Joy had never seen a real-life pity party before. And it was one part sad, one part endearing. Theo had taken Lillian’s loss even harder than she had. He had prepared cakes and pastries for her. Then he invited everyone who could even be considered an acquaintance of hers to a “casual get together” where no one was allowed to talk about the tournament.

  It was almost completely silent in the room. The only exciting thing happening in the city was the tournament. And since the tournament was off limits in conversation, there was nothing to talk about.

  Joy decided that someone had to open the floodgates. He could not stand this party and so he decided to encourage his friends a little bit.

  “Hey Theo. That was some crazy thing you did in the arena today. Why haven’t you ever done that when we were in danger.”

  Joy had been gob smacked when he had seen the devastation wrought by Theo. Theo had frozen the entire arena field and then some. The entire tournament had been delayed for hours because the tournament organizers had to go find someone with the appropriate gift to take care of the inane amount of ice left by Theo.

  Theo’s blue eyes bored into Joy menacingly. It seemed that this line of questioning was going to get Joy frozen into a popsicle soon, but that was just the price he was going to pay to alleviate this boredom.

  Just as Joy had accepted his fate, Lillian chimed in, “yeah, I didn’t see it. But that sounded like you pulled some real power out of your ass, ice-boy.”

  Theo’s eyes immediately stopped being gateways to the realm of Pain, and he turned to Lillian, “honestly, I have no idea what it was. It just happened.”

  That was the end of that. Theo was unwilling or unable to explain any more about the incredible power he had shown and no one else was willing to risk prying into the subject anymore.

  Joy enjoyed the party but found that it was lacking. He wanted to do something fun, and this party was not fun.

  But Joy wasn’t willing to brave Theo’s wrath alone. Fortunately, he knew Theo’s weak spot.

  Joy invited Lillian to sneak out of the party with him. She immediately agreed. Her eyes had long since glazed over from the dullness of Theo’s pity party and she wanted to do something, even if she was miserable during it.

  Joy loved Theo for his well-meaning nature. But he wasn’t always in touch with those that he loved. So, Joy and Lillian snuck out of the pity party and took to the streets of Vena Cava.

  The air smelled like sweat and booze. Neither were a bad thing, it smelled like many people had been enjoying themselves to excess and now the byproducts of that were left in the streets.

  It was a special time. Joy couldn’t remember the last time he had seen so many smiles around the city.

  Joy brought Lillian to his favorite sweets stand. The woman who ran it always slipped him a few extra chocolates because he smiled so sweetly at her. The woman recognized Lillian as the woman who had fought Ramses earlier in the day.

  “You did a great job. Ramses is no pushover, and you made him work for that victory.” The woman handed over a bag of chocolates and fried dough while Joy handed over the corresponding money.

  Lillian leaned over the counter and asked the woman, “do you know him? We have never seen him before.”

  “That would made sense since he’s from this section of Vena Cava. He’s a local hero to us; a true man who rose to fame and acclaim from poverty. But his story is not full of sunshine and flowers, he faces his own demons, and we respect him for that. We love Ramses, but you did a wonderful job fighting him, never doubt that.”

  The two left the woman at her counter softly humming a tune to herself.

  “That was odd. I thought he was going to be some despicable man that we could beat up with reckless abandon. Instead, he turns out to be a whole complex human being, funny that.” Lillian knocked Joy over the head for his comment but didn’t say that he was wrong.

  There was something horrible and yet beautiful about the fact that Ramses was a person. He wasn’t just a nameless man who defeated Lillian for the sake of it, he was a human being, with all the intricacies and faults contained therein.

  Joy and Lillian heard a faint thumping in the distance, it was the sound of drums.

  Neither one realized it, but their feet started to follow the noise, their hips started moving to the beat, and their hands started clapping in time.

  The music grew louder and louder until the two of them entered a back alley, where a woman was playing the drums with ferocity. Left hand or right hand, they struck the drum with feverish energy.

  But the woman was not alone. The entire alleyway was filled with bodies. They were rank with sweat and stale breath, but the music bunched them together. The grooved and moved in time, regardless of anyone’s personal hygiene habits.

  Joy moved through the crowd slowly, hoping to see the person beating the drums in such a fashion. Elbows jostled and knees collided, but nothing could get in the way of Joy and his mission.

  Then he saw her. Her red hair was now deep purple, but that wasn’t enough to fool Joy, he could see it was Luna, the woman who had entranced a crowd with her music. She could somehow control the minds of people who listened to her play, but she rarely even needed it to get a crowd. She was talented and wanted to become a part of Music. A horrifying goal for a horrifying woman.

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  These thoughts were lost in Joy’s mind as he thought, ‘she looks wonderful tonight.’

  Joy didn’t dance for a while, he just let the music wash over him in a meditative wave. Colors shined brighter and the movements seemed faster. The world was at peace for one brief moment as the music spun its way around him.

  Luna winked at Joy as he sat mesmerized, then stopped playing the drums. A collective sigh rushed through the crowd as she stopped playing. But everyone seemed brought back to life as she brought out another instrument.

  A small harp danced in her fingers as she played some minor chords to the oohs and aahs of the audience.

  She licked her lips and began a tale. One part story, one part music and Joy sat enraptured by her playing and voice.

  Love is a beautiful thing.

  It brings us together when the times get rough.

  But I am not one to let others get close.

