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Turning back to Nova with a bright smile, I gesture behind me. “I can find one here, of course.”
Her eyes widen, and her jaw drops. “You’re kidding.”
But we both know that I am not.
3
ZY
Irub my jaw, which is still throbbing. It is the epitome of how terribly my night has gone – though this shift was really no different than all the others this week. Or month.
“Fucking belligerent degenerates,” I mutter under my breath, and then I wince as I hear my mother’s voice in my head.
Moved to the city and now you talk like them, too, huh?
Half an island away and I can still feel her judgment for moving to the capital city. The city guard position here was a huge promotion for me, but leaving my little village brought so much anger that I didn’t expect from my parents. I haven’t heard from any of my family in the few years I’ve been in Karona. But that’s fine. I can fend for myself, and being here in the city is what’s best.
But it would be even better if I could get off the fucking night shift.
I didn’t know it at the time I took it, but that shift is essentially to haze the new people. Sunset to sunrise, the shift stays busy, but not with the kind of situations I thought I would be handling as a member of the guard. It’s almost always brawls outside of bars, and more often than not, I head home with a headache and a few bruises.
All minotaur are trained to fight, unfortunately for me, and being the sober one in the mix is rarely an advantage.
Tonight, the two I found in the city’s square were sailors, fighting over a woman who had been bouncing between them both. Many men on the guard think that fighting the ones that come out of the arena are brutal, but sailors are my least favorite. They’re too unpredictable. Just look at my jaw.
“Done for the night?” My head pops up when Aasimar falls into step beside me. I hadn’t even heard him come up.
He is on the day shift – the promotion that I am after – and I know that if I just keep my head down and keep working hard that I will get there. He did a few years on the night guard, too, and he’s told me that I’m on the right path. I’ve also heard rumors that my name has come up for the next round of promotions.
“Aye.” I rise up to my full height next to him, trying not to appear too worn out. In my line of work, image is everything. “It was a rough one. What about you? I rarely see you out so late.”
He chuckles and lifts a bag in his hand. “The wife was craving some vrinuts. They only sell them at a little stand down on the corner at night.” He chuckles. “The things I do for that woman.”
I smile, though it is forced. It’s not because I don’t want to hear about his family. Aasimar often talks about his mate and son, and I know they have another on the way. He’s thrilled, as he should be, but it also strikes longing in me.
I don’t regret leaving my village. I want to make a name for myself, to build up my own life so I can have my own family. But I’m still working on the foundation and it gets a little lonely at times…even more so when another minotaur is talking about his pregnant wife.
“It’s the only reason she puts up with you,” I tease, and he laughs.
“You might be right, so I better hurry home. I’ll see you around.”
I nod, and he slips down a side road away from me. My eyes linger on him for a while, until he is out of view, wondering what it must be like to have someone to go home to.
Most minotaurs spend their nights out in the city, and that is what I am used to seeing. The drunks, the ones fucking in alleys, the wreckless fighters. But the family men are at home, away from the debauchery of the city’s center, and that’s what I want too.
My house is empty, though, and that’s probably why I keep wandering the streets late at night. There is no reason for me to be out here. It’s only asking for trouble. But I don’t think I can take another night sitting at home and pondering my life.
Not that walking the backroads of the city while doing it is much better.
Maybe it’s time I find something more to do. I rarely go out with the other guards and definitely never by myself. I’ve been too focused on my career, ever since I was a little boy.
Laughter comes from the house on my right, and for a moment, I pause, turning to see a happy family through the lit window. A father lifts his child in the air, his son laughing as his wife smiles lovingly at them both.
I remember when I was just a child and things were that simple. I looked up to my father, and I wanted to be big and strong like him. But the city guards would come once a month – for a tithe that I didn’t know about at the time – and I would admire them.
I wanted to be like them, not a farmer in a small village, but a guard in the capital city. It was a dream I held on to for years, practicing my fighting and working odd jobs as a guard in the smaller villages until I was finally able to throw my name in for the next city guard recruits.
And when I got it…my mother stopped looking at me with such an expression of love on her face. I guess that’s what happens when kids grow up with their own aspirations. They start disappointing their parents.
