of Sword and Flame

Chapter 42: The Lab

 They had been walking for hours. Half the time had been spent getting lost, losing the path, or bickering. But after the path was beneath their feet again, the tension was gone, replaced with silly stories. Ren was quite the storyteller, recounting moments of danger and daring adventure. He talked about all the fights he'd witnessed from enemies of the captain, and from what Kyra could tell, their crew was not one to be trifled with.

"I thought you were just a stowaway. How did you end up in the crew?"

Ren let out a sigh, intertwining his fingers behind his head. As his shoulders tensed ever so slightly, one of his scars peered out from his collar. One hand gently ghosted his green eye's scar. Kyra tensed at the motion, wondering what he was thinking.

"You don't have to say anything," Kyra quickly remedied. Ren's shoulders seized up. He paused mid-step.

"It was probably the third or fourth week out at sea," he began. "I must warn you, there is a very...intense reason I dislike my green eye."

Kyra waited. Ren let out a series of attempts to speak, strangled sounds, like a word that became severed by a blade.

"My father has the most striking pair of green eyes," he finally managed to spit out. "The exact color as the one that I have been cursed with." He paused. "There is a reason I have such a strange scar around my eye."

Ren stared at the small throwing knife clutched in his hands. The reflection swam with the color of emeralds. As the boat lurched once more, Ren's stomach flipped. But not from the sea, no, from the green. It jumped out at him, grabbing hold, flashes of swords, blood, and birds fluttering through his mind. It was all too much.

He hurled the knife with as much force as he could muster, letting out a pained gasp as it struck the wall. It shook, waving back and forth as the waves beneath the boat crashed.

The green filled the ship's hull, and as Ren sank to the floor beneath him, the familiar, searing sensation of air leaving his lungs suddenly appeared. His chest ached as the green filled everything in sight. Even as he shut his eyes, it was there, staring blankly back at him.

It was too much. So much blood, so much pain, all because of that emerald green. The whole world was afraid of his eye. He was afraid of it, too. There was a longing there to be blind to all colors. How many days had he suffered through, begging the world to take all the saturation in the world and ring it out, drop by drop?

He knew people who were in love with life and its vivid colors. They wanted to take it all in, gather up every pigment, and put it in their little paint jars. His mother was a painter at heart, a woman unafraid of loving everything. But she was taken. She was taken, used up of all her color, until the sapphire eyes that used to crinkle up and laugh at Ren's silly words were staring up from a casket, cold and barren and lifeless.

The truth was that Ren would rather never see another color again if it meant he wouldn't have to face his eyes. He would rather go blind than see with the burden of the truth.

Everything hurt.

How do I stop this? Ren begged the world. Get this green away from me. Get it, Ren reached for the blade still lodged in the beam stretching up against the wall, away from me.

"I don't know how it began," Ren told Kyra. "All I remember is picking it up. All I remember is how much I wanted it gone."

He tore the blade from its hiding place, the chipped wood splintering across the small cargo-filled room, shattering against the floor like porcelain shards.