Incite, page 32
He wishes he didn’t come down here. Wishes his mother left him alone. Wishes everyone would please leave him alone. Let his empty shell lay isolated in his house. He can bring his chair to the balcony and watch the clouds travel over Leucasia. He’ll drink the liquid he needs to sleep at night and let his body decay under the sky. Quilan’s eyes glaze over as he stares up at the clear blue sky. The one place I—
His thoughts are cut off as girls squeal his name. Lowering his chin, the emptiness in his face has disappeared. Deeply riveted dimples show on his cheeks at the ends of his practiced smile, his teeth shining perfectly in the light.
His torpid eyes, darker than the ocean, remain the same.
“SIR QUILAN!”
“QUILAN.”
“QUILAN, OVER HERE!”
The boundaries break and the flood rushes him. This attention, this popularity is all he’s ever known. Even in his earliest memories, people climbed over each other to shake his father’s hand. He was held up in front of the crowd, put on display for adoring fans that instantly fell in love with the small boy and his blueberry eyes still bright and vibrant with life.
The faces surround him. He dips his chin nodding, shakes hands, and passes out several hugs to fainting girls and boys. They all look the same to him now, over the years they all began to lose individual characteristics until they’ve morphed into a storm of faceless creatures reaching out to touch him.
“Pardon me,” he requests, pushing his way through the sea of flesh, slowly making his way to his dragon.
What must it be like to be no one? To peruse the festival stalls at your pleasure, to place bets that will lose, to cheer in the stands until you lose your voice. Would he gawk at the riders? Would he forget they are human too and reach out to them as if they were a deity, or would he let them be and carry on with his day?
“Excuse me,” he presses forward. The people part slowly as they step on the feet behind them. The masses pulse forward like a growing entity. What must it be like to be excited to wake up to a new day? Reaching his quetzalcoatl he seeks out the comfort of their blue feathers. He shudders a sigh of relief at the soft sensation between his fingers.
“WILL YOU MARRY US!” a set of twin girls shout.
This will be his last Games. Quilan’s smile quivers, for the faintest moment his smile is real. He turns to the twins and winks. This will be the last time he has to pretend.
Reference to Chapter 11
The river of people flowing between the festival tents split for him like the bow of a ship cutting through water. They part with no resistance, stepping to the side to allow him passage, but they spin and churn in eddies, all wanting a glimpse as he passes them by, leaving them in his wake. They won’t stop him today, they know he is on his way to the opening ceremony.
He had nearly forgotten what day it was, but his mother never will. A yawn almost breaks through, but he holds it back. There was no company over for pre-ceremony celebrations at his estate.Every invitation to the parties across the upper tiers of the city was lost to his fire’s kindling. He did what he wanted to do and sat in his chair with the privacy curtains pulled back, sipping the burning drink from his cup. He listened to the sounds of life as he counted the stars, desperately wishing exhaustion to finally take over.
Oof. He can still feel the contact on his shoulders. Did he run into someone? He never runs into someone. Especially not when they know he’s in a hurry. He slows his pace.
The voice of a young man shouts at him, “Hey! You just pushed over a girl! You need to apologize!”
The weight of the watching eyes shifts. He feels a moment of relief as the weight of the faceless creatures turn their focus to the yelling man. He should continue walking, but morbid curiosity tugs on him, edging him until he’s turned around to a furious blonde curly-haired boy holding onto a girl with a crown of black braids and ringlets falling free, “Then don’t be in my way.”
The boy’s jaw drops at his insensitive reply. Quilan steps back, turning on his heel, he puts the couple behind him and returns on his track to the stadium. He knows he should apologize. It was wrong of him to knock the girl over, but he was taken aback by the anger on the boy’s face. There was no recognition on his face. This guy didn’t know who he was and confronted him as he would anyone else. Quilan didn’t know what to say, how to react. He had no implanted phrases to recite. He was stuck without his script and diverted to an answer that was expected from him.
