Chapter 114: Chapter One Hundred and Thirteen – Renn – A Bridge’s Forgotten Smile

If not for the other people walking upon the bridge, I’d think Vim and I had stumbled into a dream.

Gulping, I glanced behind us. We had been walking on the bridge for some time now… and although the end of the bridge was far away, it looked… too close. Impossibly close.

Looking to my right, and then left, I did my best to try and comprehend how much stone was around me.

This bridge was beyond massive. Vim and I weren’t really walking in the center of it, but it felt like we were. The edges of the bridge, adorned by massive walls of white stone pillars, were far enough away that I knew I’d have to throw a stone with nearly all my strength to reach them.

The pillars raised high into the sky, and were connected to each other with white stone rails. The detail I could see carved into some of the rails and pillars made me sweaty. Someone had spent years… genuine years and years, making this thing.

“Vim…” I said his name and looked ahead of us. To the people in the distance. I could see wagons, carts… groups of people, and sometimes even a singular individuals walking upon the bridge. Both coming towards us, and heading across the bridge like we were.

“Hm? Everything alright?” Vim glanced at me as he spoke.

“I… I need a moment…” I said as I slowed to a stop.

Vim frowned but paused to wait for me. “Want to sit for a moment?” he asked, worried.

“Oh… no… I’m not… I’m not bothered by the height, but the size of this thing. Vim what is this?” I asked as I spun around, to take the whole area in again.

The mountains we had just left were behind us. They had felt massive. Most of them were still covered in white snow. The trees were thick upon them… and I had honestly felt that they had been difficult. We had encountered that bridge, which collapsed… and then we ran into that broken road that Vim had helped clear way.

Yet opposing those mountains, across the massive bridge we were walking upon… were mountains that made me feel as if I’d never seen mountains before.

They loomed over us. Dwarfing not just us, but the whole world.

“They’re considered mountain chains. There’s hundreds of peaks and thrice as many summits. There’s even a huge plateau beyond this mountain here, overlooking the inward sea,” Vim said as he noticed where my eyes lingered.

“Plateau?” I asked.

“A large flat mountain. It’s… interesting. You’ll get to see it if we get to head north from Lumen,” Vim said.

I nodded, and looked down again. To my feet.

I was walking on something that had to be far older than me. The stones beneath my feet looked… nothing like any I knew. They were white, even after all this time, and not because they were stained by snow or ice. Each brick beneath my feet were perfectly aligned, and all the same size and shape.

“Did Nebl make this too…?” I asked, completely astounded. How had he done it? How could anyone? The bricks weren’t even that big… most weren’t much bigger than my foot! And…

“Nebl…?” Vim chuckled as he stepped closer to me a little, to let us talk comfortably. The wind wasn’t that strong on the bridge, especially for us, but there was still a constant whistle from it.

“Vim this is impossibly huge. How long is it? It feels longer than entire towns we’ve been to!” I said with a point to the other end. It looked so far away that it was actually blurry, even for my eyes.

“It’s four miles long, give or take,” Vim nodded.

Four miles! A thousand of his paces… four more times…

“Will you be okay if we went to the ledge?” he asked.

“Ledge…?” I glanced over to the rows of giant pillars. Yes. He was right. There was a ledge there. A real one. There looked to be no guard rail or anything to stop someone from just… falling off.

“Here, you should be able to see it even from here,” Vim reached out and gently put his hand on my back. To guide me to the edge.

I wasn’t scared of heights. Yet I still felt an odd flutter in my stomach as we stepped closer and closer. I slowed our pace a little, and noticed Vim gently allow it. He waited for me to feel comfortable enough before we got any closer.

After a few minutes we finally reached the pillars. I glanced upward, and realized they were far bigger than I had thought. Nearly three stories high, based off the buildings I’d been in lately.

I grabbed Vim’s elbow, since his hand lingered on my back, and dared to step between two of the pillars.

