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Part 20 of Alexander’s Accounts/La Tramuntana, continuing from

It’s a very strange feeling to be back on the same planet you came from. Very few humans ever get to feel it, most of them spending their whole life on Earth. It’s a weird mix of ecstasy and anxiety.

Outside the car was nothing but rolling plains shrouded in night.

I read the relevant paragraphs for Barcelona in my guidebook.

Step into Catalunya and find the door with 17 vents between the 1 and 3, right branch. Knock and state the result of playing the pinku move shouted out. The man inside will respond with the name of a street and you must confirm by stating the city it’s from. Open the door and you will be able to oblade your peccunes.

Only those steeped in werewolvian culture could have any hope of understanding it — I barely could!

I turned to read about the tags, to see if familiarity would help:

A tag is a useful piece of kit for measuring adherence to certain topics. Letting something slip will always be allowed — we aren’t murderers, but one must always deny it was true and deny that their life is at stake if they were not to state such denials. Tags respond to transponders in the same way disease responds to medicine. Transponder frequencies are not easy to replicate. Tags are also transponders and allow some leniency to allow clandestine conversation.

Enlightening.

---

I arrived at some street in Lleida: the width not more than a parked car mounting the pavement, left in the dark under a broken light. I looked around, stretched my legs, and tried to find my way towards some semblance of civilisation. Anything — a bus or train station, a hotel, even — would be great.

Barely a noise could be heard except the distant rumble of cars, chatter from some TV behind a window, and a pole-transformer buzzing. The smell of asphalt and house entered my nostrils as I walked. It’s not too different from a werewolvian city, except yellower and more car-friendly. I looked in my pocket; I had what amounts to useless wads of plastic film.

A lamp and its nearby bench, lit in the brightest part of the sodium bulb, invited me to sit and check the book. Currency exchange — what do I do?

The dropoff street for the Zaragoza service contains one house with a blue door. The man there is old and does not have much money left. Prefer buying over selling peccunes.

I scanned up and down the street and spotted the blue beacon ahead, a moth bouncing against its flickering lamp.

I knock on the door. “Sí?” emits from a wiry voice inside.

Shit, they speak Spanish. “I’m from the werewolf world”, I say, the needle in my thigh vibrating in warning. I hope he speaks English.

Silence, as I look onto his dry and grey lips, broken by an “Ah… come in.”

I open the door into the warm house. It smelt a little like a church combined with old person blanket scent. Standing in front of me was a gentleman with tendons running like taut strings across his skin, bones protruding like cables from his neck over a skinny, fatless frame.

He overpowered me like a werewolf in height, yet being entirely human. “You want… change currency?”

I nodded, showing him my banknotes. He frowned and shook his head. “I no more euros have”, he said. “I have dollar.”

“That’s fine”, I said. “Do you have $200?”

He nodded solemnly. “But be careful for he may have been counterfeited.”

“Not sure”, I said. “What about $30, for a bus to Barcelona and some metro tickets?”

He nodded again. “Yes, just give me the… ¤40? I forget these rates.”

Unprofessional, not knowing rates, I didn’t know if it was a good deal, but I didn’t care. I handed over the money and got three tired $10 notes. I’d exchange them at a proper place later.

The man looked out the window. “It is pass midnight — you do better if you sleep here and go away morning.”

I agreed, but still, best to be polite. “No, no, I’m fine.”

“You are, but you will not be”, he said. “Come, sleep in the guestroom, we are have good book.”

Unprofessional, bedding short-term clients. I shrugged. It’d be nice to try new things, I guess.

The guestroom was a throwback to Ancient Roman design. Books lined shelves just after the door, varying in colour from antique red to antique yellow.

I didn’t have dinner. I don’t trust this stranger.

“Sirens” and “vassals” seemed to be common themes among the books. I open one. It seems each time and place has its own paper smell, from the synthetic textbooks of the UK to the ancient manuscripts I once handled. This was unique.

