I’ve never really understood my purpose in life. My memories of my life before this one are scarce and disconnected. 

But I do remember the emotions that my past last provoked. It was simple and good, but it also made you feel like you really had something worth living for. 

Sometime within the last few days something happened to deprive me of that. I don’t know what happened, but I’d do anything within my power to find out. I want to go live my old life again and never have to worry for as long as I live.

But I can vividly recall everything that’s happened to me within the last day or so. About a day and a half ago, I washed up onto a rocky beach in a country that speaks a language that I don’t. My arm had been severely injured by a rock, and I suspect that it’s broken. I attempted to sit up, and not long after that I was approached by strangers. Thankfully, it didn’t seem like they had any intentions of hurting me, but they certainly looked like they could if they so wished. Since then, I’ve been placed in a room in what I assume is this country’s version of a medical center. My arm has been wrapped in something like a cast. People have been trying to speak to me but I have no idea what they’re saying. They even switched their own language trying to find one that I speak but I still don’t understand anything they’re saying. It’s annoying and oddly frightening to not be able to understand anything, especially in a medical setting. 

But they’ve been nice to me. My arm was in a great deal of pain when I first washed up on that shore, and now it’s really subsided. But now I’m here, bored and doing nothing. 

I jump at the sound of harsh knocking on the door. I was expecting the timid doctor that comes in to check on me every couple of hours. I think his name is Datu. At least that’s what he said when he was pointing to himself. I copied his action with my name and he’s been calling me Faelan since so I think I’m correct. 

But Datu isn’t who enters the room. I’m convinced this person is a stormcloud with feet. She looks to be about my age, and it normally would’ve been a relief to see someone who isn’t at least ten years older than me, but she seems intimidating. She charges everywhere she wants to go with aggression, but she doesn’t necessarily seem angry. She walks up to where I’m sitting on a chair in the corner. 

She points to herself “Elyria.” Elyria isn’t dressed like the other people who I think work here, like Datu, but she also isn’t dressed like she plans on kidnapping me or something. 

She then extends her hands completely with her palms facing up and then raises them up while stepping back. I assume this means she wants me to stand, so I do so very slowly. I stand slowly, but speed up once I see her nodding and moving her hands up faster. Once I’m standing she waves me on and I assume that she wants me to follow her. 

We leave out the door and I feel extremely relieved just to leave that room that’d I’d been in for at least a day. She guides me through the halls at a more relaxed pace than earlier, which makes me believe that maybe she isn’t going to kidnap me since we’re not running just yet. 

We round a corner and go behind what I’m absolutely positive is a desk and to Datu, who is sorting through a box. Elyria takes off in conversation, but she also makes gestures to different directions as she speaks. I wonder if we’re headed outside after this. Once she finishes speaking, Datu says something and nods his head before waving us away. She turns back to me and waves me on before continuing back on through the maze of the building. 

We do eventually leave the building and make it outside. I’ve never seen this place during the day before, but I’m happy that I now get to. We’re on top of a small hill with a path leading down the hill into what looks like a village with even more small hills. Behind the hill we’re currently on is the most extravagant building I’ve seen in the last day and a half. I would say it’s a palace, but even that seems too simple. It’s incredibly tall, and it’s covered in the most beautiful shades of green, blue, and purple imaginable. It appears to be moving.

I turn back around and look to the horizon. The clouds are at about the same level as the taller hill that the “palace” sits on, which tells me that the hills probably drop off somewhere after the village. The air is very humid, and I estimate that a large water source has to be somewhere nearby because the air is salty. 

I finally look back to Elyria who looks surprisingly patient despite the time I just wasted staring at things. When she’s sure that she has my attention again, she waves me on again and we descend down the hill. We’re following a smooth stone path and I can see small furry creatures darting around in the grass on either side of us. We follow that path until we reach the village. She leads me off onto another road, and then into a large building. 

I can recognize this building as a library. There are thousands of books in a language that I don’t understand. Elyria leads me to a table with about five tomes on it. She picks up the first one and flips through the pages before pointing at a page and turning the book towards me. She’s pointing at a separated passage of text that I don’t understand. I look at her and shake my head. She nods and flips to the next page and repeats her half of the process, and I repeat mine.

Far away from both Lucidia and Caelia lies a valley of mountains that stretches on as far as the eye can see. Inside of that valley lives a small group of all sorts of people from different corners of the world. When you combine so many different minds from all over the planet, you combine a tremendous amount of valuable knowledge. 

The group holds a large piece of the sacred stone in their most sheltered government building. It’s been kept under the watchful eye of the society’s most deadly guards for generations. It’s become such a salient part of their society that they would do anything for it and its cause. 

