Disclaimer: I don't own anything!
Author's Note: I have finished watching Samurai 7 and, in true anime form, they managed to kill off my favorite people. Again. And I have an uncanny knack for picking traitors out from their very first appearance. Real Steel was a much better movie than I thought it was going to be. Steven Spielberg puts together great stories with fantastic filmmaking. I completely recommend it. I've also watched the first two seasons of Big Bang Theory, which is hilarious and amazing. Definitely going on my favorite show list.
I have a new theory pertaining to Tales of Symphonia. They tell us that Sheena is the last summoner—other than Mithos—so we assume that they were always pretty rare. My theory is that they were more common when Mithos and the others were younger and that, as a way to consolidate his power, Mithos started systematically purging the world of summoners over those four thousand years. This theory probably doesn't have much importance to this story, but it's something that's been niggling the back of my mind.
Apologies for the late update. November's a busy month for me. NaNoWriMo and the 30 Character Challenge along with schoolwork and, this year, college stuff. Some pieces of this are in the style of Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried. It's an incredible book and has been really helpful in writing the Kharlan War.
Happy Thanksgiving to all celebrating, since I don't think the next chapter will be up by tomorrow. Enjoy the food and family and all the best blessings.
-/-/-
In war, there are no unwounded soldiers.
~José Narosky
-/-/-
The city was beautiful, or, it might have been, Before. The smooth, pale stone still showed through in places beneath the smears of ash. The glass in the windows was of some of the finest quality, but dust had settled there in layers. No one had time to get a really good cleaning in these days. Elevated roads sloped above the ones on the ground and the torches sent their glow to flicker to far streets and across the darkening sky. The people here wore turbans wrapped around their heads and loose cotton robes; they were brown-skinned and friendly enough, if more than a little wary of Kratos.
"I think I have sand in places I didn't know sand could get to." Yuan said, slightly irritated. "Why'd I agree to this again?"
Kratos chuckled a little, making his best friend shoot him a dirty look. "Stop exaggerating."
"I'm not! I'm serious—I really didn't know that sand could get—"
Kratos held up a hand. "Yuan, I love you, but I really don't want to know where the sand got."
"See, I don't get it." Kratos frowned, in confusion to the statement and at how Yuan lowered his voice. "You and I tell each other we 'I love you' all the time, right?"
"Yeah, I guess." Kratos had never thought much of it. It had always been a simple statement of fact.
"So why is it that I can say it so easily to you and I can't even get the words halfway out of my mouth to Martel?"
Kratos shrugged. "Dunno. Maybe it's 'cause you've known me longer?"
Yuan looked at Kratos and thought, maybe things hadn't changed as much as they'd been thinking. They were still stuck here, in the same place. The two of them trying to figure out the world.
"What is your purpose here?"
The four of them looked up at the speaker. He was a tall man, dark hair falling straight past his shoulders. A string of white beads braided into his hair fell nearly to his collarbone and there was a tattoo on his forehead, black and red against his brown skin, that was reminiscent of flames and seemed to flicker with the thin wrinkles on his face as his expressions changed. There was a curved sword at his hip and his arms were thickly corded with muscles, which his robes did little to conceal. His robes were sleeveless and the color of evening sand with designs running along the hems.
"We need some information." Mithos said and Kratos wondered how Mithos wasn't afraid of the man, as he knew he would have been if he'd seen him at ten years old.
"What about?"
"Efreet."
The man frowned. "A strange group for a pilgrimage and a strange time to choose to make one."
Martel glanced around at the people looking on curiously. "Could we speak to you somewhere in private?"
The man glanced at her and nodded before looking to Kratos. "I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to ask you to give up your sword." He watched, interested, as the manchild instinctively curled a hand closer to his sword before he complied easily.
"You don't trust him?" It was the other half-elf, the blue-haired one beside the human, who spoke up, undercurrents of anger coloring his voice. But it wasn't true anger, but the automatic bristling of someone who had heard the same thing too many times.
"Yuan," the human said quietly. "He's got more than enough reason not to."
"I have not known him long enough to pass judgment, but I know these people. They've been hurt too much by the humans to trust one in their village with a weapon so easily."
The man led them through the ash-dusted, sand-gritty village to a stone house built partially into a cliff in a way that made Yuan suddenly ache for his home village.
The inside of the house was…bold. That was the first word to come to Kratos' mind. There was none of the soft, blurred colors that he'd come to accept as part of half-elven culture—not pastels and they'd never been washed out, but they'd always had a quality to their patterns and dyes that made everything soften.
Not so in this house. The rug drew his attention first. Uneven stripes slashed across it horizontally in sunset hues. There were cushions on the rug, in equally bold colors, as well as a tapestry that looked rough to the touch, but was still rather well made, that hung on the wall. The walls were the color of warm sand—most likely, it was entirely natural, Kratos thought—and there were thorny plants in the windows. With all that color, it made the wood furniture seem washed out in comparison, paled by long hours in the sun.
"Please, take a seat." The man said. "I would offer you something to drink, but it's the dry season for another month at least."
Mithos plopped down on one of the cushions without needing another invitation. Martel had glanced around, looking for perhaps a table or proper chairs, before kneeling beside her brother when she couldn't find any. Kratos and Yuan followed her lead.
"So, your story?" The man asked, joining them on the cushions.
"We're from the military." Mithos began and Yuan had to give him points for having the courage to jump straight into it like that. "The war…it isn't going well. Our side's hangin' on by a thread and the humans still have our people in their ranches."
"Yes, I expect they do. What does that have to do with Efreet?"
"Our side might not have much in terms of manpower, but our people are strong individually. I want to know something of summoning."
"Summoning?" The man repeated, surprised. "Why?"
