Chapter 4 — Stairs
And thus begins Chapter Four.
Now, children.
There we were.
Still on the stairs.
The Stair Nation.
Stitch and Sharky somewhere ahead,
having apparently been blessed with functional lungs.
And Axe
slowly ascending toward me.
One step.
Pause.
Another.
Resurrection delayed.
Eventually,
she reached my level.
I looked at her.
Children.
She looked terrible.
Not unattractive terrible.
Let us be clear.
Axe was still Axe.
But she possessed the expression of someone who had personally been betrayed by elevation.
So naturally,
I asked:
“You okay?”
She looked at me.
And with all the warmth of a dying animal
“Bite me.”
The council goes silent.
Ah.
Pure misery.
Children.
I loved it.
I laughed.
Not because I wanted her dead.
Probably.
But because for once,
someone else understood.
No inspirational:
Come on, we’re almost there.
No:
You can do it.
No false optimism.
Just:
Bite me.
The council nods.
An honest woman.
And so we continued.
Together.
Slowly.
Very slowly.
At a pace no healthy young adult should ever record with pride.
The council watches.
Step.
Breathe.
Step.
Regret.
Step.
Possible death.
Step.
Axe mutters something hostile toward the concept of stairs.
Nuo laughs.
The council nods.
Teamwork.
And eventually
children
we made it.
The top.
The council erupts.
SUMMIT.
I stepped onto flat ground.
Sweet,
merciful,
horizontal ground.
My lungs attempted to return to the body.
My legs began renegotiating their employment contracts.
Axe survived.
Barely.
Then I looked up.
And
the council grows quiet.
There it was.
A statue.
Huge.
Magnificent.
Towering above us.
And around it
architecture.
Stone.
Structure.
Details.
The kind of place that makes you stop
even when you arrived with absolutely no intention of being impressed.
Children.
For a moment,
I forgot about the stairs.
I forgot about the assignment.
Forgot about the fact that we had left this entire project until the final possible day.
I just
looked.
The council listens.
I do not have the vocabulary to describe the place properly.
I didn’t then.
I barely do now.
Someone more educated could tell you architectural styles.
Periods.
Names.
Symbolism.
Construction methods.
Historical importance.
Children.
I have none of that.
My academic contribution remains consistent.
But I know what beautiful looks like.
And this?
Beautiful.
The stone.
The scale.
The way everything seemed to belong exactly where it had been placed.
The age of it.
The sheer amount of human effort sitting around us.
For a moment
I was breathless.
The council smiles.
Not because of the stairs.
For once.
Because of the place.
And then
children
my brain ruined it.
The council sighs.
Of course.
I looked at the enormous statue.
Looked again.
And thought:
Haha.
That statue is naked.
The council collapses.
There it is.
Thousands of years of human culture.
Art.
Devotion.
Architecture.
History.
And University Nuo’s first scholarly observation:
Penis.
The council groans.
To be fair,
I was young.
The council stares.
Fine.
I am still like this.
But I did not say it aloud.
Not yet.
I simply stood there,
secretly amused,
having just reduced a magnificent cultural monument to:
Heh.
Naked guy.
Then
I heard it.
Giggling.
The council turns.
Axe.
She was pointing.
At the statue.
Looking delighted.
Then she said:
“Haha.
That statue is naked.”
The council goes completely still.
Children.
There are moments in life that should not matter.
Tiny things.
Stupid things.
Things nobody else would remember.
And yet
something clicks.
I looked at her.
She was still laughing.
Pointing at the same thing I had just noticed.
The exact same idiotic observation.
No reverence.
No carefully phrased academic remark.
Just
naked statue funny.
The council smiles.
And I smiled at her.
Not laughed with her.
Not immediately.
Just
looked.
Because until that moment,
Axe was attractive.
Obviously.
Children.
I had eyes.
Physical attraction was not the revelation.
I already knew she was pretty.
But this?
Different.
This was the first time I remember thinking
Oh.
I like you.
Not:
You look good.
Not:
I’d make out with you.
University Nuo was perfectly capable of those thoughts without emotional complication.
This was
something else.
The council leans forward.
A spark.
Small.
Stupid.
Born beside a naked statue.
