NINJAGO: The Fray Of Crows

CHAPTER NINE - Amikon Kids

"Harken? Are you still awake?" Skei asked, her voice impish as to not awake the rest of the inmates.

"I don't think sleep is in my vocabulary, brukah," Harken responded as he went to the bars. "What's wrong?"

"I'm bored. Too bored to sleep," Skei admitted, then rolled over on her cot. "Can we talk?"

"We're already talking." Harken remarked.

"But... what are we talking about?" Skei asked.

Harken laughed quietly, then he struck a match against the cell wall and used it to light the lantern sitting on a small ledge inside the rocky walls.

"What about... ah! I got it."

I used to live as a tailor, sewing clothes for the rich Reatanians while I scrambled for every penny and dime that they let fall to the ground. It was just me, my brother, and our dog, Kinley. She was the thing that brought the most joy to our lives, even on the nights when we couldn't get our hands on dinner.

We lived in a village inside of our city with other people that were like us. Those were people that either couldn't keep their jobs, ended up in debt that was too much for them to afford, or just those that didn't have what society needed.

Us? Me and my brother were orphans. We used to live in an orphanage, but, with my tailoring skills and sour words from the other orphans, I decided that we would run away from the place to find a better life. So when the night came, I brought out a long rope of fabric that I had been stitching together for a month, woke up my brother, and we escaped the orphanage with little trouble.

After that was when we found Kinley, digging in a trash can for someone's discarded meal. Daeseth ended up chasing her, and that's how we found our village.

The people there called it Amikon, which, in Reatanian slang, meant Home for the Less. Amikon was paradise to us, the people there did their best to make sure that we had food and a safe, dry place to sleep each night. Needless to say, they became our family when we didn't have one, and we loved it.

As I got older, I managed to become a tailor and one day, when I was heading back to Amikon from work, I stopped by the library.

The lady that worked there actually knew me pretty well, since I would come in every weekend and ask if she had anything that didn't require a library card. Usually, she had to give me books that were old and falling apart, but this time, she actually gave me a hardcover that had recently shipped in. This thing was like gold to me, the nicest thing I've had in a long time.

I thanked her, then I ran back to Amikon for me and Daeseth to read it. We both loved that book, it was a daring tale about pirates on the open seas, magical wizards and witches, even powerful animals that could help the pirates and scourcers out when they needed it. It even had fancy drawings that looked real! That was the book that started it all, I'd say.

It was what gave me the idea to save the money I worked for, and to search around the city and in the junkyard for scrap I could use to make our very own ship. I made promises to Daeseth that we'd be just like the pirates one day, and I remember the goofball saying;

"Aren't the pirates the bad guys?"

I laughed, then I told him. "They're only bad because they have to be."

The day came when I had finished our ship, and we were ready to set sail, so we packed up our belongings, said goodbye to our Amikon family, then casted our ship onto the open sea. Just me, Daeseth, and Kinley.

We decided to try and find the fabled city of Stiix that had been written about in our favorite book, and to our amazement, it actually existed! It was there that we found the very scroll that brought us here to the Islands of Allure.