"'S the only thing I can thing I can think of that could give us the strength to make a real difference in the war."
"I agree with you from a military point of view—"
"But?" Kratos said.
The man glanced at him. "But I'm more than simply a warrior for my village. I'm our summoner as well. I have a pact with Efreet. It's his blessings what's been holding our village together in these times."
Rather than being shocked, like the rest of them were, Mithos simply leaned forward eagerly. "So it's possible then?"
"Of course it is."
"You won't give up the pact, will you?" Martel said. "Not for the war."
"To be honest, I don' like the idea. Efreet—he's dangerous. Likes to hold grudges. I've held this pact since I was ten years old. Our village has grown around Efreet's temple. He's seen all that's happened to us and I can' imagine that he'd be very…forgiving…of any humans that crossed him."
"We've been thinking of a way to end this war that isn't with fighting."
The man's eyes—like twin setting suns ringed with coal—widened. "Is that even possible?"
"There should be a way." Mithos insisted. "The world can't be only war."
"Boy, I want to agree with you, but I'm turning eighty-seven and even I can't remember when this war started. Or why."
"But that's my point. We don't even know why we started fighting in the first place. Someone has to put a stop to all this before humans and half-elves completely wipe each other out."
"And they can." Kratos spoke up suddenly. "There've been rumors of the humans developing a new weapon, a bad one. One that makes the bombs they've dropped look like bubbles popping."
The man narrowed his eyes at him. "How would you know that?"
"The military's managed to infiltrate some of the humans' stuff." Yuan said immediately in Kratos' defense. "I saw some of the blueprints for that weapon myself." It had been a fleeting glance, at the ranch, before he had to find how to turn off the security, but it had been enough.
"Let me see if I understand this; you want to use the Summon Spirits' power to try and make some sort of peace between the humans and the half-elves?"
"With that kind of power, both sides would have to listen to us."
"You're very young, or very human."
"Or I'm both."
Perhaps, Kratos thought, perhaps everyone was a little human and maybe there was a way to be always young. It was a strange thought, one that he would forget over the years, but at the moment, it seemed to be the truth of the world.
They didn't come to an agreement that day, but neither did the man—the summoner—let them sleep in possibly unfriendly territory. He graciously allowed them to stay in his own house, despite not having spare rooms and only the cushions and some thin blankets to offer.
"…D'you suppose that this is where Zaren was? After he and Viren got out of the ranch." Yuan asked that night, his voice little more than a whisper on the dark. "They talk the same, and they have the same beads."
"Maybe." Kratos agreed, lying on his stomach.
The desert was a mystifying place, so harsh and hot during the day, but cool and contrastingly lovely under the light of the moon and stars. This place was nothing like anywhere he'd ever been; a far reach from his childhood, with humid summers and freezing winters or from the half-elven capital and front lines, where springs came early and autumns were long ones. It was a comfort, to be able to hear Martel's soft breathing near the windows and Mithos' occasional snore and Yuan's voice near him, as familiar as his own.
"D'you think Mithos is right?" Kratos asked. "About more power?"
"I think it's our only chance." Yuan said. "What else can we do? The people—on both sides—can't take much more…I—I think the world's breaking. Under the strain of the war, I think it really is."
"Since when are you the poetic one?" But Yuan wasn't being poetic and Kratos knew it. He'd seen it too. Families were being ripped apart, friends were turning on each other (Just the other day, back in the capital, one of Martel's patients—ribs wrapped in gauze—had looked at him and asked, "How do you know?" "How do I know what?" Kratos had asked, puzzled. "How d'you know that they won't turn on you? These people you call friends and-and family?" Kratos' puzzlement hadn't lifted any. "I just do." He'd replied honestly and the man had scoffed and started mumbling.
Martel told him, a few days later, that the man's best friend had stabbed him in between the ribs a week ago, waking up in the same tent and not recognizing who lay in the other cot. It had taken a few nights before Kratos could sleep easy again, hoping that the day would never come when Yuan couldn't recognize him.)
"How is that poetic? It doesn't sound nearly as pretty as the things you've got in those books of yours."
Kratos smiled. "Oh, just my books?" He and Yuan had made it a point whenever they were in human lands to find a bookstore, despite Yuan having to be disguised to do it, and they often 'borrowed' books from the mages' libraries…and forgot to return them.
Yuan chuckled lowly. "Fine, our books."
"…Think that this guy'll let us make a pact with Efreet?"
"I hope so." Yuan paused in thought. "…My village didn't have a summoner. We just left offerings. Maybe that's why this village is so different from ours."
"Different how?"
"It's not something obvious, really. Just kind of the air of the place. The people here, they're scared of what the war could cost them, but it's like…they know the cost and would be willing to pay it, you know?"
Kratos didn't know. He could guess, but he didn't have Yuan's certainty. He didn't reply to him; just stared up at the ceiling, blank and bare, as he listened to Yuan fall asleep.
-/-/-
There's a girl in the kitchen the next morning. She was plain as a cotton shirt, with a thin scar that cut raggedly from her temple down across the arch of her cheekbone to her lip, which made her look like she was always half-smiling at you. She had black curls that bounced when she walked and skin browned from the harsh sun. Her eyes, amber-through-glass, were the only extraordinary thing about her.
She smiled when they walked into the kitchen, already pulling loaves of bread out of the oven. "G'mornin'. Papa said there was company and he's out in the temple, so I thought I'd get to makin' you lot breakfast."
The four of them blinked, still adjusting to the morning. "Uh, thank you…"
"Oh, m'name's Janine." They introduced themselves to her in turn and she shook their hands.
"Is the old man usually out in the temple this early?" Mithos asked.
"Mithos, respect." Martel scolded.
