To the Passing of Time
The first important thing Asterix learnt was that people could be hurt in more than one way.
While asking a lot of questions was ingrained in his nature, it was the first answer he got to truly make a difference. He was as curious, in his childhood, as he lacked self-control; he never let it slip when his peers were mean to him, and it didn't help that he was always listening. Luckily for him, he had two great gifts to rely on – quick wits, and his mother's infinite patience.
When Asterix came home bruised and covered in dust, again, he was three years old, and it had happened for five days in a row. He had set a new record.
Firmly, like she had never done before, Praline sat him in the middle of the courtyard, between a bucket of hot water and her own firm grasp. Thus, she said, the sky would hear all his cries, and would grow really angry if he ever were to brawl again.
Despite his squirming and wailing in pain, he remained stubborn as ever. He would not stop fighting – what the other children said pained him, even more than her medications. And as her face darkened, for reasons still beyond him, Asterix asked why it hurt so much.
It was her turn to explain, calmly, under a flock of passing clouds. She told him hands and blades were not the only things with the power to wound a person – what people said was as much of a weapon, and the most dangerous one. She showed him the scratches on his arms, and taught him how words never left traces like those. They could mark people deeper, longer, in invisible ways.
That afternoon, curled up on her knees, Asterix began to understand that words and thoughts could be as useful as his fists. They were his to make use of, whether he spoke or listened. He could treasure the wise ones for a rainy day; he could keep the good ones for his friends, like he did with the small rocks he collected from the meadows.
Praline told him to observe the effect of words, for it wasn't completely hidden. It was his task to read faces and eyes, like he would one day do with the alphabet. Soon, she promised, it would become much easier than it sounded.
It was a garbled idea, and somewhat big for his tiny mind. But his gaze on the world was already clear. He seemed to have been born for that.
He merely had to be patient. In time, it would all come together.
Asterix wasn't much older when he found out that people could lie about things, but not necessarily out of malice.
By then, he had enough familiarity with things which weren't true. After the long talk he and his mother had shared, he let his friends' teasing slip from his shoulders with the ease of rain. Since none of it was real, none of it mattered to him.
He shut his ears to what he would, in a few years, call envy and pettiness. Predictably, his choice made a terribly boring target out of him. He was soon left alone.
Then again, Asterix was not the only child in the village, and not everyone shared his personality. They still couldn't resist picking on each other all the time – maybe it was part of their Gaulish nature, he would muse as a grown man.
Naturally, the others wouldn't let go of one of their few sources of fun for long. Whenever a favourite target was lost, they always rushed in search of a replacement.
What made Obelix so different was that he always smiled. He had to be the most peaceful child their cluster of homes had ever nurtured. Since his change of heart, Asterix had grown even closer to him – he too, after all, enjoyed serenity more than pointless brawls.
He noticed the problem fast. His friend always smiled, but his smiling barely made any sense. With Asterix's own temper toned down, the limitless endurance of his friend served as good bait for the rowdiest children of the group.
By the time they turned six, Obelix had become the laughing stock of the village, and he still smiled.
His expression never varied, not even when Asterix urged him to defend himself. In the days the others' words were especially harsh, he only smiled wider and held his hand.
Although Asterix knew how to ignore them, that was very different from approving of what they did. And he didn't, not at all. Nor was he one to stand by and watch.
It never took him long to put the picture together. He found out almost immediately, how lying could mean something else entirely. If the other children could tell lies just for fun, there was also the chance of faking the truth by hiding it.
The day he found Obelix crying behind a rock, Asterix decided he had had enough.
Praline scolded him one afternoon, when he came back in the same state as the old times. He refused to acknowledge it.
As far as he was concerned, fighting for Obelix wasn't even up for discussion. He did realize, however, that the frequency of their brawls was getting dangerously close to more than three a day. Finding an alternative would work better for sure.
Not that Asterix cared. If it was for his friend, he was more than ready to beat them up himself forever. Still, at that rate, there was no way he would always be able to defend Obelix when he needed it.
His plan went more or less smoothly. At the very least, they got away with it. There was just one flaw, so to say, he hadn't foreseen at all; and when he realized Obelix's strength had not waned in ten days, he sat down to think about it on his own.
Maybe there was something more to it, he mused, uneasily. He had never expected the effects of the potion to last so long. What was going on, he had no idea, and yet he didn't dare ask the druid.
What if Obelix stayed that way for one year? Or two? What if…?
For the first time in his life, Asterix opened his eyes on the future. He had never seen anything similar – not even the sea and the sky, with their eternal blue expanse, could match the idea of something so big. It stretched all across his mind, and that was where he discovered his imagination had no boundaries.