The self-loathing settles in, he really should have apologized.
“You know him, You love him! Our number one racer Quilan of Leucasia riding his quetzalcoatl!” the announcer hollers into the extended horn that carries his voice across the audience the size of a city.
The roar of the crowd rumbles through the mountainous stadium. Quilan steps out on a catwalk an arm's length above the top row. The lower-class viewers gasp at their proximity to their idol. He reaches down, shaking several hands before stepping to the edge of the diving board. A rope secured to a fixture at the end of the walkway stretches down across the center of the stadium to a platform connected to the top of the wall where the front-row guests sit.
With his icy blue quetzalcoatl raining down from the sky, Quilan steps one foot onto a wooden pedal and pushes off the walkway. Smooth metal slides across the rope zipping Quilan across the stadium, one hand holding firm to the rope the other extending out to the crowd. His dragon loops around him as he passes the center. The angle of his descent softens towards the end, guiding his speed to decrease into a gradual stop. He steps off and stands on the small stage and bows, turning to face the opposite direction he bows again.
He hops down the stairs landing on the sandy ground of the arena center. Throwing his hands in the air, he spins as he walks allowing everyone a full view of him. Aether lands soundlessly in a slither. Jogging up to them, Quilan gives his audience a final bow and leaps onto the saddle. With a flick of the reins, he leaves them behind for the clouds.
Reference to Chapter 13
Clumps of dirt tumble from the ledge as Quilan nudges the tufts of grass on the cliff’s edge with his toe. It’s the first match of the Games, and the beginner racers are readying themselves at the starting line.
He used to love watching the beginner’s races. The rookies trying their hand in the Kingdom of Tillfallya’s most honored pastime. The only competition you don’t have to be a professional to enter, though most are. It’s rare for a novice to come out of the fields. Everyone here has been coached since childhood, dragon racing is not some hobby you stumble upon one day while on an outing with your friends.
He can still remember how they wore these awestruck and overwhelmed expressions as a door to a new world opened for them. The excitement of the festivities in their heads and the adrenaline of a race in their veins would radiate from those racing on the track as he watched starry-eyed from the elite box seats. He respected them. His naive mind longed to feel as they did, but years come and go, and the end of upcoming and new participants arrived. It’s become a revolving cycle of racers. Same games, new year.
Focusing past the toe of his shoe, he narrows in on the ground far below. His body teeters. It’s only a single step. That’s it. In a month's time, all he has to do is take one single step.
The horns don’t bother him as they blare steps away from where he is standing. He doesn’t hear them anymore. From his peripheral, he can see the beginners diving toward the coastal shelf. They pull up and race out over the water. His eyes shift over to the starting line.
Someone is still there.
He turns to get a better idea of who didn’t take off. An orange Pier’yani zvir perched as still as a gargoyle. He squints trying to place the boy. He has no gear besides goggles and a wild head of curls. His eyes widen with recognition. It’s the boy he had run into. He’s a professional racer?
No. Quilan tilts his head watching the trembling boy. Not a professional, someone, someone new.
Finding his courage, the boy commands his dragon to leap from the starting line and takes off. Quilan finds his predictions wrong as he watches the new boy overpower the competition, passing racer after racer, pulling from last to first.
He was incredibly wrong indeed. The boy’s pier’yan zvir lands back at the start. Last to leave, first to arrive. This year's games will not be the same.
Great. Quilan thinks as he enters the upstairs hall to the private suites of the inn. Peyton and Lucan, two of the other elite riders, lean on opposing walls laughing. Quilan doesn’t remove his sight from his door in hopes to slip by unnoticed.
“Hey!” Peyton’s grinning tan face, glowing from recent sun exposure, turns to the pale-haired boy.
Nope. Quilan steps up to his door pretending he didn’t hear them.
“Quilan! Hey, Quilan, did you see the new kid?” Peyton shifts his weight, sliding his shoulder along the wall, and leans in Quilan’s direction. “We were just talking about him.”
