Aerilus | Teen Ink

Aerilus

May 24, 2021
By ayshablake, Tooele, Utah
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ayshablake, Tooele, Utah
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Author's note:

My name is Aysha and I'm sixteen years old. I've loved reading all my life, but it became my favorite hobby when I was twelve. Since then I've also fallen in love with writing stories, and Aerilus is the piece I've been working on for years. In my free time I like to play cello, solve puzzles, ride horses, and do anything related to gardening or plants. 

I slowly opened my eyes only to be greeted by distant laughter and a very bright sun on my face. Panicking, I ran out of my bed and to the window to see that people had already started to gather in the streets. I groaned and hurried to my closet to get dressed. 

Today was the start of Inlastrius. It’s a holiday that celebrates something that has to do with astrology. I have been told multiple times why in the world we celebrate this day, but I stop listening to the story right when we’re at the part where everything gets too related to the sciences, which also happens to be the part with the “true meaning” to it. So I’ve come to the acception that I’m just going to have to live the rest of my life in confusion.

I grabbed my satchel and ran out my front door onto the stone streets that were normally easy to walk along due to the lack of people, but today’s really the only exception. Thankfully, I was only in the middle of my village on the outskirts of the kingdom, so the people were all moving in the same direction from here. 

I sprinted the mile from my house to the park where I’d agreed to meet my friends. Thankfully, they were all still in the agreed meeting place, a sturdy railing that allowed visitors to look over the abyss that some idiot decided to build an entire kingdom over. 

“Sorry I’m late, I overslept,” They all turned and looked at me with their most serious faces. I slowly smiled, “honestly you all should be fully accustomed to this by now.” 

As always, Silas is the first to forgive my tendency to arrive late. “Before we all get mad at Esta again and go into a lecture on being organized, let me remind you that we’ve only missed an hour of our day, if we leave now, we still have time to get to the castle with plenty of wiggle room for everyone’s stops. We just won’t be able to go get something to eat like we planned.” 

Silas gets up and starts to walk down the dirt path that leads north to the center of the kingdom. Amaris and Haynh pass me to follow his lead, but I don’t follow until Quinn is ready to go. 

Quinn is the quietest member of our group, which is probably because she likes to distance herself. She and her family were travellers who had seen the world, always stopping to live in villages then leaving several months later. When they arrived in our village, they claimed that this was the kind of peace and community that they had searched their entire lives for. Quinn still doesn’t believe that she and her family will be here permanently. But I know they will. 

“Remind me what this entire festival is about again?” She asks as I approach. 

“Honestly, I really don’t know. I stop listening every time the story gets complicated. But from my understanding, it has something to do with a tremendously bright star that only shows up in the sky once a year, even though it’s a tremendously bright star. And we celebrate it because...I think it’s because it makes some constellation complete.” 

Quinn nods her head slightly. “In one of the places my family used to live in, you couldn’t see the stars because of the amount of light that was already on the ground. It was near a mountain area and they found a special species of moss that gave off a bright glow at night. Our houses were coated in it so that people could see at night. The area was so populated with houses that the moss outshined the stars in the sky.”

Ahead of us, Amaris and Haynh pause their conversation. “You lived in a house covered in moss?” Amaris asks Quinn with a look of bewilderment on her face. Quinn nods and Amaris stares off into the distance for a moment. “At least you didn’t spend a whole week of your life celebrating an anomaly.”

Silas whips around with a look of pure annoyance on his face. “If everyone continues to walk at the current pace we’re moving at, we’ll have terrible seats at the festival tonight. And you’ll only have yourselves to blame.”

With that, everyone starts to walk a little faster and conversation fizzles out. No one makes any comments for the next five minutes, even when Silas leads everyone past the normal route we planned on taking into the woods. You could get to the kingdom this way, it’s a shortcut. 

  “We haven’t taken this path in years, are you sure that it’s still a safe option to go this way?” Amaris asks Silas from behind us as she picks thorns from a bush off her clothes. 