"'M just sayin'."
Janine chuckled, tucking a lock of hair behind an ear as she bent to get more bread from the oven. It was the first time that Yuan really noticed the round curves to her ears and the lack of slant to her eyes. Either Janine had very little elven blood in her, or she was as human as Kratos had been. "It's fine. And yes, he does. Papa rises with the sun and he always goes straight to Efreet to begin the day."
"That doesn't seem strange to you?"
"He's done it every day since he found me."
At first, the wording was strange. To Martel and Mithos, at least. Kratos-and-Yuan understood it with the simple ease that they'd understood, so many years ago, the awkward, fumbling attempts at friendship.
-/-
"I found her after an attack on one of the human cities." The man, who by now, has given his name to be Arin, said when he joined them about an hour later. "The city was half in ruins after the battles were done…she was wandering around, looking for her mother. I couldn't simply leave her there."
"I'm surprised that the village accepts her at all." Yuan said because he'd seen the wariness in their eyes when they saw Kratos and he'd also seen, earlier that morning, how the next door neighbor had called good morning to Janine through the window.
"It took some convincing at first, but the village learned to live with it." Arin said, sipping at the cool water in his mug. "Seeing that made me think that perhaps a peaceful way to end this war isn't so impossible."
"So you're willing to help us?" Mithos asked.
Arin chuckled. "You're stubborn, aren't you?"
"You have no idea." Kratos and Yuan chorused, which made Martel laugh.
"I am willing to help, but in order for me to allow you—in good conscience—to make a pact with Efreet, than I'm going to have to teach you our rituals."
Mithos' grin was daring and challenging and Martel thought that it looked both very young and too old on his face. "I'll learn anything you're willing to teach me."
"There is one problem." Kratos interjected. "We don't want to impose and we don't have the money to stay in the inn for longer than a night or two."
Arin smiled. "My daughter thought of that. She works as a seamstress and helps out often at the inn. She made a deal with the innkeeper that, if you lot are willing to do some work 'round the place, he's willin' to let you stay."
There wasn't a question about it. After all, Mithos was the only real virtuoso where magic was involved, making him the only real possibility to learn summoning. Yuan, while he was good at it, was simultaneously repulsed and entranced by it and Kratos, he was only just beginning to learn magic. Martel didn't like to use magic as a weapon (Not to say that she can't, because she is a force to be reckoned with and was utterly fearless when backed into a corner), she believed that that wasn't what it was for.
Martel was the first to remember words and manners. "Thank you." She said, bowing from the waist in the fashion of the elves.
Arin shook his head. "No, I think I'll be the one thanking you after this is all done."
Mithos smiled, wry and sparking with humor. "We'll try our best not to let you down."
-/-/-
The innkeeper was a thin woman, with hollow cheeks, thin lips and a hardness in her eyes. (Her eyes are not so unusual. Everyone they know has those eyes because no one has any memory of a time Before the war. They don't know that there's something wrong with those eyes) Janine was curled into a chair by the window, mending what seemed to be sheets with easy, practiced movements of skillful fingers.
She smiled when she saw them. "How was the first day with Papa?" Her question was directed at Mithos. "Was he a hard teacher?"
Mithos shook his head, matching her smile. (Martel doesn't think he realizes how much he's changed, how much Yuan-and-Kratos have changed him. A few years ago, he would never have smiled at a human, not for anything.) "You haven't been taught by half the people I have."
Most of that was Alstan and Myra, but it was also partially Kratos and Yuan because they were always all teaching each other.
Janine glanced at the others, but her eyes kept straying to Kratos. She must not have seen very many humans since she began living in this village. "Lemme guess, you're the teacher?"
Kratos blinked in surprise. "How'd you know?"
Janine laughed. "You and Papa have the same look about you." She looked back at the innkeeper. " Rylene, these're the people I told you about. Kratos, Martel, Mithos and Yuan." She introduced, pointing to each of them in turn."
They half expected Rylene to turn them away, but she just nodded. "So long as you pull your weight, don't cause no trouble, you can stay."
"Thank you." They said sincerely.
The rooms that the innkeeper showed them to were small and vaguely cramped, even with the high ceiling and single wide window. Each room had two straw mattresses covered with thin sheets with faded quilts folded neatly at the foot of each bed. Yuan dropped his bag onto his bed and leaned on the windowsill.
He wasn't accustomed to windows with glass, even after years of living with Kratos at his father's house and working with the half-elven military. They hadn't had glass windows in his village. They'd had holes cut out of the rock that served as the walls of their homes. They'd had small troughs in front of the window to collect water when the rains came. To feel the glass here, it was just strange. Yuan knew that, more than once, he'd found himself tapping against the glass in a sudden, mild case of claustrophobia.
Here, he could see the wide expanse of sand that seemed to never stop and the sky here was a very pure kind of blue without the clouds to hide some of it. This place was the exact opposite of his village. The mountains were fuzzy things in the distance and nothing grew out here.
"I like it here." Yuan said and Kratos glanced back at him.
"How come?"
It was more than the place, more than how the world smelled a bit dusty, but mostly clean here. There was no stink of magitechnology residue here from bombs and bloodstained weapons. It was the people here. Wary perhaps, mistrusting maybe, but they'd not said a word about the strange human and his companions in their village, walking their streets in close proximity to their children.
Yuan smiled sideways at his best friend. "Probably for the same reason you do."
Kratos chuckled. "It is different here, isn't it?"
"Just a little."
-/-/-
The rumors came quick. Fior, the blacksmith's apprentice who was sweet on Janine so he came to visit the inn rather often, had told Rylene about the sunshine-and-summer-sky boy was to be learning the summoner's craft. Mariel, Cavir the tanner's wife, had mentioned that the green-haired woman was a Healer. Others came and went and half of what Rylene heard about her temporary tenants sounded like things out of children's stories. The rest…well, the rest just sounded impossible.
