Once Upon a Time. . . (on hold)

The 'Archery God'.

Dinner time was extremely awkward.

Neither of us brought the scroll up, but by the look on her face, I knew she wanted to talk about it as much as I did. But what was there to talk about?

We baked a small strawberry cake, which was still sitting on the center of the table. I slurped my soup as silently as I could, as I heard the fireflies on the sphere jars dangling on the ceiling bump the glass repeatedly. My mother took out a knife and two banana leaves which we used as plates. She handed one of them to me. "Well, we shouldn't put a good cake to waste." She forced a smile. I stared at the piece of cake on my 'plate' blankly. I didn't feel like touching it at all.

I guess this meant we both lost hope. We knew our dad wasn't coming home. All we had to do now is wait for a man dressed in black to show up in our doorsteps, carrying a scroll. At this point, I was so done with scrolls.

"If you're planning on giving his stuff away, I still want to keep the flute," I said, bringing the plate closer to me. My mother placed a fork beside my plate. "The flute's actually worth quite a lot, and we could use some more gold coins. But I suppose he'd want us to keep it."

I didn't want to look up at her. I couldn't believe she thought about selling the flute because it was worth a fortune. My dad found the flute when we were swimming in a lake nearby my house when I was probably 10. I only played with the water because back then I was afraid of drowning. My dad on the other hand went deeper and deeper until my mother and I got worried about him. After what felt like an hour, he came back with something long and shinny. He said he saw something gold sticking out of the soil inside the lake. He never actually used the flute, he usually just walked around town with it to brag about it to his friends. Back then my mother complained about how much of a brag he was being and that he seemed to like the flute better than he liked her, so after awhile he stopped bringing it around with him. It was a rather funny story, in a way.

I suddenly thought about the screams I heard earlier in the afternoon. I still couldn't understand how the bees could fly all the way to our place. Sure, they were big, but weren't they afraid of water? There were deep, deep oceans surrounding our kingdom. And we were far away from other islands. Why did they bother attacking us?

And secondly, I heard an old neighbor of mine, Mrs. Grayjoy, said that bees used to be smaller than us. But then again, the things she said rarely made any sense.

"Do you still want more?" I shook my head and stood from the dining table, making it shake a little. "Then wrap it up and give it to your instructor tomorrow."

I nodded and went back into my bedroom, making myself comfortable on a hammock. I was given a choice of having a swing bed, or a hammock. I went with the hammock, because it reminded me of the beach, and I liked the outdoors better than the indoors. There just wasn't much I could do indoors. That was another reason why I went with option B even though it meant that I would someday go on the field, and fight off something that may be even worse than bees- or giant bees, remembering what Mrs. Grayjoy said.

I opened the round window a little, letting some of the night air enter. I covered the jar of fireflies with a huge leaf. I could still see a bit of the light coming out of the jar, but it didn't bother me that much so I was able to get my needed sleep quickly.

***

Before I went to the archery field, I let the fireflies in my jar go. I got a notice from a man dressed in green that today we were going to train for quite awhile, and that the ones that were good enough at archery would focus on that major, since they needed more people to deal with the bees. I knew for sure that I wasn't one of those people, and I would never be. I could tell that my instructor already gave up all hope on me. He looked so expressionless and bored whenever he saw my attempts of shooting an arrow to the bullseye. I bet it'd make his day if I just managed to send one arrow flying towards the bullseye.