The Man They Called Universe
…
"Where are you going to go?"
The question itself was fair, and made sense. The voice behind it was confused and unsure, which to the addressee, wasn't so normal.
A hand paused in its thumbing through papers of a hand-written journal, and looked up to the speaker.
He had not expected running into anyone as he made his leave. Especially not him.
"Kal." He responded back on a tone dull with a lack of emotion, expression just as so. "…Why are you in here?"
Kal was his adoptive brother, by law. He was the person- note, person- that he had known longest in his life, much younger than him but looking a few years older. Kal looked to be entering the age of 19 now, but the expressionless man himself, looked only 15, 16 tops. Neither one was actually so young as they looked; eyes do play tricks.
Kal certainly wasn't one to look nervous- upon the usual, he was brash, and aggressive- or the opposite, lighthearted and outgoing. Never nervous, never unsure, though.
"You shouldn't go." Was what Kal answered with; it wasn't an answer to what had been asked. "Midori- Midori-"
"Mother Midori is dead." Was the hot response- it was as cold and blank in tone as before, and the younger looking man's expression did not change, but his posture shifted aggressively and after being around him for so long, Kal could feel his anger rolling like waves.
The younger of the brothers looked down at the ground sharply. "Her- Mother's funeral-"
"They all die, Kal." Cut in the older, looking back down at his book. "You're ageing is slowing down like mine. You'll see, Kal. All your parents die, one family after another. You'll be glad they do, Mother Midori will be the only exception. I'm not staying around to be put in another foster home here."
"Koyol, where are you going?" Kal asked quicker this time, giving name to the man so far in our story without one.
Koyol looked over his shoulder at his brother. "I'm going to a place." Was all he said. "I'm going somewhere, that's all I know."
Kal looked at the ground. "The princess won't be pleased. Neither will Teacher."
"ty che, suka, o'khuel blya?" Cruel words rolling off in their mother tongue, language so foul that it made his brother redden over his earthy brown tone. Kal was an enigma, as while most of their home village had been white, pale, pinkish, Kal had been born with a skin tone like bronze.
Their mother called him 'Nutmeg' for it.
Koyol had been born with scales as black as night, black tar with the faintest undertones of purple.
She joked once and called him 'midnight' for it.
When he developed the green skin, she had happily called him an Olive and laughed for 5 minutes full, amused with how clever she thought she was.
He missed her.
She would be the only mother he'd ever had that he would miss.
And now, She was dead.
"piiiiz'dets, blyaaaa!" His emotionless tone sounded frightening when raised to such volumes, when the air around him burned with anger. "Be gone, suka, leave! I have lived a hundred years without people to call true family! I will not need her nor you!"
"K-"
"net!" he snapped, turning around fully after slamming his book down on a metal table, echoing loudly in the underground bunker-like room. "Koyol was the name of the son of Midori! Koyol was the name of that family's boy, and that family is no more!"
It was almost hateful when the green skinned boy leaned toward his younger brother, and with an expressionless and icily empty tone, hissed "We are no longer brothers. Koyol is gone with Midori!"
Koyol had known Kal long before Midori. They had been friends long before, and such words hurt them both; most obviously Kal, who's face twisted in shock and pain.
"Not brothers?" Kal was certainly winded. "My family disowned me for you, and you push me aside?"
"My parents have all tried to kill me." Koyol's voice was strained with the lowness of it's quiet. "What is disowning in comparison? Find a new family, Kal, because ours died with her."
Koyol spun back around, grabbed his book, grabbed a black bag waiting by a door, and walked in before locking it behind him, each of the thick 7 locks firmly in place and double checked as quick as he could move.
There was a sudden banging on the door behind him when he turned away, and frantic calls of his dead name, and of many names he'd had before, and the sound of his brother in panic.
With no more to say, and only the desire to leave, one green skinned hand reached up and gently touched a large, earth green square-cute gem, held onto his person by a black choker necklace.
Closing his eyes, he willed it alive, and the Universe opened before him when his eyes opened, in the shape of a bright, white rectangular shape, glowing with a sourceless light.
Take me anywhere. His mind whispered. Take me away, anywhere you can, just let me leave all of this behind.
All of this training to be a prince, all of these people who saw him as an aboniation, all of these memories of pain, all of these agonizing ties people called relationships, all of these people trying to teach him things he didn't want, all of these restrictions and expectations and limits…
Take me anywhere that I can be free.
He stepped through universe's door, and in the moments, scarcer than milliseconds, he was nothing and he was everything, within and beyond the universe itself.
