Algernon Black

(Chapter 81) Future Promises

Selice woke up the next morning to Beal and Loy in the only kind of fight she had never seen them in. The two were completely silent and she quickly found that the only thing she hated more than their screaming matches was this quite awkward tension. And with their silence she had to take the initiative in thanking the villagers for housing them before they quietly headed to their next destination.

But before they could get too far out of the town they were stopped by a high-pitched voice yelling for them to wait.

The team turned around to see Oira, with her now perfectly braided hair, huffing as she ran as fast as her small legs could carry her. The team waited patiently for her to catch her breathe and when she did she looked straight at Loy.

"I expect you to keep your promise." She said through labored breathes. "You're going to protect the future, right?" She asked in such a powerful determination Loy couldn't deny her.

He nodded his head, taking her as seriously as any man. Selice smiled at her, glad to see the girl with more life to her face and passion in her eyes. And her passion made Beal question his own purpose. He had thought that was to kill Loy, but that didn't seem quite right, not after watching his sworn enemy do more good in a few days than he'd been able to accomplish his entire life.

Beal stared down at his compass and wondered what his teacher would tell him. If it was wrong to hold onto the past when the past was all he had? And as Beal contemplated his teacher he noticed a slight glow creeping out of the closed edges. He thought it was just a stray ray of sunlight filtering in through the leaves, but he felt warmth to it, one he hadn't felt for years. Beal then knew right away what his teacher would have told him. He crossed the distance to Oria and held the watch out to her. It was the size of her entire palm and Oira looked down at the outline of a bird indented in the metal with a questioning look. She opened the compass to see it glowing alive and sparkling with the colors of the night sky. Small round crystals swirled around each other, and the needle stayed pin-straight pointing in one direction.

"When you decide you want to protect the future too, follow that arrow," Beal said, reminiscing for the last time at the working compass. "You'll be able to find the strength you need."

Oira gaped at the magical compass, feeling that indescribable sense of wonderment Beal felt when he first beheld it. She nodded her head.

Loy glanced down at Beal with a smile barely at his lips. He had worried for the boy after last night's outburst, that perhaps he had recced too far in his hate to come out of it, but he could see he was growing. And hopefully in a way that prevented him from making the same mistakes that still haunted him. Loy turned around and with his back turned, waved goodbye to Oira. The rest of the team followed and Selice captured the moment of the front fringes of Oira's hair falling out of her braids being blown back by the wind as proof Loy wasn't as bad a person as maybe the world thought him to be. She looked at Beal and wondered if he realized that too.

Oira still held her hand over her heart as she watched them disappear into the forest and as she looked at Loy's back with the cape that laid across his broad shoulders she thought no one was as well suited to protecting the world than a real prince.

They were already out of sight, when Oira bent down and shouted, "Thank you!" As loud as her small lungs could, even wrapping her hands around her stomach and pressing on her diaphragm like she could force the words out louder and longer.

The entire team stopped. Oria's scream even sent the birds in the trees flying around them.

Selice smiled lightly looking behind in the direction of the village, and when she turned back around Cal was hysterically crying into the open air with his nose sniffing.

"Real men know when to cry." Cal blubbered as his nose dripped down his face. Beal nodded his head in agreement, feeling as if he had just overcome a huge hurdle himself. Even Loy felt the ever so slight tremor of his psychotic heart.

"Come on." Selice drawled, strutting ahead of the trio of emotional men, "You're not going to protect the future by standing there." She turned around to smile at them, which was a rare enough sight from a beautiful woman, and just enough to snap them out of their tears and refill their determination as they carried on.