The human, Kratos his name was, he was unfailingly polite and never seemed to mind taking a moment to chop her some firewood for the cold nights and was perfectly content to put up laundry to dry. To Rylene, he seemed very little like a soldier, save for the scars on his hands and the sword that she would see the boys practicing with early in the mornings and the knife constantly at his belt.
Yuan was vaguely wary of her at first. She wasn't sure why until she saw just how close Yuan and Kratos were. He was good at folding bedclothes and wasn't a half-bad cook either, even if his potatoes were rather bland and he sometimes put too much salt on the morning eggs.
"You remind me of someone." Rylene told him once as she plucked the chicken she was going to put in a stew.
No one had ever told him that before. Yuan knew that he and Zaren looked very little alike and no one outside of his village, it seemed, had met or remembered his Poppi and Mama and he doubted anyone could make a connection between him and Dehua or Kail. Despite all this, he said, "I have a brother. I know he spent some time out here, in the desert, but I'm not sure whether it was here specifically."
Rylene studied him with sharp eyes. "…Zaren?"
Yuan blinked in surprise. "Yes. How could you tell?"
"You two got the same nose and yer eyes are shaped the same. And you got that same sense of loyalty he's got."
Yuan thought of Viren and Zaren and wondered if he and Kratos were really like that.
Mithos really was the sunshine-and-summer-sky child that Fior had described him as. And it was more than in looks. Mithos liked to smile and laugh and he had dreams that were several sizes too big for him that Rylene hoped he would grow into. He would tell her about those dreams sometimes, when he would sit on the splintering counter in the kitchen, drying the dishes she would hand him. But something about him felt a little wild too. All of the boys—as Rylene had dubbed them, though Yuan and Kratos were well above the age of majority—had some of that, but with Mithos, there was an extra few touches of it.
Martel, Rylene had decided, was a good influence on all the boys. She was a sweet girl, but there was steel in her spine and spitfire in her soul. Rylene had seen a lot of women back down from the men in their lives, playing the role of meek, obedient female. Martel seemed to refuse to comply with that stereotype. Rylene had seen her argue and debate with the boys over breakfast and laugh with them the next moment.
Rylene wasn't fooled either. There weren't many women out in the battlefields—here, it was very nearly unheard of—but Martel had seen the front. When Rylene asked Martel to get a chicken from the yard for dinner, Martel would snap its neck without a second thought. Not with the efficiency of a wife in the kitchen, but with a soldier's. A Healer Martel might be, but Rylene had no doubt that she could kill just as easily.
-/-
There were nights that Yuan couldn't sleep. Well, everyone had nights like that, particularly these days, but where most could at least stay in bed and try to will themselves to sleep, Yuan couldn't. He had to move.
It was one of those nights when Yuan slipped out of bed, careful not to wake Kratos—who had a very special ability to fall sleep anywhere, even when straw from the mattress was poking his cheek—and quietly shut the door to their room behind him. He went up the stairs to the flat-topped roof of the inn (This, at least, is the same as his village and indeed, all half-elven buildings. Half-elves are nothing if not good at making the most of space and Rylene uses the roof for growing cacti and herbs and there are large jugs that, when the summer storms come in, collect rainwater).
Martel whirled when she heard steps on the cool stone of the roof. She relaxed when she saw Yuan's familiar face. "I thought I was the only one awake."
"So did I. What's your reason?"
"Just dreaming." Martel said. She was sitting on a crate, her hair loose for bed and a blanket around her shoulders. Even in the desert, nights were chilly.
"Good ones or bad ones?" Yuan asked, joining her on the crate.
Martel wouldn't look at him, her eyes instead focused on her bare toes. "…Do you ever remember faces?"
Yuan didn't need to ask her to elaborate. Yes, sometimes he remembered faces. Faces of people he killed, people he walked past when heading back to join up with the others, pale, corpse-white faces of people no older than him and they would be lying dead there and none of them were smiling.
"Sometimes."
"I-I can't get this one…Luna, but he wasn't much more than a kid. I mean, he looked so young and-and he came up behind me while I was healing someone and he snapped a twig or something, I dunno, so I turn and I-I didn't think, I just acted. The next thing I know, he's lyin' there and he's not moving or breathing or anything…"
Yuan wrapped an arm around her shoulders, tugging her closer. He knew what it was like. He remembered people dead too, but the person that stuck out the most in his mind was Khuey. He and Khuey had been sent out to scout and they'd been trudging through the muck and mud of the heavy spring rains that left the ground soggy and swampy up to their knees and, in places, up to their waist.
Yuan had been looking around a particularly high hill, careful to watch his step, when Khuey had called out to him ("Lookit this, Yuan! Wonder what it is. Real shiny, ain't it? Hey, maybe we can sell this and get some good money off it! Whaddaya think?" Khuey laughs, all bronze bells and bright smiles.) Yuan had turned and he'd seen Khuey stand up from his crouch, a glinting piece of metal in his hands, smile on his face. He'd been a handsome kid, always good with the girls. Sandy hair and eyes like the sky recovering from a storm, compact shoulders and large, powerful hands. He'd died in a burst of light before the fire consumed him, lifting him into the air before gravity brought him crashing right back down.
Yuan could remember the white of bone (Too white, like starch sheets and newly pressed paper) the single visible eye, still that sky color that was so very different from the red blood (Red like cherries and strawberries and fire and heartbreak) and the wet yellowness that Yuan guessed was Khuey's gut that didn't belong there. And, for a horrible minute, the heart was beating. The heart that was exposed open to the air, a garish red like berry juice finger-painted along the walls, beat once, twice, thrice before stopping and never starting again.