There actually was something to stop someone from falling off, but not in a good way. Off the ledge was simply another section. What looked to be another small bridge, running along the edge of this one. Yet that one also had no rails or safety features. Maybe they had made it simply so if someone did fall off, they’d land there instead of falling far into the…

Groaning, I stared down at the bottom of the world.

There were giant trees, and even lakes and rivers in view beneath the bridge. Far beneath us. To the point that everything looked tiny, as if painted. As if not even real.

“See? Lumen,” Vim pointed to a far off corner of the world. I followed his finger and sure enough saw a massive city. It looked like it was sitting right on the ocean, but it also looked like it rolled up the mountainside it was situated against.

From the distance it looked massive beyond measure. “Is it bigger than Telmik?” I asked.

“About that size, give or take. If you look you’ll see dozens of smaller towns and villages all around. There’s one there, and there,” Vim pointed, but I only saw one of them. My eyes hazed over for a moment and I stepped back, away from the pillars.

Vim let me, and stepped back with me.

“Why’s there no safety rail?” I asked.

“Look how massive this bridge is, Renn. If you fell off it’s kind of your fault,” he said with a chuckle.

“Then let’s get back to the center. So it’s not our fault when it happens,” I said sternly.

“Sure…”

Heading back to the center of the bridge, I was thankful that Vim neither teased me… or pulled his arm free of my grip as we did so.

Vim was the protector, so he was used to being… protective… It wasn’t just something he promised to be, and the rules demanded he be… It was also something he did instinctively. Innately. It was a part of him, and always would be. So to him it was nothing but second nature… but that didn’t mean I didn’t appreciate it when he acted so.

“The pillars are for the wind by the way. Without them breaking the wind, this would be almost impossible to traverse safely. But even still, during storms it becomes too dangerous to cross,” Vim explained.

Glancing at the pillars… I realized that was what those rails were on the top of them. They were oddly shaped and coiled around themselves for that reason. They were meant to divert wind.

“Why doesn’t the wind just pass through the middle?” I asked.

“It tries. But wind follows the pressure and temperature. The stones are radiant. They absorb the sunlight. Touch one,” he stopped walking for a moment to let me bend down.

Gently laying my hand on the ground, I smiled at the warmth. “What the heck?” I released Vim’s elbow as I went to touch the stones with both hands. To warm them up.

It was cold up here.

“The stones are layered. The top layer is brick that warms, the middle cools and then the bottom heats again, so ice cannot form underneath to weigh it down,” Vim said as I ran my hands along the bricks.

“I’m surprised no one’s tried to take all these bricks, these are amazing,” I said.

“Oh people have tried. Trust me,” Vim said.

Looking up at him, I wondered what it’d be like to know as much as he did of the world. How much had he seen? How much had he forgotten?

Standing back up, my fingers suddenly felt cold… even though they hadn’t before. I hurriedly buried them into my pockets, but it didn’t help much. The leather I wore was warm on the inside, thanks to a layer of fur, but on the outside and in the pockets it was somehow colder than the general air.

“They should make all bridges with this stuff. Your bridge you broke wouldn’t have done so with these,” I said.

Vim frowned, and shifted a little. “It wasn’t my bridge…” he said.

“You said you and Nebl helped build it?” I asked.

“Well, yes. I had helped. But Nebl was the chief of that crew, and the lord of that region paid for it… I was just there to make sure no one bothered Nebl,” Vim said.

I smiled at him, amused he’d take more offense to it being his bridge than the being told he had been the one to break it.

His pride was odd.

He tapped his foot on the bridge we were on now. “Still standing,” he said proudly.

For the smallest moment the world, in all its amazing beauty, disappeared. And for that moment, only Vim stood in front of me.

He was smirking while staring at the bridge beneath his feet. Staring at it in a very obviously proud way. The kind of proud that only a man who was defending his pride, and doing so majestically, stared.

The moment passed as I took a deep breath and a cold wind blew past. It wasn’t a harsh wind, just cold. It made me shiver.

