Ten of Swords (Draft Only)

Chapter 32

A day had passed since the expedition left. Samson had been called to come to one of the gardens by his mother. A servant had delivered the message since he was unreachable by the others during his studies. However, when he got to the garden, Elise wasn't there to let him in on some plan or to confront him about his distant behaviour.

"OI, SNIFFS!" A girl screamed at him from across the garden. With an uneven gait, she covered the distance in an unsteady run and almost picked the boy up when she embraced him. Her short dark hair tickled his face.

"Poppy?!" He hugged his friend tightly as she rocked him side to side with childish glee. It had seemed as though years had passed since they last saw each other, though it may have been only a matter of weeks. The sickness had done nothing to slow her down, even as she was still slowly adjusting to a cheap wooden leg with no foot. She couldn't yet afford one with a functional joint, but she would rather stand on a wooden peg than not stand at all. Young and healthy, she was lucky to be able to do that much.

The young woman let go of the boy and grabbed his hands. "I want to know everything. What's the food like? Do you get to tell people to do whatever you want? Do you get to pick your own servants? Gods, imagine being able to pick out the cutest servants and have them follow you around all day." She was practically drooling at the idea of it all. It was a little jarring. Samson avoided answering.

"What happened with that doctor lady?" He inquired.

Poppy jerked her head to the side, indicating the general region behind her. "She's here too. She wanted to make sure I was going to be ok with the peg leg. I'm not very good at taking care of myself, so she wanted to make sure I was ok before she went back to the hospital."

"So, there's nothing going on with that? I thought you might have liked her."

Poppy snorted in amusement. "It's casual. Not everything has to be so serious. Besides, I don't plan on staying in one place any time soon."

Understandable, but Samson felt himself a little disappointed. Admittedly, he knew he was living a little vicariously through his friend. Though not yet an adult, he was old enough to be curious about relationships and what it meant to be intimately familiar with another person. Poppy's flippant attitude toward such a thing unfortunately added credence to the uncomfortable idea that stories of grand romance and true love were nothing but fantasy.

While he was distracted by his thoughts, Pepper wrapped an arm around the boy's neck and messed up his hair with a gleeful giggle. If she were to fail to take the opportunity to do so, she probably would have regretted it for the rest of her life. Considering that he was growing up fast, and they had both only just barely survived up until that point, there was no telling when would be the last time. Additionally, he was apparently a privileged young lord now and she had always wanted to do that to someone's wealthy brat child. "I hear you've got new tagalongs. Who are they? What are they like? How's Pepper, Butch, and the Boss?"

While fighting for her life, she must have been too out of it to realise what was going on. Or she would have already known that Butcher was dead. She had no idea what had happened. Maybe she didn't even know that all the others were gone either. It was like looking back in time. To her, nothing had changed. Even if she was missing half a leg, that meant nothing to her. If he told her what happened to her, it would be saying goodbye to the last part of this world that still existed from the time before everything went wrong.

Silence dragged on. Poppy let go of the boy and stared at him questioningly as he made no effort to tidy his hair or answer her question. There was no way he could properly communicate to her just how much everything had changed, or just how many things had gone wrong. Still, it wouldn't be right to leave her in the dark. To keep her ignorant for his own sake was something that he felt was evil. If he was in her position, he would want to know. No matter how much he didn't want to say it, it was his responsibility to do so.