I have a lot of money. It’s not in euros.

The books are their own thrill; could some arcane magic fall out like a dusty bookmark? Could I accidentally summon something I shouldn’t? Stumble across forbidden knowledge?

The bus ride. It’ll be so boring in the desert.

The books look so disparate in time, from hundred-year old tomes to modern 60s books on the bookshelves. “Qûesht la’âjx idome espagne was one.”Qûesht la’âjx idome bretagne" was the other.

Phrasebooks. I need them to get by! I should buy some!

Looking at these books made me tired. I decides to go to bed.

---

The sound of bells woke me up. Not townbells but meditation bells, pagan bells, magic bells. The old man was ringing around the house, approaching my bedroom. He said a good morning to me. A morning good I responded to him as I sat up. Wait, “morning good”…?

The vibes here are nice though, I decided. “These books… what are they?”

For a second, the man stood and the ringing stopped. “They’re irrelevant now but they interesting. Go try, they won’t you bite!”

He left to continue ringing, and I didn’t have enough motivation to stop him and ask him — what?!

Morning wood. I miss Artemis already, but I somehow also don’t care. I’ve got books to look at. Books.

The book I found was heavier in scent, slightly more seafaring but sweet, with crimson notes of a blooded history stashed in the background.

The text itself, to my dismay, was all purple prose, difficult to understand, technical, vague. Unprofessional, confusing customers.

Wait — it’s the same obfuscation techniques as I saw in the guidebook!

The thought became unentertaining very quickly, though. The phrasebooks weren’t too good either. They had such constructions as “Lên tzhe qûzho lan rodeau stûè kaza la idome bretagne” which I didn’t even know how to pronounce. I could read back, though: “good morning” was “bonnê zur-ge” and “I’d like (zhi-shetè)” was “wo tèzh”.

I gave up and moved on. My brain is not equipped for crazy languages today.

The old man told me the directions to the central Lleida bus station, this place near the river. I said my byes and left. Lleida is a nice place, historic too. Cars are a hazard I must get used to again.

I walk to a currency exchange near the centre of town with my pitiful $30. What language should I use? English would paint me as an uneducated foreigner. Would Latin? I thought and realised that Latin would, too,. but in a more refined way. “Potesne hoc $30 in euro convertere?”

The clerk stared blank-faced at me. “Do I look Italian to you? I speak English, you know…?”

Their accent, surprisingly, was on point. A clean and crisp American accent. “Can you turn this $30 into euros?”, I asked.

The clerk nodded. “That’ll be €25.52.”

I gave over the $30 and got my wad of cash and coins. Should I use the ATM? I don’t trust the fees. No, I won’t.

I walked to the bus station directly and met the clerk, electing to instead use Spanish.

“Una boleta a Barcelona Nord”, I said, having seen the two stops the company had in the city. “Junto ahora”, I said.

I pronounced it wrong, I think. J is a wildcard letter and I used it like a y. H is another wildcard and I pronounced it English. All these languages and their takes on the script…

She nodded, saying something in Spanish I didn’t understand. I went blank-faced, forced a smile, and handed over my two banknotes. She took them and gave me back a few coins; €1.50.

My bus was the 12:30. With it being 10:13, I had time to kill, so I chose to explore the city.

There was a cathedral and castle nearby. I decided to walk there, following the line of the river. The chilly post-winter air is still trying to grab bites of my flesh, from which my coat protects.

The cathedral was in ruins, so I instead looked for cheap views on the hill about it.

Fields of green surrounded a city of orange points and slants, broken by the occasional white flatblock. Hills plugged the horizon with a natural skyline, anchoring myself to this world.

What a beautiful place, a city dead centre of plain desert. A strange sense of home; is this where the human evolved to live? With other humans in a place they could get everything, the great outdoors only a walkaway, is this the place?

