The table was in silence and Raivis didn't dare to break it. Playing with his dinner, he kept meditating about what he had been calculating during the whole afternoon, until he eventually made a decision.
"Moze has invited me to spend the night at his house this Friday."
"I thought his mother didn't want any more parties after what you did last time" his mother smiled with a bit of malice.
"I told you the phone pranks was Raulo and Valter's idea!" Raivis replied, offended to be included in that plural.
Toris snickered and made a comment in low voice which Raivis suffocated with a coarse "shut up".
"Well, alright, you may go, but I hope you guys behave. And that does include you" his mother said.
"Do you have anything to say too, Eduard?"
Eduard raised his head from the plate to glance at his father.
"Hm?"
"You're chewing over something inside that head of yours" Mr. Neikus said to him.
"No, it's nothing."
They rang at the door. Mr. Neikus didn't insist and got up to answer.
He found outside a girl with a pretty body and even prettier eyes and a very long blond hair who gave him a naughty smile.
"Uh, good night?" Mr. Neikus greeted her.
"Hello, is Toris at home?"
"Yes, yes, he is...Toris! Come here for a moment! Come in."
"No, thank you, it will only be a moment."
Toris got up from the table and walked to the hall, where he suddenly stopped upon seeing who was waiting for him at the door.
Poland leaned to one side to look at Toris with a widened smile.
"Hi. Am I interrupting something?"
"Dinner."
Toris glanced at his father and him, with an expression which made him believe he got a wrong idea about this visit, made his exit. Once his father left, Toris approached Poland, controlling the volume of his voice.
"What are you doing here?"
"I wanted to know how you were doing" Poland sniffed around the inside of the house. "It smells so good. Lassagna?"
"Just like this morning. You shouldn't be here. I never told you where I live, have you been following me?"
"Don't make that idiot face, I didn't kill anybody. Hey, it isn't bad at all, the house. Not a palace, but it's much better than a niche."
Even though Toris didn't invite him in, of course, Poland walked in anyway.
"You've been following me!" Toris exclaimed.
"And what are you going to do about it? Are you calling the police?" Poland turned to him with a smirk which could have melted more than one man...maybe even Toris, in other circumstances.
"Well...Probably!" he replied.
Poland chuckled.
"Ah, Liet, you make the most hilarious faces when you're flustered."
"I told you, I'm not Liet. You're completely mistaken."
"Toris!" his mother called him from the living room. "Why don't you tell your friend to have dinner with us?"
"No, mom, she's already leaving!" Toris replied while grabbing Poland to drag him to the door. "And she's not my friend!"
"I am" Poland smiled, letting him take him with no resistance. "It's just that you don't remember."
"Is that why you're here? To remind me?"
"All times needed."
"I'm going to save you trouble, then: I'm one hundred percent convinced that I've never seen you in my life."
"Not in this one, but in the previous one, yes. It's been so many centuries together. You must hold some memory inside that little soul of yours."
"He! Centuries, you say? I see you fine for being centuries old."
"What can I say? I try to keep a beauty routine. And, you know, time passes differently for nations."
They gazed at each other in silence until Poland turned around to leave on his free will.
"There's so many things you should remember. I see you don't trust me...But I'm not leaving without you. The sooner you open your mind, the better."
Before reaching the sidewalk, he turned around, his long braid doing a movement many people would have found sensual, and approached his hands to his mouth to use them as an amplifier, so Toris could hear better his last words:
"Lublin! 1569!"
After what he walked with the calm of who has resolved all of his tasks and has nothing else to do before vanishing in the dark of the night. Toris saw him walk down the lane, after which, shaking his head, he closed the door and rejoined his family.
"Look at him, the womanizer. Girls come home to visit him" Raivis said, getting even for the comment he had done before.
"Shut up, you dwarf" Toris replied as he sat.
"Who was that? I don't think I know her."
'A crazy lady' he was about to say, but changed his answer:
"A classmate."
That night, however, he almost told his brothers the truth. Everything about that girl who claimed to be Poland and he supposedly being called Liet before, something happening which implied spirits and nations...He even opened his mouth, not very sure of where to start from. But he ended up laying in bed without saying anything.
