Things Lost and Found (a Waglington and Mianite fanfiction)

Chapter 55

The song of the day is "Bonfire" by Building 429. You have no idea how hard it is for me to find a song for Tom that I actually like. XD I found this one completely by accident. Hooray for serendipity!

*Tom's POV*

I shivered inside my black coat as we tramped through the knee deep snow blanketing the mountain. Mot had told me the name of the range, but my teeth were chattering so loud that I hadn't heard it. I'd also asked where exactly we were going, but of course he refused to answer that. I grumbled under my breath as we kept going. We should reach the top of the pass today—if Mot knew this "road" as well as he said he did. There had been a clearly marked—though overgrown—path further down the mountain, but how did he know we hadn't lost it in all this d*mn snow? Every snow bank looked the same to me, and it's not like there were any sign posts. Why on Mianite would anyone need those?

The journey hadn't been that bad until we got to Katsir, despite our having to fly there. (That Gaines dude had all the portals down for maintenance after an earthquake cracked one of the portal frames last week.) We took off our angel rings at the outskirts to not spook the natives. Mot had stopped to talk to a few people to inquire about the condition of the road and catch up with the one or two he knew. At the time I'd wondered why he was asking about roads at all. We were going to fly, weren't we? Nope. Mot told me as we left the burned out village behind us that we'd be going on foot from there to avoid unwanted attention.

"Attention from whom?!" I'd wanted to yell. There was literally no one for miles in any direction! The thing that stopped me was how odd Mot was acting ever since we came within sight of Katsir. Where he had met my whining and pestering with snarky comments of his own, now he let them pass. I even tried insulting him and didn't get a rise. It was like he didn't even hear me. I'd never seen him this reserved except when he found out that the Dianite in this dimension was still dead after being KOed by some assassin 10 years ago.

10 years ago...Ohhhhh! It suddenly dawned on me why Katsir had him acting weird. He got Alyssa from there. Her parents had died in the fire, along with any relatives who might have adopted her. He's probably missing his kid and remembering the people he used to know there before they died, I thought to myself. If Sparklez went into full on panic mode when Ianita was out of his sight for a few minutes, I couldn't fathom how Mot held it together being a whole universe away from his girl for months.

Being the great human bei...er, zombie...that I was, I took it upon myself to cheer him up, or at least distract him. "Yo, Mot!" I yelled, making sure he was actually listening before I asked, "You sure we're going the right way?"

Mot rolled his eyes and started slogging through the snow again. He did answer me though. "Yes, Syndy. I've traveled this road dozens of times. This is the main trade route between Katsir and where we're going."

"Then why is it in such bad shape? And why is there snow everywhere? I thought it didn't rain or snow in this dimension!" I panted. Man, the air up here is thin. Unless I was hallucinating all this white stuff from lack of oxygen, something wasn't adding up.

"Look, kid. We used to get plenty of rain, snow, even hail and tornadoes, but near as I can tell all of it stopped when Mianite got full reign over the world 10 years ago. I guess he doesn't like the weather changing." Mot shrugged. "We're high enough up that the snow here never melts. As for the road, well, there was no need to trade with a village that didn't exist anymore, and the people that have moved back in aren't wealthy enough to make trade worthwhile yet."

Wow, harsh. It did make sense though, from a business standpoint. There's nothing there worth stealing either, except maybe a bit of ambrosia, I noted. What? Old habits died hard.