Which is beneficial because they’re being hunted. 

Our diminutive society has both knowledge and a possession that the rest of the world either seeks with great determination, or marvels at the legend of. 

But over the generations of knowledge they’ve shared they’ve ironically learned that people are almost never meant to stay put in one setting. Sometimes one must leave a place of security for the good of everyone. 

Realization of this arrives on the wind that night. A meeting is called to decide what should happen. After a long debate over the best option, the group decides that though they must leave eventually, for tonight they will remain safe. They’ll start packing today to depart within the week, and additional security measures will be applied for the time being. 

As for the people, they anxiously await what the morning may bring. 

“You know I’m really beginning to think being famous heroes is overrated.” Haynh says after a couple hours of walking. 

“It’s too late to turn back now, you’ve made a choice and now you have to commit to it. We have to be a lot further than we are or we’ll be caught.” Amaris answers. 

I personally feel close to fine. A little stressed, which is more than expected given the situation but so far we’ve been having a lot of fun together. We nearly fell in the river a while ago while trying to cross, but we managed to make it out with nothing more than soaked shoes and feet. 

“We should stop and let our shoes dry as soon as we can. Can’t you get diseases by walking around with wet shoes for too long?” I ask. 

“You can, and it’s fairly common too, but Amaris is right, we really do need to continue on further or our families will have the opportunity to catch us. But just doing that won’t be enough. They can just bring along some tiaders and we’ll be caught. We need to try and throw off their trail by changing our scent.” Silas informs us.

I remember my tiader that I had to leave at home. He was really excited to see me when I went home, but I couldn’t give him any more attention than a pat on the head because of my rush. I feel a sense of sadness and guilt about not taking more time to say goodbye.

“Well if that’s the case we should start walking in the river. It’ll throw them off but we’ll be really cold, and we don’t want to be cold when the sun goes down.” I suggest.

They all look at the river with the same disgust. Going in rivers is never fun unless it’s optional. 

“But they’ll see that our footsteps stopped and they’ll know we’ve just been walking in the river.” Amaris adds

“Then we’re back at square one.” Haynh says as he sits on another fallen log. 

Quinn steps up to Haynh.“Haynh, please move. You’re sitting on our way out of this.” 

We all look at her in confusion. “Care to elaborate on your plan to get us unstuck?” he asks.

“You need to get up off the log so that we can carry it a little ways down the river. We’ll walk through the grass and leaves right there,” she points to the right, where the trail ends and the foliage picks back up “they’ll be able to see our tracks and they’ll think we went into the grass. We’ll keep walking until we reach the place where the river twists to the west, and there we’ll place the log across the river to make it look like we crossed to go south. We can start walking north back up the river, but they’ll think we started walking south.”

“I get what you mean, but we’ll need to hurry, this will take a while and the sun will set within the next couple hours, after that our risk for hypothermia will increase, especially with wet shoes.” Silas agrees. 

“I still don’t understand, what are we doing?” I ask.

“Just follow Silas and I, it’ll make sense once we start. Everyone pick up the log, this is going to take a while.” I’ve never seen Quinn taking charge as much as she has, and I feel incredibly appreciative for what she’s done for us. 

***

“My fingers hurt and I can’t carry this any further!” Haynh announces before basically dropping the log. 

“You can literally hear the river, you have like two more minutes, I think you’ll make it.” Amaris adds.

We’d been walking for about 15 minutes with the log, which was a long time considering the log probably weighed around 200 pounds. That’s about 40 pounds on each of us, with the weight of our packs.

“No seriously, I think it’s about to start cutting into my hands.” He holds them up for us to see that his skin has started to scratch a little.

“Then let’s lift it onto our shoulders.” Amaris suggests. 

Lifting it up isn’t comfortable, but the weight doesn’t feel as heavy and we can move a little faster. Despite this, we still drop it as fast as possible when we reach the river. 

“We’re never taking a tree anywhere ever again.” Haynh states as he goes to sit down. 

“I promise we won’t pick up any more logs if you get up right now so that we can leave.” I offer to try and motivate him to keep going. 

I look up to the north and think about the path ahead of us. It’s very slightly uphill from where we are now, which makes sense because this whole land is just one slowly inclining mountain. Except for the kingdom, which is on a cliff on the opposite mountain. I don’t know why anyone in their right mind would build an entire kingdom on a cliff when there’s a mountain right next to them, but I kind of like living up high. I just wouldn’t want to build an entire society while being that far off the ground. 

I look back down at the river that we’re all walking in. I can’t decide if it’s more comfortable to walk quickly or to take my time. I want to be out of the river faster, but if I step down too hard, then I can really feel the rocks under my feet. 

