I pull my hood lower trying to cover my green ringlets that often get in my eyes. I needed a hair cut. Down a dark alley, I walk into a mirror, my clothes turning sharp and angular, sparkling with a rainbow sheen you can’t see if you focus directly on. I check my golden pocket watch. Following three o clock I find my exit into a different alley. I step through, my clothes returning to their basic state. I wear moon socks, baggy gray sweats, my cropped stardust hoodie, and of course, the mandatory band around my arm letting the whole tree know my station. Deep burgundy. Like the dried blood of a crime scene. A Slap Stick. Or in other words a nobody with a pen.

I pull out my pad of empty stencil paper and my fountain pen.

I draw my trademark. A mandatory license. Slap Sticks can go wherever, but not without Roots knowing exactly where you are. Still caged. Just in a bigger trap, with no where to call home. An extra puzzle piece that nobody needs.

I finish off my trade. Big thick lettering that spell out

“AWQZTEAR”

It means, son of sorrow. It’s my name in the native tongue of the lost generation. It translates to something like _Benoni_. My parents called me Ben.

My friends just call me Noni.

I pull the stencil from the paper and tuck my pen and pad back into my waist band.

I walk from the alley into a Main Street of Sharp Suger City, or as us sticks call it, the Axis Gate. One of the biggest branches of The Tree, it holds the most nodes intersecting the sub branches. I pass many shops, several, selling themselves. The is no sense of reservation or class. These sugar rots will swindle your every point, until you got no currency left. Leaving you, in more ways then one, pointless.

Most buildings are made out of sugar bricks, but a few of the oldest establishments are still elaborately carved from sugar crystals ranging in color. They are beautiful.

A sugar rot steps into my path. Her breath is sickly sweet. I hate this place.

“Hello there young man! Can I offer you some Cane Shots that will help save you from a premature death? By the sheen of your lovely brown skin I can tell it’s right around the corner. What a shame it would be! Only thirty points. We accept currency from several branches, almost all twenty five!”

I tell her to shove off.

Most everyone worth their own two can see Cane Shots are actually just diluted shots of maple syrup. First off gross, second off, total scam.

I slide pass the jabbering rot and move into the thick of the crowd to avoid being singled out a again. The woman obviously didn’t notice my band, because we sticks are not welcomed in the Axis Gate.

Not welcome, but we survive. I hop on the back of a stem route that was speeding towards The Trunk. Sticks can travel from anywhere, but it’s easier if we are closer to The Trunk of The Tree. It opens up the rest of the branches. Not just the twenty five everyone else can use, but all seven hundred. Most of the general population of the twenty five often get annoyed that Slap Sticks can travel wherever. They’d even tried to limit us in the past. It has never worked because each stick’s slap is different, so they police us instead. What the general public don’t know is that most of the other branches are hostile and dangerous. We’ve made homes in the outer branches because we aren’t allowed in the twenty five after moon dawn. However, we often have to rebuild because the branches snap. Sometimes you can tell in advance, other times, lots of sticks are lost.

As the stem route closes in on a platt ahead, I jump off and coming to a rolling stand. I jog into the shadows of a giant abandoned crystal cathedral. After sneaking in through a side door I walk around in awe taking in the carved scaffolding. I look at the thinned windows depicting the lost generation’s up bringing. Saplings born from fire. Molded from the matter of the great before. Cutting fabric into the first three branches.

I wandered away before painful memories took hold of me. Coming to the pews I sat in one.

Grinning I started down at my trademark. It was time. I hoped he hadn’t slept in. I wanted to go comet racing.

“Branch 32.” I whispered, slapping the sticker down on the pew.

In a flash of dirt, water, and light

I was gone.

I was going to my home, or as close as it gets.

I was going to see Kibou.

BRANCH 32. OFF GILTED BRANCH. ORIGIN:: STAR CENTURY BALANCE/ ENTRY: STICK 22698.

BENONI LAVENTRY

**_six minutes before moon dawn.

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