"I dream too." Yuan told her. "They're…they're not pretty dreams."
Martel could imagine. She remembered having to run with Kratos and Zaren out into the field to try and find Khuey and Yuan, fearing all the possibilities that could've happened. The truth, in ways, was worse than what she'd imagined. "Sometimes, I forget what those're like. Pretty dreams, I mean."
"I think flowers were part of the criteria." Yuan said. "And stars and clouds and unicorns."
"Unicorns are real."
Yuan shook his head. "Once, maybe. Not anymore. I heard they were hunted to extinction."
Martel turned her head to look at him. "Right before we left Heimdall, I remember hearing talk of a tribe of elves who left us 'cause they didn't agree with the things the Elders were doing—or not doing—about the war and apparently, unicorns are really near their territory. Wherever that is."
Yuan smiled, unsure why, but the idea of unicorns, the kind that had been in some of the books that he and Kratos had read at night with just a candle and moonlight through the window, made him want to smile. "I like that. The fact that they're real, I like it."
Martel chuckled a little and tilted her head back to look at the stars. "I think we still have some pretty dreams left in us."
"Yeah? Like what?"
She smiled sideways at him, lovely and utterly ordinary against the backdrop of the night. "Like peace and kids not afraid to play in the streets and humans and half-elves living together. A family. A house and a goat."
"You want a goat?"
Martel shrugged. "I like goat's milk. We didn't have many cows out in Heimdall."
"We had sheep's milk growing up. Then again, we had like sheep everything in my village."
Martel brought her knees up, heels balanced on the edge of the crate and leaned her cheek on her kneecaps. "You were a shepherd?"
"No, I was too young. I would've been. I wanted to be, even. It was like my biggest dream ever, to be just like Zaren and out in the fields with my very own flock."
Martel's laughter was soft and sweet. "You, a shepherd."
Yuan rolled his eyes. "Yes, you've found out my shocking secret."
She eyed him. "You don't look like a shepherd."
"Well…things changed."
Martel shook her head. "Even when I met you, on that boat, before we joined the military, you still didn't look like a shepherd."
"What did I look like then?"
"A sailor." She said, grinning mischievously. With that grin, she looked more like Mithos than ever.
Yuan stuck out his tongue. (He still stands by the theory that he's seven and twelve and thirteen and nineteen and twenty and twenty-three and every age in between because sometimes, he still feels very much like nine) "Seriously."
"A friend." At the look on Yuan's face, she added, "Thought you'd like that."
"I do. I like that a lot." Because being Martel's friend was better than being nothing at all.
-/-
"So…why didn't you go to Martel for this?" Kratos asked, sitting cross-legged on the bed across from Mithos, gently cleaning the burns on his hands.
"She hasn't been sleeping well." Mithos said. "And she's been pretty stressed with all that's been going on. I didn't wanna bother her."
"You're never a bother. Especially to Martel." Kratos inspected the burn closely. He'd had his own mishaps with burns when he first began learning magic—apparently, he had the opposite of Yuan's issue. Control. He'd burned more than a few empty rooms—as well as his hands—to an even, golden brown before he'd learned to tame the fire. As such, he had gotten rather good at treating burns because, in Yuan's words, if he was going to keep doing it to himself when there was the possibility of no one else being around to help, then he should learn to do it. "And this is pretty bad. What were you doing?"
"Well, Efreet is the Summon Spirit of Fire. Makes sense that his rituals involve fire too."
"This isn't going to be a constant thing, is it? Getting burned?"
Mithos shook his head. "Hopefully not. It's just hard to get control of the mana required."
"…So you are a summoner?"
"Nothing so far's been able to show otherwise. Only way to really tell is to try and make the pact. Anyone can learn the rituals and the technical stuff. The ability to make a pact is what makes a summoner."
"…You like it, don't you? Learning all this."
"Yeah. It's so different, to see it as an actual religion."
Kratos frowned, unscrewing the jar lid for the salve he'd begged off of Rylene and coating a few fingers in it before dabbing it gently on the burns. "I thought elves believed in Summon Spirits."
"They do, but they don't practice it like…like this." Mithos jerked his head in a movement that, to Kratos, meant the whole village. "It's incredible, I guess."
Kratos carefully wound clean bandages around the burnt palms and singed fingertips. "I suppose it is."
"You-you won't tell Martel about this, right?"
Kratos gave him a look. Mithos may have been a teenager now, or close to it, but sometimes, Mithos still acted very much like eight. (It's Yuan's theory at
work again because Mithos is not only twelve, but as well.) "You really think you can hide this," Kratos held up Mithos' small, bandaged hands. "From her?"
"I could try."
"And you'd fail just as fast."
"Yeah." Mithos sighed. "If I could just get this spell right, then I don't think I'd have any problems."
"What's the spell?" Kratos asked, unable to contain his curiosity.
"'S supposed to be part of a bigger spell to summon him, but I can't say it."
"Why?"
"I mean literally, I can't say it. The spell's gotta be said really fast and I can barely say it slowly."
Kratos leaned back on his hands, thinking. "Well, I don't know if this would help, but there used to be these like, poems almost, that we would say as kids for fun. We called 'em tongue twisters. They could help you get used to saying hard things quickly."
"What were they like?"
"Um…" Kratos had to think pretty far back. It had been a long time since he'd thought of these. "Okay, I remembered one. She sells seashells by the seashore. The shells she sells are surely seashells. So if she sells shells by the seashore, I'm sure she sells seashore shells."
"She sells sheshel—Dammit!"
Kratos laughed, but still said, "Language. Martel hears you talking like that, she'll whack you upside the head."
