Contrasts

There are two kinds of people in this world.

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André Gaspar loved the new people. They were fun to hang out with! They had cool things that Agama didn't have just yet, like smartphones. He'd always wanted a smartphone, but he knew he'd never be able to afford one, since they hadn't had the time in Agama to make them affordable in any measure. Especially to somebody like himself, and not on the money he made at auntie Micaela's. And they had things like smart watches and wireless earbuds and... wow! 

There was even talk of them bringing some fancy new shop to Agama. One with robots and lights! Wow, wow! That sounded amazing! André couldn't wait - he wanted to go to that so bad! The new people were so fun!

They even liked to go to the same places he liked, too! Such as the new nightclub that had sprung up somewher in the Lunar Quarter. He knew he wouldn't remember the name of it - he always drank just enough to excise the name of any place he went to out of his memory. He'd dressed nice for it - his best space-themed tank top and shorts, nails done up, hair styled. And he was amongst a bunch of the new people, talking about utter bullshit and laughing because they were all at that stage of drunk where everything was hilarious.

It all depended, of course, on how you approached them. And André had worked that down to a science. He did everything possible to play the part of the excitable local who wanted to show people the sights - the right tone of voice, acting like he knew where anything was, advice on where to eat and so on. And it worked, every time. The amount of new friends he'd make in any given week would fill up a notebook - in fact, it had. Only a few really stuck around to become permenant drinking buddies or the like, but it was more than enough!

And they didn't judge him for how he was dressed, either. That made a nice change, considering that Agama was still very conservative, in some ways. A lot of places didn't really hold with how he chose to look, and he'd been barred from about three of them now. But the new people didn't seem to care about that - that was another thing he liked. They didn't even make a single remark about it. It honestly made him wonder how many people like him were outside of Agama and how often people saw them.

He wished that Valério - grande irmão - thought the same way. He didn't like the new people at all, André knew. But trying to talk to him about it in any way was... difficult.

Then he felt a hand on his thigh. He didn't remember what was said, or what he responded. But he definitely remembered being lead towards the men's toilets, under a ceiling that sparkled like the galaxies he loved to read about.

Oh, yes. André Gaspar really loved the new people.

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Érico Castello did not love the new people. They were loud, noisy and inconsiderate. So he was currently trying to escape from them in the local library.

He'd read everythng in the library twice over, he already knew. But the act of reading mattered to him far more than whatever it was he was actually reading, so it made no difference. He'd failed to find a quiet corner - the only empty seats were near the window. So he was now nose-deep in a well-worn copy of Memorias Posthumas de Braz Cubas, trying to pretend that the street outside wasn't being occupied by tourists who were somehow already drunk before ten o'clock at night.

Books mattered a lot to Érico. They weren't just bits of paper held together with glue. They were important - they were records of past eras, monuments to attitudes and thoughts and societies long since gone. They were moments of time frozen in print, voices and fears and hopes of generations reaching out from the pages in which they were contained. They revealed so much about how the people of the past thought, what they wanted from humanity, what they hoped to achieve and worried about-

There was a loud hurrah as somebody fell over and spilt their drink. Érico rolled his eyes and flipped the page.

That was something the new people didn't seem to understand. They were flush with gadgets that let them do almost everything at once and put so much stock into each and every one. They held too much value in shiny plastic and LCD screens for his liking. A book, to them, was boring. A useless lump you'd use to hold open the door or just throw in the trash. They didn't see fantasy or history or anything of importance in these things. They saw 'old', and in their minds 'old' couldn't order them pizza and play music while watching the soccer matches, so it had no value. 'Old' had no place in the foreigner's world.

And that meant they didn't respect those who saw value in them. Especially if the singing of some inspid sports chant, fading but audible, was any indication

So no, Érico didn't like the new people. But...

He turned another page, making not a rustle.

He didn't hate them. It was only ignorance, after all, that made them so rude and loud and clueless about Agama's history and customs. People didn't all come here to learn the history of the place - not everyone, he understood, cared as much about historical preservation as he did. Some of them wanted to get drunk and party and other things besides, and while that was annoying when one was trying to sleep at half one in the morning, they were withing their rights to do so. They didn't have to bend over backwards to accomodate him. He couldn't bring himself to hate them, even if he wanted to.

Not like Valério.

Although he couldn't bring himself to show it... Valério worried him. The brunet was always an angry person, and he directed it at everyone and everything that looked at him funny. He seemed to thrive off being angry for little to no reason, and most of the time it could be ignored or brushed off. But Érico was starting to notice a very ugly change in him, a slow and cold deterioration.

He stifled a small cough, and immediately felt eyes on him. The dragon in the back of his mind hissed reaproachfully.

Valério had found something new to stoke his ugliest side. And that something was everyone not from Agama. As in, literally everyone.

Angry as he coud get, he had usually been approachable. You could hold conversation with him and go out and do things with him. But that had been fading fast wth the new wave of tourists and the arrival of the Kobbers. The smile on his face at work was more forced than ever. He spent much of his time in his room with his punching bags - he'd broken far too many to count by now. He didn't make any effort to go out and socialize. He'd make comments on how poorly the neighbourhood had changed and, despite tia Micaela's efforts, had started using the word gringo the same way most people used a comma. 

Érico wished he couldn't blame him, not with the upbringing he'd had - if even one fraction of what he'd been told was true, it was truly awful. But he knew the tourists didn't deserve any of Valério's hateful sideeye, or any of what he'd offhandedly muttered under his breath when he thought nobody was paying attention. It seemed as though the other boy was just looking for an excuse to be angry. Poking and poking like a woodpecker on a beehive, trying desperately to provoke some sort of reaction.

And what if the reaction he got was...?

He looked outside, and saw the drunken crowd was gone. Thank goodness.

At least he wasn't André. That idiota could be lured into anything if you flashed a smartphone in his face. And why was he so obsessed with space and rockets when he couldn't even add two plus two? Stupid, stupid man. It didn't just drive one up the wall, it made you do several laps around the ceiling for good measure.

But between his lack of brain and Valério looking to cause trouble... it was a miracle Érico Castello hadn't gone mad by now.

Small blessings, said the voice of the dragon in the back of his mind.

He decided he was done reading, and stood up to return his book.

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There are two kinds of people in this world.

And then there were the three little birds whom, once the crowd they were watching had gone out of eyesight, took off from the roof adjacent to the library and fluttered away.

We shall hear more about them later.