The Search for Life

Chapter 8

The light of day echoed throughout the black void of night as the first rays of morning light backlit the Fire Kingdom's central mountain. The two self-made orphans of expectation sat crisscross in the reddened ash with their backs to the glassy palace walls, both watching the growing fire that would soon warm the earth. There had been a long silence over the pair that neither was willing to break. What had been said -- as awful as it had been -- was better still than what had not been said. And so the two remained wordless as they had come, and the prince laid his head in the Guardian's lap.

The volcanic rocks dug into Leota's palms as she leaned back, but her back hurt more than her hands. Her legs had fallen asleep when the first light of dawn had appeared, but she didn't dare move. If she moved, then he'd moved, and then the peace might be broken. She would give anything, her legs included, to stay in that peace another moment. For, whatever front she had put up, the threat of her kidnap and torture had been incredibly harrowing. She wasn't sure he knew that, either. Perhaps that was for the best.

As the shadow they sat in receded into the mountain and the sun rose over its peak, something prompted Teki to speech. That something was the result of thousands of words forming hundreds of possible sentences and the time-consuming process of choosing the right one. And though it had taken him ages to decide what to say, it took him even longer to decide how he wanted to say it. He polished his words like a gemstone, though when he spoke, it was out of obligation to timing. His words would never be perfect, he knew, so with slight regret that he could never let Leota knew exactly how he felt, he muttered,

"I shouldn't have done that."

And that was it. He swallowed as soon as the words were out of his mouth and immediately wanted them back. But it was too late.

Her silence was long. She shifted beneath him and he wondered if he should have gone with the straight apology he had originally planned – like the one she had offered him – but that wasn't what he had said.

Leota lifted her hand ever so slightly after briefly deciding to stroke the prince's hair. Since this decision was almost immediately rescinded, the result was a slight rocking of her hips and the readjustment of her palm on the rocky ground. She hoped that hadn't disturbed him too much. It's alright, she considered saying, but neither of them were 'alright,' and she didn't feel it right to answer a truth with a lie. So instead, she told him, "Everyone makes mistakes."

The prince rubbed his eyes and dared to smile. His slight smile grew into a grin until he was shaking from the laughter he held back. At first, the Guardian thought he was crying again, which would not have been unexpected, but soon his laughter was audible. He smiled and sighed and relaxed a little, and watched the mountain peak carefully. "What I did was not a mistake," he told her.

Initially, Leota was confused at the meaning of this, but she waited for elaboration. She suppressed a spike of fear that shot through her stomach that this was all perhaps part of his plan to nab her.

"It was not an accident that I found you and demanded your capture," he told her. "It was not an accident that I threw you against that column, and it was certainly not an accident that I conspired with my brother and father against you. I wish it were otherwise, but that is the truth of it."

"I should think so," Leota concurred, sitting up and folding her legs as the Prince sat up himself. "But I didn't accuse you of a series of accidents. I said you made a mistake, and everyone makes mistakes."

The Prince folded his legs like she had done and watched her in the growing light. "Yeah, mistake's too light a word for what I did... When they say 'everyone makes mistakes,' they mean that people screw up in little ways, it's not—" He stopped himself, and narrowed his eyes to check if she was understanding. "Are you still underestimating the gravity of my words? I told you I was there to kidnap you. Do you honestly not care about any of that stuff? I ask you again: are you a masochist?"