Chapter Seven: Smell the Fresh Air

   Jairo spent the next several minutes staring into the flames, sometimes making it into a specific shape. His powers grew stronger and more capable of complexity by the day. Then Rupert came through the door suddenly, pushing it open with his foot and carrying a large bag in his arms. Behind him a shorter woman with black hair came through, with an unusually strong and stern expression, wearing a plain pink dress with a white apron. She also carried a large leather bag.

   Rupert crashed his bag onto the table, then grabbed the woman's while she closed the wood panel. Door, Jairo reminded himself.

   "Are you, uh, Mrs-?" he started to ask.

   Her blue eyes glared at him. "The absurdity! Do I look like I'm as old as Mr. Frankincense?! The only reason I'm talking to you, savage, is because I'm the doctor's assistant and I help with his patients!"

   "Sorry, but-"

   "Yes, I know this silly nurse's dress makes me look older, but I'm 16! You-!"

   "HERE Jairo look at this," Rupert interrupted, moving in between the two. "As I said before, this isn't the desert, and you're going to need clothes that look like us and keep you warm like us." He handed Jairo a cloak and round hat, no hand covers, along with some of those thick sandals, and some dark shirts and pants. And last but not least, a couple pairs of thick brown things that Rupert wore on his feet. As well as one or two stringy articles of clothing Jairo didn't recognize. They were all beaten-looking and creased, as if they were older versions of what Rupert was wearing now that had been stuffed away for who knows how long.

   When the old man finally moved out of the way, the girl tried to attack Jairo again and Rupert barely got between in time. "Adelaide, would you be a dear and fetch a bucket of water for me from the well?" and she shot a glare at him before stalking out the door, her own thick sandals stomping on the floor.

   Then Rupert helped Jairo sort out the different types of clothes. The shirt and pants Jairo knew, but: "The pants are too big," Jairo said.

   "Well, that's what a belt is for!" the doctor replied. "Like that rope thing around your short trousers."

   Jairo looked at the leather rope around his waist. He could see the resemblance. "A belt."

   "Yeah, that's what it's called." He showed Jairo how to operate a belt, and he learned quickly. It was a simple device, but quite clever really.

   "What are these called, these inner foot coverings?" he said, holding up the brown things.

   "Those are socks," Rupert chuckled. "Good for keeping your toes warm when it gets really cold around here."

   Then Rupert showed him how to button the shirt and cloak, which apparently was called a coat. When Jairo tried out the socks and the boot things together, his feet were sweating, and they were just sitting there. It must get really cold around here.

   Adelaide came back, with two buckets of water on a pole across her shoulders. She laid it on the ground carefully. She cleared her throat loudly and tapped her foot when Rupert wouldn't stop fussing with Jairo's coat sleeves.

   He made a strange noise in embarrassment and moved away from Jairo, and starting rooting through one of the leather bags on the table. Adelaide critically eyed Jairo, and he looked back, unblinking. Rupert sneezed and walked between them to get to the fire. He placed a metal bowl that hooked neatly into the metal web near the fireplace, and filled it with one of the buckets, and left the other by the stone base. He added some peculiar things, of various colors and shapes, then what must have been some spices. Rupert then used some sort of wooden instrument with a flat, circular end to stir the mixture. It looked like one of the meat stews his mother used to make, except with those strange extra ingredients and the weird stirring thing. It normally would be rotated regularly, but that was obviously not possible, hooked as it was into the metal thing.

   "Doc makes the best stew in town," Adelaide commented randomly, not looking at Jairo, "but he's average and most everything else. But if you value your life, don't ask him about his pies."

   "I heard that," the old man said, tending his stew carefully.

   Jairo cracked a smile. "You're more intelligent-looking than I first thought, savage," said Adelaide. "Smart as a dog, but more smelly than one."

   His smile turned upside down. "Thanks, Mrs. Frankincense." He didn't know what a dog was, but from the sound of it some sort of unclean animal.

   "You're welcome," said Rupert randomly, while Adelaide's face was busy turning red. 