“Come on. Let’s get across this bridge before nightfall, so you don’t freeze to death,” he said, noticing my shiver.

“I could just lay on the bricks,” I suggested.

“Like them?” Vim asked.

Raising an eyebrow I tried to find what he was talking about… and sure enough, to our left near the pillars… were what looked to be people lying down against the base of the pillars.

There were two of them, and they had lain down near one another. Most likely laying against the pillars to have warmth from multiple angles.

“Although it’s hard to imagine this thing collapsing… I’d still not sleep on it. Ever,” I said as I stared at the two sleeping men. They were curled up near each other, wrapped in odd looking furs. Was it spiky? It looked it.

“Me either. But you can’t blame them for it, Renn. To them it’s been around forever and always will be. Their great-grandfathers traversed it. So did theirs. And along the way their great-grandfathers ancestors forgot to tell them that there used to be dozens of such wonders all over the world, yet are gone now. Collapsed, buried, forgotten,” Vim said softly.

Glancing at Vim, I realized he was once again speaking of a history no one knew about. Or at least, no one but him.

“How did a civilization that could build such things disappear Vim?” I asked him.

“Easily. Overnight. With a whimper,” he said.

I didn’t like how seriously he had said that.

If something could do that to such a powerful peoples…

Then what hope did we have?

Vim and I walked in silence for a good few minutes. And that silence lingered as a large wagon passed us by on the other side of the bridge. It was huge, with wheels bigger than Vim, and stacked with massive barrels. The four barrels within the wagon were so huge, I knew if one laid down on its side it could have been used as a small house.

“What’s in them you think?” I asked Vim.

“Probably fish,” he said.

Fish! Live ones, maybe…

The wagon was guarded by four horsemen. They, and the wagon riders, all stared at us as they passed.

Their looks were odd, but I had been growing used to strange stares lately. Ever since Vim and I had started carrying around our weapons, the whole world had started treating us a little different.

“You think they’d all stare so much if they knew the swords were dull?” I asked Vim after the wagon was far enough away.

Vim chuckled happily, telling me he had thought the same thing. “They’d stare still, for sure! Just in a different way,” he said.

Smiling at his happy smirk, I enjoyed the sound of his amused voice. Usually he spoke so plainly, and calmly. His normal tone was so bland that such emotion from him was rare and valuable.

Looking up to my right, I stared at the tip of the spear on my back. Unlike the sword on my waist, that wasn’t dull at all. The arrow head looking blade at the end of the spear gleamed, and looked menacing.

What most people probably didn’t know was that spear tip could be unfastened. It could be un-tightened off fine threads, and removed.

Vim and I still sometimes sparred. We’d only done it a few times since leaving the smithy, but that had mostly been because of how cold it’s been. He didn’t seem bothered by the cold, but he was kind enough to not force me to endure it.

He still hadn’t allowed me to wield anything other than the sword, yet, however. Even though he let me carry it.

“The church at the crossroads thought I was a mercenary by the way,” I told Vim.

“Well, that is what we look like right now,” he said.

“They asked what band I belonged to,” I said.

“What’d you tell them?” he glanced at me as he asked.

“The Silken Band. The one Lilly’s son is in,” I said.

Vim paused for a moment, causing me to come to a stop too. Uh oh… had I made a mistake?

“That’s actually smart of you. I apologize for not bringing it up before,” Vim said as he thought about it.

“Oh?” I smiled at his uncommon praise. He did give it out sometimes, but it was rare. Rare and precious, since he only gave it out when one really deserved it.

“Hm… from here on out just say you’re in the employ of the Animalia Company,” Vim said.

“Animalia?” I asked.

“Means what it sounds like. Animal. It’s the main company the Society owns. The one we’re headed to in Lumen,” he said.

“Sounds… a little dumb,” I said honestly.

Vim smiled and nodded. “It is! I gave them a bunch of better names, but who am I to judge?”

“Something tells me that was the better option then,” I said with a nod.