Exactly.
Axe noticed me looking.
Her smile changed slightly into confusion.
“What?”
I shook my head.
“Nothing.”
The council groans.
Ancient male communication.
Children.
I was not about to explain:
I have just discovered that your sense of humor is compatible with my developmental age.
So
nothing.
And we kept walking.
The council follows.
Stitch had the camera out.
Actual documentation happening somewhere.
Sharky existed.
Possibly contributing.
Axe and I wandered around the architecture.
Looked at carvings.
Structures.
Stone.
Little spaces.
Big spaces.
Things I cannot name anymore.
Children.
This is where the Archive becomes visually rich
and linguistically useless.
I remember beauty.
Not terminology.
I remember standing there and thinking:
This place is incredible.
I cannot tell you whether a particular column belonged to some specific style.
I cannot identify every structure.
I cannot give you the academically correct vocabulary.
All I have is
beautiful.
The council nods.
Sometimes that is enough.
We explored.
Stitch photographed.
The assignment slowly accumulated evidence that we had actually gone somewhere.
And every now and then
the statue returned to view.
Axe would look.
I’d look.
Then one of us would grin.
The council braces.
“Naked.”
The other laughs.
Children.
We had discovered a running joke.
A very sophisticated one.
The council adds:
ACADEMIC ANALYSIS:
STATUE REMAINS NAKED.
And somewhere during those stupid little moments,
Axe stopped being only Stitch’s friend.
Not girlfriend.
Not even close.
No dramatic shift.
No declaration.
Nothing happened.
And yet
something had happened.
The category changed.
The council grows quiet.
There are people you find attractive.
There are people you enjoy talking to.
And then occasionally,
someone says the exact stupid thing your own brain just said,
and suddenly you become curious about them.
Not their face.
Them.
Children.
That was Axe.
For the first time,
I wanted to know what else lived in that head.
The council smiles.
Probably more insults.
Correct.
Promising.
And maybe that’s why this moment survived.
Not the exact order of every building.
Not what Stitch photographed.
Not what Sharky said.
Not even most of the assignment.
But this
I look at giant statue.
Think:
Haha naked.
Axe immediately says:
Haha naked.
And something inside me goes:
Oh no.
The council laughs.
Not love.
Let’s not become dramatic.
Attraction with additional infrastructure.
The council nods approvingly.
Good.
We continued walking.
Sometimes beside Stitch and Sharky.
Sometimes slightly behind.
Sometimes stopping to look at something.
And the place kept surprising me.
Not because I had researched it.
I hadn’t.
Not because I understood its history.
I didn’t.
But because beauty does not always require comprehension before it works.
Children.
You can know absolutely nothing about architecture
and still stand beneath something old and magnificent
and feel very small.
The council grows quiet.
Then giggle because the statue is naked.
Both can be true.
That may actually be one of the better summaries of University Nuo.
Capable of awe.
Unable to sustain dignity.
The council nods.
And Axe?
Apparently similar enough.
Which was dangerous.
Very dangerous.
Because shared stupidity is powerful.
The council begins writing ominously.
No.
Do not call it fate.
No soulmates.
No stars aligning.
Children.
It was two idiots finding the same thing funny.
That is all.
But sometimes,
that is how a person moves one step closer.
Classmate.
To interesting classmate.
The council updates the file.
AXE:
PREVIOUS STATUS — STITCH’S FRIEND.
CURRENT STATUS — HMM.
Exactly.
“Hmm.”
Nothing more.
And so we wandered through Karkala.
For the assignment,
technically.
Camera clicking.
Architecture surrounding us.
Four university students trying to collect enough observations to fabricate competence later.
And among all that stone,
all that history,
all that beauty
the first spark between Axe and me came from the least romantic source imaginable.
A naked statue.
Children.
Of course it did.
Thus concludes Chapter Four.
The Final Ascent.
The Bite Me.
The Magnificent Architecture.
The Great Scholarly Observation.
And The First Spark.
Children.
I had climbed to the top expecting to document Karkala.
Instead,
I discovered two things.
One:
the place was beautiful.
And two:
Axe’s brain was apparently just as stupid as mine.
The council smiles.
The second discovery would prove considerably more dangerous.
