When we fell from Earth

The Visitor

The Magic, the Creator, shall again walk amongst them,

They will sing again the Songs of Arotheman.

-Tenth Stanza from the RulersOFall prophecy of the return

"What happened to you?" Youssef asked Yuto the moment Yuto opened the door for him. Youssef have had a long day in the spices shop, and he really just wanted to relax, but clearly Arotheman had some other plans for him. Yuto raised an eyebrow, but he didn't talk, his throat had hand marks on it that were a shade between red and violet. His eyes, however, had a gleam in them, as if Yuto were more alive after he felt the pain of whatever happened to his throat. But that couldn't be true, Yuto was afraid of cockroaches, let alone someone trying to kill him like that. Youssef stepped in and grabbed his best friend's shoulder, shaking him softly. "Yuto, what happened?"

Yuto gestured for Youssef to wait. Youssef put his hands away as Yuto fished his phone out and started typing something. When he was done, he turned his phone, so it was facing Youssef. Youssef read, knowing quite well he was never allowed to touch Yuto's phone. No one was ever allowed to touch Yuto's phone, except for maybe that one guy at uni he saw Yuto giving his phone to, once. Youssef read what was written, his eyes widening.

Well, a man called Bager from another town came here because his town was attacked by Berberan. When Nour and I came and he saw us, he tried to strangle me to death. Nour summoned a fist made of the light inside the Varten and knocked him out, but my poor throat was already damaged. Everyone is inside, we were waiting for you. Why were you late anyways?

Everyone else was already here? Wow. He was really late today. And wait...what did Nour did?!

He looked at his watch, remembering it doesn't work in Arotheman since time runs differently here. The days and nights were equal hours here, unlike Earth. However, there were special occasions where the day was longer or shorter, depending on the time. During The Rounding Perpendicularity, for example, the day only spanned five hours of the 20 hours a day normally spanned. How long had he stayed in the shop today?

Yuto led him to the kitchen, his hands wrapped around Youssef's neck. Everyone was seated around the table; all of their mood was dampened. Youssef looked at Mohammed, but even he looked haunted, his normal sarcastic and indifferent attitude nowhere to be seen. Laila tapped her fingers on the table and looked at Nour, who was putting soup bowls in front of them. "So, we either escape here or die?"

Barona was looking at the pot of purple soup, swirling it slowly and looking as if her eyes weren't seeing anything. "I don't know, my dear. I don't know what you should do. The Imagination Creator, I don't know what we should do."

"What's happening?" Youssef said from the entrance of the kitchen. Everyone turned to look at him, as if noticing his presence for the first time. Yasser looked at him, fixing his glasses, which is something he did when he was nervous. "The nearby towns have been attacked. Bager, the one who strangled Yuto like that, was the mayor of the nearest town. He said that they burned everything down, destroyed his town, and left him as an example to what will happen to this town."

Youssef nodded and when he looked at Barona, he saw how she was looking at them. She had this look as if they were the key to everything. They were said to be this world's ruler, that they were the ones to save it, eventually. But being given the task like that, Youssef knew for real how impossible said task was.

To save a world. To carry everyone's hopes and dreams. To be the one to tell them that their world is saved, or that their world is ruined. This was too much, even though he knew from the start, from the moment he woke up on the couch in Belimerando's house, he knew that it was too much. But he had chosen to ignore it, to live the experience of being in a magical world where he had no restraints on anything. He enjoyed living with people that didn't know him, or his failures. He...he even contemplated starting a new life here, where no one would look at him and remember how he failed, how he didn't manage to do the one thing he was supposed to do.