Sequoia

Chapter 3

    As the sky grew darker, it was time for dinner, and I finally got the courage to ask Felix something I've been wanting to ask for a while now.

    "Hey Felix, can I ask you something?" I asked, walking up to him as he rotated a salmon on a stick over a fire. Aurelia was out with a jar of fireflies to find some lemons as we didn't have any left.

    "Sure, ask away," He said, turning to face me. The fire illuminated his face, making shadows dance across his sharp features.

    "Why haven't you gone back to the Warlock King? There have been so many opportunities for you to escape, so, why haven't you?" I questioned.

    His face became thoughtful, and it took him a few seconds before replying. "Well for starters, sometimes I do think about going back. But, I like it here. I feel like I have more freedom and less stress. And, to be honest, I never really wanted to be a warrior in the first place." He shrugged, a look of discomfort on his face.

    "Wait, if you never wanted to be a warrior in the first place, then how did you end up becoming one?" I asked, furrowing my eyebrows together in confusion.

    "It's a long story..." he said hesitantly, looking at the fire like it held the secrets of the universe within its blazing embers.

    "We have a while before Aurelia comes back, but if you don't want to share then you don't have to, I'm not forcing you or anything." I shrugged, hugging my knees against my chest.

    There was a moment of silence, and then Felix spoke, his voice quiet. 

    "I used to live in the middle of a field of wildflowers, with my parents and older brother. Life was peaceful, our little haven was far away from the Warlock King's clutches." Felix said, his eyes lost in the memory. "I used to enjoy running through the colorful flowers with my brother, Finn. Our parents never worried about us going too deep into the forest since my family comes from a long generation of great fighters, assassins, spies, etc. Which meant that our parents started training us to fight at a young age so that we could live up to our ancestors and keep up our legacy of fighters." 

    His face darkened as he paused to grip the stick the salmon was on to rotate it, a little harder than necessary. Poor stick, I thought.

    It was a gloomy day when it took place. Clouds obscured the sun, as if foretelling the horrible event that would take place later that day. Finn and I were folding origami animals on the worn wooden table in the living room. Our parents were on the couch sipping tea and watching us with smiles on their faces. Suddenly, there was a knock on the door. All of us turned towards the door, we rarely got visitors. My father leaned his head back to take a peak out of the pine green curtains and his face paled.

    "Kids, go up into the attic, now. And take all your origami things with you." My father ordered, standing up and setting his cup down on the table.

    Finn immediately knew something was wrong and quickly gathered up all of our origami paper with one hand and told me to grab the origami animals. We both quickly made our way up the stairs into the attic. Once we were in the attic and the trapdoor had been closed, we set everything down on a dusty crate and peeked down into the living room through a crack.

    We watched as our father answered the door. Before he could even say anything, the strangely dressed people shoved him aside and barged into the house. There were two warriors that day, one of them stood guard, standing in our cottage with his arms crossed and looking around suspiciously. The other warrior interrogated our parents, asking them stuff like; is there anyone else that lives here, how long have you lived here, how many are in your family, etc... 

     I desperately wanted to know more, but I could tell that Felix was getting uncomfortable when he paused, so I left it alone. We sat in silence for a while before a rustle of leaves told us that Aurelia was back.

    "I found some lemons! Picked a whole handful." Aurelia announced, breaking the tense silence in the air with her cheerful mood and setting an armful of lemons into a basket. She then took a lemon along with a knife and cutting board to a table. 

    "Something happen while I was gone or something? You two are unusually quiet." she questioned as she glanced over at us sitting silently by the fire. 

    "No, no... We're just, thinking, is all."

    Dinner consisted of salmon with squeezed lemon juice on top and some blueberries. We all joked around a small fire as we ate, laughing at Felix's attempts to throw a blueberry and catch it with his mouth. And, in that moment, I forgot about everything; the ongoing war, the evil Warlock King, the fear of being caught, I focused on just being in the moment, on the people who were with me, and life seemed almost... normal.