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alipacc · 1 day ago

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Window Watching - Short Story

A walk would clear my mind.

At least, that was what Dewi thought and maybe that would count for something.

She kept her hands neatly tucked in her pockets as she stepped onto the all too familiar pavement for her routine stroll. The sun had already hidden itself away but the rain had persisted - only barely though. Thankfully, the stand she got her fritters from was still up and running, the fiery glow from the embers roasting the potatoes felt almost surreal that day.

“The usual?” Dewi nodded, responding to the old man with a weary smile as she approached the stall.

Her feet tapped away on the pavement as her eyes observed his skillful maneuvering of the skillet, the sizzle as the cut pieces of potato hit the skillet and the smell - almost imposing - made its way to her nose and its warmth only relaxed her nerves. She let out a soft exhale.

As her breath faded, her eyes wandered up above and fell on her distraction for the night.

It’s safe to say that Juno apartments were somewhat of an anomaly in the human realm. With its clandestine nook in the city and its high walls scattered with half lunette windows and sunken panes of stained glass. It filled one with a sense of what some would call whimsy and others would call insanity. Maybe it was the way every flat was organized, like bric-a-brac with balconies shooting out at all angles, each with its own little ecosystem and shack-like roofs protecting almost every single one of them. Makeshift lanterns hung at the tip of the gables, illuminating the soft shards of rain with a weak glimmer.

Nevertheless, it was what Dewi called home.

As always, her balcony seemed fairly mundane compared to her neighbors’. Smoke billowed from the railing on the right - no doubt from the five sticks of incense Raya would burn every day and every night. A muffled tune came in from the glass door behind it, lit by a warm orange and only obscured from view by the gallery of creepers the songstress refused to cut away.

A heavy scarlet rose to Dewi’s cheeks when her eyes fell on the silhouette in Raya’s window - she was home, dancing, it looked like. She ran a hand over her face as she stared, thinking back to the last time she’d spoken to her. It was almost ridiculous, really. All she’d done was ask the chatty, vibrant and pretty girl next door out on a date and now their interactions were limited to wordless acknowledgments and polite smiles in the hallway.

Almost like salvation, came the sound of Uncle Budi’s throat clearing and in a completely expected twist of fate, Dewi’s eyes darted between the fried potatoes in his hand and his kind smile and she was off on her usual route to the apartment center with those same fritters in hand.

Clear my mind, clear my mind, clear my mind…

She burned her tongue as she took a bite, then another, and one more for good measure.

“Aduh..” She exhaled, the object of her unfortunate frustration was a sad looking tin of pineapple that sat at the curb awaiting its demise which Dewi mercifully granted. The tin hit the bottom of one of the flats on the first floor.

It’s safe to say her gaze lingered on the carved borders of the window, clearly handmade. It depicted a sparrow (or what seemed like one from the messy almost frustrated carving at the ends) drinking from a bird bath. Unlike the sparrow, the bird bath was carefully etched, the water from it flowing from one corner to the other in a careful choreography. All of it framed the magician bent over his desk, in complete focus, scribbling something away on a stack of parchment, occasionally referencing something from the books piled high on either side of him.

She’d heard of him from time to time, he was a textbook hermit but who could blame him? A sole magician in the human realm, bound to protect everyone but himself. Something akin to pity bubbled up in Dewi’s chest. She dragged her feet away, leaving behind the awfully blue glow coming from his window.

A little lantern whirred up above, the tinny sound was an old but familiar one. The firebug inside was still kicking, even after ten years of its discontinued production. Back in its day, it was a marvel - the combination of loam magic and science to create something spell-bounding and practical all at once.

In its time, it was truly an innovation unlike any other but now only a shell of it hung on the tip of a conic roof covered by those iridescent dragon scales. The lantern itself was cylindrical, sharp-shaped and hung by a tightly wound leather strap on the roof - moving wildly in all directions. The firebug which looked like something crossed between a grasshopper and a cockroach was flying and flailing wildly inside the glass. The neon yellow glow made it look almost transparent, highlighting its exoskeleton along with it striped belly, its beady eyes black against the light show that was its body.

As Dewi took another bite of her potatoes, she looked up at it, a curiosity creeping its way into her brain by her ears. All she could really see was the bottom of the lantern emitting a circle of yellow light, the flat was high up, almost secluded. The old woman who lived there was known to be somewhat grumpy, uninviting and a little bit of a grouch and by the sole interaction that Dewi had had with her over her three years of living there - she couldn’t necessarily vouch for that assumption.

She’d very kindly helped her move in when she first arrived at Juno apartments - a young, not necessarily frail but anxious first year who had just rented her first apartment. It was nerve-wracking to say the very least, and that cup of tea Ms. Kraft offered had left an impression, a good one, clearly. It was most evident by an almost reminiscent smile on Dewi’s face as she stared at the base of the whirling lantern.

Once again, Dewi hummed herself away into a little gate.

The inner circle of the apartments were quite uniform in their presentation, quite contrary to the ones that hung on the outskirts. Away from prying eyes, it was a refuge. The windows were tall, gold-rimmed half moons with tinted glass. Violet columns etched into the loop, almost like a perimeter and a distorted view of the night sky above through a cloudy dome.

What Dewi was after though, was the centerpiece. There it was.

Striking. That was what she thought when she first came across it on her midnight rambling. It was a fountain by definition but deserved a descriptor much more fitting to its magnificence. Just like clockwork, Dewi circled it slowly, her eyes moving up and down the sculpture. A symbol of peace is what most had called it when it was made and from what Dewi had heard from her history teachers, the unity it represented was unprecedented.

There they stood - a human sitting in a chair, a magician and a demon circling them from above in an undone bow, pouring out the water that pooled below in a clear aquamarine. All of it, carved in marble a mere century ago. They looked frozen - by the half lidded eyes of the human, the billowing of the witch’s robe and the stillness of the misty tail of the demon.

Awestruck. That is what she thought now as she observed the statue again.

Her eyes met the demon’s, she sat on the mossy ground cross-legged and ate her fritters.

#stories #the magician's refuge #tmr #alipacc #writing

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