   They all laughed at that, and Jairo picked up the other stringy cloth that wasn't the belt. "Is this one of those things you wrap around your neck?" he asked.

   "No, that's for formal occasions, don't worry about it," Rupert said.

   "You people put on more clothes for important events? Why hide your strength, why not display it proudly?" Jairo said. These people were weird.

   Rupert's face turned red, and Adelaide laughed. "I'd like to see old Lernie show off his big stomach," she managed, choking back a hiccup.

   "I'd rather not," said Rupert sternly. "But now with that delightful mental image in our head, the stew is ready to eat."

   They ate the stew heartily, the occasional random chuckle making someone nearly spew stew across the table, the bags relocated to the floor. Rupert sat in the curvy chair, somehow commanding to stay still and not rock him back into a state of no escape. After they were done and Jairo had discovered what spoons, knives, and other utensils were, they tipped their bowls to drink the last bit of broth before being done.

   "Well, Jairo, you must be exhausted, doing all that you have in just your first day out of that week-old bed-rest." Rupert said, cleaning his mouth and chin with a strange white cloth. "And this is a napkin, or a handkerchief, for cleaning yourself up on a small basis," he said, noticing Jairo's curious look.

   He didn't try to let on, but Jairo was having a struggle to keep his eyes all the way open. He was too tired to even make a big reaction. "A week, huh? I've been out that long? Normally, in our tribe, if someone doesn't awake for three days, they're considered dead...."

   And with that, his vision showed him involuntarily slumping forward onto the table. The last things he heard before going to sleep was Adelaide making a disapproving noise and Rupert's chair creaking as he stood. The flames' shadows from the fire, that danced across his view of the floor, echoed in his dreams.

-----V-----

   Jairo found himself in a strange land, with a green sky and blue earth under his purple feet. His whole body was purple, and flickering, yet somehow transparent, like a flame. He could see outside himself, and he looked at his red eyes, with a strange slanted property.

   His dream-self could move around the landscape, a flat plain with no grass, and blue trees. There was no sun in the sky, a sourceless light from which no shadow was cast.

   The Jairo just standing there, however, was always looking straight at him, though he didn't seem to actually turn. Unblinking, his purple self said: "Durg Foore solng dorth."

   His dream self could move around, watch, listen, but he couldn't say anything back to this purple Jairo. It grinned at him, and roared, blue fire roiling from its mouth.

-----V-----

   He woke up in a sweat, breathing heavily, chest heaving. He threw the thick and stifling blanket off himself. His leather tunic was soaked with sweat under the armpits and front. Then a peculiar high-pitched sound came from outside the window, and Jairo leaned back to see better. A wooden thing that looked naturally grown, moved horizontally and ended shortly before coming in the normal view of his window. Upon it sat something mostly red, but with a yellow triangle on top, black stick things on the bottom, and beady black eyes. Then it took off suddenly, beating its wings and making that annoying chirping noise. It looked like one of the death-birds in the desert, except smaller, red, a lot less threatening-looking, and... cuter. Jairo shook his head. Weird.

   Rupert, sleeping in the curved chair, snored loudly, and Jairo grimaced. Even worse than Dae, Korf and Kort combined. Maybe that's what woke him.

   "Morning, Rupert Frankincense!" he said loudly over the noise.

   The old man woke with a start, rocking back the chair significantly. He leaned up and rubbed his eyes. "You can just call me Rupert, you know. Where's that girl Adelaide? She was supposed to wake us."

   Just then the very lady came in through the door after making a strange rhythm upon it.

   "Well, it seems you boys are up already." She wrinkled her nose at Jairo. "Judging by the state of your shirt, and the general smell, you need a bath."

   "If you don't mind me saying so, Jairo, you haven't exactly washed for over a week." Rupert said, stretching his old limbs.

   "Where does the word wash come into bathing? And where do you guys have enough sand for a proper bath?" Jairo asked, curiously piqued yet again.

   "Ah, well we don't have your nice little sand baths here," Adelaide said in a slightly, is that a malicious tone?