Vim’s smile died a little, but not entirely. “Rude.”

Passing an older man, I noticed the staff in his hands. It had a little bell at the top, similar to the one that had hung over the door at the Sleepy Artist. Yet his, even while walking and the wind, didn’t make a sound.

“When shepherds retire here they take out the little thing that makes the bell sound. It’s to imply they no longer will call their herds, or dogs,” Vim said gently.

Glancing at the man who had very obviously noticed what I had focused on… I wondered how he did that. “Do I speak my thoughts aloud sometimes?” I asked.

“Only when you sleep,” he said.

“That’s worse!” I groaned.

Vim actually nodded, as if in complete agreement.

“Really…?” I asked. What had I been saying in my sleep? And why was Vim actually acting as if it had been… bad enough to make him act so?

“Between that and your snoring I sometimes can’t sleep,” he said with a nod.

I sighed and looked away from him. So he was mostly teasing me then.

Though… he’d not tease without a sliver of truth behind it. That was how he teased. It was the way he found humor in his world. He teased and joked, but did so by building it off what either was happening or had happened.

He teased off the truth, not a lie.

“Do I really snore that badly Vim?” I asked.

“Only when you’re tired. Or very happy, for some reason,” he said with a frown.

Great, so I really did!

Yet… “Happy?” I wondered what that meant.

Snoring while tired was obvious. Yet why would I snore loudly when I was happy?

“For your information I only snore when I’m in great and terrible pain,” Vim said.

“Pain?” I stopped thinking about my own snoring and tried to remember if I had ever heard him snore.

“Agonizing pain,” he nodded firmly, sounding and looking completely serious.

“That’s horrible. Why would you even know that?” I asked. I couldn’t think of any time I had heard him snore.

In fact I honestly couldn’t think of any time he had actually been completely asleep near me. A few times he had seemed asleep, yet if I moved or said anything he’d just sit up and start talking. It was as if he never slept at all, or didn’t need to.

Which was odd. By now we’ve been traveling together for…

Well… Winter had come and gone, and although it was still cold up here in the mountains it was definitely spring. We’ve been together for at least three or four months.

Nearly half a year… maybe more, since winter had come earlier for the north where we had met.

Glancing behind us, I realized how far we had come across the bridge. The side we had entered on now looked as distant and small as the one we were headed to.

“Vim you mentioned there had been other things like this? Really?” I asked.

“Many. Not just bridges, but… well, a lot of things,” he said. I noticed he had stopped himself from actually listing them. Was he unwilling to tell me about them, or was he just not in the mood to talk about it?

“Did you break any of them? Like that bridge?” I asked him.

“Huh…? Well… Maybe a couple,” Vim looked away from me, turning his head to look out into the distance.

Staring at him, I realized he had done so on purpose… not because he was examining the world or something that had caught his eye.

Was he embarrassed?

“Did you really?” I asked, smiling wildly as I watched him wave me off with a light gesture.

“Not intentionally,” he said stiffly.

“Will you tell me about them?” I asked, excited.

“No.”

“Then at least tell me if you broke them on purpose or not,” I said, letting his simple and straight answer pass without bothering me.

“Uh… Well…” he finally looked back my way, but only to look in front of us. There was a set of carts and wagons nearing us, so he did have a reason to do that at least.

Vim started walking towards the rightmost section of the bridge, out of the center. To let the carts and wagons eventually pass without bothering us. I stayed next to him, but decided to round him… so he’d be nearest the pillars and ledges and not me.

Walking on his left was… different. I usually didn’t walk on this side. It was even weirder now that I wore a sword at my hip. It was tightly snug on my right hip, which kind of… made me feel a little farther from him. As if it kept him from ever getting close to me, since it was dangerous.

Which was ridiculous. I knew even if the sword had been sharpened to the extreme, Vim wouldn’t have paid it a moment’s thought.

“Three. Maybe four of them were on purpose,” Vim finally said after running through his memories.