"Can you write it down?"
Kratos nodded and looked around for possible paper and ink. He knew he wasn't likely to find any in a half-elven village, so he went to his pack and pulled out a leather-bound journal that Yuan had gotten him for his twenty-second birthday as well as a pencil he used to keep his place. Flipping to a blank page, he wrote out the tongue twister before handing the journal to Mithos.
Mithos read it slowly, word by word, like he was relearning to read. Slowly, he managed to say more of the poem, but the second line continued to give him trouble. Kratos just ruffled his hair and told him that it took practice. "A lot of it." He said ruefully.
-/-
"What are they doing?" Martel asked Janine. She'd gone with the seamstress to get a few bolts of cloth from the market; the cloth here was dyed in rich colors like crimson and indigo and some of the colors, Martel had no name for.
Janine followed the half-elf's eyes. A group of women was dancing to the beat of a tambourine and a single drum, their bodies undulating in waves both short and strong as well as longer ones. "Oh, that's a traditional dance. We call it barqi. They're practicing for the festival at the full moon this month."
The dancing was graceful and the music intoxicating. Janine watched Martel's face while she watched the dancers with the sagats on their fingers keeping time with the powerful drum and there—Shaadil had joined in with her guitar. "Would you like to learn?" Janine asked her.
Martel looked at her and shook her head. "Oh, no. I'm not much of a dancer. But it is very beautiful though."
"It's a community dance. We all join in. It's simply that, for them, this is their passion. Really, I'm not so great at it either." Janine grinned a little. "Papa says that I've got two left feet and no sense of balance on top of it, but it's fun to be with other people and see them not worrying about the war. This is, I suppose, our escape."
Martel thought about it, then thought about the faces in her dreams and nightmares, the people she couldn't forget even if she wanted to. A way to not worry about them? "…Alright, I'll try it."
-/-
Kratos was the first to see her practicing, thankfully. He would tease her the least. He simply leaned his arm on the low wall behind the inn, waiting for her to finish.
When she noticed him, she jumped a little. "Make some noise, would you?"
"Well, I would've if I thought you could hear me over those…things." Kratos tapped his fingertips against his thumb, not sure what the instrument was called.
Martel held out her hand for his inspection—she knew his curiosity so well—and said, "They're called sagats."
"Sagat." Kratos repeated, studying what were essentially cymbals small enough to fit on her thumb and forefinger. "So, why're you learning this?"
Martel's shoulders lifted and fell in a shrug. "I liked the idea of it and Janine offered to help me learn, so, why not? There's a festival in two days. Supposedly, everyone joins in to these kinds of dancing, or it might just be women. I'm not sure. Janine wasn't very clear on that."
"She mentioned the festival this morning."
Martel read the look on his face. "Did she ask you to accompany her?"
"Not that I could tell. She just mentioned something about possibly seeing me there."
"She fancies you, y'know."
Kratos gave her a look. "Somehow, I have trouble believing you."
"I'm not kidding." She said, slipping the sagats off of her fingers and slipping them into the pocket of her dress.
"I didn't say you were. I meant you were probably wrong." He said as they walked back into the cool shade of the inn.
"Really?" Martel said, grabbing a date from a bowl on the counter. She bit into it, letting the sweet juice fill her mouth. Once she'd swallowed, she continued,
"Because I didn't know you understood the female mind so much better than me."
"Nooo…but I'd have to question the sanity of anyone interested in me." Kratos said, half-laughing as he hoisted himself up to sit on the counter, legs swinging and heels hitting the cabinets gently. "I'm really not all that interesting. Let me have a bite?"
Martel passed the date without a second thought. "I suppose I can't convince you otherwise, then?"
Kratos wiped a bit of sticky juice from his chin. "You can try."
"You're too stubborn for your own good."
"Do you say that to your reflection?"
Martel shoved at him playfully, making Kratos have to catch himself with one hand, laughing.
-/-
Sometimes, Kratos thought he knew the young man who appeared in his dreams. His teeth and upper lip were gone, his nose half-burnt away and one eye socket empty, the other eye closed. One of his eyebrows was singed, but still there; the other had been burned away. A day's worth of stubble roughened an undamaged, freckly cheek. Red hair (Not real red, like cherries and strawberries and fire and heartbreak, but orangey, like carrots) was cut regulation style, short enough that it had been recently cut and maintained enough that he hadn't had the cut for long. The haircut only made the smooth curve of round ears more obvious. A dragonfly rested on the remains of his nose ("It's good luck if a dragonfly lands on you," one of the children in the capital says, giggling at the insect on her arm). There was a slash between his collarbone and his heart, the white of bone poking out from redred meat and blood. That was what had killed him, not the fire.
He was beneath a tree, half in sunlight, half in shadow. He had the small shoulders of a boy, but the musculature of a man. Thin legs, small waist, powerful, calloused fingers. A uniform on him, creases still visible and the hems of the pants weren't yet worn with marching and trudging through the fields. There was a ring on the third finger of his left hand and a shell hanging around his neck off of a leather cord. (Is someone missing him? A wife? Kids, perhaps? Or will his children never know their father?) His legs were almost completely intact, his boots still with some kind of shine to them. There was a long, deep slice going down one thigh down the opposite knee. (He hadn't run. Kratos had thought him brave until now. He couldn't have run. Not with that injury.)
He'd been born, perhaps, a few years after Kratos, in a little seaside town whose port was too small to be of much use to the military. His parents had lived there, as well as his grandparents and their grandparents, where, before the war if such a time existed, his great-great-great many times over grandparents had carved out this plot of land from others and had started building it up, catching fish and selling them in nearby towns to make money. They'd struggled for their independence from the human king. He wasn't a bad person, didn't want to invade half-elves. Wasn't a racist. He was a citizen of Sylvarant and a soldier. From his father's knee, he would have heard stories of the great heroes of the war and the great monsters they'd battled and how they'd defeated the king's armies at Seagull's Pass. He'd have been taught to defend the town at all costs, would have been said that that was the highest honor any man could have, was to defend his home. It was never a question.
