Master of None by N. Lee Wood Page B

baths tended to want to also strip the hair from areas of his body young Namasi had found so fascinating.
    He had thought about her since then, and once believed he’d spotted her on the streets. But when the woman had turned around, her ivy green sati over a wine-colored mati, he was both relieved and disappointed to see it was someone else. The woman had stared at him, and touched her companion on the arm, nodding her head in his direction. Embarrassed, he’d pretended to be unaware of their scrutiny, and had walked by with the end of his sati drawn up over his head to shadow his face.
    Although he was lonely, he was rarely alone. Everything about Vanar life tended to be conducted in the company of others. The Vanar men spent a good deal of their waking hours in the shelter’s community baths, more, he suspected, out of boredom than an obsession with personal hygiene. Nathan’s flash sink doubled as a toilet, but for anything more than a simple piss in the night, he had to use the community baths on the ground floor.
    He found the baths a necessity, but didn’t enjoy the curious stares or the silence that fell whenever he walked in, the empty circle that formed around him as people backed away in distrust. Whenever he disrobed and fed his clothing into the bath’s cleaner, standing naked and impatient for it to reemerge, he endured the open examination of men marveling at his freckled pale skin, the whispers and indiscreet pointing at the blond hair at his groin, the glint of gold curling across his chest. Only their obvious fear kept him from being physically touched.
    He finally learned to use the baths at night, by silent agreement with the other residents. Alone, he exercised nude in the shelter’s gymnasium and swam to exhaustion in the long, shallow pools, his muscles slack from long disuse in prison. As his body hardened, he felt his mood improve, his spirit reviving. He had survived growing up in Westcastle. He could survive Vanar. Eventually, just as he had West-castle, he would escape Vanar as well. He would never give up hope.
    Although he was still treated with wary distrust, he was often stopped in the streets, usually by a Vanar woman either scolding or curious. His halting apologies and incomprehension usually discouraged any lengthy conversation. He learned which areas to avoid, not for fear of crime, but because naekulam were discouraged from invading areas reserved for more privileged classes, particularly women from the Nine Families.
    Curiously, one place that was not off limits to him, or any Vanar regardless of family, sex, or rank, was the Assembly of Families, the heart of Vanar justice. The Assembly was the largest building in the city.
    A long, undulating staircase led up to the columned porch of the semicircular building, and an assortment of Vanar citizens usually could be found scattered across the steps, a colorful spectrum of sati. Anyone could petition to be heard by the Assembly, even the white-robed naekulam generally huddled protectively at the far end of the shadowed colonnade, with expressions of either hope or dejection as they waited for their hearing.
    He spent several weeks sitting on the floor in the men’s public balcony watching the proceedings on the multiple layers below, not understanding a damned thing, but entranced by the mystery. It became the highlight of his day, hours spent enjoying the choreographed chaos, the multitude of discussions flowing around him like atonal music. Here was the key, he knew, to the soul of Vanar. He knew there was some kind of pattern, just outside his comprehension. The gestures and faces were curiously relaxed, like a family reunion of a thousand contentious relatives, everyone at ease with the familiarity and the arguments.
    He watched as an elderly naekulam gestured eloquently with his hands as he talked to two Vanar women, serious expressions on their young faces. Whatever point the old man had to make, it convinced the women to lead