I was about to tease him about the very obvious multiple numbers which he was implying he had broken without purpose… but stopped when I noticed my friend’s very sad expression.

Vim and I walked in silence for a good moment, and I suddenly felt a little bad.

I had made him remember something painful, it seemed.

“Four, for sure. Personally I’d say only three, but the reality is I destroyed four. One had been a bridge like this one, actually. To the far south-east. There used to be mountains there, but they’re gone now. It’s a desert now,” Vim spoke lowly, but not angrily. He sounded lost in his thoughts.

For a small moment I tried to think on how Vim would even accomplish destroying a bridge this size. I had joked earlier about it being… easy to break, being so big, but the reality was far from it.

I could only imagine how big the support beams were. And if this bridge was anything like the stuff that Vim and Nebl crafted, it probably had steel beams hidden beneath the white stone too.

It’d take an unexplainable amount of force to bring this bridge down. Something no singular individual should be able to summon.

“I’m sure you had good reason, Vim,” I said to him as the first horseman in the caravan arrived near us.

Surprisingly it was a woman. She carried a flag on her spear, and both her eyes and her horse glanced at us as we passed one another.

A few dozen men and women, some on horses and some not, walked along the row of carts and wagons. Some were small, pulled by a single pony… while the biggest wagon was as big if not bigger than the first one Vim and I had passed earlier. I couldn’t tell any of their cargo contents, though, since they were all wrapped firmly with leather tarps.

While they passed, a few of the guards raised their spears or fists to us. I made sure to return the gesture, since Vim seemed lost in thought still. He was ignoring them completely.

When the very last wagon, and three horsemen accompanying it, passed us by… I studied their little flags once more. They were blue, with what looked to be a weird looking crest embroidered onto them. Maybe a shield or something? It was hard to tell, since they were small flags and were flapping in the wind.

“You’re right though, Renn,” Vim spoke for the first time in a while, once the caravan was gone.

“Hm?” I turned to look at him, and hoped he’d return to the center of the bridge. We had a ways to go still, and I didn’t like that I could hear the roar of the wind from beyond the pillars. It sounded angry, and I wanted nothing to do with that drop.

“There’s very little left anymore. This is one of the last standing wonders, I think,” he said softly.

Wonders. He called it that again.

Wonder. A word to describe something momentous.

This was the size to be called such. Definitely. Yet…

Studying the man walking next to me, I realized he was remembering a world that chances were only he remembered.

What was in his mind right now? These giant structures? The history of them? The moments when he had last seen them, or worse yet destroyed them? Was he thinking of them as they crumbled… by his own hand?

Or was it something far more precious. Maybe it was people. Places.

A home even.

“Could you rebuild them, Vim?” I asked him carefully.

Vim blinked and looked at me. He quickly regained his composure, and I wished for a tiny moment I hadn’t asked a question. I had wanted him to stop looking so… dejected and defeated… yet at the same time, I personally didn’t find anything wrong with a man relishing in his past.

Those moments were precious. Valuable. Lovely. I hoped one day to have as many as him. I could only hope and pray that I’d be able to look back at these moments, like right now, and smile fondly.

Though Vim hadn’t been smiling…

“Not alone. Especially not while the Society needs me, either,” he said.

“I could help?” I offered.

Vim smiled softly at me and shook his head. “Nah… Let someone else build wonders for once,” he said.

“I haven’t built one yet, though?” I said as I smiled at his smile.

“Well… I suppose that’s true. I look forward to what you eventually build then, Renn. If it’s a statue of me, make sure to get my good side,” Vim said as he nodded confidently.

I laughed at his foolish thought. “Which side’s that?” I asked happily.

“Why this side of course? I know you never get to see it, always walking on my right, but it’s lovely when the moonlight hits it just right,” he said as he held his head high, sticking his chin out a little. As if posing for a painting.

“The moonlight,” I snickered. He noticed I usually walked on his right side? Really?

“Only a new moon’s light, by the way,” he added.

Laughing at him, I shook my head. “I’m sure it makes you look lovely!”