Raivis, on his phone, seemed to be listening to music, when he actually had a tab open with photos of the neighboring country, Latvia, that unknown place for him until the day when a boy he didn't know insisted that he was its nation. He had to go there, he had to know if he would find something in that place which could make him remember, because he had a feeling inside of his chest which made him think Sealand was telling the truth, all that fantastic tale had sense. He regretted having to lie to his brothers, to whom he had never hidden something so serious, but if he told them they would think it was crazy to go on a trip with people he didn't know and believe all that absurd story.
Eduard was too absorbed on his laptop to pay attention to the revealing faces of his brothers.
«Lunch at the prairie. Summer. Finland.»
Those were the three words written in the page by which he had the book open on his lap. He could read that too. How strange...thanks to that music app he had downloades to see what the songs the book contained sounded like, those words had sense to him. Images came to his head, too weak to understand what they were, but got to give him goosebumps.
"Ed" Raivis called him.
"Hm?"
"I'm going to turn off the light."
"Ah, okay."
Even though he wasn't sleepy, he switched off the laptop, removed his glasses and got in bed.
He didn't realize he fell in Morpheus' arms. He simply found himself in a very green prairie, filled with yellow flowers, under a warm sun, extremely nice.
He made his way through the tall grass, to the only human figure in there.
«Hello?»
The little person was picking up flowers, as many as he could. When Eduard approached, he turned around. It was a boy around ten, with platinum blond hair and violet eyes, so big and lively.
«Moi! You are like me, right?» the child approached him and gazed at him with a smile. «I'm so glad to find someone else! My name's Suomi, but you can call me Finland. Want to pick up flowers with me? They're for my nanny.»
«Finland?»
The boy giggled, and a voice spoke, one which didn't belong to him.
Don't you remember?
«Remember...what?»
The sunlight seemed to intensify. There was a moment when Eduard had to close his eyes, because the flash blinded him. When he recovered his sight, he found himself in a palace's room, with mirrors covering the walls, surrounded by people dressed with elegant clothes of a far away time, and in front of him was the same boy, just much older, now as tall as he was. But it was him. He still had that innocent smile.
«What's wrong, Estonia? You look like you've seen a ghost!»
«I know you!»
«Of course you do, silly! Real friends never forget each other!»
never forget each other...never forget each other...
The echo prevailed when a snow blizzard swept away the ball room. Eduard covered himself with his arms and when he removed them, saw that Finland was still in front of him but wasn't smiling anymore. His clothes had changed too: dressing elegantly before, now he wore a light blue uniform and carried a rifle in his hands. His expression was downcast, tense.
«I'm not letting them take you away! Nor Germany, nor Russia, nobody!»
And again that voice.
Are you going to forget what he did to you?
Finland alarmed, gasping. He pointed at something behind Eduard with his rifle and shot. Eduard tried to turn around but the world suffered a violent shake and found himself dizzy, laying on the ground.
The next thing he saw was a corpulent human figure which looked at him from above.
«You came...Too late, but you came...»
The shadow was too blurry, but could see how it placed its hand on the head and glanced everywhere around it, desperate for some reason. He saw something which made it go away quickly. A handful more shadows replaced it. Blurred, agitated faces. One of them was Finland's. Sorrowful, he wobbled, covering his mouth with his hands, as thick tears fell from his eyes.
«...You can't be gone...Tell me it's not true...!»
«I'm here! I'm here! Finland!»
He wanted to extend his arm to him, but he couldn't move. However, he felt a hand looming over him, filled with a green light.
Eduard opened his eyes with his heart racing. He got up to place a hand on his chest and look around him. The daylight entered through the window, revealing that Toris was already up and Raivis struggled against the coziness of his bed.
"Morning" he said to him. Useless, because he only got a grunt from Raivis.
He got dressed and went downstairs to have breakfast.
"Good morning" his mother said to him. "And your brother?"
"Still dozing" Eduard replied, sitting down after preparing himself a cup of coffee.
"This boy..."
