Gilded Ashes-Chapter 327: Not Just Flowers

"What do you mean?"

The words came out before Raizen decided to say them. The casual tone he’d been maintaining - the determined-but-patient interrogator - was gone. Replaced by something raw.

The lizard didn’t respond.

"Hey." Raizen crouched. Brought his face closer to the toilet seat, closer to the small black shape curled against the warm stone. "What do you mean, "be careful"? What’s wrong with the flowers?"

The lizard’s tail shifted. The membrane along its fin caught the lantern light and made it flicker across the stone wall. One eye opened - barely. A sliver of pale gold beneath a heavy lid.

"They’re not just flowers" it said.

"They are flowers. I watched them get made. Someone grew them with-"

"Someone grew the shape with Eon. Yes. That’s how it’s supposed to work, dummy." The eye opened a fraction wider. The pupil was round, soft, unfocused. "The shape is a flower. What’s inside isn’t."

Raizen’s jaw tightened. "What’s inside?"

The lizard’s mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. The pattern of something trying to retrieve a memory that kept moving.

"They hold things" it said finally. "Things that were put there. Things that stay." The eye closed.

"What’s that supposed to mean!?"

"Dunno."

Raizen felt the lotuses in his right pocket - the two of them, sealed in resin, pressed together in the fabric. He’d been carrying them since this morning. Since Enya’s grandfather had handed them over. Since Enya had grinned and said "you’ll pay me later."

He opened his mouth to ask another question - what kind of things, who put them there, what do they hear - and a fist hit the bathroom door.

Three knocks. Hard and impatient.

A voice - deep, gruff, speaking in an Ukaian accent that Raizen didn’t understand fully but whose tone translated perfectly: hurry up in there.

The lizard’s head disappeared beneath its tail. Conversation over, non-negotiable.

Raizen stared at the curled shape for two more seconds. Then he scooped it up - gently this time, cupping it in both hands the way he’d held it when it first appeared. The lizard didn’t protest. Didn’t call him a bogglecrank or whatever weird words it had stored in that little brain. It just settled into his palms, warm, small and suddenly very quiet, and let itself be placed back into the left chest pocket.

It curled up against his heart. Same position as before. Same warmth.

But Raizen’s hand lingered on the right pocket. On the lotuses.

He unlocked the door.

The man waiting outside was enormous. Broad enough to fill the hallway, arms folded, face arranged in the universal expression of someone who’d been waiting too long for a toilet. Raizen slipped past him without eye contact and navigated back through the casino toward the table.

The food had arrived.

Three bowls sat on the low table - wide, shallow, carved from dark wood. Inside each one: strips of smoked vegetables laid over a bed of dark greens, the greens glistening with something oily. Thin slices of pickled root vegetable curled at the edges. A scattering of crushed seeds on top. Steam rose from the plate - faint, delicate, carrying a smell that hit Raizen’s empty stomach like a physical force.

Kenzo was already eating. Not eating, exactly... more like inhaling the food. His chopsticks moved so fast, his plate was a third empty after only a few seconds.

Atman ate differently. Slower. Each bite considered, savoured, evaluated. He chewed with his eyes half-closed, the expression of someone experiencing something they’d experienced many times before and still finding new things to appreciate.

Saffi had barely started. She held her chopsticks precisely - too precisely, looking like she just learned how to hold them. She took small bites, chewed thoroughly. But Raizen caught it - the slight widening of her eyes after the first taste. The pause. The second bite coming a bit faster than the first.

It was good. Whatever it was, she liked it very much.

Raizen sat, picked up his chopsticks and took a bite.

The greens were rich and smoky - dense with flavor, the kind that filled the back of the mouth. The pickled roots added crunch and something sour that made the whole combination work in a way he wouldn’t have predicted.

He ate slowly, but his mind was somewhere else.

They hold things. The black lotuses hold things.

His eyes were on the table, on the food, on the bowl - but his attention was silently on the right pocket. On the two small, resin-sealed flowers.

Enya had made those flowers with her Eon. And now he learned that... That’s how they’re supposed to be made? Enya - with her bright grin, her vine-covered entrance, her grandfather’s shop and her box full of dozens more. She’d pulled them from nothing, shaped them with her Eon, and given them to him like they were gifts. Like they were just flowers.

"Maybe she just doesn’t know, and they got a flower order?" Raizen thought.

He tried not to give it too much attention, and focus on the food.

"You’re quiet" Kenzo observed.

Raizen looked up. Kenzo’s bowl was nearly empty. His chopsticks rested across the rim.

"Oh, I’m just a bit tired" Raizen said. Which was true. Just not the whole truth.

Kenzo accepted it with a nod. "You should be. What happened on that platform -" He paused. Chose his words. "- wasn’t quite normal, Raizen. I don’t know what it was, but it wasn’t a standard manifestation. It’s totally alright, you don’t need to worry-"

"I figured." Raizen cut him off.

The casino’s sounds wrapped around them - cards slapping wood, dice clattering, the roulette wheel turning. A man at the next table won something and celebrated by slamming both fists on the surface, rattling every bowl within three meters.

The lizard shifted in his pocket.

A small movement. The kind Raizen was starting to recognize - the creature adjusting, waking slightly, lifting its head to observe before settling back down. He felt the tiny feet press against the fabric. Felt the head rise above the pocket’s edge.

The lizard was looking at Saffi.

Raizen glanced down. Caught the pale gold eyes peering over the pocket’s lip, fixed on the girl across the table. Saffi was mid-bite - chopsticks raised, attention on her food, unaware of being watched by something the size of a thumb.

The lizard studied her. The wide pupils moved - tracking her hands, her face, her posture. The same searching look it had given Raizen on his chin. Evaluating. Measuring.

Then it spoke.

A whisper. So quiet that Raizen had to tilt his head to catch it - the words barely more than vibrations against his chest.

"... And something, I didn’t tell you, that one isn’t broken" the lizard murmured.

"She’s just looking for something she’ll never find in a book."

After a few seconds of silence, the reptile added:

"...but something about her concerns me"