Eldoran

Chapter 6: Withered Past

Forgive me Nereus. It was not my choice to make and if it were, I would have taken you with me. I can't imagine what you're going through. The sound of clicking and clacking echoes as Mister Crest fidgets around with a little computer and looks at us back and forth. I tried to avoid as much eye contact with him as much as possible but the awkwardness in this car is building up ever so slowly. Here I sat next to Athena wondering what her thoughts are in this current situation.

This luxurious car is like a small moving living room. Mister Crest sits on a curved sofa by himself near the front of the car which is opposite to where me and Athena are sitting. Mister Crest closes his computer and places it on a side table.

He sighed

"Listen, Apollo, Athena? Both starting with the letter a, should be easy to remember haha. Look, I'm sorry about your other friend. I really am. The b-... I just wasn't planning on three y'know?"

I clench my fist in my pockets in frustration. Why us two? We're nothing special. What are the odds out of all the children in the orphanage, and it had to be us two, leaving Nereus all by himself, just after he started getting a lot more happier with us. He puts his leg on top of the other then sits upright. He looks over to a small screen and presses his hand, then typed something afterwards. The blue tinted windows then started to turn transparent. A small box then appears from the side of Mister Crest's sofa, he opens the top and starts fidgeting inside the box. He pulls out two wrapped cakes and hands it to us.

"Here. A peace offering.. I admit that I was being a bit pushy back at the orphanage, I hope you can overlook that."

He said with a half a smile on his face. I have still got to get used to this man. He gives off an odd vibe. He looks like the busy type, so how would he spend time with us? His smile... so sincere yet so mysterious. I hesitantly accepted it. The light shined brightly through the window making me squint my eyes which caused me to shade my eyes and notice what was outside. Hm, what do you know, there it is. I didn't anticipate the fact that I would get a glimpse of the city again so soon.

"The journey will be quite long, again, my sincerest apology. If you have any other questions, please don't hesitate to ask."

He gets back to whatever he was doing with his computer. I stayed silent while I heard the sound of unwrapping plastic. It's a hard situation. The kids that get adopted leaves with a smile on their faces to find their new parents. Of course they will shed a tear here and there to leave their big family behind to start a new one but... they seemed happy. We all have to be adopted at some point, but it's just the matter of when is what saddens me, we don't know when. Had I known beforehand that we were going to get adopted and leave Nereus behind, I would have spent more time with him and helped him a whole lot more so that when the time comes for us to go, he can stand for himself. I feel like I didn't achieve that well enough.

I ended up staring outside the window most of the time. I did not feel the need to talk at all. This place feels slightly different compared to the city. I mean, there are still quite advanced buildings. Pointy ones, curved ones, a lot of different shapes as well. The thing that stood out the most was a building called "Bioclimatic World", it's a round building with a lot of greenery on it and surrounding it. Are those the same artificial grasses we've seen from the museum? I see from a distance as well, a sign called 'squatter zone'. There seems to be some tight security patrolling around the gate. It's like from a movie, they seem to have some sort of weaponry but I can't make out what it looks like from here, but I can see some blue glowing light from it.

The variety of people here as well give off a different impression compared to the city. Majority of them seem normal but I do notice a few gloomy people. Actually no, far too often than I anticipated. From a distance, I see a few buildings that stand out from the rest of the area.