  So, let me tell you a tale where love was too much.

  Joy let the story, and the music eat at his soul until he could see the characters in his mind. The notes corresponded to steps the characters took within the story and they danced through the lines of poetry.

  The story went as follows.

  There once was a young man who loved flowers. There was something so perfect in the cultivation of a perfect plant. He was poor and couldn’t afford flowers, but you would be surprised at how beautiful some weeds can grow.

  In the cracks of the city the young man made blossoms flourish with a touch of his green thumb.

  He was besotted with his beautiful flowers, so much so that he didn’t even glance at the pretty boys and girls who passed him by in his daily gardening.

  The sway of hips and a jaunty step meant nothing to this young man. He wanted to see his beautiful green world flourish.

  He was so incredibly focused on his garden kept within the paved streets that he didn’t even notice the quiet girl who sat next to him.

  She had been sitting there for months. He would run home after a long day’s work, and she would cry because she was so far beneath his notice.

  She wished she could understand his love for the flowers, since her love for the boy seemed so similar. She observed the boy as he observed the flowers and watched him grow happily as he watched the flowers do the same.

  They grew older, with the boy never noticing her. But the girl knew everything about the boy. She loved the way he brushed his hair behind his ears as he worked, she loved the music in his laughter, she even loved the way he picked his nose when he thought no one was watching.

  The boy loved the flowers, and she was content watching him be in love, even if it wasn’t with her.

  Their worlds changed when they received their gifts from the gods. In an ironic twist, the girl received a gift from Nature, while the boy received his gift from Love themself.

  The boy could bring the things he loved to life around him. If he loved it enough, it would appear in the world. The girl was able to grow the ignored nature of the world. If no one loved it, she could make it beautiful and grow like nothing else.

  The boy continued his days of walking around the city, giving his love and care to every weed or flower he saw growing between the cobbled streets. His love for the flowers and weeds left shimmering images of them floating through the streets in his wake.

  The girl stopped following the boy. His love poisoned the parts of Nature she was able to affect, so she started finding sections of the city that had not been visited by the boy and let the grass and flowers grow with the power of her gift.

  What she grew was more beautiful than any natural thing that the boy could ever do. But he was not filled with envy the first time he saw her work, instead he thought “whoever did this must be beautiful.”

  The two danced to an unseen tune. They wandered different parts of the city, growing different plants. They made elaborate gestures to each other, there were private gardens that littered the city during those days. But only the two of them understood their significance.

  But throughout all this time the boy never laid eyes upon the girl. She was a figure of his imagination; so much more than a mere person could ever hold.

  The girl still couldn’t work up the courage to tell him her love, face to face, so she opted to make the most elaborate garden yet. Hidden beneath a bridge that was surrounded by mulch and shit, she created a garden of reds, blues, and yellows. Weeds grew as tall as the bridge, then bloomed with flowers unbecoming of their status as weeds.

  The boy stumbled across the girl working her magic. And his forgetful mind finally found her face deep within himself. She had been with him since the start. When he had first started wandering the city, caring for the unloved plants, she had been next to him, smiling timidly, watching him.

  He was aghast and filled with shame. This beautiful, wonderful person had shown him such love and he had only been able to fall in love with her when he was unaware of who she was. He was a cruel man, unable to love that which was known, only able to seek out that which he had yet to taste.

  In his haste to run away from the scene of horrifying truths, the boy didn’t notice the girl seeing him. She saw the boy she loved more than anything else in this world run from her.

  Now don’t you think that broke her heart?

  See, people always forget to think of how their actions will be interpreted. The most vital part of any human action is not the intention, it is the perception.

  The boy saw the girl he had ignored his whole life and knew that he had been awful to her, and thus he ran away hoping to hide from the nasty truth that he was not a kind person. The girl saw the boy running away from her and concluded that she was unloved by him.

  She grew the flowers around her until the formed a tomb for a girl with a broken heart.

  Oh, how young love destroys us.

  She had created a temporary tomb for the living, soon it would fulfill its proper task, but she would suffer first, as only she felt was proper.

  The boy hid from the world for days. The plants he nurtured and cared for so much went unattended, and the girl he desperately loved slowly died within her tomb. He hid from it all, shivering beneath a warm blanket, safe from the pain that his actions could cause.

  She died in that tomb and the boy learned about it months later.

  The boy claimed to have lost the great love of his life. His own actions had killed that which he loved, and he was destroyed from the inside. He refused to let his life be ended by this mistake though, he would live on through the memory of that girl and the love that they have.

  Yet I ask my audience this; did he ever love her or just the idea of her?

  Thus ends the story of Ramses the Lover or the Loveless.

  With a bow Luna exited the stage of her own making. Leaving only remnants of imagination in her wake.

  The story etched itself into the minds of all those present, but most of all it struck Joy discordantly. Something about the boy, Ramses, didn’t sit well with Joy. Somehow what the boy had done seemed beyond forgivable; it offended a deep hidden part of Joy that even he didn’t know about.

  Joy wandered through the now quiet and restless crowd to find Lillian. Once he found her, she also seemed bothered by the story. There was something in there, a nugget of truth that Joy couldn’t discern quite yet, but he would.

  The two slowly wandered back to the prince’s castle. Joy had a tournament to prepare for, but his mind was filled with images of young children in love, and blossoming weeds.