AVENIR

Introduction: Part 1

So when I could finally see past the blobs; I mean that when I could see past colors and shapes and actually perceive the world, the blurs were not a sight to behold.  For they stayed gray, and black, and dirty brown, even as my world came into focus.  For I was a child of the streets.  My first memory was on a dirty city sidewalk; where that sidewalk was, I did not know.  A rat was chewing on my hair. I remember screaming and running to my brother, shaking him awake, and then, huddled next to him, crying tears of a scared and lonely young girl.  There were many moments like this, but most memories were much worse.  Let us just say that when it all began, in the year 2020 P.D. (Past Death - they called it this because they had finally figured out a way to keep who they wanted alive for all eternity), I was sick of eating hamburgers covered in bird poo and cigarette butts, retrieved from a hard day's work of dumpster diving.  I was tired of constantly fearing the darkness and relying on the moon and my brother for my only source of comfort.  It wasn't enough.  I was tired of being alone.

My brother taught me from a young age to always fear the men in blue, the ones who were supposed to serve and protect, but in fact seemed to only be put on this Earth to clean the street of homeless scum like us.  We learned to avoid them, but we were growing weaker.  It was wintertime, the year that it all happened, and food was scarce.  Lately, my brother had taken it upon himself to teach me how to fight, which was mainly by instinct.  Listen, he would say, and watch.  Use all of your senses, and let your movements speak for themselves.  Go where your body takes you.  And always, always remember to fight from the shadows. 

I always wondered exactly what all of this meant.  My practice punches felt so weak that I wondered how I would ever face off against a real cop if need be.  My brother would go to the nearest karate school and just stay outside and watch – he said each school had windows of glass, as if the karate students inside were taunting those outside to come in and try them.  My brother had a very good memory; he would run to whatever alleyway we were staying in that night, wake me up, stand next to me, eyes closed, and begin teaching me the next sequence, all from memory.  I learned to run, kick, bite, wrestle, and apply chokeholds.  It was all we could do. We were preparing for a day we knew would someday come...the day they would find us.

The best times were whenever we stole a few pieces of wood stacked high from an outdoor market or found a box of matches on the street.  We would drag the nearest garbage can into our alley and set it aflame.  After a week of sleeping by the heat exhaust outside someone's tenement, a fire was a treat.  I would cuddle up against my brother as we stared into the sparks and flames of our fire.  "What will ever happen to us?" I would cry.  My brother would shush me and tell me of another world, far, far away from here, across the shoreline, just beyond where the last spark of our fire escaped off to.  "Where? Is it here?" I asked.

"No," whispered my brother.  "It is not here, nor is it anywhere else on this Earth...no, sister.  Far beyond the farthest star, in another time, another dimension, there is a place where everyone can be happy."

"Do I have to die to get there?"

"No, sister, you just have to find it.  I have been there, and one day you will, too."

By this point, I would always be half asleep, but these words would always jostle me awake.  "How do I get there, brother?  I need to get there!  You have to take me!"

He gazed down at me, a forlorn, faraway look in his eyes.  "Alas, sister, I cannot take you...not just yet.  Perhaps you will arrive there someday.  But listen to me now, sister.  Never kill.  Always fight for peace.  For if ever you kill another, someday, you will be destroyed as well.  On this Earth and beyond, we are all brothers and sisters, all connected.  Nothing benefits from killing another. Only harm will come to those who harm."

"Would you kill someone to save me?" I murmured one time, on that fateful night, already half asleep.

He didn't answer for a long time.  "If I knew you would not escape, then...yes.  Only to save you.  But you must understand, that would mean I would be killed as well."  I was silent.  I was entering the subconscious state of mind when I felt my brother shift his weight abruptly to get up.  I did not want him to see me watching him, so I just barely opened my eyes.  He walked away from the fire, and before my very eyes, I watched him pull something strange out of his pocket.  It looked like...maybe a piece of metal?  I watched him run his hands slowly over it, until it began to glow.  I heard him murmur something so soft I barely knew if he had opened his mouth.  A golden light seemed to surround him.  My eyes widened; I jumped up and ran to help him.  Was he on fire?  Before I could reach him, he was gone.  I ran to the end of the alley and peered around the corner.  No one was there.  He had disappeared.  It was then that I realized that my brother knew magic.