Altered Destiny

Ch. 12

Ah, Animation vs Minecraft. Fun, (mostly) lighthearted, entertaining, way more epic than you'd ever expect stick figures to be... and currently my biggest distraction from writing aside from my actual job. Those stickmen make me happy.

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"It was my friends' birthday yesterday."

Ingressus sat in a clearing in a stand of bushes, talking to gravestones. "The ones I told you about, Luciren and Volerik. They just turned sixteen. We had a party for them last night- me, their mom, a few of their friends."

Ingressus shifted in the grass. "I wasn't sure how it would go; whether their friends would want me to be there. I didn't want it to be uncomfortable for the twins- it was their celebration, they shouldn't have to deal with the tension that might've been there. But it seemed to be okay. We all had fun, even the other Ardoni kids."

He laughed quietly. "You should've seen the paint bomb Luciren had, Sorays. It looked a little like a firework, but there was just a little bit of gunpowder and a whole lot of powdered dye inside. It turned their entire yard rainbow colors when it went off. You'd have loved it. There's still a bit of purple on my arm." Ingressus glanced at the purplish smear blooming over his skin. "Kittrian wasn't happy. She didn't even know Luciren had it. Luciren wouldn't give any names, but I think she got it from Leah. It's the kind of thing she'd do."

Ingressus pulled his knees to his chest, gazing up at the sky above the bushes. "Those three- Kittrian, Luciren, Volerik- they're my best friends here. And not just because they tolerate me. I actually like them. Volerik loves to know things- how volcanoes work, the Songs, the history of the world. I got him a book on the stars for his birthday, and he wants to go out and learn the constellations together. Did you know they've been using spyglasses to study the moon? I do now. And Luciren- she'd have loved your stories, Raiden, Gyarus. She's full of energy all the time, always running around and looking for adventures. But the minute you start telling her a story or give her a good book, it's like nothing else exists for her. Kittrian's the kindest person I know, but Songs help you if she finds out you've been mistreating someone. Luciren found a bird with a broken wing outside their cave, and she and Kittrian splinted its wing and took care of it until it could fly again. When Kittrian found out that Selarin had thrown a rock at it, I could hear her telling him off from the next island over. It was very satisfying."

He looked around at the stones ringing the hidden clearing. He'd made each one of them, finding the flat stones one by one, tracing out and then carving the markings of everyone in his camp, and then buying several jars of red paint to fill the stones in with color. Dominus's gravestone lay at the head of the clearing, with Lyrinia's beside it. Ingressus's mother had been killed in an avalanche several years before the raid, but he couldn't bear the thought of his parents being separated in death.

"I wish you could've met them," he said. "But at the same time, I'm so glad they were never in the mountains. They don't have to be afraid here, they can just... live. I don't know if they'd still be... themselves... if they'd had to live our life. If they'd grown up looking over their shoulders all the time. I never want that for them."

Ingressus fell silent, sitting there among the painted stones. The leaves rustled in the breeze around him, and a pair of birds chirped somewhere nearby. Outside the bushes, the Ataraxians were starting their day. Cart wheels squeaked, voices greeted each other indistinctly, and the smell of someone cooking breakfast wafted from somewhere. But Ingressus's mind was far distant.

"I keep thinking I should be doing something," he admitted. "You gave me Voltar, dad. You trusted me to lead the clan after you. But instead I'm just... here. Living among our enemies. Even without Voltar, I want to help our clan, but I don't know what I could do. I want to end this, end the raids, end our people's suffering. But I have no idea how to make that happen."