile company of Ydaz.
Her mother, a scribe to the governors of one of the most important emirates of Ydaz.
They had achieved that with their minds.
As much as she hated her mind – hated herself – Aloe couldn't do that to her family. To betray the tool they had helped her nurture and wield. She could only remember making one choice, and that was to stay in that greenhouse for a month.
The vital arts were as much of her as she was theirs.
The true choice she had made.
Aloe woke up weary-eyed – her cheeks rigid from dried tears – to the grunts of a dweller. The sky had been washed with the warm oranges and frigid purples of twilight. It was getting late, but a city could be seen on the horizon.
"Sorry," she whispered to Fikali, "I dozed off. Come on, let's get inside."
Deep down, she knew the apology wasn't directed to the dweller.
Don't you find it curious that until less than a century ago no one practically cared about mental health? I wonder what consequences that may have...
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