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Freddie shook his head quickly. “No. I hate those fucking things. As part of our trial to become Warriors, we climbed to the top of the tallest one in Hawkseye. After, we scaled back down the side of it. I am good at climbing, but I’m not doing it by choice.”
I would love to see the view from the top of the tallest building, but I doubted such a thing would ever occur in my lifetime. Adventuring for the sake of fun wasn’t what the life of the Chosen was all about. Besides, it might be downright dangerous if I had a vision while I was on top of something high. I could fall off and die.
But they let me step inside, with Charlie and Oliver next to me. They didn’t seem to mind the building so much as Freddie, their postures relaxed.
“I’ve never been in some place so old,” I admitted.
The boards creaked beneath my feet as I stepped inside. I looked upward and saw cobwebs and dust dancing in sunbeams. While evidence remained, proving a floor once stood above my head, only ruins were left of it. Another ghost of a floor remained above that, but then just sky above us. If there had ever been a roof, it had long since vanished. Walls, towering above us, showed the skeletal shape of what likely once seemed a majestic structure. I shook my head, finding it amazing it stood at all, considering the history which left it unoccupied.
“I don’t see the point in keeping these things around, truthfully.” Charlie sighed. “Knock them down. Put useful things where they once stood. Instead, the spots that still have these buildings are like ghosts.”
Oliver shook his head. “Think of them as memorials. Graveyards, I think they called them.”
Yes, another old word, and I shivered in response. We didn’t have graveyards anymore, or the cemeteries I read about. No one had the space. In areas where life could be sustained comfortably, no safe space remained unused. Anyplace we didn’t live, there was always the risk of monsters. We burned our dead, but I agreed, the building certainly represented a memorial. We could never forget their world, since the people who had lived there ended all at once. Or so the stories said. No one alive would remember anyway, since it happened hundreds upon hundreds of years before any of us were born.
I touched the wall, wanting to feel it, so I could remember the moment longer. I might never get to do something like it again. Frivolous adventures wouldn’t be part of my future. This felt like a one time thing. “What do you think they were like?”
Charles touched the wall next to me and frowned. “Who?”
“What were the people who lived in the time when these buildings were whole like? We never talk about them, except as a story about how things were destroyed. Surely, they were…I don’t know…like something?”
Oliver stared up at the sky. “People are always the same, so they were probably just like us. Some were good people, some were bad people. At the end of the day, they were people going about their lives.”
“They were blind and clueless,” Charlie cut in over Oliver. “But he’s probably right.”
I shook my head. “Who could imagine there would be explosions to end everything?”
“Well, not them obviously.” Charlie stretched his arms over his head, showing off his hard abdominal muscles. Yes, they are all gorgeous men, but that doesn’t matter. I couldn’t let myself fall for them. Every time I turned the corner, they hurt me. It was a consistent dance. Still, they were fun to talk to when their guards were down.
I added, “We’re being so judgy about their explosions. There are things that could come for us that we wouldn’t see coming. There were riders on those winged creatures. You never saw that coming.” I didn’t know why I was so preoccupied with the topic. I just was.
Oliver put his arm around me. “That’s why we have you. You have visions.”
I elbowed him and he laughed. “I almost didn’t see that one coming, and Carissa died. I’m not infallible.”
“You are super strong.” Charlie rocked back on his feet. “Why is that?”
I shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.” I pointed upward. “Would this have been someone’s house?”
Oliver looked around. “I would be surprised if it was. It seems less likely they would use this for sleeping purposes. I mean, why would anyone want to sleep that high up?”
I pointed at him. “You and Freddie don’t like heights.”
“Throw yourself off a building sometime in a test and see how much you like it.”
The sound of a galloping horse caught my attention, and we all looked up as Truett rode into sight. He stopped near Freddie, then the two of them spoke.
Charle grinned. “For the record, I loved throwing myself off that building. I would do it again. Any time.”
“Are you three nuts? Why go inside a building that could come down at any time? Why take our wife into a building that could fall down on her?” Truett stormed toward us on a wave of fury.
I lifted an eyebrow. “If you really think it’s going to come down, could you resist slamming things around to hasten the process while we’re standing inside of it?”
“She makes a point.” Oliver patted Truett on the back. “Don’t bring it down on our heads? I figure, if it can survive all this time, it can survive our wife. Besides, she really wanted to see it. She’s never seen anything old before.”
“Well.” I grinned. “Other than the four of you.”
I no sooner said it with a grin on my face—meaning to tease them—than suddenly I wished I hadn’t said it. I was teasing, but they didn’t know that and…
