Chapter Text
“Fuck, fuck, damn it, fuck!”
Raya furiously scrunched up the page from her calendar into a tight ball and pegged it at the bin under her workbench, missing it entirely. The commissions she thought she still had days left to complete were, in fact, due today. Two ‘easy’ jobs very quickly became impossibly difficult – unless she did nothing else for the next twenty-four hours, including sleep. She had only been in Sandrock for two months and she was already screwing things up. Her mother’s arch voice rang in her head.
“Soraya, honey, we told you this would all be too much for you.”
Being immigrants, and war refugees to boot, her mother and father had needed to work harder than their neighbours just to eke out a basic living. Raya respected hard work; she hadn’t graduated top of her class in the Builder’s Academy just because of natural talent.
But what she couldn’t swallow was the guilt that came along with it. It had been forced down her throat since she could crawl how grateful she should be. “People like us had nothing,” her father would repeat every mealtime. “We were chased from our homes, beaten, our families torn from us. When the Red Sash took people, they didn’t come back. You are lucky, Rayray.” Blah, blah, blah… The Seesai Civil War had ended decades ago. But her parents still refused to return, even to show their only daughter off to her few remaining relatives. Raya had never felt the inclination to go by herself.
Her parents’ bitterness hung over everything she did, like they were waiting for her to fail. Nothing she did was ever good enough. It didn’t matter to them that she was singled out as different by everyone around her. That she had no friends for most of her childhood. She had to be strong. She had to be grateful. They were especially insufferable when she had decided to move out on her own, to start anew in a place where she wasn’t the ‘Seesaian couple’s daughter’. The Eufaula had seemed like another world away, the perfect place for a fresh start.
With a determined glare, she grabbed her axe and satchel and jogged towards the Shonash Canyon, keeping to the mesa side of the train tracks. She could do this.
She hadn’t made it past the Oasis when the loud screeching of brakes and shattering of glass cut through the otherwise quiet morning. It should have startled her. But all her tired brain could manage was, ‘What now?’
She heard gasps and the shuffling of feet behind her as half the town came running out to see what the commotion was. Raya didn’t have time for distractions, especially not whole-town-rubber-necking level distractions. So she picked up her pace and continued on her way.
As she trudged past her workshop a few hours later, hands stinging from cactus thorn stabs, she was lost in thought, trying to remember where the hell (she was almost convinced she actually lived there) she could find a sisal tree. Yan stepped in front of her, catching her off guard.
“Ah hah! Wandering around aimlessly, Builder?”
“Actually, no I…”
“That is so you! Great news, I’ve got something you can do right here!”
“Yan, I can’t…”
“You see, Logan has struck again! More specifically, he’s struck this here train window, and well, the train can’t run without all its windows. And if the train can’t run, then I – uh, we, can’t get any important shipments sent in from other cities. No shipments means no gols! So, yeah, you know the drill. Guess who needs to fix it?
“Uh, you?”
“Ha ha ha! They never told me you were funny, Newbie! And don't take too long! I've got a reputation to maintain..”
Raya sat down heavily on the station steps and thumped her head against her knees. She groaned loud enough to disturb a thorny jumper sleeping under a nearby cactus.
Why today, Logan? For Light’s sake could you not have done this tomorrow!
She took a deep breath, forced a smile, and got up to greet the anxious looking station master.
The harsh midday sun bit into Raya’s forehead as she plastered glue onto the outside wall of the Commission Guild building. She tried to shelter her face with her arm, but she was pretty sure it was already too late – she was going to be red as an applecherry by the time evening fell. Spring hadn’t properly arrived yet in Sandrock but it was already hotter than a summer day in Highwind. Her body really wasn’t designed for living in the desert. Her pale skin blistered at the slightest kiss from the sun and she had deep cracks in her fingertips from too much sand and too little moisture. It made keeping up with the unceasing stream of commissions painful and frustrating. After her first week in town she had drawn up diagrams for a sturdier pair of work gloves and a wide brimmed leather hat, but the design called for gathering a lot of hard to come by materials and a tool upgrade, none of which she had the time or money for right now.
On days like today, when she felt like she couldn’t take any more of this sun-bleached town, she wondered why she had ever left the comfort of home in the first place. Highwind was green and cool, and a gentle breeze blew in from the ocean every afternoon, the slight scent of salt and seaweed wafting through the air. Back home, she had friends and time to spend with them, when she hadn’t been roped into working extra shifts at her family’s restaurant, anyway. There were parks and theatres to while away her spare time, and there were… her parents. It never did take much reminiscing to remember why she’d left.
All she wanted to do today was get this stupid job done, then she could slink away back to the ruins where it was cool, shady and free of people pestering her. But it was her own fault. She had made the mistake of tossing a friendly wave to the hulking Church Enforcer, the mere sight of whom made her behave like a teenager. She’d catch herself twirling her hair and giggling whenever he called her “Skinny Arms”. She tried her best not to stare openly as he patrolled the town perimeter, his perfectly cut form twitching and flexing with every step, but she knew she was being obvious. Yesterday he’d winked at her as he passed by her gate on his way back into town, a giant grin splitting her face before she had a chance to cover it. It was pathetic, but she was weak for his bulging biceps and outrageous flirting. Enough to get her to agree to anything he asked, apparently, including sticking these Light-awful posters all over town.
Half-heartedly she slapped the wanted poster up onto the wall, cringing inwardly as she tried to smooth out the wrinkles with her hand. The ‘wanted man’ stared out at her judgingly from underneath his ridiculous hat.
“You know what, yakboy? This is actually all your fault,” she cried, smacking her palm angrily across the face of the scowling bandit. The Civil Corps had decided he’d become enough of a problem they no longer cared whether he was breathing or not. And quite frankly, right now, she didn’t really care either. Raya had never met the man, yet he had managed to add so much more work to her already overflowing plate. And for what?
Stepping up to the piercing blue eyes and glaring brows that she was sure was artistic license – no one looked like that – she leaned in close with mock intimidation.
“What kind of idiot goes to all the trouble of planning a train heist, holding people at gunpoint, but doesn’t actually steal anything?” she asked. She quirked an eyebrow at him as she waited for an answer. After a few seconds, she rolled her eyes and let out an exasperated huff as she lugged the bucket of glue up to the next spot on the list.