The Upside Down Tale of a Warrior

Chapter 5

"B319, B318, ah here it is, B17," I murmured to myself. I sweep the tent flap back with a small flourish and step inside.
    There were two other people inside of the tent not including Renald or me. I send a curious glance at Renald and he rushes to explain.
    "I thought I would invite my only other friends in the army. Eliza, meet Simon and Leonardo." Even though he caught me by surprise I was glad that I now knew three people here. Even if Simon looked like he wanted to congratulate me and burn me alive at the same time. At least Leonardo looks friendly, I say to myself.
    "Nice to meet you guys," I say with a small smile on my face. Leonardo is the first to get up and shake my hand.
    "Likewise Eliza. You can call me Leo, I understand Leonardo can be a bit of a mouthful." I smile at him as he gives me a I-want-to-be-your-friend handshake. Simon stands-a bit reluctantly- and shakes my hand too. Except his handshake was more of a I-would-kill-you-if-you-weren't-useful type of handshake.
    "I heard you took down Jameson and he didn't even land a punch on you," he says in greeting. I nod my head yes, not really wanting to brag about it. Simon looks surprised by this. It also looks like I just won a tiny bit of his respect. Renald looks at us all like he is a proud parent then ushers us all over to the small fire in the middle of the tent. His tent looks exactly the same as mine except for the fact that he had armor on his wooden armor stand.
    After I was done examining the tent I finally took time to notice the wonderful smell that wafted through the tent. Chicken, bread, and a small hint of cheese. The smell of baked bread brought up painful memories of my mom's cooking that I had to push away. Though it was like trying to push a semi-truck away.
    "You alright there Eliza, we lost you for a moment," Leo's worried voice broke me from my trance and I shook myself.
    "Yeah I am alright Leo. Are you though, you like you are foaming at the mouth and ready to fight us all off for this dinner." That earned a couple of chuckles from everyone and Leo launched into a story about the time he was so hungry he actually did fight off the people in his scouting troop just to get a bit more food. I started laughing when he threw arm movements in there, along with extremely funny faces.
    Dinner came and went quickly and we spent our time around the small campfire trading stories. I had to alter mine a lot to keep them from knowing I was from a completely different time period. I even told them about a time I had wrestled with alligators to supposedly "prove my love to my Egyptian girlfriend" apparently dating an Egyptian was highly applaudable around here. Apparently they were, "Extremely hard to impress and usually the most stubborn people you will ever meet," according to Simon, who looked impressed with me by the end of the night. I was glad that I had won him over somewhat, he was still a bit suspicious of me. I don't really blame him though, they had never seen me around before and suddenly I just became uninvisible and beat the second best fist-fighter in the army.
    "Where are your parents now?" Simon asks me and the smile immediately drops off of my face. I had just finished telling them how my dad had trained me for years-which wasn't actually a lie- when Simon asked me a very touchy question.
    "They died. I decided to enlist to carry out my fathers legacy and distract myself from the pain," I said with no emotions showing on my face. I sounded so cold about it you would swear I was a piece of ice reciting basic information.
    Instead of showing pity Renald says, "I lost my mom before I could even walk."
Continuing that Leo says, "I lost my dad to war."
Simon looks at the ground and says gruffly, "My mom died after having me and my dad died at war."
I looked around at them and didn't show an ounce of pity.Not out of coldness but because no one wanted to be looked at in pity after being looked at like that their entire lives. I felt some sort of bond around that campfire that night, some sort of indescribable connection now connected us, irrevocably and unchangeably. I was meant to find these people.
    "Well I say we turn in for the night," Leo declares.
    "I agree, who knows when we will be attacked and need our energy," Simon says while getting to his feet. I stand up too and yawn. Not realizing how tired I was until right then.
    "Goodnight then," I say while turning and heading out of the tent. I stop and stare at the sky. It was completely dark out and you could see billions of stars in the sky. I stared in awe because you would never be able to see this many stars in the 21st century. There were too many artificial lights all of the time. Out here there were zero lights and every single star could be seen. A sense of calm washed over me as I stared at the sky and the stars stared at me.