I stare at its beauty. Humans weren’t made to live in conglomerate cities. Modern life isn’t well adapted to small villages. Is the answer the small city? Is the answer the city that kept us urbanites happy for most of human history? Is the answer Roman street design?

---

Standing in the street, the bus having arrived at Barcelona Nord and having had moved on.

Oh the street, what filth! So pitifully crowded! Buses ran this way and that, police patrolled, and oh-so-many humans scrambled. Unshowered bodies and pompous pretentious people of business walked all the same — what horror!

Barcelona isn’t. No werewolves to break the homogeneous flow of people. Too many cars. Too much noise.

I speedwalk out of here, walking straight to quieter streets. A baseball game, running, loud, too many people to track.

A biblioteca. A place for me to run into and hide. I do just that.

Books, after all, are the greatest hideout. Computers, after all, are great for doing stuff. Libraries, after all, are host to both.

I need to find the way to the currency exchange. I reread the extract and looked at a Xarxa de metro, and looking between the lines 1 and 3, I found the Catalunya station.

That’s where I’d go next.

Down into the metro then, follow the signs.

Arc de Triomf metro station. I went to the first ticket machine I saw. Switch to English, so I’m not lost.

I selected for a simple ticket and put in the fare, nicely lower than €3.

I walked through the station and found my way to the platform, the one towards Belltvitge. The train arrived with its great big ruminating bass noise and into the packed car I went, where I’m not used to this kind of movement, the sardine cans rocking and turning through the tunnels.

Out, at Catalunya, among a real crowd. To decode the book’s words is to realise where you need be; crossing the platform to get to the eastbound side, following a junction and reaching a vent. I knock, to no answer. The door has 17 ventholes, though.

“Hi…? I have peccunes!”, I poked.

A gruff yet distant voice from the inside. “pon and menpon?”

“Mp”, I said. “menpon pon”

The voice wasn’t satisfied. “And add menpon and pon?”

“50% all around”, I recalled.

“And carretera de fepentrio?”

“North city, obviously.”

“There you go!”

The door was opened by this raggedy bloke and I walked, turning a few corners and going. “Up here!”, shouted a voice from above. I saw a hatch in the ceiling and a rope ladder. I climbed it.

It had that public transportation scent with a few notes of body odour, the noisy passageways outside barely a murmur after so many tunnels.

A cosy amber light, a messy bed backing an electric hot plate and a minifridge defined the room; a messy counter and vegetable juices dripping next to a 90s microwave.

It was a pokey space. It was warm and endearing.

And inside stood a werewolf, silver, beaming. “So, you come to the official peccune currency exchange! Welcome to my house!”

The vibes were cool, I noticed. Warm and shining, cool and relaxed. “Ok, so I have about ¤560, ¤220 went into the taxi ticket, and ¤40 went into dollars into euros into transport here…”

“That’s ¤300!”, said the man, already having jabbed stuff into his calculator. “Do you want to convert it? It’s about €230!”

“Yeah”, I said. “Can you card it?”

“Glad you asked! Peccune buyers are so hard to come by here!”

I gave him the card, and he accepted without even asking.

“How do you live here?”, I asked, to strike up some conversation.

“Pretty simple, I have the hombres de lobo group take care of most of it, and the south pays me a nice paycheck for exerting control here!”, said the man. “And you’re from the werewolf world?”, he asked.

“Well, I’ve been living there since before covid, so yeah”, I said.

“Gosh, I miss y’all so much… the humans here just don’t understand what it’s like to have a village in nowhere.”, he said. “I’d do that here but some hunter’d kill me, probably.”

“How grim”, I said.

“Well, I have a lot more than you think here - past the electrical shit there’s a series of tunnels past the metro system and you can get to so many places!”

“Woah”, I said.

“And hey, you don’t even need to take walks, you can just sit back and let the hombres de lobo give you stuff!”

“How nice”, I said.

“You know what? You’re welcome to spend nights at my place! It’s quite cosy!”

