Warrior ‣ Bellamy Blake

Bonus Chapter Three

The next chapter is coming up soon I swear, but it's so hard to upload after starting school especially since I have classes that are WAYYY too high of a level for someone of my intelligence. Time management is not my forte. A filler bonus chapter that I needed to write.

Plus, this is an important chapter for the future to come. It's a wee bit short and depressing.

BOLD = Trigedasleng

***

It was almost a week after Aella left Arkadia when she started causing trouble. It wasn't intentional, but trouble just happened to always find its way to her. After stirring the pot for the first—and certainly not the last—time, she was scavenging in the woods for food when she came across a child.

"Hello?" she asked, remembering that word. She could barely comprehend the language at that time.

"Hello?" the child asked in English. "Is someone there?"

Aella turned the corner to stare the boy in the face. He couldn't have been more than eight years of age and he looked terrified. She also noted that half of the boy's face was mangled.

"Who are you?" he asked fearfully.

"I won't hurt you," Aella assured him.

"But I am hideous. I-I'm supposed to die. Please don't lie to me."

"Supposed to die? What do you mean?"

"I was born with this," he said, gesturing to the mangled half of his face. "Erase each blemish in the bloodline."

"That is terrible," she murmured, bending to his level. "Don't be afraid of me. I could never purposefully harm someone that didn't deserve it, but what are you doing here? How did you live this long if what you say is true?"

"I was taken in by a nice family in the desert when I was abandoned," he admitted. "They pitied me, but then they were killed. I've been running ever since. I didn't want to die, but I'm supposed to."

"No one should want to die, young one. I suppose you must be a quick runner, then?"

He smiled a little, but then erased it from his face immediately.

"What's your name?" Aella asked.

"I don't have one. The family couldn't come up with one."

"Well, no-name, want to come with me?"

"You're a stranger."

"I'm Aella Kane, a young woman from Skaikru that had to leave for a while."

"Why should I come with you?"

"Because I could protect you and you could teach me how to build a proper fire."

He chuckled. "You never learned?"

"I lived in the sky and was captured too many times before I could properly learn," she joked, becoming very happy when the little boy giggled like the child he was supposed to be.

"Wait, I don't trust you." And the stone-cold boy was back.

"Why not?"

"I don't know you. How do I know you're not a liar? Plus, I can take care of myself."

"Well, then maybe I need your help more than you need mine, but if you really wanna know more about me, ask me anything."

As the sun dipped below the horizon, Aella Kane and the young, nameless boy chatted for hours on end, exchanging stories about the times each of them did something remarkable, then following with the time they did something stupid. When it got too dark, the boy did teach her how to make a proper fire.