Tempest War

Chapter 3

"Welcome to the Kingdom of Veriah," Asami opened her arms wide, motioning to the world in front of her.

"This is beautiful," I was breathless. All kinds of trees and flowers bloomed around me and grass covered every acre of land.

"Veriah is the homeplace of nature and earth powers. Each kingdom holds a gem that fuels the power and ecology of their kingdom," Asami explained.

"In English," I stated.

Asami chuckled, "Basically what you see is a product of magic." I took a deep breath in and smelled the jasmine that had just come into bloom. Birds chirped overhead while squirrels ran around searching for food. It was truly magical. "Come, let me show you the heartland of Veriah, the Hanashiro."

Asami began walking down the hill, her stride confident. From what I could tell and just by standing next to her, Asami was about 5 '4", the same height as me. She had long legs and a pink anklet around her left ankle.

At the bottom of the hill, a network of roadways was worked into the ground. Towns sprung up between the cross sections of the road. In the midst of all the dirt roads only one of them gleaned in the sunlight. Only one of them had crystallised rose petals embedded in it. Only one road led to the Hanashiro.

On the road, Asami asked me some questions about my personal life. I answered truthfully and to the best of my ability. However, one question caught me off guard. "You're here without your family's knowledge. What's up with that?" Asami turned to face me.

"I don't talk about my family," I snapped. I didn't mean for it to come out as harsh as it did, but my family was not something I talked about, ever. Asami didn't reel. She almost suspected that was the case.

I was five years old. My father had just gotten a job upgrade that brought him out into the Mojave Desert. His mining company had hit the jackpot and gotten their hands on exclusive rights to mine in Death Valley. The valley was home to huge gold and Platinum deposits. We moved out to Araiya the fall before my fifth birthday. The town was small and quiet. It was quaint and I really liked it. The house we moved into was next door to a boy my age. This boy was Dax. We became fast friends and spent every hour of every day playing together. The year went by, I acclimated to school with the help of Dax, and soon I was five years old.

Then it happened. The accident that changed my life forever. On the day my father found a giant deposit of gold a major storm hit his mining site. The mine shaft collapsed completely. All twenty-three miners down the shaft were buried alive. My father had just gone in the shaft to check the progress when the storm hit and the shaft collapsed. His body was never retrieved and mother was too sad to tell me. She kept making up excuses for why my father never came home. We lived in a tense sort of understanding until I was six. When I turned six I spent my birthday at Dax's house playing games. That evening when I got home I realised Mother had not come home from the store. I realised everything was pristine as if my mother had never lived in the house at all.

The police found her body two days later. They told me about my father. They told me about my mother and how she had met her end. She had gone to the mine shaft my father died in to see if she could recover any of his belongings. The shaft was so unstable she met the same fate as my father. Fitting, mother and father died the same way. I knew long before the police had told me that my father had died in the mine shaft that day. The death of my mother however really shook me. Each night I would cry myself to sleep in the guest room of Dax's house. Each night I would cry until the pillow was soaked and my eyes were red and puffy. This routine continued until I was eight. When I turned eight, Dax finally woke me up to reality by shouting at me to snap out of it and live on as if my parents were still alive. He gave me a pendant, it was my father's. It was a piece of pure gold flattened into the shape of a coin. It was engraved with the words, "For Koa, Stay Strong. Great Things Await You". I cried for the rest of the afternoon clutching the necklace.