Center of Attention

Liar

       "You idiot!" I screamed at Smallik as his face contorted in pain. "You absolute fucking idiot! Do you know how much time I spent whispering and conniving secrets to the damned demons of Hell itself just to keep my father dull as he followed you as a pup? And you told him the truth? The truth? I can't believe you would betray one of the many voices that have guided you through all of this!"
        Smallik gulped. "I want to believe that, Firstien. I want to so bad, but I can't even get the voice of Ogillitiy Istinti to stop telling me to kill you at every chance I get."
I stood, shocked as my father stood on his feet and picked up Smallik to land in his arms. Smallik collapsed like a rag doll, arms held up by my father's strong grip. I loathed him. I wanted to see his head on a spike. Firstien turned to me like he knew I was there, but he couldn't see. I knew he was just pretending that he could.
     "Ogillitiy said that he didn't want to kill me," he whispered out in the air as if anyone could hear him. "He said he would never dream of it! And you can hear his voice?"
Smallik grappled onto Firstien. "Since forever. Before he died, even. He wants you to die, says it's the only solution."
       Liar.
      "Ogillitiy is my son. I cared about him as much as I cared about Mavara." My father was now whimpering.
        Liar. You never cared. You just sat and drank your life away, and for so long I had wanted my hands to slowly curl around your throat as you chokes on your own self-pity. That's your fault. All of it.
         "Every single second you stand there breathing is another second the world has to suffer!" I screamed. "It's your fault Mom's gone! It's your fault I'm like this! Liar! You're so full of it!"
          He turned to me. For real. I gulped.
      "You will see the end of this journey," he growled towards me. "You will watch us find another solution to killing me, and the future will change from the actions we take today onward."
          "He didn't know that Smallik only had two days left in the past. He didn't know that everything they were doing was predestined.
         "Fine."
         That's the only thing I could say to a man whose purpose was to die.

         Though my feet hurt and my mind was completely dazed from everything going on, I decided we needed to move father and father away from the spot we landed. More literally, the pink trees. I had a strange suspicion that the Eldritch lived among the pink trees, and they weren't going to stop hunting their prey until they were either found dead by their own volition or murdered by a bowman. I shivered at that thought alone, but I also kept cautious of the fact that Smallik was having an internal conversation with my son the entire time. And my son wanted to kill me. He was acting so forward before, but I didn't think that meant that he wanted to do everything in his power to stop me from breathing. I heard his voice. Through the rustling of the trees I heard him scream, 'Liar!'.
           Smallik had a hard time starting a conversation. He did open his mouth a few times before giving up and just following me until I ended up starting a conversation. About Ortim. I wanted to know what Ortim was like compared to my city, Vior, and I wanted to badly know of his life. He said he had to do terrible things to get here, but I wasn't convinced. Not completely. Despite his cocky attitude in the beginning, he was practically a pushover with no means for authority.
"I wasn't a leader of some resistance or anything," He spat at me. "I was everything you couldn't be. Enforcer."
            I blinked. "You don't like Enforcers?"
          "No. They would beat us mercilessly for pleasure just because they had the damn time to. I imagine that Enforcers stuck inside Vior were not as... brutal?"
            I shook my head. "We just kept things orderly in Vior. And made sure that the people who killed or hurt others were persecuted. But you seriously were just a thief that ran around the streets?"
          "Oh yeah." He seemed proud of that fact. "Wings can get you far, you know. That's why they usually clip any winged creature, just so they can't cause too much mischief."
         "But you weren't clipped?"
           "Almost. Twice."
           A twice too many times was what I was reading from his expression. His voice died down for a while as the pinkish trees had started to disappear into the heavy lush of green, and he kept turning his head back and forth as small bugs had flown passed his face. He was anxious, but I couldn't figure out why. I decided to negate my inner questions with another question.
           "So, what's it like being a Fae?" I asked. "Do you feel like an insect?"
           He laughed a little. "An overgrown one, sure. Other than that, I'm just as human as you despite speaking in another language sometimes and having two names. Oh, and wings."
          "That you can use."
         "Of course I can use them." He stared at me like I had told him something that was completely stupid, but then his shocked face loosened until he was laughing yet again like a child who found something to occupy their time with. "We Fae don't often use them, though. They're fragile, so they had be hindered by all kinds of things." We were passing by a few mossy stumps of trees. "Hey, sit down with me for a second. My feet hurt."
         My feet had been hurting. I was sure there were blisters coming from the back of my feet from every single breaking step, but when we sat down I saw nothing by red skin. My entire foot was red. I landed underneath a large, fanned-out tree with its branches stretched expansively across the large expanse of the sky, and Smallik had landed right next to me with an empty stare that was directed towards nothing being shown in front of him. He was somewhere else, a place probably much better than the real world. I was starting to imagine what his fake earth looked like, but I soon returned to mine because it was tailored towards me.
            We continued to talk about a lot of things that didn't necessarily have anything to do with... anything. It was just small topics, like our lives in a nutshell. As our bodies had finally settled, we were settling down, too. There were moments where I could hear the sound of a rustling bush. Slowly I would grab my knife in my pocket, but every time it just ended up being an animal that was too curious for its own good. One time I even chucked my knife because I was scared that people made from bark and leaves were out to get us. They probably were.
That didn't stop the both of us dropping our heads as the soft grass lied heavily against our heads. Our speech slurred, and every scratch in my skin screamed for sleep.
             "Man," I yawned. "I'm so tired."
            He nodded. "Then go to sleep."
            "Is it safe?"
            "Go ahead, I'm sure it's more than safe."
            After a few minutes of silence, the sounds of bugs had suddenly ceased, and the ground below was starting to feel like a fluffy pillow.

            "Wake up, dumb ass." I spewed the words like fuel coming out from a raging fire. Smallik only stirred for a moment before falling back to sleep. I wanted to strangle him and cut out half of his eyes just so I could hear Dad scream out my name in frustration That would be fun, pleasing to the ears even. I just didn't have it in me at the moment to try and kill the one chance I had to get rid of my father and this stupid world in general.
            "Smallik!" I screamed. He jolted, turning back to look in my direction with such spite in his eyes that I was holding my own heart to make sure it was theoretically beating.
           "What?" he spat at me. It was quiet, and I turned to the snoring figure of my father. Disgusting.
           "Now is the time! Kill him why you have the chance. He's even got his own knife you can slit his throat with."
         He turned to Firstien, eyes half open as if he was tired as my father was. There was a sort of disgruntled agreement there in it, and I was so glad that he didn't stray too far from the path that I wanted him to take. His hands slipped over the knife, and he held the blade there for a moment. Just a moment.
        "Go on!" I hissed. "Kill Firstien Istinti!"

         I felt the hands slip over into my pocket for just a moment as I woke up. It was Smallik latching onto my knife, probably listening to my son's voice as he told Smallik to kill me for everything that I've done wrong. Which was nothing. I couldn't remember a single thing I did to that bratty kid besides try to be a good father. If trying wasn't enough, then I was just going to have to be something so much better than that. As the cold blade shakily went across my neck, I turned my head to stare at Smallik. He gulped as my expression was dull.
       "Don't listen to him." That's all I had to say. "Don't listen to him because you know that there's another way. When given a task, there are many solutions, and killing me don't need to be one of them."
         The blade fell away, and he slouched his head. "I just... I want there to be another solution."
         "There is. We'll see the faeries after we rest, and the world will be as happy as it was before all of the shit that's supposed to happen. Okay?"
            He lied back down. "Okay..."
           I turned away from him, sighing as I placed the knife back into my pocket. Securely.