Everyone needs a little Hero

Hero Rising

Hero was shaking in his borrowing boots. It took him twenty minutes alone to lace up one shoe. It took even longer to pack his borrowing bag and load it with his essentials. His door was firmly locked for most of the morning. For some reason, keeping it locked seemed to keep out the looming feeling of the outside world.

It didn't make sense, but it was what he was going to do until the last possible moment.

Something about what Rey said to him stuck out like a sore thumb. It was an itch he couldn't quite scratch and a feeling he couldn't quite shake.

Rey had said a lot of things, and some of them felt unjustified. It wasn't him who was locked in a box. It wasn't him who had been grabbed and pinched. His entire world view hadn't come crashing down on him all at once.

At the same time, what Rey said made perfect sense.

Hero couldn't hide in his room forever.

Hero couldn't deny that it was his Borrower and human friends who had come together to save him.

Despite how terrible it was, Rey was right that it might have been the first time in their history that Borrower and human worked together toward a common goal and had not been afraid of being captured or harmed by the ones they stood beside.

Hero had done that. It was terrible, but he helped bring them together.

Now, after everything, Hero felt like he needed to do at least one thing. If he never saw another human again, he needed to go and see his best friend - Sam - and thank him.

Yes. Hero at the very least needed to see Sam.

So, after an agonizing hour, Hero dared to glimpse at his reflection in the mirror. The same brightness wasn't there in his eyes. He looked tired and scared - like so many other Borrowers he knew.

Had he really been changed so much? He felt like it, but he didn't think he looked it too.

Realizing that what he needed to do wasn't going to get any easier if he just stood there staring blankly at his reflection, he chose to act.

He stepped out of his room and immediately saw his parents sitting at the kitchen table and all of his siblings in the main living area. It took only a fraction of a moment for them to all turn their eyes onto him.

"Hero, I'm glad you're up sweetie. How are you feeling?" asked his mother, cautiously approaching and giving her son an affectionate peck on the crown of his head.

"I'm okay. H-how are you?" Hero muttered. He still couldn't bring himself to look into the faces of his parents. He was terrified of absorbing the full force of their disappointment.

"Better now that you're here," smiled his mother affectionately. "Are you hungry? You look a little pale."

"Hero," said Atlas, who immediately stood and observed his brother's apparel. "Where are you going?" The words hung in the air for several seconds as his family slowly noticed his attire as well. They saw his hook and his borrowing bag on his back. They also saw he was dressed for borrowing out, not just going out into the community.

"I... have some erra-"

"No. No you don't!" Atlas scolded. "Hero, this is exactly the kind of thing you used to say when you went out to go visit your so-called human friends. Be specific. What are you doing? Where are you going? Who are you going to go see?"

"Atlas," muttered Casper. The eldest Rafter son whipped around to look at his father in disbelief.

"You can't be serious, dad," said Atlas. "We are on the brink of losing the entire community. We've certainly lost their trust, and for what? For Hero to go and play grab-and-go with some humans? This all started when Soren and his brothers mo-"