It had scared him, though. The war. He had lung problems; he'd never been able to swim or run as well as the other kids. He liked sketching, liked to sit on the pier and draw the ships he'd known all his life. He liked to read about faraway places. He wanted to be a painter. Him, a soldier? Like his grandfather, who'd had a scar running down the length of his face and who'd spoken in such powerful, gravelly tones? He couldn't do that. He could be a fisherman, like his father, if it came to that. He hoped that the half-elves would give up already. He hoped the drafts would stop coming. All he could do was hope.
"Kratos?"
Yuan's face was blurry at first, but Kratos recognized his voice before ever opening his eyes. As it was, Kratos sat up on his elbows, wondering why Yuan looked so worried. "What is it?"
"You were talking in your sleep."
"What'd I say?"
"I couldn't make out any words." Yuan said, moving to sit on the bed in the small space between Kratos' thigh and the edge. "It didn't sound good though. You alright?"
His teeth and upper lip were gone, his nose half-burnt away and one eye socket empty, the other eye closed. One of his eyebrows was singed, but still there; the other had been burned away. "Yeah. Just—bad dreams." Kratos read the look on his best friend's face. "It's fine, Yuan. I think I'm gonna go for a walk, clear my head."
"Want company?"
Kratos understood that Yuan wouldn't pry more into it if Kratos didn't want him to, would walk beside him, quiet and understanding and loyal as a shadow, but the more he looked at Yuan, the more his memory merged with the familiar planes of the half-elf's face (Red hair—not real red—no, blue, like ocean.. Familiar eyes—one burnt away—no, Yuan's fine, he's right in front of him…A slash between his collarbone and heart…). "No thanks."
Yuan nodded and ran an unconscious hand through Kratos' unruly hair. "Just remember to get some sleep, alright?"
"Yeah."
-/-
"You aren't feeling well."
Kratos knew better than to try to lie to Martel, particularly when it came to his health. "No."
"Anything I can do to help?" That was Martel, always looking for a solution. Just like her brother.
"Can you change the past?"
"Don't be a cynic. It doesn't suit you."
"I was being serious." Kratos paused in his peeling of potatoes. "…Do you see their faces?"
(One of his eyebrows was singed, but still there; the other had been burned away. A day's worth of stubble roughened an undamaged, freckly cheek. Red hair was cut regulation style, short enough that it had been recently cut and maintained enough that he hadn't had the cut for long.)
"More than I care to admit. Is that what has you awake at night?"
Kratos winced. "I didn't wake you up too, did I?"
Martel frowned, shaking her head. "No. I'm usually already awake. I can't stop seeing them either."
"…D'you ever feel like you know them? Know everything about them?"
"That part, no." That Kratos did, though, didn't surprise her. Kratos was the storyteller out of all of them and could be surprisingly empathetic. "But
sometimes I think I could cry forever because I feel so sad."
"Think they'll ever go away?"
Martel's smile was a bitter upturning of lips. "Is it strange to say that, sometimes, I wish they won't? Or can't? I feel like we're the only ones who'll remember them, even if we didn't know them, and they deserve to be remembered. It's our job as survivors."
Kratos hummed in thought. The young man's face (The man he killed, the one he took away from the wife, the fiancée, the possible children) was fading from his mind the more he spoke about him. (He can't forget him. Something tells him that he will remember the man he killed all his life) But it didn't seem right, for the first time in his life, to mention this to Yuan, who he knew had his own nightmares to contend with. "That sounded almost wise."
Martel's chuckle was a real one, none of her earlier bitterness tainting it. Perhaps this was how to get through this war, Kratos thought. One laugh at a time.
-/-
"This is what you wear for the festivals?" Martel said dubiously, twisting in the mirror.
"It is when you're a dancer." Janine replied. "Why, don't you like it?"
"A little…revealing, isn't it?"
The black top was fitted and stopped a few inches below her breasts, which left her midriff exposed. It didn't plunge as much as she'd seen some of the others, for which she was grateful, and it was carefully embroidered with dark blue designs along the bottom hem. Silver bangles were sewn into it, jingling and reflecting the light with Martel's every movement. A wide leather belt, cut into thin strips and then braided with the bangles and colorful beads, was almost too tight against her hips. The skirt was in varying shades of blue and pale purple, the fabric in long strips and created the illusion of a full skirt. Martel had been given a pair of leggings to wear and thin, black cloth had been wrapped around her forearm, tying off at the middle finger and elbow. Her hair was left undone, falling down her back.
"Not terribly." Janine was dressed similarly, but her top dipped a little lower and she was in pale browns and dark wine colors, her bangles bronze and there was subtle paint above her eyes and on her forehead.
Someone poked their head inside and told them that the moon was nearly fully raised and that the dancing had to start soon. Janine smiled and looked at Martel in the mirror. "Ready?"
-/-
Mithos ran up to hug her after the dance and she laughed and returned it, ruffling his hair in that way he pretended to hate ("I'm too old for that sort of thing, Martel!") Kratos was grinning. "Don't think we didn't see you stumble."
"You'll never let that go, will you?"
"Not a chance." He said easily, embracing her after Mithos had ducked away. "But other than that, you did fine."
Martel hugged him back, knowing that even with his teasing, Kratos meant more than what he said. And she hadn't expected any less of him. When he pulled back because Janine called him and Mithos had finally found the bowls of food, Yuan was staring at her, as he'd been doing since she'd stepped out.
