Thorns of Fate: Serendipity Saga Book One

Chapter Thirty-Eight

"Chapter 38 is dedicated to the very real best friend whose heart and personality inspired Will's character. Some of the following analogies are true and an actual representation of the amazing person that this best friend truly was."

In Memory of William Butler (February 3, 1993 - July 28, 2016)

Will and I had an easy relationship. We always had. It wasn't one that required much work. It just was. We just were. I loved him like a brother more even than as a cousin or as a best friend. He was the closest person to me aside from Kellic. He knew all my secrets, my hardships, the pains I had experienced.

The image of Will, broken and beaten, was one I had to repeatedly chase from my mind. I had no idea what I was walking into, but I knew he was there and that was my sole focus. Will was family. He was family that would decimate me to lose.

Will and Kellic were ten years old when I broke my arm. I was seven. As far as we had known, our mothers were dead, our fathers not in the picture. Our grandmother stayed relatively busy with the company and its various offshoots. We spent a lot of time with just us. Grandmother had to work late one night and when the sitter hadn't shown up at the house, we hadn't bothered to tell her.

Kellic suggested that we go exploring in the woods, playing pirates, cops and robbers, and tag. I was thrilled by the idea. Anything to get out of the house and do something fun. Will had taken more convincing but with a giggle, Kellic pulled me by my hand and we fled into the trees. Will followed, always our protector and not eager to leave us alone.

For a long time, we just played. We picked sticks for swords and clanged them off of each other as we danced through the trees, giggling like the children we were. Will was always the best sword fighter. At that point he was much larger than Kellic and myself, already becoming more muscled and far taller than us. He had a better reach, poking his sword-stick through our defenses.

After some time--and several poking blows--we decided that pirates wasn't fair due to his larger stature. Instead, we made a game of finding the biggest trees to climb. There was one daunting tree in the forest area that none of us had ever successfully shimmied up. It was the challenge but we didn't dare try it. At first.

We spent hours climbing the smaller trees and seeing who could reach the highest branch, who could climb the fastest, who could see the farthest. I was good at climbing trees. Kellic was almost the same height as me at this point, making our reach far similar, but I was small, skinny and could slide through branches better than they could. Once we'd reached the top of the biggest tree we dared, Kellic and I had gotten into a serious competition.

"I think I'm the best climber," Kellic said, hanging from a limb at the top of a thin tree. This height was still far below that of the tree and I told her so.

"This is nothing, Kel. If you're really the best climber, you could climb that tree," I said, jabbing a finger at the ominous oak across the clearing. I watched her face first fill with anxiety, then indignation.

"You can't climb it either, Kyra. You're not any better," she said, spitting venom.

Oh, no, that wouldn't do. Will try to break up our bickering but it didn't really work. Kellic and I were both extraordinarily hard headed and we weren't likely to back down from a challenge.

"I can so!" I had yelled, hanging a branch farther down than her.

She shimmied down the tree, climbing from limb to limb until she could touch her toes to the ground. She propped her hand on her hip and stuck her tongue out at me as I slid my way down to join her. "Prove it then!" she shouted back as I hit the ground.