The Price Of Gold

05. fire, water and earth

v.
JULIAN ARCHIBALD
22 July, 8:30 p.m.

The world, to most, is a puzzle.

A chaos of pieces that people blindly shove together in hopes of making something that fits. Perfectly.

Grandfather is one of them, a man who is obsessed. With power, with wealth-- but those things followed him, naturally. But his obsession was far more. It was the need to solve. The need to understand. The need to perfect. For him, there were no loose ends in his world, no errors in judgment, no cracks in anything he created, weather it was a thing or a person. If something didn't fit, it was broken.

He saw people like puzzles. Especially us.

Alastair, Aurelia, Carver, Ophelia and I.

Alastair was the first. The one who set the blueprint. His fire. The first thing he could never tame fully. A force that burned brightly, violently. He was a flame that consumed everything around it, a blaze that left destruction in its wake. Grandfather used to tell him he was a wild horse, a person of instinct. But Grandfather was wrong-- Alastair wasn't wild. He was a calculation. He was precision. All Grandfather needed was to spark it, and Alastair would burn everything to the ground. But that was the point. The old man played mind games, he made him feel like he was in control but all truly was only under Grandfather's control.

You could call Alastair the leader, if you were stupid enough to believe in such things. But I know better. Leaders don't have to tell you they lead, that was what power position hungry people like Grandfather did. The real ones simply make you follow. Narcissism? No, that's too pedestrian for him. He's not concerned with self-love. He's concerned with control but not over others. Over him. He only wanted to keep hold of himself, have control over himself. Rest all is a game to him, and he's always two steps ahead, watching us all like chess pieces on a board. I don't envy him. I respect him.

Aurelia, of course, is the second. She was the water. With a smile that stays with you even after she's long gone. Beautiful, sure. But beauty's a weapon, and she knows it. Soft words, soft skin, soft eyes. She's a puzzle, too, but one that you think you have solved-- until she pulls the pieces apart and leaves you searching for answers. She doesn't talk much. She doesn't need to. She is the answer. As I said before, she was water. Cold, smooth, and impossible to pin down. Like a river, she could slip through your fingers, carving paths in places you never thought she would go.

Grandfather could never fully see through her, as she was water. She knew how to play the game-- how to look like the delicate flower when, underneath, she was the current, pulling everything down. He hated that. He couldn't control it, could see through it and still not understand it. Water, always moving, always shifting, always slipping from his grip no matter how tightly he tried to hold on.

And then, there's me. Third in line. No better, no worse. I was the soil. The earth, beneath their fire and water, steady, silent. The observer. When Alastair makes his move, I know exactly how to counter it. When Aurelia smiles, I know exactly what's behind it. There was nothing in me to control, I was just there.. just me. Someone watching the puzzle pieces fall into place, one by one. And when the time comes, I'd finally fill in the gaps. I'd be the one to make the pieces fit.

Carver and Ophelia-- the youngest two, so innocent, so desperate for something they never understood.

I could see it in the way they looked at him, right from when they were kids-- eyes wide, filled with a kind of raw hunger. They were like young birds in a nest, chirping for scraps, begging for validation they would never truly receive.