Center of Attention

I Need This as Much as You Do

         There were times to admit your fear. We all know that at the end of our lives we admit to people that we've done the world an injustice by dying or by the actions and paths we took when we could walk and breathe. Yes, we regret, as does anyone with a heart. So, even if you're not dying, do you regret your actions the moment you finish doing something you wish you hadn't? 
        "Stop," Smallik had said to me. "Stop telling my story in a way that just sounds so wrong. I'm not the bad guy."
          "Aren't you?" I told him. "Aren't you the reason the world relies on a Center in the first place, or are you just a time traveler spewing lies to people. Even my father."
           "Quit it! You aren't even alive right now!"
            Oh, he was right. Everything you hear is all in his head as much as the story beyond this text is in my father's. "I'm just trying to guide you. I don't want the past to affect the future the way it had, and I don't want my father to be the Center of the damn world. You understand, don't you? Humans are so hard to keep up with."
           "So are you, Half-Fae." He would yell at me in his head. I sighed at his comment. 
            "Leave me out of this. This is your story, isn't it? You're the one who wants to get immortality, betray my father, and you want to save the time between 4025 and 9127. That's all you. Right?"
               He sighed. "Yes, that's all me. And I'll do most of that to get where I need to go."
              Smallik seemed like he was in an internal battle with himself. I couldn't tell you why, but I was starting to think that maybe he was having an internal battle with himself about everything he just told me. I clenched my fists into the sheets that I slept in last night like there was nothing else to hold onto that would keep me sane. I couldn't imagine a city full of monsters that separated them from the humans. It was possible. They even took away elves and dwarves from everyday life and made the world as empty as I thought it to be. For so long I was empty because of that. I had only known of my city, the place with concrete walls all around it like it was a prison.
              "I can hear voices." He had sounded so clear, like a bell going off. "Voices of the dead. They've always told me to do things that I'm against, and they've told me about what happened with Sobollum and your son and all that. We all knew you, most monsters do, but that's how I found out about the elf that could take people back and forth in time. He studied the greatest alchemy under the best of black magicians in 4025, and he was able to recreate it in 9127 with just the chemicals in that time. Yes, I've heard voices of the dead, and there's a particular one that just won't shut up about my actions."
               He grabbed the sack full of gold coins and pulled out a black book. It was identical to the one Ogillitiy had. In fact, there was a giant signature on the front. Ogillitiy Istinti. How did he get Ogillitiy's book? Though the question was laid fresh in my mind, I decided not to go further than that. Everything was already too strange to begin with, and I had no reason to pry despite the fact that it belonged to my son.
                "Ogillitiy had this book," he said. He handed it to me, and I held the leather binding as if it was something so much more important than anything else. Inside was neat handwriting and scribbles in the margins. There was a title at the top. 'Written Conversations'. The letters made out Smallik's name a lot. It was all gibberish otherwise, but I saw the first few sentences. I gulped.
                 "It must've been the year 4065, much far back to when we as people had begun to learn all the ethics of humanity. A man, bitter and afraid to be alive, had sauntered the streets much like we always had done on cold winter days. His yellow eyes were set on one foreboding thing: the end of humanity itself." I stared into Smallik's human disguise eyes. They were yellow-like. Yes, the description was true, but I didn't see the end of humanity staring back into me. I saw the rawness of fear just lying bare within his irises.
                  I handed the book back to Smallik and decided to think for myself. The suspicions that I had about Ogillitiy were almost worse now that I saw that leather-bound book between Smallik's long fingers. How did he know everything? Even I wouldn't have figured out that there was a town that was filled with monsters just close enough for me to be worried about it all. It was... all so surreal, out of touch even though the facts were right there in front of me. Even though I asked Smallik before, I was now asking it again. What happened between now and then?
                  Maybe something is supposed to change, change enough to fix every issue that happened. I could try to find someone to blame it on, but I didn't know anyone. Not a king or queen's name passed my lips as I thought of what to do. That was a thought, too. It had passed my mind before when I thought about it, but why couldn't we have tried to ask for an authority figure to do something to change an oncoming war or something. I believed it to be war. That was something big that could change the entire world, and I had heard that people often did irrational things during wars. Like kill races. That was something I knew, and I stuck by it in my head for a minute before Smallik began to talk.
                  "We need to get going," Smallik sighed. "We can discuss it when were walking across the hilltops."
                  But we didn't. He led me through the now less-lively Ortim with a cold stare into the nothingness of the cobblestone that was zigzagging underneath his feet. Yes, everything that had been on the streets last night was gone except anyone who sold anything. There were merchants lining the streets, and they all had some sort of crowd piling up next to them. I was mesmerized by the calamity. However, Smallik passed them by to saunter down the main road to the other side of the City. The farther we began to go, the more I began to notice the large castle in the background beside us. It was outlined in blue flags and banners with the symbol of a lotus flower doused in white. It was all noticeable, and I began to glance over more and more until I tripped on my own two feet just from the short steps I had been taking.
                    I kept up slowly afterwards and heard Smallik mumble something about a queen or something. When I held open my throat to ask, he already had the answer. Apparently, the Queen of Ortim was recently sick with some sickness that was bad enough to make her bedridden, and he was trying to link that to the absence in the timeline to before now and the present. I told him that even if she was sick that there was no way to know if it was because she wasn't able to stand and guide her people. That did line well with my war theory, but how could the world turn that dark in so little time if it was just a war someone lost? I imagined there to be a lot of monsters as much as there were humans in my world.
                     We reached the other gate and immediately gained approval to leave as soon as they saw the fake Smallik walk up with a smug face. The large wooden gate reeled open with the men's strength, and we slowly walked out into the open world before anyone could notice our suspicious act. It was somehow colder in the field, even with the sun shining. I had shivered slightly before completely forgetting about it as I caught up to walk next to Smallik. His now black eyes were staring straight into the fields ahead of us as if he was trying to find any life of faeries around here.
                      "I have to ask," I started with a slight cough. "How do the faeries benefit us?"
                      He didn't look away. "I'll be honest, the immortality is a selfish request. I'm actually going there to find something out. Faeries like stories, since their travelers. They will exchange information for stories like ours, and they are fabled to see into the future. I have this strange suspicion that they know something about what's going to happen."
                       "Do you think that's why they don't exist in the future? Because they knew too much?"
                       "They're dead because they migrate like butterflies." He looked up to me. "You can't stop an animal's migration path, so they executed every last faery to exist just because they had always tried heading South when Fall came. It was... a public execution." He shivered.
                        "So, the city of Ortim wasn't a holding cell for monsters for very long, then? If you saw the execution yourself, then it couldn't be."
                        He nodded. Yeah, that didn't make a lot of sense just because that I would have killed off the faeries as soon as humanly possible knowing they weren't able to be stagnant creatures. "Ortim was a beautiful place before the new leader of the country decided we need to be isolated without even a chance to leave. It wasn't just us. It was you, too. You humans were stuck in your city, too, and I couldn't tell which was worse."
                       I remembered the broken apartment buildings across from our pristine ones. A warning?
                     "This isn't just about what happens with us," Smallik had said. "I imagine that it's easy enough to get rid of one man ruining the world than anything else, but this is also about this." He stretched his pinks arms out in the sunlight, and his wings had followed them. "The world is in shambles, and it shouldn't have to be."
                        "You're right," I agreed. "I want the world to experience everything we've seen in storybooks or heard about from school. Seeing all this..."
                        We turned to each other for a moment, and we both sighed the same words. "It's just so fucking magical."
                        And it was. It was a past to get lost in, and we were going to find those faeries.
                       For Ortim. For Ogillitiy. And... for Mavara, too.