"Are you feeling better now?" his father asked, not looking up from his phone, reading the news like every morning.
"Me? Why do you say that?" Eduard looked at him with a frown.
"You were screaming all night long."
"Even if I hit you with the pillow" Toris nodded before biting his chocolate bun.
"And...what did I shout?" Eduard asked.
"I don't know, senseless things."
Fnland, for instance? Eduard tried to focus on what he had to do that day, but spent the whole day thinking about those violet eyes, that pale face.
Finland...
That was another name Raivis thought about when he opened his eyes that morning.
"Come on, Raivis! You're going to be late again!"
One of the first things he did when he got up was looking at the phone. Among the massages from his friends and the social media he was in, he found a text from Sealand.
«We've got a trip this Friday, don't forget it! ;-P»
He erased it to get rid of all proof of his crime. He didn't believe what he was about to do, but...Nations existed. They existed and those who had been destroyed by humans twenty years before were identical to him and his brothers. Darned if that was just a coincidence. He had lots of questions in his head and if he didn't do that trip, as crazy as it was, he would regret it for the rest of his life.
As for Toris, that night he was barely able to sleep but he had nothing to blame Eduard for. When his brother started to whimper in dreams he was already with his eyes wide open like an owl. Sure it was because of that crazy girl who said was Poland. Because she was crazy, there was no doubt about it. Nations existed once, alright, but they were all dead, Poland included, and he was very sure he was not Lithuania. The idea itself was absurd. He was Toris Neikus, a common guy, and he was convinced he was nothing else. Maybe he should cut his hair or leave it longer. He liked it that way, with that precise length, but at least they wouldn't mistake him for an extinct nation anymore.
Even though he resisted, that morning in which a teacher's absence left him almost two free hours to study at the library he got a computer and did a search. 'Lublin 1569'.
«The Union of Lublin, established in 1569, tied together the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, creating the so-called Commonwealth of Both Nations, characterized by a single monarch, a common parliament and one currency. The Union was an exceptional case of the democratic integration of two countries with peaceful and inclusive coexistence of people from various ethnic and religious backgrounds.»
"Well, it wasn't that great..." Toris muttered.
And frowned as a reaction from his own comment. He closed the tab and explored the online catalog of his university to look for the books he needed for his assignment.
Ina had been thinking about it for days, and was eager to share her conclusions with Vika. As soon as the two girls met again, Ina dropped the bomb with no hesitation:
"Don't you think it's fishy what happened the other day at the terrace?"
Vika looked at her, not understanding.
"Do you mean the girl who was mistaken?"
"Well, girl, what you call a girl...But yes, that's what I'm talking about."
"Toris told her she was mistaking him for someone else."
"You should know I came across that gal again and she asked me to tell him where she could find him."
"Oh, yeah?"
"Yeah, she told me she had some super-secret business to take care of with him. Vika, honey, I'm sorry to say this, but I think Toris' cheating on you."
Vika blinked overwhelmed.
"But Ina!"
"It's true! Don't you think it's weird? She was insisting that she knew him and he was like no, no. Then she shows up and asks me to give him her address, of a motel, and that I tell him she's an old friend, 'one of those you never forget'. Girl! Clear as day! And you know what Alex told me the other day? He told me he saw a sexy blondie talking to him at the faculty. I told him to describe her to me, because my instinct told me that couldn't be good, and he gave me her description. Toris knows her and he's playign dumb! They're seeing each other in secret!"
"...Toris would never do that. It has to be a mistake."
"I'm just saying you should keep your eyes wide open from now on. You're my friend and I don't want people to make a fool of you. Toris is a very cute guy. So cute he could have any girl he wished."
Ina then paid attention to her phone exclusively, after spreading such terrible seed on Vika's heart. She was left calm while Vika started to feel something was very, very, very wrong. Old doubts started to come out again. Too nerdy to have a boyfriend, too chubby for boys to look at her, too shy to get anybody's attention...
No, she said to herself. Toris was not like that. He would never do such a despicable thing. He loved her.
...But she only knew that because he had told her. How did she know it was true?
Who was that blonde girl who had showed up all of a sudden?