Haynh rushes up the river as fast as he can, causing him to slip. He’s putting a lot of effort into it, but it hasn’t done much for him considering he’s only about 20 feet ahead of us. Meanwhile there’s Amaris behind us, who is stomping in the water to avoid falling in, which has caused her to be about 10 feet behind us. 

Only Silas and Quinn have decided that walking at my speed is a good idea. It’s uncomfortably quiet, so I decide to do something about it.

“Does anyone have like a specific idea in mind of where we’re headed or are we just walking around aimlessly?” 

Silas opens his mouth and I know that it won’t be quiet again for a while. “Well right now we’re headed north, and if you had actually pitched in when we did that project then you would know that the ruins are thought to have come from a faraway land to the north. From there, we should be able to encounter a group of people who will likely know more about this than we do, we’ll observe them and see what we can find out before asking them. If they treat the archetype like we did back at home, we’ll be prisoners in no time. But if we do find out some useful information, we can use that to decide what we do next.” 

Haynh stops and turns on his heels “Oh yes, I was really looking forward to our “encounter” with people from a faraway land. So excited in fact, that I brought my shoes best equipped to walk to a faraway land. And what better way to break them in than to walk in a river?!” He holds up his foot, and his shoe looks like it’s moments away from falling into the river. 

He continues walking up the river. I look back to Silas “You probably could’ve thought of a better word to use than encounter. It makes it sound like this will be a much more thrilling experience than it’s going to end up being.” 

“But what if we don’t learn anything from our encounter? Will we just go home? We don’t have an excuse for being gone.” Quinn asks.

“Then we continue on. We don’t know how far up we’ve gone, but there’s a very good chance that there are more civilizations as we head north and I’d imagine that can only increase our chances of finding out more about the archetype.” Silas answers.

We keep walking through the river for another hour before everyone in the group is positive that it’s safe to move out of the river. The sun is beginning to set, and I estimate that we have a couple of hours before dark. 

We find a small clearing on the opposite side of the river to stay for the night. It’s surrounded by trees and bushes, but Haynh still insists that we gather twigs around us in a circle just in case any creatures find us in the middle of the night. 

“I’m not interested in getting eaten. All I want is to be at peace for a few hours before we have to go back to living in misery for another day.” He says while he tirelessly works at gathering sticks and placing them strategically around the us.

“You were so excited to be famous, and now you’re whining more than anyone else.” Amaris tells him.

“I’ll admit that the idea that I had in my head when we started this journey may have been a little glorified. I wasn’t expecting to walk to a faraway land in a river.” He glares at Silas. 

“If it wasn’t for the river you’d have no chance at being famous for finding the archetype so maybe you should be a bit more appreciative.” Silas says while emphasizing his words by wringing his shoes out harder. 

“Can we stop before this becomes an argument? I’m hungry, so why don’t we decide what to do with the food we have? We can all eat the food we brought ourselves or we can pool everything we brought and divide it up between us.” I suggest.

Amaris gently shakes a bunch of packs of food out of one of her three packs. “I brought enough food to share and, no offense, but it’ll probably last us longer than whatever you all brought.” She picks one up and holds it up for everyone to see. “All you have to do is add water and they stay fresh for a very long time. One of these packs is probably enough to feed all of us and I have like twenty of them. If we eat three times a day, these will last us nearly a week. We also have the food that the rest of you brought. All we have to do is find a way to make it last us long until we encounter a civilization.” 

Quinn unfolds a piece of fabric to reveal some assorted plants. “I’ve picked some plants that I know are edible while we were walking in the river. Most of them aren’t very good, but they’ll keep us from starving.”

Haynh surprisingly stops gathering twigs and leaves. “You know, come to think of it, Quinn’s the only one who has really been pulling her weight this entire time.” He looks toward the rest of us. “The rest of us haven’t done anything in comparison. Except for me of course. I’m keeping the predators at bay.”

“Laying out sticks doesn’t keep predators away, it tells you when they’re already here.” I correct him. “I don’t actually think there’s a way to keep them away for sure.” 

He considers this. “I should dig a hole to hide in just in case one does attack us.” 

“Why don’t you come help Esta and I with the tent?” Silas asks.

“Why didn’t you tell me we had a tent?”

“We don’t, we have a tent that’s been strategically ripped so that it’s now a large waterproof sheet that we’re going to use to cover as much area as we can in case of rain.” 

He takes a thick bundle of plastic out from his pack and I’m surprised at how well it’s folded considering it’s a ripped tent. I go to help hang it up and it covers about half of the clearing. 

