The Jaya Chronicles

Gray Skies | AU

The young man's feet kept leading him forward, one after the other. Exhaustion covered his body, alluring him to throw the backpack on his back down without a care and just lie down on the muddy and wet ground.

The sun was already setting. He knew that it would take less than an hour before it would no longer light up his way for him.

There were trees all around him, making it hard for him to see anything but the brown trunks and dark green leaves and bushes that were aggressively getting attacked by fierce water droplets and the strong, cold wind.

The rain pouring down wasn't any help.

He sighed. He wanted to pull out his paper map to see where he was, but he couldn't when it was raining as aggressively as it was in that moment. It could damage the only way home he had, and he couldn't risk that.

It was a bummer that he had forgotten his umbrella at his friend's house.

It was also a bummer that his friend's house was in Ignacia when his own home was located in the Sea of Sands. Nonetheless, he needed to get home.

He had spent the past two days at his friend's house to work on a History project for school. Since the distance between the two homes was too much, both sets of parents had agreed to let him sleep over at his friend's.

But now he was on his way back home when a thunderstorm caught up on him and brought some heavy rain, too.

It was too late to walk back to his friend's, but his house was also still too far away, too.

You would think that he could find shelter under a big tree, but he was too scared of any animals jumping on him at his most vulnerable state.

On top of that, he was hungry and thirsty. Granted, he could take out the water bottle he had in his bag and drink out its contents, yet he decided to ration his water when he remembered that he also had to walk through a freaking desert. And he did not have any food on his person.

His parents, although very fascinated by technology, refused to use cellphones for a reason that he was not understanding.

"Some things deserve to stay in their own generation, son," his father had once said.

Still didn't make sense for him, though.

And it was also no use to think harder about it when his phone was out of battery already. He had a charger in his backpack, yet he had no place to use an outlet for the charging of his cell phone.

A sound of relief left his mouth as he seemed to near the end of the small forest he had been walking through for the past ten minutes.

When his feet landed on concrete, he let out small, tired sound of happiness. As he looked up at the scenery in front of him, he found a lot of greenery and a small shop of some sorts.

He thought about continuing to go so that he would arrive at home sooner, but he was really craving to rest his feet as well. Besides, it was raining like crazy.

The young man walked over to the small shop, and once he was standing right in front of it, he was quite happy that it had not closed yet. When he looked up, he could read the name, even if he had to squint his eyes due to the raindrops smacking against his face.

"Four Weapons," his voice rang quietly amongst the heavy rain covering most of the sounds around him.

Taking a peek inside, his eyes did, in fact, land on a variety on weapons. Without much hesitation, he walked inside and sighed out in relief when he stopped feeling raindrops pouring down on his frame.