Point and Time

Chapter 8: Mark: In Order to Perfect

We had been practicing for what felt like hours but every time I checked my watch it had only been a couple of minutes. Being paired with Macie meant I didn't even get to see Emily for the time being. Macie seemed to be doing fine with the time going so slow but I was growing frustrated. I didn't understand any of this. Why did we have to save the world? What was the point in us trying this hard if everyone before us failed? What. Was. The. Point? I had no clue as to what was happening or what we had to do with it.

"Want to give it a try?" Macie asked pointing to the test dummies that spun around, moved up and down, and went all around. 

Macie had been practicing the course since we walked in, I ran it once. The first time we walked in, that was when I ran it. So of course Macie ran it the second time when she saw the whole thing run through at least one time and she was killing it. I just wanted to be held by Emily. This stuff wasn't working for me. I was hurt, everything about this was plain dumb. I was heartbroken. I left my family behind. For whatever family this was going to end up being, or is? I have no idea what I'm supposed to do. The family I knew for a fact I had, was a few cities away. While I was living a make-believe fantasy based on the fact I could be the son of a god or goddess. This just sucked. 

I couldn't help but think I was doing the wrong thing by staying here and not doing what I needed to be doing, which was being with my family. The family who was supposed to be spending Emily's birthday with us, with her. This was not how I wanted to spend my day. 

"Kids, dinner time. Come eat." I heard Eli shout from the dining room that was down the hall from the training room.  Macie walked straight out of the room and ran in one direction as we heard clanging everywhere. 

"This literally makes no sense to me." Someone spoke from the door that Ethan just walked out of.

"Yeah, it's safe to say it didn't go as well as we thought..." Ethan said 

We all walked and sat at the dining table with ten total seats. Fig and Eli sat on the ends. Seth, Macie, Chase, and Ever sat on one side as Emily, Ari, Ethan, and I sat on the other side. We all sat in silence for a minute as I began to realize that Chase had a new bruise forming under his eye that I couldn't tell if it was from himself, the crash dummies, or Ever. After I realized it was self-inflicted, I looked around the table for other things. Fig was watching us and just keeping his eye out. Eli was looking straight down and had his hair tied up so it didn't get food in it. Ever kept nervously looking at Chase because she felt bad that she didn't get a black eye. Macie's head was on Seth's shoulder as he just slowly ate his food. Ethan was quiet basically mimicking what Eli was doing as Ari was destroying his food. Emily scooted her chair close to mine. Oddly that was the only thing that felt normal in the past twenty-four hours.

"How did training go today?" Eli asked.

Just as he did, Ari and Seth looked at each other and started cracking up. Chase put his head on the table as Ever patted his back and laughed. Me and Emily looked at each other as Macie and Ethan looked just as confused.

"Well, I'm okay with an axe at least. HAHAHA" Seth started smacking the table.

"Chase may need to understand where to hold a sword... and how to keep it there?" Ever giggled as I saw Ethan smile and bite his tongue and barely laugh. 

"So the training went as good as it was supposed to." Fig smiled at Eli.

"How in the hell is that?" I whispered to Emily. Her dimples had been showing. She was happy. I didn't even realize but there were ten people here. none of us judging each other. We just were having a good time. Learning, talking being friends. Nothing was going wrong. We were just having fun. I smiled. I let the tension from the training room drain from my shoulders and they fell as I sat back in my seat smiling. Macie looked at me and smiled.