82nd day of Fall, 511
Rathe stretched out the last kink in his long spine from the dawn rest that had been many bells too short for him, as he waited for Chevu on the walkway. Both of them had been up too late last night and his buddy didn’t seem to be in too much of a hurry.
Finally, he called out to his dark-haired friend. “Feel free to take all day, so that all the good jobs are gone and we have to come back again tomorrow.”
A sour expression crossed Chevu’s sharp features but he increased his pace from a slow crawl to more of an elderly person’s stride. Rathe rolled his eyes, which made his head hurt all over again.
Outside of the gleaming Cosmos Center, the hard-working boy Rathe had seen there many times, had abandoned his little garden of flowers; a testament to how cold the blanket of air was that had settled across Lhavit. Rathe pulled his cloak tighter around his heavily muscled body, blocking out the worst of the chill in the air.
Eventually, Chevu caught up and together, they went inside the building, leaving the cold behind. It was just as shiny and beautiful inside as it was outside. Directly to the right of the circular room the pair entered into, was a small group of white desks, each one stationed by a secretary. They hadn’t been able to offer him much help the last time he was here, so instead of ringing the crystal bell, he herded Chevu towards the board on the far wall.
There were papers tacked haphazardly to it. Each one of them offered a private job from someone who didn’t want to work through a middle man, like the Center, for whatever reason. All of the jobs would have offered him possibility, if he could read them, but when he tried to make the hastily written words come into focus, letters swam outside the edges of his vision, as usual.
He had hardly tried to make sense of it before his headache deepened to a dull roar, making the space behind his blue eyes thrum with pain. Rathe looked back to Chevu and thumped him on the back. “What are you waiting for? Find me a job.” It was an instant relief to take his eyes off the dancing words.“You know what I can’t do. I’ll do anything else.”
Chevu gave him a weighted look, not giving in when Rathe ignored the meaning behind it. “What if you didn’t have friends who could do stuff for you? What would you do? You have to figure out how to read sometime.”
“You’ve just got your head up your ass because I made you get out of bed early. You know I’m running out of savings. I need a new job before it’s gone and the next rent comes due. Not to mention that thing called food… Come on, Chevu. Focus. When this is over, you can crawl back under your rock.”
Chevu’s eyes twinkled with a hint of laughter, but it quickly faded. “Think of the things you could do if you could read.”
“Think of all the things I’ve done and I haven’t been able to! Think of all the things you’ll be able to do once you’re done here and you can go back to your exciting social life.”
Chevu shook his head. “You’re hopeless.”
“Hopeless is not helpless.” Rathe directed his attention back to the board. “Is there something there for me or not?”
“Give me a minute to read them. There are a lot of posts.”
He watched Chevu’s lips move while he read a couple of postings, but his friend never voiced anything out loud. Finally he tore down a paper and handed it to Rathe.
“That one is looking for a guide around the city. It doesn’t pay much but it’s a job.”
Rathe grabbed the piece of paper out from between Chevu’s thick fingers. “Who’s the contact person?”
“Haeli.”