“This is great. We have just enough space to cover all of us and some of our packs. We all brought more than one pack, we can take the things in our packs that absolutely can not get wet and put them under the tent, the rest can stay out.” Silas says as he admires his work. 

Amaris walks back over to the clearing from the river. I didn’t even notice her leave. “I don’t know if this is how the food is supposed to look.” She’s holding a bag that appears to be filled with slush. “It looks disgusting.” 

Haynh goes to inspect the contents of the bag. “Does it taste disgusting?”

“I don’t know, I haven’t tried it.” She gives the bag a little shake and the “food” inside wiggles slightly. “I’m too scared.”

I used to make mud pies when I was younger and I put all sorts of “ingredients” that I found in them. When I was seven, I was dared to taste one. It wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be, if I could eat dirt, sticks, and plants that I’m sure were at least slightly poisonous, I could eat whatever was in that bag. 

“I’ll do it. It’s not strong enough to make me too sick.” I get a cup from the bag that Amaris brought and hold it out to Amaris. She shakes a bit of it into the cup. They’re all watching me and it’s too awkward for me to handle. I laugh, but I’m not sure whether it’s at them or me. “You all are making me extremely uncomfortable.” 

“Just eat it. We’re all waiting on you.” Silas says.

I look at it again. It’s a really light shade of green. I can see how if other things were this color, they could look nice.

This doesn’t qualify for that. 

Silas somehow manages to make his stare even more intense. “Any day now would be great.”

So I tentatively try some of the slush. “It tastes like how I remember grass tasting.”

Quinn gives me a puzzled look. “You eat grass?”

I give her one back. “You’ve never at one point in your life eaten grass? I think that you might just be the weird one Quinn. Through a child’s eyes, grass looks like a delicacy.”  

“Well now’s everyone’s chance to try grass. Everyone go get a cup.” Amaris says.

***

I’ve decided that out of everything that’s happened to me so far on this trip, sleeping on nothing but a thin mat and a quilt on the forest floor has to be the worst. Worse than walking in a river, and worse than eating grass. 

But it’s not worse than leaving my family. I think about how worried they must be right now. About how terrified all of our families must be right now. I feel awful for doing this to them and I start to cry. I know that what I’m doing for them could be helpful for them in the end, but that doesn’t make the situation any better. 

But as I look at my friends I decide that maybe I’ll be alright for just a little bit longer. I remember the notes that we left promising that we were all still alive, just off somewhere for an indefinite amount of time. 

I think about what could’ve happened if we would’ve just gone back to the village and completely disregarded the archetype. Someone would’ve found it eventually and surely they would’ve been able to track us back down and find it. We would’ve been criminals at best and it would’ve hurt our families too. Probably not as bad as what we’ve done, but it still would’ve been bad. 

The thought gives me enough comfort to sleep.

I’ve been sitting in a wooden chair pointing out various languages to Faelan for hours. It’s incredibly draining and I don’t know how much longer I can keep doing this. It feels absolutely hopeless, but I try not to show too much of my hopelessness. I really need a break. 

I give a slow sigh and slowly lean back in my chair, trying not to come across as frustrated. 

I honestly believe that I’ve tried every language that exists. I’d say he’s unable to speak if he didn’t spend so much time questioning us in his own language when we first found him. 

I don’t even recognize the accent he’s using. This whole situation is going downhill much faster than I could’ve ever imagined. I want to go home and read my own book that I was reading. Just to escape to somewhere else for a moment, to be anywhere but here. 

Then it hits me. 

I shove my chair back and sprint to the front desk. 

“I have a crazy request. Is there any way that I can get a book that someone would normally need a pass for?” I dig a card out of my pocket and slide it across the counter. “I have this if it helps. I’ve been sent here to work with someone and I believe that the book will assist me in my work and, technically, I’m not legally required to have to get permission for this.” 

The man at the desk looks at me in shock. “Give me a moment.” 

He stands and walks to the back room as if this was another everyday request for assistance. I wait anxiously for his return. I can’t believe I didn’t think of this earlier. 

He returns several minutes later with an extremely dusty and surprisingly insignificant looking book. I basically snatch the book from him. “Thank you!” I yell as I run back to the table where I left Faelan. 

I flip open the book to any given page, there aren’t many to begin with and each one holds all of the information that I need to know. I turn the book around and hand it to Faelan. He picks it up and examines it for a moment. He smiles and sets the book back down on the table and begins to read aloud in a language that I don’t understand. I get up and grab ink and paper from another table. I trade him the book for the ink and paper. He seems to understand what I’d like him to do because he begins to write, and I can see that the figures he’s writing are the same as the figures from the book. It’s far from anything that I can comprehend, but I do know that the last person rumored to have been able to decipher this language died hundreds of years ago.