She bristled automatically. She knew she wasn't as slender as the other dances; that she had freckles and she had scars and her skin certainly wasn't smooth. "You keep staring at me. If you think I don't look good, you can just say so."
"Oh, no. You look…beautiful." Yuan told her sincerely. "It's just not…you, y'know?"
Martel hadn't expected that, and felt a flutter of female vanity. It was nice to hear compliments. Still she chuckled slightly, twirling the skirt a little. "Well, it's not like I'll be wearing this sort of thing again. But it was fun."
"I'll bet." At her confused expression, Yuan added, "You were smiling the whole time."
"Maybe you'd like to wear something like this and see if you don't feel a little ridiculous." Martel challenged as she poured herself a mug of the sweet wine they had here.
Yuan waved it away. "Nah. I don't have the legs to pull that off." Martel nearly choked on the sip of wine she'd just taken, laughing. He grinned cheekily at her as she tried to get her breath back. "Tickle in your throat?"
"Oh, hush."
He chuckled, but his eyes were serious. One of his hands came up, almost as though he wasn't thinking about it, to tuck a loose lock of her hair behind a
triangular ear. "You should wear your hair like this more often. It suits you."
He suddenly seemed too close for some reason. He'd been closer before, Martel knew, sharing blankets and bedrolls and embraces, but he'd never seemed so close. She could almost feel the mana running beneath his skin, like electricity. She could see the subtle scar on his cheek, just beneath his eye, where a tree branch had gotten him as a child. There was another scar, a pale imperfection on tanned skin, along his neck and collarbone.
It seemed natural to lean up to brush her lips against his. His lips were slightly chapped and she felt him tense instinctively before he relaxed, kissing her back. (He tastes of lightning and open skies and summer storms). Martel could see the future—misty, meandering and mysterious—and suddenly, that expanse was terrifying and she broke away.
Martel had a moment to see the look on Yuan's face before making herself disappear in the festival's loud colors and bright music.
-/-/-
"Martel?"
The first thing she registered was the concern in Kratos' voice, making her automatically turn towards him.
She smiled a little, though she had to work at it. "Hey. What're you doing here?"
His brow was smooth once again, the worry gone from his face. "Nobody knew where you'd gone. We thought the worst."
"Sorry. I just…needed to get away from everyone."
Kratos hovered just outside of the backyard she'd found herself in. "Do you want me to go?"
She shook her head. Kratos, she thought, would always be someone who didn't count when the urge to be away from people took to her. "Stay…please?"
He sat beside her on the very low wall that was uncomfortable to sit on, but he didn't seem to mind. "…I lied, by the way. About why I'm here."
Martel snorted. "Is that supposed to surprise me?"
"I'm guessing you know why."
"Yeah. I-I panicked."
"Um, before you start, you might wanna know that I don't know the whole story. Yuan just told me you ran off and could I please help him look for you."
Most people would have needed more information than that. It didn't surprise Martel in the least that Kratos didn't. Not when it came to Yuan. "…I kissed him." Kratos tilted his head, a spark of curiosity in his eyes, but he didn't say anything, which she was grateful for. "I-I don't know what happened really. I mean, I liked kissing him and I wanted to, I guess, but for some reason, it scared me. So I had to get out of there."
Kratos just looked at her for a few minutes before saying, "I hope you don't expect me to have some kind of mystical wisdom on this."
Martel laughed suddenly, unable to help it. "No, I suppose not. Any advice then, if you don't have mystical wisdom?"
He shrugged. "Tell him everything you just told me? I think he'd like to hear all that."
"You don't think he'll push me away for it? For being scared?"
He gave her a look that suggested she was being an idiot. Usually, that look was reserved for when Yuan and Mithos were plotting a prank, or it was her giving him the look, but apparently, this time it was warranted. "I honestly don't think that there's anything in the world that you could do that would get him to do that."
Immediately, Martel thought of something, but that involved murdering Kratos and that certainly wasn't going to happen. (She's not sure just how much Yuan loves Kratos—for it is love, in a very different, yet very real sense of the word—but she is sure that they're Yuan-and-Kratos and she couldn't ever break them apart)
"So, you're telling me to go talk to him?"
"If you still feel like hiding, I can pretend to look for you a bit more."
Martel brushed her bangs out of her face. "You'd do that for me?"
"Of course I would." Kratos sounded like he was confused.
"Heh, never mind." Martel felt flattered that Kratos would do something like that for her when he'd come looking for her because Yuan had asked him to.
"How much have you had to drink tonight?"
"Not enough, I promise you." Martel said, pushing herself to stand up and kissing Kratos' cheek. "Thanks, by the way. For listening."
Kratos pinked, but she pretended not to notice. "You going to go talk to him?"
"Mmhm. I don't know how it's going to go, but it can't hurt, right?"
"You keep up that optimism."
"I don't need your sass."
Kratos just gave her a small push. "Stop stalling."
"Yessir."
-/-
"So…how'd it go?"
Yuan didn't jump. He never jumped at Kratos' voice, even if it was in the middle of the night. "Thought you'd be asleep by now."
Kratos sat up, resting his elbows on his knees. "Well, with today's excitement, I just couldn't."
Yuan sat against the footboard of Kratos' bed, one leg dangling off the side of the bed. "…It went well." Yuan looked up at Kratos through his bangs, grinning a little. "I told you I'd marry her one day."
Kratos chuckled. "You aren't married yet."
Yuan kicked Kratos playfully. "Stop trying to kill my buzz."
"I think that's from the wine."
"Oh, shut up." But Yuan couldn't stop smiling.
-/-
"I love you as you are, but do not tell me how that is."
~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin