Marks of the New Era

Chapter 5.2

Although at first she was a little surprised, Safiya quickly understood that drawing was the way Tai expressed himself.

While he drew, the princess started thinking about what she had been told, she now knew part of what her brother had gone through but the amount of drawings in his notebook worried her, not all his drawings were horrible things, he also had some happy moments in those pages, but the representations of his nightmares and syndrome were the most shocking and the most common.

"Here" Tai said as he gave her three sheets.

The first drawing seemed to take place in an old village, on the left side were him and their father and on the right side there was... Garon? She wanted to ask but decided to look at the second drawing, it was divided in two, one showed a fight between soldiers, the bodies on the ground making her think that it was a massacre.

The other part showed their father being attacked by Garon, which finally gave an answer to that nagging question, then, she passed to the third one, there, Tai was leaning on their father's body, sobbing and with a red mark across his left eye which, she realized, was how he got his scar.

"The event is called the Cheve Slaughter" He said "Garon tricked dad into meeting him to supposedly declare peace, but it was an ambush, dad and our soldiers were killed on the spot, I was the only one who came back alive, but Garon gave me a reminder of the massacre" He said while pointing at his scar.

"Even if the event was awful, I'm very glad that you're alive Tai"

"... sometimes I wish I wasn't, it was my fault after all"

"What?!"

"I knew something wasn't alright" His voice started quivering "I should have convinced him that something was wrong, that we shouldn't go, but I didn't"

"Brother you didn't know what was going to happen, you couldn't have stopped it"

"Still, even then I should have told dad to increase the security, if I did, maybe he would be here with us"

"I-I*sniff* I'm so sorry" Unable to hold his tears back, he put his head in his hands and started sobbing.

"Tai, please don't blame yourself for this" Safiya hugged him and started rubbing his back "You weren't responsible for what happened"

"Y-You don't h-hate me?"

"Of course not, I couldn't hate you for something you had no control over"

Those words relieved him a bit, his sister didn't hate him for the death of their father, but he didn't know if it would be enough to make him forgive himself.

"Tai" He looked towards her "Do you remember the last time mom and dad took us stargazing?"

"Yes..."

"Do you remember what dad told us?"

"That he would always be with us even if we couldn't see him?"

"I think dad is looking at us in this moment, if he could talk, I'm sure he would tell you that the event wasn't your fault, you were a teenager after all, and even if it was, he would have already forgave you, and so have I"

"I-I think your right" He smiled at her through his blurry vision "Thank you"

They keep talking for a while, Safiya was surprised that none of Tai's siblings knew about his syndrome despite him locking himself in his room for a few months but she realized that their mother keep it hidden and understood that her brother wasn't comfortable revealing something so personal.

And besides, there was a conflict within him related to them.