“It does! You look best at dusk, and I look best during a new moon. Everyone has their own special moment, you know,” he said with a nod.

I was about to tease him over the very obvious fact that his time resulted in no moonlight at all… but couldn’t do so. Especially since he had said something very interesting. “Dusk?” I asked excitedly.

Vim nodded. “Dusk.”

The many hundreds, if not thousands, of sunsets that I’d watched in my lifetime quickly ran through my mind. I saw all the colors, the glares… those few moments of twilight, where it was dark and light at the same time.

“Dusk…” I tried to imagine what he meant, and failed miserably.

How come dusk? Was he teasing me? Making fun of something? Or was he being genuine? Sometimes he did this. Sometimes he said something without blinking that once I thought over it, I realized he had just said something completely absurd.

Had he just given me a generous compliment?

“Originally I thought the morning light was best, but,” he shrugged. He didn’t seem to even realize how bothered his words were making me.

“Why wasn’t it?” I asked quickly. Maybe his answer would tell me how to actually interpret his words.

“You ignore the sunrises, mostly. Yet usually stare at the setting sun, sometimes happily… sometimes as if you’re upset. Those emotions on your face while the setting sky and night mix makes you stunningly beautiful,” Vim said smoothly.

Not even the cold air up here on this bridge could cool off my face as I stared at him.

“Especially when the rays of setting sun hit your ears and hair just right. It helps too if you’re smiling a little and…” Vim slowly stopped talking, and also came to an abrupt stop as he finally looked at me.

I realized my mouth was wide open, so I promptly shut it and looked away from him. I felt the burning in my ears, my human ones, and for a few very solid loud heartbeats heard the ears on my head ruffle and brush against my hat as they twitched and moved around.

We both stood still, and I was glaring at a certain brick. One that had a very noticeably crack in it… yet for some reason I couldn’t focus on it. I couldn’t tell which way the crack came, or went or if it spread to other bricks… or if it was even a crack at all, and not just a bunch of dirt and…

“Well, you just went and proved me wrong… That’s not fair Renn, I only get one singular moment a month to be good looking and look at you, doing it whenever you want to,” he complained.

Raising my hands, I started to laugh as my eyes watered and a huge smile planted itself on my face. “Okay! Okay! Stop! Please!” I shouted.

“Stop what?” he asked innocently.

Taking a very, very, deep breath… I slowly looked back at him.

Vim was smiling softly at me, staring at me as if I was someone far more precious to him than I really was. His look made my heart thump harder, and suddenly I was far more conscious of how hot my face was.

I nearly jumped back, but instead only went still, when Vim reached out. A gentle, but firm, hand put itself against my cheek.

“You’re as warm as the stones,” he teased as he pulled his hand away.

Reaching up to cup my face, both to hide my embarrassed blush and to see if he was telling the truth… I groaned as I realized I really did feel hot.

“Come on Renn. Even if you no longer need to worry over the cold tonight, I still don’t want to sleep on this bridge. Knowing my luck I’ll break it on accident,” Vim patted my back, ushering me to start walking again.

I joined him as we returned to walking, and with each step I did my best to get myself under control.

Why did his silly little comments affect me so deeply? He’s teased me before. He’s said I was beautiful before. Yet…

Gulping, I stifled a groan.

“If the bridge won’t break even while hearing your honeyed words, I doubt anything can break it,” I said.

Vim chuckled, but didn’t argue. Did he even realize what he had just said? Aloud?

Wait…

Glancing at him between my fingers, I realized his smirk was…

Lowering my hands, I stared at the man who for probably the first time since I knew him… Was smiling normally.

Vim was smiling naturally. Without a care in the world. It looked good on his face. It was more a smirk than a real smile, but it was obvious it was his genuine smile. It fit his face perfectly, as if it had been molded for it.

His face existed for that smile to live upon. The fact it had taken this long for me to see it for the first time…

And it had been because of me.

Which made me smile too.

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