  “A few scratches won’t kill you. If we took the normal route the crowds would have slowed us down even more and then we wouldn’t have time for making everyone’s stops. We’re better off taking the less crowded path and ensuring that we get there on time.” 

  The forest may have been the faster option, but it certainly was not the more pleasant option. My ankles were covered in scratches from thorns and my legs hurt from walking up the steep hill. But I didn’t complain. If it wasn’t for me, we could be walking through the shops and enjoying not getting torn to shreds. 

After about an hour of walking, Silas decided that we could rest for a few minutes. I wanted to cry tears of relief when I finally sat down.

“Are you finally starting to feel any remorse for your decisions?” Haynh asks as Silas stops to survey the path ahead but doesn’t sit down. 

“I don’t have a single regret about my decision. We’ll be to the center of the kingdom within the hour.” Silas says, looking satisfied for the first time today as he starts to pack up his things and proceeds down the path. 

No one else was ready to start walking again, but we followed anyway because Lucidia had just started, and we didn’t need any conflict on the first day. 

I had walked a considerable distance before I noticed that Quinn was walking slowly far behind us. I told everyone else to wait there for a moment while I ran back to see what happened. 

“Are you alright?”

Quinn nods and holds up a stone to me. “Do you recognize this? I found it half buried near the rock I was sitting on when we took a break. I can’t read what it says, but you’re bilingual, maybe you can.” 

I could speak two languages only because I spent half of my time with my Grandmother who was from a distant land, until she passed away when I was twelve. But when I looked at the stone Quinn had found, I didn’t recognize any of it. I shook my head as I slowly handed it back to her. “Keep it just in case. Maybe we can find someone who can read it, if not, it might be worth a fortune.” 

Quinn puts the stone in her pocket and we run back to the group. “We found a stone with writing on it that I don’t understand. It has to be from somewhere far away from here. We need to stop and see if anyone in the antique shops knows any foreign languages that could help us figure out what it is.”

Amaris asks to see the stone and Quinn hands it to her. Haynh and Silas look over her shoulders to look at it and Silas smiles. “Honestly Esta, are you ever awake in school? These are ancient ruins from the archetype!” 

I stared at Silas. “We don’t go over ancient ruins or the archetype in school.”

“We did an entire project on them.” Silas notes.

Amaris gives Silas a puzzled look. “We went over ancient ruins once when we were like seven, and I’m very sure that project was just there to confuse us and give us something to worry about, just like the archetype itself. They only know a few ruins and nobody in their right mind actually believes that they’re a real thing. What we did learn in school is the most accurate theory about the archetype, which states that it’s fake.”

“Well I still remember the three that we learned and they look exactly like this!” He moves over to sit on a fallen log and examines it more closely. 

But just as quickly as his excitement started, it diminishes and the color leaves his face. His hands go slack and he nearly drops the archetype, but Haynh catches it.

“Wait -what’s happening? What’s wrong?” Haynh asks as soon as he catches the archetype. 

“If we actually get caught with that thing we could be mistaken as criminals. Nobody knows if the archetype really exists, but the people who do believe that what’s written on it is not good stuff.” Silas explains.

“Define ‘not good stuff’ please?” Haynh asks. 

“Like, people die in the writings on the archetype kind of ‘not good stuff’.” Amaris explains for him. 

“Which is exactly why we should hide that thing in an even better place than we found it and never even think about it again. Unless you all want ‘not good stuff’ to happen to you.” And with that Silas walks several more steps down the path, as if that will protect him from the writings. 

Haynh, still not quite understanding the gravity of the situation says, “I say we look for the rest of the archetype! This isn’t all of it right? There’s more out there to be discovered? If we find the rest of it, we’ll be famous!” 

“Theoretically yes, but how do we know someone didn’t just make a fake version of it? How do we even know what’s on the real archetype? Nobody’s ever seen it, so how do we know it’s not a lie? We can’t just set out on a journey to find the supposed remainder of the archetype, we have to know what we’re doing. I guarantee you there’s tons of people back in the village a thousand times more qualified to go searching for it than we are, we should just take it back to the village and find somebody qualified to take it.” Amaris reasons. Her entire family is mostly made up of political figures, they’ve been here for centuries, and the village and her ancestors go way back. They’re practically royalty and Amaris would never choose something that wasn’t in the kingdom’s best interest. I almost want to agree with her.