   "Adelaide, can you please get some more water from the well? We're going to need a lot." Rupert asked, donning his hat in the process. "Come on Jairo," he said, beckoning with his hand.

   When the door open the first thing Jairo noticed was the cold. It was like the middle of the night in the desert, except it was morning.

   "Does it get any colder than this?" Jairo asked, rubbing his arms.

   "No, it's only fall. The winter and snow is yet to come," Rupert said in a matter-of-fact tone. "Come on, behind the house."

   They went around from the front door, and Jairo got a proper look around. The house was constructed mainly of wood, but with a stone piece for where the fireplace was, and extended beyond the strange roof that looked a bit like a spear head, a whole different shape from the walls of the house, not melded together like his village's sandstone dwelling roofs. A stone base also went around the bottom of the house. A strange green and brown thing stood to the left of the window, and after a minute Jairo realized it must be a large plant. It stood a dozen feet high, and it looked nothing like the trees he had seen at the oasis. Pieces branched off, and Jairo thought he recognized the one that cute red bird had been on.

   They went past the window and behind the house. Jairo then got a clear view of the desert. Endless sand stretched farther than the eye could see, but it stopped at the largest flow of water Jairo had ever seen. It moved quickly and in vast quantities, small plants growing nearby. This must be the river.

   "Come on, Jairo, we haven't got all day. Bath time. Strip." Rupert said impatiently, waiting for him to stop admiring the view.

   "You're not my parents," Jairo retorted, looking at him.

   "No, I'm your doctor. Now strip. It's not like I haven't seen it all while I was treating you for a diagnosis. And a diagnosis-"

   "I know what those are. I've been around Naa enough to know that." Jairo said, slightly irritated to cover his embarrassment. He pulled off his clothes quickly, and he swore a cold wind cropped up just to chill him. Then Adelaide came back with two buckets, and he turned around quickly. He turned his head to look at her, but making sure his back faced the right way.

   "Hey!"

   "What?"

   "Guess!"

   "What?" said Adelaide, teasing.

   "Adelaide," said Rupert, "honestly?"

   "All right," she said reluctantly. "After I get this first bucket!" She rushed forward and dropped a bucket of liquid ice on his body. Cold, so cold. His teeth started chattering immediately. The fluid death-elixir dripped down his body and soaked into the earth and grass, which apparently was the name for the strange, small plants that grew all over.

   Rupert exhaled sharply. "Adelaide! He's still a patient!"

   "Fine, I won't bother him anymore." And with that she turned around the corner of the house and disappeared.

   Rupert handed Jairo the other bucket and a cloth. "Scrub yourself good all over," he said plainly. After he was done and dried off with another cloth, they left them hanging off branches of the tree, and Jairo got dressed in his new clothes.

   "You look like a proper gentleman," Rupert said, smiling and approving with nods of his head. "Now to head into town."

   "You mean, to the rest of Astis?"

   "Where else? Adelaide, I know you're around somewhere, come on."

   A short walk down a dirt path took them past some trees, which had screened them from the strangest sight yet Jairo had ever seen. At least a couple dozen houses just like the doctor's ringed a square with a stone floor. Most of the square was taken up by strange wooden, partially open boxes with people standing in them, selling wares displayed on nearby signs. Some were written, which Jairo couldn't read, but he could still see what the merchants were gesturing about, which they usually were holding in their hands, out to people.

   "Sorry, not into the square today," said Rupert, steering him away. "I'll be having more business there tomorrow you can come for, but today it's just some appointments with some regular patients. Down this way."

   He led them down an alley between some houses, with Adelaide behind Jairo. They passed a particularly dark alley when he felt himself being pulled sideways, quickly and quietly, before feeling a final of sensation of being hit on the head really hard.

Author's Note

You can probably guess: Rupert's stew contains mushrooms, tomatoes, carrots, celery, potatoes, and he's stirred it with a spoon. That's right, a spoon. Hopefully in this chapter you gain a new perspective of knocking, doors, spoons, ties, and socks in general.