I consider. It’s cheaper than a hostel and probably even better. I decide to be daring. “Can we share the bed?”

“I’d spoon you if you’re into it!”, he reassured. “And if you’re not… then, yeah, I can probably get the air mattress out and sleep you there!”

Nice. Artemis once said that he doesn’t mind what I get up to whilst we’re apart. We’re quite apart here!

So, certainly, sleeping with the werewolf would be cooler than a hostel. Hotter in the right ways, too, I guess.

“Let’s establish a password!”, he jorted. “How about you say the name of a metro line and I give a english-translated station on the one two lines above?”

I nodded.

“So, let’s practice! Name any line!”

“Line… four”, I said.

“Province!”, he jorted.

“Nice”, I said. “Do you know where I can wholesale laptops?”

“No!”, he said. “But ask one of my hombres down there, in the tunnel. Ask for Charlo, he speaks English!”

I descended the rope ladder and called out quietly for Charlo.

From another panel, this time in the wall, a face came out, rough, unshaven. “Hola?”

“I want to buy laptops in bulk”, I said.

“Otra ve- again?”, he asked.

“I-want-to-buy lap-tops in bulk”, I said. “Like, a big bunch-of-them.”

He nodded. “Ah, there’s a place I know on the street, follow me.”, pulling himself outside the panel, straightening up and strutting ahead.

I followed through candle-dim tunnels, some not lit at all, walking through puddles and up and down stairs, dangerously near some metro tracks, across said tracks, up some more stairs, past a door, through a service hallway, under some wires, and up onto these alleyways, right into the gridded streets of Eixample, and some curves and turns. The white-signed shop, a desk inside.

“What’s this?”, I asked.

“It’s a good wholesaler”, he said. “You can get anything crazy cheap.”

Barcelona is a big city. A small one at that, but it always throws a good hallmark at you.

So, I went in, rang the bell. The clerk came, Charlo translating. “I want to buy a bunch of laptops.”

Charlo translated. “Pay now or later?”

“I’d like an invoice”

Charlo translated. “Ok, look in the catalouge and pick what you want.”

I looked in the menu. There were plenty types, from weak stubby chromebooks to powerhouse gaming computers to no-name computers promising they’d work. I found something, with specifications I thought would work with the most people. I pointed at it.

Charlo translated. “How many of it?”

“As many that fit in €750”, I dared.

Charlo translated. “That’s 10.”

€75, quite cheap I’d also need network infrastructure, I realised. Charlo told me not to worry, that “radio waves is always better”. But still, that’s infrastructure.

“Some data towers”, I dared to ask. “And servers.”

Charlo translated. “Same thing, choose from the catalogue.”

I looked at my options. I picked the cheapest mobile transmitter and server modules. Wait - would this work together?

“Fuck it, scratch everything, I’ll just mass-order phones and get someone else to handle the tech. Get me the address and I’ll send a mail.” Wait - how does cross-realm mail work? There are the warehouses, right? I’ll ask Artemis. Or Biblia.

Charlo translated. “Just pick one from this page.”

I nodded and used my fingers to trace my thinking. Something cheap but smart enough to capture the immigrant human market. A Chinese brand, I decided - would China be able to debt-trap the Southern Government? I dare to think that they’d dare. I’ll send them a mail.

Charlo translated. “You can get 20 for €750.”

Talk about a deal!

Charlo translated. “Pay €75 now as a deposit and tell us the address.”

The address was written on the back of a hair border card, so I showed Charlo, at the same time taking out the payment card and paying the requested €75 to the clerk.

I smiled, realising the transaction was taking place, and we were about to get the monopoly began. “Tell them that they should write…” I looked at my card “Alx-43-A on the bottom line of the address to help sorting.”

Charlo translated. “It’s done.”

I didn’t know what else to do, so I followed Charlo back through the tunnels and into metro guy’s place. I knocked. “Line 3!”

“Oh, that’s hard! Wait, no, parallel!”