But I want an adventure even more.

“I say we pursue it. Not to be famous like Haynh suggested, but to do the right thing. If Silas is right and what’s actually on the archetype is ‘not good stuff’ and it gets into the wrong hands, we’re all in trouble. But if we bring it back we risk being seen as criminals, we have no evidence to prove we’re innocent. But if we leave it here and continue on with our lives, we risk someone else finding it again soon and we’re back at square one.” I nervously sat down and watched their faces. 

“I agree with Esta.” Quinn says, surprisingly confident.

“I mean, Esta just practically stole my entire idea by making it logical and persuasive but my opinion remains the same, I say we find the rest of the archetype.” Haynh adds. 

I look to Silas and Amaris only to find them both looking torn between their three options. 

“If you two want to go home and not look for the rest of the archetype, I won’t be offended at all. If we get caught, I swear I’ll leave you two out of it and you can go back to living your lives. Any harm that comes to us from the archetype will never reach either of you.” I said and I left them both to think it over in quiet for as long as they needed, within reason of course, I was eager to set off. 

Silas is the first to decide. “I’ve decided to go. If something happened to you all and I could’ve been there and prevented it, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. And someone has to keep Haynh in line.” His attempt at a joke is pitiful as always, but we all smile and Quinn and I laugh to try and ease the tension. Except for Amaris. 

She’s sitting on another fallen log, her face turned to the ground. I catch her wiping her eyes with her sleeve and when she lowers her arm, I can see her sleeve is soaked. I feel bad for not noticing her crying and I walk over to sit with her. 

“Amaris you honestly don’t have to go if you don’t want to, there’s no shame in staying behind. Besides, we could use someone to cover for us while we’re gone.” I tried to reassure her.

“No...I want to go, but I just feel terrible about leaving my family like this.” She says through sniffles. She looks up at the rest of us, “You do realize that the only way for us to go is without our families’ permission right? They’ll all think something awful happened and I feel bad for putting them in that kind of suffering.” The mood of the group dampens and we sit in silence. Finally Quinn pipes up.

“We could leave them a note explaining what we did. It doesn’t have to include everything, just enough to reassure them that we didn’t all die today. And we can hide it somewhere that’s well hidden enough that they’ll find it, but not right away. That gives us time to get far enough away without them catching up to us, since they’re going to go searching for us.” I’m surprised by her behavior today, normally she’s not the voice of reason in our group. Not because she’s not a reasonable person, just because she never really gives her input on things.

“Alright then. I guess we need to decide on when we’re leaving, are any of you prepared to be gone from home for an indefinite period of time?” I joke, trying to lighten the mood, but of course it doesn’t work. The only answer I get is four head shakes. “Well I’m not either so we’re all on the same page. Do we want to go back home and get clothes?” I try again.

“All of our families are out of our houses now and in the village celebrating right?” Haynh clarifies with everyone. When everyone confirms, he says “Well then I suggest we go back to the village in groups, one group goes together to each house while the other group stays here with the archetype, we shouldn’t risk taking it back to the village. I’ll go with Silas and you three can stay here, we’ll be back as fast as we can. Don’t pack heavier than you can carry, we can’t be slowed down.” And with that, he and Silas go back down the trail from which we came.

                                                              ***

It takes a couple hours for everyone to meet back up in the same spot. We check how much water and food we have, and Amaris’s family happened to have a water filter in one of the packs they give out to the soldiers that sit on the outskirts of the kingdom. As long as we followed a stream, we wouldn’t have any issues. We had a decent amount of currency, also courtesy of Amaris, and enough blankets to not suffer from the cold. It doesn’t snow in Lucidia, so we figured we’d be alright. We turned and took one last look at our home, and set off on a journey that may change everything.

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. 



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