Half the Power

New Beginnings

Ava and I whipped around, both clutching our newly-formed weapons. When we saw him, we both dropped them.

Ryan. (I'll explain soon. But at that point, I had no idea.)

Ava ran forward and flung her arms around his neck. He seemed surprised at first, because small jets of water shot from his palms. But soon he got over it and hugged her back tightly. Obviously, they weren't the type of siblings to do that much.

I walked forward, my hands in my pockets, trying to look calm enough. In reality, my head was swimming with thoughts. I would like to say that I had deep feelings of gratitude and relief, just happy to have the trio back together, safe and sound at last.

But for you, reader, I suppose I must tell the truth. My train of thought went something like this: Ryan? Him? Not dead? But I thought... Huh?

Ryan finally pushed back, looking like he was struggling to breathe. He held his side, and Ava blushed. "You okay?"

"Yeah." He groaned. "Just... think I may have broken a few ribs. And pretty much every other bone." Back to humor already. Small amounts, but baby steps. He would be cracking jokes soon enough.

Ava and I turned to Orion. He was doing what I assumed was smiling, but it was hard to tell on horses. "We have a healing station nearby. There, we can give you adequate care."

We followed him to a tent, Ryan with his arm slung over Ava's shoulders for support. He would occasionally gasp sharply out of pain, and he limped along, but other than that, he seemed pretty healthy for someone who had definitely been dead.

It was all I could do to keep from shooting questions at him. Looking back on it, I don't think my brain could actually form any to ask. All of my thoughts were still muddled, and my brain worked sluggishly. 

I was dying to know the story. I always had a thirst for knowledge that would never go away. I tried to calm myself down, but walking in silence while Ryan had a story to tell was just plain torture.

Ava didn't seem to have the same problem. She either couldn't stop smiling, or just didn't want to. She held Ryan's left hand, the one over her shoulders, to help him.

When we reached the tent after what seemed like years, Ryan was forced to lay on a cot. It was surely painful, and it caused a lot of gasps and sharp exhales, but eventually Ryan was flat on his back. When a nurse came in from the other side, I cocked my head.

She was human. I didn't understand how she was awake, even though we had defeated Ortheon. She seemed like she had never been asleep. She wore a pale blue nurse's shirt and skirt, with a silver stethoscope around her neck. She looked so normal, it unnerved me. She smiled warmly and ushered us out of the tent.

Ava and I waited, despite the fact that the sun had sent and the air was freezing. We just pulled our jackets tighter around ourselves.

I'm not exaggerating when I saw we were out there for hours. Ortheon came over periodically to try to soothe us away and set up the tent farther away, but we stubbornly refused. The hours turned into all night when the sun rose.

My stomach growled, and I reached into my bag. Apples. Again. I had had almost nothing else to eat since I left home... two days ago? Yeah, two whole days since this all started. It amazed me how much had happened since then, how it would change my life forever.

I dug around the bottom of my bag, but every other food had been smashed. I longed for something else, but I wasn't going to leave Ava, and I definitely couldn't get her to come with me. She wasn't leaving Ryan anytime soon.