Disclaimer:I don't own anything!

Author's Note: Lord of the Flies is really not my kind of book. And I generally enjoy classics, but apparently island scenarios aren't my cup of tea since I couldn't get through Lost either. Unfortunately, Lord of the Flies is my required reading for the AP Lit class last year's English teacher assigned me. Woo….

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What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
~Henry S. Haskins, Meditations in Wall Street, 1940, commonly misattributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson

-/-/-/-

"You already know what you have to do." Martel said patiently. "You just have to let it happen."

Yuan avoided her eyes. "What if I hurt someone?" What if he hurt her? He'd never be able to live with himself if he hurt Martel and he refused to think about what Mithos would do to him if he did.

"That's why you're up on that rock and I'm back here." Martel wasn't afraid of Yuan, even knowing what lack of control in magic could mean. But Yuan's fear was gripping his magic so tightly that it couldn't even get out and she knew that he wouldn't hurt her.

Yuan shifted cautiously on the boulders rising out of the ocean that he was balancing on. Looking out at the ocean made him nervous, but not enough to not be able to stand here, on perfectly dry ground.

(Kratos volunteers to sit on a lower rock, as a safeguard and a touchstone of sanity—he'snotalone he'snotalone—and Yuan vehemently tells him no. What would happen if he missed? Kratos just looks at him with those redbrown eyes that had always been too old for his face and far too trusting and just says "You won't hurt me." like it's a given.

To Kratos, it was.)

Yuan glanced down and Kratos sat there, bare feet in the water and watching Yuan with that teacher's patience of his. Mithos was farther back than even Martel, standing on the border of sand and solid ground, watching curiously.

"Okay." Yuan breathed out, the salty air stinging his cheeks, but not his lungs and that made it okay. "What do I do?"

"You have to focus on something out there." Martel inclined her head out towards the horizon (It's a very different horizon than the one Yuan remembers from his seat in his pomegranate trees, all blues and seashell white as opposed to the brown-green of pastures and the gray of storm clouds) "And imagine what you want to happen."

Yuan took another deep, salt-tasting breath. The magic was there, itching at his fingers and beneath his skin and, once upon a time, he'd thought that the thing he wanted the most was to get the itch out, but he knew better now. He could live with the itch if it meant that Kratos, Martel and Mithos were safe.

He remembered what he read on the page, remembered the spell and the elements of the circle that was supposed to appear. And he can feel the mana in his body rising to meet the spell's demands, to mix and merge with the mana in the air to create the spell, but then he saw the burned bodies of the soldiers (They had families too, didn't they? People they loved, places they wanted to go home to? They weren't so different) and the mana choked, suddenly retreating back into whatever cavity in his body it lived in.

"I-I can't. It doesn't…" Yuan couldn't put it into words, wasn't sure that there were words for something like this.

But Kratos knew how to read him, but he couldn't really help either, his blood dry of the spark of mana that produced magic. But he stood and leaned his arms on the rocks.

Kratos was the tallest of all of them right now—and wasn't that a strange picture?—lanky and stretched out. His pants were too short at the ankles and his shirts were very close to almost too short and they're too tight at the shoulders. At the next town, they'd agreed, they'd do some work for clothes that fit properly. And Kratos had lost much of the baby fat in his cheeks and sometimes, Yuan found it difficult to see the boy he remembered in his face. But he stumbled and tripped over his own too-long limbs and Yuan would chuckle and help him up, even as Kratos shot him a look.

"The old man would've cuffed you over the head if you gave him that excuse." Kratos said.

Yuan understood what he didn't say as he ignored the memories. The old man was the one person who'd believed in them, and they'd left without so much as a goodbye or a note. "A new teaching method you're thinking of adapting?"

Kratos grinned at him. "Possibly."

Yuan sighed. Magic should feel natural, he knew that. He'd even seen Mama light the oven on her good days. She would say a word, wave her hand and the flames appear, licking at the fuel that Yuan collected a few times a week. He couldn't do that.

Perhaps if he tried a different approach. He didn't think about the spell or the consequences (Can't think about those because then everything just chokes itself off and if he keeps letting that happen, the magic won't spark for him anymore and he'll only have a vague memory of it) and he just draws the mana up from wherever it liked to hide in himself—perhaps even the same place that Kratos' bravery hid until it was needed—and tried to shoot it out from his fingertips. Surely something was better than nothing.

The next thing he was aware of, he was flat on his back—which he had a feeling was going to be bruised tomorrow—staring up at Martel and Kratos' vaguely amused and concerned faces. "…That didn't work, did it?"

Kratos shook his head. "Not at all." He reached down, helping Yuan to his feet. "But it was worth a shot."

"If you say so."

"You're doing it wrong." Mithos said suddenly and all three of them looked back at him.

"What do you mean?"

Mithos crossed the sand quickly—he was still small, still looking more like four rather than six. It was part of being a half-elf. There were periods of rapid growth, particularly during the first few years of life, before there were long plateaus of staying the same. Mithos was in one of those plateaus, as Yuan had been for the past two years.

"You were concentrating it in one point, right?" Mithos said, looking up at him with very blue eyes. "Your fingertips."

"Uh-huh. But what's that got to do with it?"

"You're pushing all of the mana out at once, so it forced you back. It's here," Mithos had to go on his toes to reach Yuan's shoulder. "And here," Mithos pointed to Yuan's wrist. "Try focusing there instead of your fingertips. The flow, not the flood."

The boy's eyes reminded Yuan of Kratos', old for his face and years. "How do you know?"

Mithos shrugged. "I could see it. The mana, I mean."

"Mithos…" Martel crouched next to him.

"'S okay, Martel." He assured her quickly, seeing the concern in her eyes. "It don't hurt. And it's kinda interesting, actually. And I don't see it all the time."

Martel thought about arguing, thought about telling him that seeing mana could develop into something dangerous (Some of the old men in Heimdall could see it and she knew that they weren't always there in the head), but she glanced at Yuan, the hope on his face; at Kratos with his protective instincts, and Mithos with his quiet hope and understanding and she sighed.

"Alright. Besides, it'll probably help more than I can. I've only ever really learned Healing." Martel didn't think about the spells that she couldn't remember learning, but that she shouted instinctively when the wolves had attacked her and Mithos. Golden light had sliced through them, illuminating the clearing and she could still see the remains of the wolves in her mind. (But that was alright because it was to keep Mithos safe and she would do anything for him)

Yuan focused on what Mithos had said, on the mana, not on the consequences, not on anything else. Shoulders, wrist, flow. He felt the itch for a moment before there was a burst of barely controlled mana and lightning cracked, far and away, on the waves.

Yuan gasped for breath, stunned and amazed and feeling utterly breathless. The itch was gone, even though he knew it was only temporary. It was gone and everyone was alright and the laughter was bubbling up without him thinking about it and he hugged Mithos. "Thanks, kid."

Mithos just grinned. "Told ya so."