Lavender Snow

Voices of the Past

"I was eight when I was taken from my home."

Techno stared holes into the carpet, playing with a fidget toy. The voices were quiet with a melancholy reverence, listening along with his family to his words. The sunshine outside didn't match the somber mood that lay heavy on the room.

"Enderians live on floating islands. They aren't as connected with bridges as the Essempí. The Elytrians explore around the End to find the islands and conquer the cities. This is how they find Enderians to bring to the Essempí.

I don't remember a lot about my home. Just fuzzy flashes of playing with my sisters and being held by my mother. My earliest memory other than those glimpses is being taken from my city to be transported to the Essempí. I—"

"Why don't you remember?" Wilbur interrupted.

Techno shrugged. "I don't know. Probably the emperor's fault, if I had to guess. Dude messes with your mind. Anyways, I remember being in a cage with two other kids, flying to the Essempí on a boat. Th—"

"A cage?!" Phil gasped, getting halfway off the couch.

"Yes, a cage," Techno said, placing a hand on Phil's knee and forcing him back down. "It was a long ride, they weren't going to tie us up and give us chafed wrists."

"That doesn't— that's not any better!" Phil spluttered. "You can't just—"

"Dadza, you can't just interrupt me at every horrible event that happened in my absolutely tragic backstory," Techno said flatly.

Phil sighed and bent over his knees in defeat. He flapped a hand in Techno's direction. "Alright, continue."

"Thanks. So during the ride to the Essempí, I chatted with the other two kids, and we quickly became friends. The one dude, Halo, was scared half to death, all pale and shaking, but the other kid and I kept planning unrealistic escape plans. We thought we'd be heroes or somethin' and free everyone. We were. . . young and dumb. I teased the scared kid a lot, with the other kid, Skeppy. That, at least, made him defensive instead of scared. We were mostly just joking, though, and changing the subject proved to smooth everything over.

As it turned out, Halo and Skeppy were friends from an orphanage camp in the city. Skeppy wasn't afraid because in his mind, as long as he had Halo with him, everything would be okay.

As the days progressed, we became more and more anxious and uncomfortable with our circumstances. The cages weren't big enough to allow us to stand or lay down, and our legs were sore and stiff. Halo was especially distressed, and after a few days he stopped talking and would just stare at the front of the ship, unresponsive to our whispers.

Finally Skeppy and I decided to cheer him up with a power contest. I went first, makin' a hole in the top of the cage with my finger. Then Skeppy grew these crystals, straight from his palm. He gave one to Halo, and that, finally, snapped him out of his trance.

Halo looked back at us, and he had this— this look in his eyes, I can't describe it exactly. It was like he was gazing at something far away. And Skeppy said— Skeppy told him, 'Halo, use your powers, give us a prophecy," and it was like a switch had been flipped in his mind.

Halo took the crystal and just— stabbed it into his wrist. And then he took a paper out from his robe and wrote on it with his own blood, weird symbols and scratches, nothin' intelligible. I wanted to stop him so we could fix up his wrist. Skeppy insisted that we couldn't interrupt a prophecy, but I could tell he was worried, too.

As soon as Halo was done writing, he took the paper and slipped it into an envelope. His powers went crazy then, purple smoke streamin' from his cut wrist and flowing around the envelope. And then he collapsed on Skeppy, envelope dropping onto my lap.