Not a single one of his actions had caused lasting effects before. Everything burnt away in a handful of days. Now he pictured the consequences of what he had done, years and years onward, without anything to stop him. It felt like the chain never ended.
After a few confused minutes of that, he felt dizzy.
What the incident truly taught him, in the end, was how nothing anyone does is predictable.
Asterix entered adolescence with just a little more wisdom, but ever holding on to that certainty. No matter how deep and elaborate the planning, things were always bound to be unforeseeable at some point. It was the one constant element in the workings of reality – no man, astute or not, possessed the power to get around it.
The outcome of a childhood scuffle had turned around his view on life forever. His innate observant nature had taken a sharp turn towards extreme caution. He always thought through his actions in detail, making up as he could for his lack of experience. Most of all, feeling aware of his limits, he was never pretentious enough to think he couldn't fail.
Asterix never paid mind to it, but that was exactly what set him apart from the rest of his age group. His unusual sharpness of mind only made him stand out more. Regardless of his will, and his opinion of himself, he had to witness the slow transformation in his village – with growing stupor, yet resigned to his fate.
He noticed the role he was being involved in as quickly as it came to be. Requests of assistance from the elders got more frequent with each month, and scarcely did a season go by without impressed rumours spreading in the village.
His tactics already worked wonders. The older warriors all agreed on that. And over time, while the greatest danger swallowed up their whole land from the south, the crucial choices their freedom depended on stopped being approved without his opinion.
The time he spent in Panoramix's company increased every day. It was near incredible to witness the amount of memory and knowledge he held in his aging hands. Asterix was drawn to discovery in a way no one else was, as the druid himself had observed at the dawn of his existence.
The young warrior told him everything. He spoke of the gods, and his doubts on how their fickle hands could trace the destiny of mortals. He spoke of perils and expectations, of the growing pressure which weighed on his shoulders. From time to time, he was scared. Panoramix laid his fingers on his brow.
He was scared, and that was normal, the druid said. He was just young.
But young people like him, he added with a smile, were destined to change the world.
He wasn't blind to Obelix's situation, either. The shift in his importance became evident at the same pace of the Roman advance. The adult child of the village, his dearest, eternally little brother, not so far from turning into their last resort.
Obelix did not seem to care that much. He was never touched by anything – he lived on, regardless of what came to them. New strength aside, his nature had stayed the same.
They lived through everything together, just like they had overcome the bitter parts of their childhood. Obelix's state only made it better. They hunted, ate, drank in company, and shared all the little they had; they disobeyed their mothers, fleeing all the youths in search of a fiancée, to lie down at the edge of the forest and laugh at the stars.
Regardless, Asterix thought, it felt like it could go on forever.
He had the chance to see it, with unparalleled clarity, the day the Romans had nowhere left to tread on but the ground of their home. The two of them marched out and fought on the front line, side by side, at unnatural speed.
It was over in a matter of minutes. Obelix laughed, happier than he had ever been. It was a fun game – it worked wonders for the tranquil monotony of their lives.
He turned around as if nothing had happened, putting his enormous arm around Asterix's shoulders, and walked towards the bench under their favourite tree.
They sat there in the very same way the seasons had always met them. Asterix couldn't believe their calm would be threatened anytime soon.
It became a ritual, earlier than he had expected. The fear of the unknown which had thrown shadows on his youth was barely a memory. With age had come his elements of balance – familiar and dear, if always mitigated by the wisdom of all men who realize nothing lasts forever.
Asterix was stable, to the extent he could afford it. He knew he was the heart of a little universe, and kept it healthy and safe by never thinking of himself as such. A thread of security linked together all that surrounded him; as long as it lasted, it was sufficient.
He was never alone, certainly not with Obelix around. Once, when his banishment was but a distant memory, Abraracourcix confided him how everyone had expected his friend to follow him. There was no point in parting what everything else had brought together. Asterix was used to seeing him in the middle of the fight, a flurry of red hair and fabric, as well as dozing off against the wall of his home. It was a constant, and they were always happy.
He didn't remain idle and bored for long, either. It seemed the gods had decreed his life to be an eternal challenge. Maybe, he told Panoramix after thwarting a particularly dangerous Roman plan, they always made sure to give him everything in the right measure – the danger he needed to keep sharp, and enough fun to stay active.
He still had no way of foreseeing what would happen. No tool from his intellect could shield him from the future. He had, however, learnt to make peace with it – which was probably one of the greatest gifts of adulthood.
As the years went by, he kept learning new things. It made him feel safer each day. He could not tell whether it would last, or vanish with the changing wind, but it didn't matter.
All Asterix let himself be sure of was that time never stopped flowing. And, as long as he'd keep smiling to it, time would be his friend in return.