Gregor squinted against the bright afternoon sun and brought a hand up to his forehead to briskly swipe away the sweat that had collected there. Even after almost nine months between him and the last time he had set foot in the Underland, he still felt like the sun was consistently too bright and too hot, though that may have been, he thought, the effect of southern Virginia, not the sun itself.
Virginia was beautiful, even he had to admit. The rolling mountains around him (who knew mountains could be rolling?) were pristine, covered in forest, but with a few open fields. The valleys in between were almost entirely farmland, much like where he stood now, waist deep in young grain stalks. Only a few fields over, he could hear the rumbling voice of his uncle and the slightly higher pitch of his aunt, the actual owners of the farm he and his family were living on now. Indefinitely. When he once bothered to ask his dad if they would ever be going back to New York (and the Underland), his dad just got an uncomfortable look in his eyes and changed the subject. So in all likelihood, Gregor wouldn't be going home. Not for a long time.
It wasn't so bad here, though. His aunt and uncle put him to work on the farm, with Lizzie and Boots helping where their chores required it. Gregor had enjoyed learning how to coax a harvest from the ground while all of the other kids his age were all in school. His mom had wanted him to go directly into school when they first arrived in Virginia, only a week or so after Grandma had passed away peacefully. But his father had talked her out of it, though the deciding factor, Gregor thought, was himself. For weeks he had just stumbled around, leaving the house at odd hours, walking at night, barely speaking to anyone at all. He had carried himself so carefully those weeks, talking only softly, moving only as slowly as he could, as though he would snap if he went any faster or louder. It sure felt like it to Gregor.
So his parents had decided that maybe Gregor needed some time to wake up and remember that he was Gregor, not the Warrior, not a soldier, not an Underlander. So he had gotten all the rest of the school year just to heal. Healing and growing things on the farm. But it was summer now, and soon enough he would be back to school, back to life. For months, he'd seen and spoken to no one but his aunt and uncle, his parents, and his younger siblings, not counting the animals that lived on or around the farm. But soon, within a few short months, he would have to face the world again. It should have been a terrifying prospect.
But it wasn't. It wasn't anything at all, not to Gregor.
Gregor wasn't entirely sure why he wasn't afraid, or even nervous, about something like the first day in a new school anymore. Afraid that he might lose control, yes. Afraid of social humiliation, of bullying, of bad grades, not at all. Maybe it was just that he had seen far scarier things than young humans and change. What ever it was, Gregor felt... not at peace, not quite. His nightmares could attest to that, and the way he flinched at the sound of banging metal and the smell of blood, both of which brought back flashes of terrible memory that overtook him like a storm. Grief, for Aries and his home and everything, shook him at the most unexpected moments. He felt... passive. Empty. Lost. As though the world would do what it wished with him, and he had given up trying to stop it, or even caring about it. He had already done everything he was supposed to do in life. Now he was like a cast-aside tool, no longer used for any purpose, just rusting away, waiting for whatever happen, and uncaring either way. A warrior in a world that no longer wanted warriors.
That was all he was. That was all he had.
Gregor shook his head and bent down into the grain field again, tugging again on the weeds scattered among the golden stalks. Thoughts like these were useless when there was work to be done. Autumn would come, whether he liked it or not, and so would school and the world and everything else outside the farm's borders. Maybe it would disturb Lizzie or his mother that he was having thoughts about giving up on caring about life or himself. Maybe they would fear that he was thinking about dying, about not caring about anything anymore. They needn't have, even if they had known. There had been too much death already, and Gregor wasn't that stupid. He felt no need to die, merely no need to worry about how he lived, either. But he didn't worry. Not him.
He just worked in the field. and waited for the coming of autumn.