Her fingers were cold.

Or maybe it was the ointment she applied to my . 

I was packing when Victoria walked into the room, holding a yellow bottle: medicine she purchased herself. She told me to change out of the short-sleeve tee I was wearing. When I asked why, she dragged me into the bathroom and showed me the reason behind the incessant itch I’ve been feeling lately.

Mosquito bites littered my backside. A consequence of sleeping with the window open one night. Unlike me Victoria had prepared bug repellant lotion for herself beforehand. Apparently, Jingxi frowned upon imperfections of any kind, so she needed to look as good as she could for public relation’s sake. For the Board’s sake.

She hadn’t noticed Henry failed to warn me until I changed in front of her the day before. And it was while she dabbed the blushing red spots on my back with a q-tip that she told me about her first trip to Dunai four years prior. She still had a scar under her ear caused by oblivious scratching. 

Luckily, an adverb she used, my predicament didn’t look nearly as bad as hers did then.

Surprised by her sudden act of kindness, I let out a joking, “You know, I had a feeling you didn’t like me.”

Even though this and that were two different things entirely.

Victoria’s denial wasn’t immediate. A few minutes of conflicted silence passed before she finally said, “I like you.”

Like: an almost childish verb that’s much harder to use as we get older.

Shrugging off her confession, she clarified, “It’s your situation that’s unlikeable.”

And she wasn’t referring to the itch I couldn’t reach lying just between my shoulder blades.

Or maybe she was.

He appeared at the hotel door room an hour before I left to catch the ship for Jingxi. Golden haired with emerald eyes hidden behind a pair of round glasses. The first thing Victoria did was ask who he was. The second thing she did, the second he introduced himself, was leave. His name was Tellius.

Kai’s mentor.

A Dunai astronomer who originally hailed from Rut: the village built under the roots of the Tree of Life. The very same Zhoumi called home. The singular characteristic binding together the people who lived there, in a nook in the northernmost mountainside, was their green eyes. Almost hypnotic swirls of darker green in orbs of brilliant brighter green. 

Tellius explained he rarely went unrecognized.

He said the same about me, for other reasons besides the physical he wouldn’t divulge.

After hearing about my arrival a bit too late, he rushed to the outer ring to see me before I left.

“Has Kai mentioned me?”

Tellius finally asked. The young Guardian was the only person on his mind for the past thirty minutes. Even as he exchanged small talk about this and that, I could tell he was just waiting to bring him up. Since I didn’t have an aversion to talking about Kai, despite our recent disputes, I wasn’t nervous in the least. 

Nervous: the word that came to my mind first, for whatever reason.

“Fondly.” 

I answered with a smile, resisting the urge to scratch at the stinging sensation on my right shoulder. The medication didn’t seem to be working; the wrath of mosquitos and their insatiable stomachs nothing to be scoffed at.

“Yet the kid can’t spare a handful of minutes to make a call.” Tellius sighed, continuing on a moment later, “Don’t worry about me, Seeress. I’m used to him playing hard-to-get.”

I hadn’t realized my expression had changed. That I had stopped smiling. That I could empathize so much with Tellius I myself was sighing right after him. Gone for over a month and each time I call the Capital, with Luhan’s help, he’s never there to answer. 

Kai was a master of push and pull.

Pulled into the past by bittersweet memories hitting him all at once, Tellius managed a laugh in spite of himself, “I didn’t think I would have it in me to raise him at first. As the youngest out of my fellow Guardians, I could barely take care of myself. I’m not stern like Hector and I’m certainly not the type to give endless affection like Lyon. So, imagine my first thought when a baby was into my arms.”

“Your entire universe, galaxies and all, came crashing down around you?” I read his mind.

“You’re naturally good at guessing, aren’t you?” He laughed again. For real this time. And he reminded me of Kai. Just a little bit. “But I think I did an alright job. I managed to keep up with him and his fleeting nature, at the very least.”

But his thoughts were much clearer than Kai’s. Easy to be understood. Easier to be influenced by. They were the kind that tug at your heartstrings because of words like “family” and “love.” Feelings that can bridge the gap between sympathy and empathy — no matter what side you’re standing on.

Tellius had a son, despite never having one.

He worried for his son, even though his role as mentor had come to an end years ago.

“I haven’t talked to him in a long time.” I admitted, feeling slightly embarrassed by the fact, “I’m sorry.”

“My thoughts aside, I already said it’s fine, Seeress.” Tellius reached out, patting my stinging shoulder, “As the boy who was enamored by space and all the mysteries hidden lightyears beyond the ground I stood on, I’m used to being ignored.” He interrupted me before I could reassure him. At the age of 55, after everything he’d been through, he didn’t need pity. “But, I’m not all that good at playing ignorant myself.” 

He wasn’t here to give me a vote of encouragement. He wasn’t here to tell me he believed in me and what I wanted to stand for. He was here as a father concerned by the company his son kept.

“Kai’s last call to me was troublesome. Worrisome. Wearisome. What have you.” Tellius truly seemed as mature as his age as he looked at me. “I’m sure you know what I’m referring to.”

“Yes. I do.”