“Good for you,” Quilan slips the key into the slot.
“Aw, pouty pouty Quilan,” Lucan clicks his tongue. “Lighten up, man. It’s the time of the year for you to take all the money again.”
“Maybe from you, but I always secure myself in second,” Peyton gloats, jabbing his thumb to his chest. He spins back to Quilan at the sound of the hinges opening, “Wait, Quilan! You didn’t answer, did you see the new guy?”
Quilan’s head falls back with the slump of his shoulders. His lackluster eyes roll over to Peyton, “And?”
“For one, he looks like he was living in an alley, but the funny part is that he doesn't just look like he was born in a barn, he’s actually sleeping in the stables,” Peyton’s gaping grin returns as if he had said the punchline of a joke.
“Huh,” Quilan steps inside his room uttering, “Interesting.”
“Oh, come on. We’re brothers now and you still don’t want to talk?” Peyton plays up being upset with an exaggerated pout of his bottom lip.
“No.” He doesn’t even talk to his older sister, so why would he talk to the man she married?
Closing the door behind him he can hear the two men shrugging off his attitude. He is younger than them by several or more years. He’s the youngest in the elite race, he has been since he started six years ago at fifteen. The next youngest is Peyton who is three years older than him and of last spring, his older sister’s husband. They’ve known Quilan most of his life through his father, but he’s not their friend. They’ve watched him grow, but they remain in blissful ignorance that the light in the child’s eyes faded over the years until it permanently died out several years ago. They are either oblivious, or they don’t care. What is he, but in their way for first place?
Finding himself in front of the window, Quilan taps the shutters with clean fingernails. He’s sleeping in the stables? Quilan wanted to ask for more information about the rookie, but he didn’t want to join their squabble in the hall. He has his own sources of finding out information on anything and anyone.
With little to no force, Quilan pushes open the shutter letting the sun in. He leans out his window towards the forgotten stables. Who is he?
Reference to Chapter 18
Quilan had almost fallen asleep watching the routines of the beginners he had memorized. They lack originality and creativity, their performance is merely routine tricks. The citizens don’t know any better, but any racer knows the so-called tricks are simply training exercises. Except for Stirling.
Remaining slouched in his cushioned chair, Qulian misleads the four other elites that he wasn’t enthralled by Stirling’s performance.
His show was a grand spectacle of daring acts never displayed by anyone except him and those who have worn the title of elite. These aren’t moves you learn from any mundane coach. He claims he was self-taught. How did he train his dragon to catch him without killing himself in the process? Qulian crosses his arms pleased. It was purely incredible, everything he does is extraordinary. Like a high-pitched octave breaking glass, his flow of thoughts is shattered.
“There’s no way someone from Patu can pull off tricks like that,” Lucan spits bitterly, his feet propped up on a wooden stool in the Elite’s private box.
Peyton scratches his chin. “What are you suggesting? He lied about where he’s from?”
The second oldest of the elite racers, Firmin, grumbles, “Who in their right mind would claim they're from Patu.”
Aylmar, the oldest, nods in agreement, “They would have to admit they live in huts with dirt floors.”
Why must they ruin everything? Quilan wonders to himself. They’ve tainted the sport with pompous attitudes, pretentious beliefs, and materialistic acts. Fans buying their capes color is more important to them than who those people are.
“What do you think, Sir number 1?”
Quilan ignores him, he doesn’t care which of them it was who asked the question. He will never tell them what he thinks.
“Ay! Quilan! Too good to join the conversation?”
Any light starting to brighten his dark eyes is snuffed out and listlessly rolls over to the four men, “Indeed.”
“You’re a drag anyway,” Lucan waves Quilan off. The four return to conversing.
It’s easy to tune real people out. What he finds impossible is ignoring his own voice speaking to him at night. His words ring loud in his head despite his attempts to plug his ears. Here he can practically dismiss their contemptuous conversation as cicadas in the summer.
