Air, Land or Sea

Scup placed the thick ribbon around my eyes and the book and candle shop — deemed unfit to insure —disappeared to blackness. I didn’t have the heart to tell him the thick cotton scratched the delicate skin around my eyes. He had prepared so thoroughly I couldn’t start his surprise with a complaint.

It did scratch though. 

Years of unlit nights walking down to the docks to watch the lights of the ships disappearing into the horizon made the journey less of a mystery — but I still wasn’t sure why my friend had decided to surprise me with something other than the normal chicken strips while we walked home —like we generally did the last night of the week. I had been looking forward to curling up together with the new books recently brought to town.

“Did you lock the door?” I asked as we walked through the heavy garlic mist of Minna’s cafe. My stomach growled, I would have eaten any of her glorious fish and wished a bit we were turning through her entrance.

Scup shushed me loudly. “Of course I locked it up, don’t want a stray getting in and lighting that place up,” he said, his northern accent purring at my right ear, his whiskers glancing across my neck. I still worried. Scup wasn’t the best for remembering details and I hadn’t heard the clasp of the lock reaching home. It would have been easy for the bit of ribbon fluttering at my neck to divert his focus for just long enough to forget. Whenever this was over I’d need to rush back before I could get to those books.

I heard the tinkle of coins, followed by a a sigh and a smaller echo of a few more hitting the first. Someone had not secured an agreed price before this moment. Nothing new when it came to my ridiculous friend. Scup was just not built for business.

I heard a clasp lifted and then a soft, slow scrape as if a rug were being pulled along the dock. A hand other than Scup’s soft paw grabbed my elbow — firmly but not painful. “Watch y’step dearie,” a gravelly voice said to my left as the hand guided me up onto a short riser. There was a soft sway to the platform and my heart skipped a beat, thinking perhaps Scup had secured passage on a boat - something that would have been a shock given his aversion to water.

The rug seemed to be pulled closer to us, a quick “tsk” from the gravelly stranger, and a sudden roar knocked me onto a rolled blanket at my feet. The air was on fire!

I pulled the ribbon from my eyes, no longer willing to play along with this game. Scup grabbed my hand. “I’m surprised you trusted me that long,” he said, laughing. 

We were in the basket of a tiny hot air balloon. A large lava pickle bloomed in the center, roaring contentedly as it stretched toward a hanging apple in the center, delicately licking the skin and turning it black and wrinkled.

“Look,” Scup said, pointing to the ground that was quickly moving away. Below I watched a spark of light move toward Blendon’s field. It doubled, tripled, as villagers passed a flame from a candle, one to another, slowly spelling out a message: Ooneh, marry me.

I turned to him. He held out a thick ring of jade, two candles stretching around to a flame at the center.

Overhead the bats and dragons flittered and swooped through the darkening sky. A long way down, the townspeople blew out their candles, wax dripping on to their sensitive fingers. And out at sea I watched the lights of the ships sailing forever away.