**“Someday you might” she retorted. “But I will ask you for nothing. You are not forced to do anything for me…”***

“Thanks” Bara replied.


By sundown, Bara was wearing the second pair of shoes she had ever worn. Before she put them on, she scrubbed her feet hard, almost painfully. She removed all calluses and trimmed her toenails. She put on mint foot balm and wrapped them on a thin cotton cloth. Once her feet were enveloped in sturdy leather, she felt much taller, much stronger and more comfortable, like suddenly she could do anything she wanted to and no one could stop her. 

When Nolan saw her shoes he raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. The four of them: Nolan, his wife, her child and Bara, had dinner together in the kitchen. The kid’s name was Filk, and he was a charm. His hair was spiked and blond and his eyes were always fixed on something that moved, changing every now and then between different interesting objects. Nolan and Rina, that was the woman’s name, were civil enough to each other. They spoke very little and only of practical matters. Bara ate again to her heart’s content. The Wag alarm still cried in the distance every fifteen minutes. 

Filk finished eating his dessert and excused himself from the table, which was quite unnatural for such a young kid. Then Rina spoke suddenly. “Have you decided if you will abort the baby yet?”

Nolan froze with his spoon in midair. 

“I’ve decided to keep him” Bara answered. 

“Smart girl” Rina enjoyed her dessert and her husband’s shock with equal glee. “Are you moving to the islands with us?”

“I don’t know”

“You could work for me… For us, I mean. Maybe be our chamberlain for the main house. What do you think, dear?”

Nolan didn’t bother answering. He stood from the table, leaving his dessert unfinished.

“He thinks I’m rude” Rina added. “It’s a serious proposition, by the way. Think about it. We are leaving as soon as the Wags disappear”.         
  
Bara found Nolan lying on his bed by the window, reading yesterday’s newspaper. 

“You got angry” Bara said, half smiling, from the doorway. Nolan looked at her with an angry face. 

“She always does this” he said through gritted teeth, changing the page with difficulty. “Everytime I meet someone I like she absorbs them… And then she spends so much time with them until there is nothing to like about them anymore, nothing to be discovered, nothing to be learned… It has always been so” He sighed and got up, then pressed a button on the pad on the wall. “Why didn’t you say you were pregnant?”

“I didn’t know”

“You obviously knew, because you told her” 

“I did know but I didn’t. The guards in the entrance told me”

“Do you know who the father is?”

Bara shook her head. A servant appeared with a large bottle of something pink and left as soon as he put it on the table.

“I guess it doesn’t matter, really. I’m sure I have fathered one or two children in my life, but the mothers never care to tell me”. He took a long, long gulp of the pink liquid. “Do you want a boy or a girl?”

“I don’t care” she answered, but felt an icy chill inside her stomach. Did she care? “Can I shower?”

“Sure, go ahead”

Bara dipped herself in warm water and spent over two hours looking at her belly, trying to figure out the shape and position of the cell developing rapidly and incessantly inside of her. She didn’t really care about the baby’s sex or appearance. She didn’t have bouts of mental images of sweet and fun things to do with a small extension of her being once it came out of her body. All she felt was a light, a poignant shine spread from within her outwards. Bara felt great with this new light emanating from her. In fact, she felt so good that she even decided to sleep with Nolan, whom she had grown fond of, but by the time she came out of the shower, he had passed out on the floor. She covered him with a duvet and lied herself on the bed, next to the window, warmly wrapped in a bathrobe. She sensed at some point in the night that Nolan touched her and said words inviting her to fulfil her promise, but she never woke up completely, and he quickly gave up. The event remained in her memory like a vague, formless erotic dream.

Morning came, then noon, then the early afternoon, and by the way things happened inside the apartment you could not tell one day from the other. So by the time the sun tinged the dessert red Bara had already made up her mind: she had packed a few edibles along with her water bottle, filled to the brim, and some foot cream she snuck out of the bathroom. Regardless of the Wag alarm, she climbed out of the window when everyone in the house was still deep into their afternoon naps, and landed on the street. 

Bara made a point to store this image in her mind. She would’ve made a painting if she had known how. The pebbled streets were covered with a thick bed of reddish black feathers, while the air around her was heavy with clouds of golden desert dust, dancing with the breeze under the dying sun. She didn’t know where she was going, or whether she’d make it out of the city alive. She hadn’t asked herself those questions. The road she had fallen into led straight to the main gate. Some Wags silently circled the tallest buildings. As she walked forward, more worried about the guards than about the birds, she came across a very large male. It was pecking into the bloody remains of some unrecognizable street animal. Bara stood still and waited, so did the Wag. Then Bara ventured a sideways step, towards the exit: so did the Wag. Its red eye remained focused on her. Then she ventured a step forward: so did the Wag, stepping over the bloody mess with its dirty talons. Bara’s heart leaped, and the Wag ruffled its feathers. 

She didn’t know that people were watching intently from the windows, including Nonal and his wife, not so far away they couldn’t enjoy the show. For many, it was the first time to see a Wag in real life. For everyone, it was an unprecedented event to watch a person mount the deadly beast.

Bara clung onto the dusty feathers and watched the earth become smaller. Her Wag joined the others in their circling flight, and soon before the sun had disappeared completely, they had left Foraignville behind, cowering among piles and piles of sand.