Before the Dawn (Draft 1)

Part 8

Ignia

Ignia hated remembering the argument that had just occurred. She'd been completely illogical and unproductive. Part of her said she could hardly be blamed for not wanting to think of Sion being put through what she'd experienced. What were the odds of him needing these skills? But the poor buck had lost his mother over this. It was probably a coping mechanism, similar to her motivation to join the Vespertilio after being orphaned by Ado herself. If that was the case, he certainly didn't need to be taught killing techniques.

Now she was rationalizing. Ew.

"Ignia? What's up?"

She perked up at hearing Sion's voice, and only had to briefly search the wide clifftop hollow to notice Luscin had left. What was up, again? She skimmed briefly through her thoughts before giving a nod as she pulled her mind to the thing she'd wanted to speak about. Luscin.

"You screwed up the jump again," she answered simply. Sion did not look pleased.

"Uh... Yeah, I know. I'm trying my best. Is that all?"

Ignia raised an eyebrow. "You do it right when you're practicing alone."

Sion froze, his fur bristling slightly. Ignia continued.

"Look, kid, I'm noticing more and more that something is weird between you guys. Why is he even hanging out with you when I didn't see him around you at all since..."

"Since my mom died. You can say it."

"Well, a little while after that, yeah."

"It doesn't matter."

Ignia's ears leaned back, her tail lashing a couple of times. That was Sion's answer every time she tried to help him, and it made everything so much harder.

"Sion, you'd better start telling me what's going on because I can't play guessing games with this. I am trying to take care of you, but you clam up whenever I ask you anything. Let me help."

"You can't."

Ignia stamped her hoof against the ground twice. This kid was as cryptic as a poem and what she had to do to get him to open up was a question she'd been asking for years. There were certain things that would make him light up, he looked like Pluma when he did. She imagined those moments reflected how he'd been before the war. She hated that she could never get him back to that place for long and felt she was failing Pluma every day she didn't try, but she didn't know what else to do at this point.

"Can I go now?" Sion asked dryly.

"No, shush for a second."

"What-"

"Shh."

Sion gave a discontented huff, but sat down while Ignia continued to think. What made Sion less apathetic and depressed? Learning, training... his training. His training motivated him more than she'd seen anything else do before. He'd cared enough to start learning to use plant magic for it, so maybe he'd talk about his feelings for it. For once she had something new to go off of.

"How badly do you want to be a good fighter?" she asked.

"Why?"

"Because this problem with Luscin is obviously interfering with your training and your best bet to fixing it if you haven't already is to at least try and work out whatever feelings are involved or whatever."

Sion went silent, his pupils blowing up and his ears pinning back. "That's not the problem, he'll still hate me no matter what you tell me."

Ignia perked up slightly at the use of such a strong word. "Hate you? He doesn't seem to hate you."

"He's an expert at fake politeness. Just... trust me, he hates me."

"And why is that?"

"Because-" Sion seemed to realize he was about to accidentally not be infuriatingly closed off. "No, it doesn't matter. You can't change it."

"Does he have a good reason to be mad?"

"Yes. Well, no... kind of?"

"By the Goddesses and the stars and all the magic in the bloody universe, please give a straight answer for once."

"Okay fine! I stopped talking to him, alright? He was- Hell, he was so unhappy whenever he was with me, worrying about me. I couldn't keep making him feel that way. So I pretended I didn't want to be his friend. He still doesn't know why. Are you happy now?"

Ignia blinked, tilting her head as she tried to make sense of the story. She couldn't believe she'd even gotten this much out of him, but now she actually had to figure out a way to be helpful about it. She thought she'd start by pointing out the most obvious hole in his logic.

"And. You didn't think ditching him would make him feel worse?"

"Well he was fine eventually, I've seen him."

"Well... then why do you act so weird around him?"

"I don't know- I feel bad?"

"But you think you did the right thing."

"Look, I don't know. This isn't helping."

Ignia had to admit she didn't feel like she was getting anywhere.

"I'm still figuring out what's going on... Do you think we can sit on the roof and keep talking about it? We haven't been up there in awhile."

Sion shook his head.

"Do you have any better ideas, or do you just want to give up on having proper training?"

"Alright, but only if you admit I was right earlier."

Ignia's fur bristled slightly at the mention of the earlier argument. If she did that she'd have no excuse not to teach Sion and Luscin at least some lethal fighting moves. She couldn't lie, she'd already done enough of that to him.

Her first plan had stopped working and the only thing she could think of that might work as a backup was to appeal to Sion's curiosity. More specifically, his recurring interest in Ignia's history with his mother which she'd never entertained for reasons which still applied.

But she'd gotten so close.

Maybe to change Sion's patterns of not sharing she'd have to change her own. Ignia hated changing her patterns but she hated the idea of making this much progress for nothing even more. And she didn't have to tell him everything.

She first had to figure out an excuse to bring up the topic, or even what she could say about it. It didn't take long to find something but it was probably what she wanted him to know the least. At this rate, she thought, she may as well tell him everything, but everything might be more of a shock and she didn't want to get off the subject.

"Look, I know what it's like to fall out with someone because you think you're protecting them, because it happened with your mother."

Sion's ears perked with either surprise or interest, or both, and his tail began to sway back and forth. "Really? Did you just finally tell me why she never talked about you or anything?"

"I'll tell you the things if you'll tell me your things. Let's go." With that, Ignia headed towards her oak house to climb up to its roof. Despite her anxieties towards finally going into this topic with him, she couldn't help but smile slightly to herself at how much he resembled his mother when he was interested in something. Ignia used to wake him up and bring him here to show him things like the different moons and sometimes just the stars if she really wanted to cheer him up but didn't have any other excuse to. But it had worked less and less as time went on. To be honest, she missed sitting on the roof with him.