The Will [on hold]

5000s - Episode 8

5000

“Shelta.”

Kevriel glanced up at his adoptive father, who had uttered the isle’s name as if it were a vision from a storybook. “Shelta indeed,” he attested.

Gorovan kept his gaze of auburn brick fixed on the high walls of white stone, atop their bed of black rock rising from the sea. “It’s been so long since last I saw this place.”

“I’d bet it hasn’t changed?” Kevriel reckoned.

Gorovan’s knuckles whitened on the deck’s rail. “It never changes.”

Kevriel looked down at the open letter in his hands. “It may well be the only thing.”

The small crew of the small craft set about preparing to make harbor. Kevriel turned to help them readying the boat, furling the letter back into a small scroll in his fist.

“Do you fear it?” Gorovan asked.

Kevriel paused and looked up into fear-filled auburn eyes.

“The change that you now know is set to happen,” Gorovan clarified, mistaking Kevriel’s silence for confusion, “after what you’ve read.”

Kevriel smiled, a faint and frowning smile that did not reach his raven eyes. “I do not fear it,” he asserted. “I just don’t like it.”

“You must know,” Gorovan advised him in a low and urgent tone, “that in the face of what is happening on Glorion, this is our only hope.”

“A sad day,” Kevriel pronounced as he handed the letter back to Gorovan and gathered up some ropes to moor the ship, “when our only hope is such a hopeless thing.”

“Would you rather have never read it?” Gorovan suggested, regretting having ever shared the letter with this boy—this boy who had, for quite some time now, been a man. “Would you rather I’d not brought you with me here to Shelta, to discuss it with your father?”

“This isn’t about what I’ve read, or whether you’d brought me.”

Gorovan rolled the feather-light letter heavily in his hand.

“It will not matter what I know, or what I say,” Kevriel furthered, hefting a thick coil of ropes on his bronze forearm. “You and my father will go through with this. There will be no discussion. Leastwise not with me.”

“Do you resent it?”

Kevriel paused in his movements, arching one brow. “What? My voicelessness with Father?”

Gorovan lowered his eyes, a little.

“I resent nothing,” Kevriel maintained, “although the many voiceless soldiers, who are set to be the victims of this plan—”

“Victims!” Gorovan exclaimed in protest. “They, Kevriel—they would make victims of us.”

“So we’ll strike first, and justify our strike as self-defense?”

“It’s not a strike. We are not harming them, or victimizing them in any way. We’re helping them. We’re helping everyone.”

“And men like Eldor? Claron? You really think they need this kind of help?”

Gorovan scowled. He most certainly did think so. “They are… their cases may be different. We can discuss it, all of us, once we are back at home. Safe at home, with a new weapon of defense at our disposal.”

“Weapon,” Kevriel echoed, nodding with raised brows and a pursed, sardonic smile as he began to move away. “Lovely.”

Gorovan parted his lips as if to speak, motioning to follow his adoptive son toward the other end of the larboard.