“Correct!”, I assumed.

The rope ladder was thrown down for me. Touching the wall, I felt a slight rumble - turns out the ground is carrying the train’s rumbles!

“How did it go?”, he asked, sitting opposite me, our legs within touching distance.

“Quite well actually, but I don’t know what else to do”

He sat too. “Name’s Tom”, he blurted. “Try the big library, it’s always a nice place to go widen your horizons!”

“Not sure… any tourist places?”

“I’m not the one to ask”, he shrugged, moving his foot to rest against my calf.

“Yeah”, I said.

I looked up at the ceiling. The raw metal had become a little rust-red. “So, how did you get here?”

“Well, the south was looking for ‘disposable people’ to put into a currency exchange point between themselves and the government, so I volunteered. I thought it’d be 3 years until I could come back home. It’s been 10.”

“Wait, seriously?!”, I asked, genuine.

“Yeah, they were supposed to send someone to recover me from my office but nobody came. I had to move to this shed here.”

“Damn”, I said, shaking my head. I leaned forward to rest my had on his leg, gently stroking the thick hair. “That’s horrible.”

“It’s ok now, I found some people who were in a worse situation, put them together again, so I guess it really was just fate”, he said.

“You know how I came to the werewolf world?”, I asked.

“Go on”, he said.

“I got into a car crash after a day in the colonialism branch of the museum, and woke up in hospital, saw a guy stealing goods and asked what’s up.”

A look of familiarity. “And he abducted you, threatened death?”

Am I not the only one? “Yeah, but I like werewolves a lot, so it was what I wanted anyways.”

“Seriously? Naw, thanks”, he said. He scooted over to sit next to me and lay a hairy hand on my thigh, squeezing it gently. “I’m not sure that I want to go back any more.”

I reflected, squeezing his. “And I’m not sure that I want to stay on earth.”

He smiled gently and pulled me into a shoulder-hug. “Well, I guess we share that.”

I leant back, feeling the muscle of his arm cushion me. “And my werewolf boyfriend found these two guys out when the gang were killing humans, so brought them back.”

“So, you’re here to…? Start a business?”

“Yeah, trying to monopolise and get representation.”

“Oh, good”, he said, drawing me closer.

I looked onto his muzzle, his nose. “I like you”, I realised.

He smiled even more. “Yeah, you’re cool.”

“I was considering a hostel but now…”

“You’re more than welcome… I should be thanking you for coming here.”

I smiled at that. Here, it’s cosy and warm, being pulled into the hair of my new werewolf friend. I’d hate to go back to fighting the south, but I can’t imagine abandoning my people.

No, for now I’ll focus on the now. On Tom and maybe Charlo. The rumble of that train, the noises behind many walls, the buzzing of the light.

All I need for now is Tom.

Stay tuned for part 21, in which we shift to the chaos

---

Some notes:

• I think the UK is based in having banknotes which are of plastic film. Euro notes are too easy to rip. ¤ is thusly plastic film.

• New character direction just dropped - Alexander is a paper smell connosieour and is very snobby

• I’ve actually been to the exact space Alexander has been several times. Estació Nord has a bunch of litter and pickpockets, but there’s a nice library near it where i read about stuff in Catalan and Spanish. Reverse culture shock is no joke!

• Language nerd things: the phrasebooks are written in a language reminiscient of contemporary romance languags, but fucked up.

• My time in france is influencing my conlang orthographic norms. Don’t worry, this language is mostly rule-sound phoneme based, gn is always ñ. But i am going for a bit of a classic aesthetic here.

• Oh and also if you’re ever at Estació de Nord, go to the park at the bottom of the station near the exit of the metro station, and sit on the building elements behind the benches. If you’ve found the right place, you can feel the metro trains vibrating your ass a little as they run past. It’s fun because it’s cheeky, in two ways.

• I’ll leave shipping Tom and Alexander to fanfiction. One sex scene is how much is planned to be provided in this story.