The Prophecy of Water | ✔️ 🎖 [2018 Wattys Shortlister]

CHAPTER 42-A Farewell and A Welcome

Maybe the ability to delude ourselves is a survival tool that nature gave us.

How else would we live with ourselves?

LoG, 421

"You wanted him to come and rescue you! You were hoping for it! I didn't! I wanted to stay right where I was. To fight next to Grizzly. Radan separated me from him! Don't you understand? I never ... back ... away. I never leave the battle unfinished because, for me, it's like a defeat. When I fall on the ground I get up and keep trying!" Words poured out of Squinty like water, as flashes of her previous fights with Sien and Enoka flew through her mind.

Liton approached Orla and stood by her side. Squinty noticed his hand was on his axe. Maybe he is wondering whether he should intervene. That's nonsense. I would never attack Orla. I am just ... furious about everything. Life is happening to me and I didn't ask for any of this.

Orla shook her head in Liton's direction. Then she backed away and moved over to hug Jewel who was still lying motionless on the ground. "I am sorry." Squinty heard her say through a forced whisper. "I didn't know Radan separated you from Grizzly. Now I understand your anger. I think that I ... I would have reacted the same way."

Squinty cursed her own hot-headedness. She was quick to anger but she couldn't apologize for the world of her.

I hate that about myself.

Thinking about how she could make it up to Orla and somehow make her forget about that outburst of hers, she approached Jewel as well. "How is he?" Squinty muttered, hoping her voice sounded kind.

"He died in the Obsidian Mine Tunnel, a Light ago," Orla replied, calmly and that was when Squinty saw it.

Jewel's punctured eye was smashed up into a socket by a bone blade that had been run through the dog's brain.

Squinty was shocked and at a loss for words. "I ... I didn't know."

"How could you know?" Orla replied gently.

"I thought ... Since he was with you ... That he was merely wounded."

"Oh, no," Orla said in dream-like voice. "We were just looking for a place for him to sleep forever, while we were waiting for Radan. I couldn't have possibly left him down there in those Tunnels. So I took him with us."

Squinty thought about the horror that Orla must have felt, as she walked through an unknown land with a man she had just met, next to the corpse of the dog she loved. "That's awful." She heard herself say.

"I guess here ... Here it could be nice. Under this tree? What do you think?" Orla asked for her opinion tenderly, with care, as if they had never fought moments before.

"I ... sure." Squinty found herself nodding when a rustle of leaves on the forest floor was heard.

"What was that?" Liton jumped on his feet, brandishing his axe. Squinty joined him but a moment after, pulling out her daggers and ready to "disappear" if the need be. Orla came to stand next to them as well a bit later, her bow at the ready.

What came out from among the trees surprised the three of them. They all simultaneously lowered their weapons.

"It's ... Grizzly! And Onyx!" Squinty was the first to exclaim as the two War Dogs approached in a measured, solemn step. The bigger of the two, her brown mutt, was proudly and gently holding Mr Big Ears in his teeth and wagging his tail. Onyx was walking right next to Grizzly, with a slower gait. She carried a body on her back and it wasn't too hard for Orla and Squinty to recognize a crest of red hair.