Chapter 8: Rooftops & Basketball
"Quintessence. What does ’quintessence’ even mean...?"
I turned to the back of the book, hoping for a glossary entry that made more sense. Like earlier, I was disappointed. If anything, the carefully worded paragraphs of text, that seemed to dance across the page, made the subject harder to understand, not easier.
I sighed and put the book down next to me and stared up at the sky. At least it wouldn’t throw around technical jargon around like fried rice.
The sun was high in the blue sky and the clouds were massive. I’ve always liked cloud watching and could do it for hours, though the real reason I was here was to test out the charm you’d made. It was a small thing, just a little piece of wood, about the size of a clothes tag, and tied onto the end of my tail with a bit of string. If it worked, you said you’d make a better tie with some leather scraps. Personally, I was alright with the bit of string. It made me look like a toy in a shop.
You didn’t laugh when I said that, but I could see the amusement in your eyes.
There was a shout in Chinese, and I came back to the present to find something round flying fast toward at me. Lucky for me, my reaction time is pretty good, and I caught the basketball firmly between my hands. There was a patter of feet and a few kids ran up to me.
I was on the roof of the Walled City, or rather, on one of the roofs, one with a makeshift basketball court painted on it. With it just being kids playing around here, even if the charm failed to hide my tail, it wouldn’t cause too much of a fuss. At least that’s what I hoped.
"Here you go," I said, shooting the ball to the nearest kid, though perhaps I should say he was a teenager.
"Thanks!" he said to me in English as he caught it. He started to head back to his friends then stopped. "Want to play with us?"
I looked at the group. There were three of them, two boys and a girl. One boy and the girl had similar looking school uniforms on while the third, the one I’d thrown the ball to, had a different one. It was lunch hour, a good time to be playing ball, an idea shared by new fewer than a dozen other kids who were all playing various games across the roofs.
"Alright," I said, jumping up.