At this rank, Stirling will be advancing to the next ranking. Would he be able to prove himself worthy to slide into the elite level by the end of these games? Quilan smiles internally, it would be nice to race him. Have his final race be the last and only real thing in his life.
The pearlescent goggles are an icy rainbow around his eyes. Quilan sits upon his quetzalcoatl awaiting his cue to start. The trick competition. The races can be hard to stand out to the crowd for what separates someone in the advanced from the elites because they are not watching them race each other. They do not comprehend the differences in speed and accuracy. But here, during this round, there is no comparison. It’s strikingly obvious why they are labeled the elites.
Quilan flicks his reins and the coiled-up quetzalcoatl springs into the air. Their feathered wings carry it soundlessly across the sky like an incoming storm that has yet to release its power.
Loops, figure eights, spirals. The legless dragon spins through the sky. These will not set him apart, these are warm-ups for his last hurrah.
A genuine smile slides onto Quilan’s face. Up here, away from everyone, he is immersed in tranquility. He doesn’t have to pretend to be someone, he doesn’t have to be anyone at all. He is no one, currently living in the present, with no past and no future. Here and now, nothing else exists.
Quilan taps the trained signal onto Aether’s neck and unhooks his belt. Stirling isn’t the only one who is psychotic enough to risk his life for a game. He has been practicing this move for a year. Started with balancing on a water wheel at a mill, then progressed to practicing balancing while standing on his dragon with an extended harness in case he fell. A year of his life dedicated to what he is about to do now, here in front of this crowd for the first and last time.
No harness attached, his left foot slides forward into a binding. Quilan twists the reins around his wrist and cautiously rises to his feet and secures his right foot in back. With the air tugging at his loose navy blue top, he leans, surfing the back of his quetzalcoatl. The movements of his weight directing the direction they will fly in.
Up here close to the clouds, he is the angel they claim him to be.
He pushes down, riding the air current to the turquoise water. Pulling his knees up, he directs Aether to lift up before diving into the water. The crowd screams in disbelief as he flies over them. Cheering, they hold onto their caps and duck as the gales of wind rip through them.
He’s back out over the water.
Squatting down, he taps the coded command and then removes his feet from the bindings. The quetzalcoatl arcs and turns their body into a wheel. Running along Aether's back, Quilan stays at the top of the dragon's roll. As their tail narrows below him, he jumps, skipping over their head to land on their neck. Completing another revolution, they’ve fallen too low in the sky to continue and Quilan purposefully falls back into the saddle, giving the cue for Aether to spread their wings and carry them to shore.
Landing on the churned-up soil, Quilan can hear the wood bleachers shuddering under the rowdy crowd. He kisses his hand and whips it out across the stands giving them the small gestures they long for. At least he doesn’t have to worry about finding a way to top that for next year.
Feeling disgusted with his pandering movements, Quilan grimaces in the form of a fake smile. He waves his hands above his head and exaggerates throwing several more kisses. The audience who calls out their love for him will never know he despises every breath he takes.
Reference to Chapter 19
The steam from the bathhouse opens his pores as he leans his head back against the tile. Shoulder deep in the blanket of water, Quilan’s mind wanders up to the passing clouds through the condensation-covered skylight.
He blinks, rewatching the rookie's races over in his mind. He was undefeated in the beginner races, there was no comparison between him and the other beginners. He was unstoppable in their ranks and had been boosted to intermediate. The corners of Qulain’s lips twitch. He can see the raw talent. The hidden potential in the boy. The judges don’t see it, but Quilan knows the boy is meant to race in the elite. He can feel it in his gut.
The boy, Stirling from Patu, is the most intriguing thing he has laid eyes on since—since, well, ever. He displays the enthusiasm and passion for racing that the others have lost. His raw emotions are painted clearly for everyone to see. He doesn’t cover up his discomfort and fear. He wears it upfront.