Warning me of what could happen if I continued on with my rebellious, untraditional ways, he asked, “And do you know what happened to me? To us? The past Guardians of this tiny rock?”

Tellius and his fellow Guardians were abnormal themselves. Since the first of them was born until the last, their Seeress was nowhere to be found. Thirty-nine years of sitting in the Capital, facing insurrection from the, then a mere political movement, Council who claimed they were useless and millions of Exotians who believed they were. Thirty-nine years until one day, they woke up and their powers were gone. The Seeress they never knew dead. 

Somewhere. Somehow. Something they were punished for.

The very day she died, the Tree of Life stunted their aging. Their physical appearance never changes. A constant reminder of the moment they truly became “useless.” But, compared to past generations of Guardians and Seeresses, they drew the longer stick.

As Tellius told me all of this, everything I already knew, everything he must have known I knew, he repeated himself several times. Not because of his fading memory in his old age. Rather to reinforce his underlying meaning. To further convince me to not follow in the footsteps of my predecessors. Because, apparently, Kai rarely listened the first time, too. 

And it worked.

Listening to the Guardians' foreboding history from someone who experienced it firsthand had my nails digging into the hem of my sleeves. My entire back felt like it was on fire. An itch tempted me to scratch it through an application of pain. Of the possibility of uncomfortable, awkward relationships. Of the thought of never, truly, becoming close with anyone.

I remember something Cera said once. Something I forgot. Because I didn’t see a need to draw lines between us, I looked past her words of, “Ela Nektor was a lonely child.”

Lonely: a word I grew nervous of feeling.

“The Tree of Life won’t let him off with a smack on the wrist.” Tellius mumbled begrudgingly, “It’s a vengeful weed, it is.”

I felt like a child, ignorant and naive, as I asked the following with the same heartbroken tone I would use to ask if Santa Claus was real, “You don’t believe in the Tree of Life’s intentions?”

“I think a plant does what it has to to survive.” He nodded to himself, “I think humans do, too.”

Victoria was right. 

Not only about wearing long sleeves, either. 

Jingxi was an architecture marvel. Living up to its name, reinforced glass stretched up the sides of every skyscraper and storefront. Everyone and everything seemed to sparkle, dazzling in the morning sunlight and even more so when the moon rose high in the sky. There existed a street, dipping low from a high-rising hill, named “Thousand Moons Boulevard.” It was here that the moon reflected its pale, white face across the cityscape  — a sight that made me miss what I'd left behind. Along with its beauty, however, came an almost palpable air of arrogance.

The stark different between Jingxi and Dunai was the people.

Moving like puppets performing a show for an audience on strings, there was an obvious disingenuous subtext to their words and actions. They would smile in greeting, only to wonder why I deserved their attention. The procession for the Boards’ arrival was broadcasted all over the city, and yet I saw no one watching it — as the Moon Guardians and I sailed in a day earlier to avoid attracting too much attention. Selfish thoughts were a constant whenever I closed my eyes and listened. 

All the envy almost turned me green.

I wanted to leave the day I arrived. 

I stayed because Henry asked me to. The Council always had a tight hold on Jingxi. In the past, a Board would be jailed on even the slightest of suspicions against him or her. Now, they got fake smiles and empty cheers. 

“They don’t care who’s in charge. As long as the mirror shows them what they want to see, they’ll follow the man holding it.” 

Victoria commented in distaste as soon as the door closed behind us. As soon as we were alone, her shoulders slouched, she took a long shower, and didn’t wake up until noon the next day. Tired from helping Henry hold up the gaudy piece of glass. Willingly going to his side to do it all over again. 

And he deserves her. 

Henry, whose vision is clearer than those whose very lives are reflected back at them every second of every day, deserves smiles and cheers.

“He’s a good man.” 

I said in an attempt to convince Lay’s squared shoulders to relax. This night’s events worried him into taking up the role of motionless guardsman. He remained stiff, standing straight, saying nothing while his thoughts said everything.

“He wouldn’t invite me if he thought I’d be in danger.” 

“What if I thought you would be?” 

Lay broke his vow of silence in order to cast doubt on my overconfidence. I took offense to his lack of trust in the man I believed in to the point of absurdity. The result was a string of angry words I didn’t mean. Even if I apologized later that night, in the corner of a large banquet filled with hundreds of Jingxi citizens, the fact that I said them doesn’t change.

The fact that I even thought of something so disgusting and still allowed it passage through my lips doesn’t change. 

“You don’t trust me?”

His jaw visibly tightened. Hand reaching out, feet taking steps, only to stop. Backtracking, retracting, he made a noise. A garbled syllable of a word he was going to say. Beaten down and submissive like a whining pup. But he didn’t leave with his tail between his legs. Lay returned to his guard duty, his answer so painfully obvious I almost apologized immediately.

Ashamed by my own mistake, I didn’t. I blocked him out of my mind, not wanting to hear whatever thoughts laid behind his downtrodden expression. This did not equate to that. I know. His distrust of Jingxi did not mean he didn’t trust me. I know. 

I know: an empty, almost lonely, phrase.