[COMPLETED STORY]. All's fair in love and war. But the efforts striven in the name of war translates into futility. Because the Universe states that only love transcends across space and time.
Published: 12th May, 2017.
Heads up - the Arawaks' cuisine is slightly different. The name 'Arawak' is lifted from the native Jamaicans who were wiped out by colonizers. I'd mentioned in the first story I had uploaded and deleted (it's also mentioned in this story's tags) that this story has postcolonial elements.
'Red-oxiding' the floor is something that we South Indians do in our traditional houses (it's beautiful); I don't know if people elsewhere do it too. It looks something like this:
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~*~
It's early morning; the light is pale violet outside. We always wake up early.
Mom sets fried saltfish, banana porridge and corn bread on the table, before settling in with us.
We sit around the long teak wood table in our cluttered, smoked-up, homely kitchen. The walls are blackened, especially around the stone oven and along the chimney that rises up and out of our sloping roof of red clay shingles (from the numerous times mom was mad and made the fire flare a little too strongly), and the glaze over the floor from the red-oxiding that my dad said we did years ago, when the house was built, is now peeling off at places. Our home is worn, but cosy and warm.
Our dad sits at the head of the table.
Presently, he gets a faraway look in his eyes, and then, he shakes his head sadly. Sitting next to him, mom notices it, and she mildly asks, "What?"
"Well, it's just this conversation that I had with Frank yesterday."
It's Mr Frank Beckham, Alex and Niles's dad.
Laurie extends her hand toward the jar of tangerine syrup. I try to reach it but my fingers barely brush it, it's sitting too towards the centre of the table. Leon reaches in and slides it recklessly across the table at Laurie, and mom shoots him a peeved look.
"What conversation?" she tries to let it slide, and shifts her attention back to dad. She ladles some porridge into her bowl.
Me and Laurie pour the syrup generously over our corn bread, bright orange over a sweet yellow.
"The Celts. They're big trouble." my dad says grimly, eyes hard on his plate of breakfast as though he wishes to set it to flame, and not eat it.
The Fundamentals from Celtland, here as visiting traders in our Arawakland.
"Why, what is it now?" mom asks, voice significantly sombre.
"They've finally managed to kill King Xandrammes in Oxia. The Psykhes were simply crushed. And over here, they're winding up Zion quite nicely with their cockeyed theories for him, about why this defeat is actually a good thing for Arawaks."
And Louie smirks at my dad. "And how were you able to collect this information about the Psykhes when the word hasn't even reached Arawakland?" Leon smirks with his twin.
