Time To Fight

Chapter 11

It was disorienting to look around, but at least the blurriness was in color.

As my vision cleared, there was no doubt I was no longer surrounded by guards waiting to pounce. A harden wooden floor with a red, embroidered carpet was underneath my feet. A small room with pale yellow walls surrounded me. This place reminds me a bit of home. A soft cry reached my ears, shoving my ramp id thoughts into the background. I whirled around to find a baby's cradle. The wood had to have been chiseled quite early before the birth. There was so much detail. Daisies, my favorite flower, were engraved on the edges. Taking a step forward, I reached for the daisies, feeling the smooth contours of each petal, the bumps joined together to create their centers.

The cries grew even softer and it was when silence took over did I realize the crying didn’t come from the first floor of this home, but from inside the cradle. A small little head poked out of the forest green blanket wrapped around the child's small little body. The baby's eyes were closed shut as the baby wiggled itself around, looking as if the child wanted to escape. Escape. I just escaped myself, but where is this escape?

I took another look around, trying to find something to clue me into where I had landed. A morning light shone above the baby's cradle. Trying to keep the already restless child from crying, I inched my way to the window, hoping the wooden floor wouldn't continue to creak. What? This can't be-

I was home. Well, not home, but my mother’s home village, the village I would visit every year for a month, until I became eight. This is house had a perfect view of the long line separating the plains from the shroud of trees. Every time I'd come back, I'd weave my way between the trees with its rough dirt and lush green grass covering the plains. It didn't make sense. How could I be here? This village is in the opposite direction of the temple if one leaves from Lasas.

A piercing cry from the baby reverberated through me. Quite a strong set of lungs coming from such a small little thing. As I raced forward to do, well, something to keep the baby at bay, I could hear footsteps racing up the stairs. Now what do I do?

Reaching the cradle, I looked down at the child to see it moving around much more violently. The blanket was beginning to untangle itself from its helpless victim. I shoved the swords into the loops of my trousers in order to be ready to reach into the cradle to pick up the child, ready to try to calm it down the way my mother would when she took care of the neighboring children. A skill I never learned. The elements were always my focus. Children were the farthest thing from my mind. Of course, the priestess has already declared that children will be huge part of my future. If only I paid attention to how to hold a baby and rock it gently.

The footsteps had stopped. Apart from the lungs of life still ringing, there was silence. Hesitantly, I kept my head angled to the child, letting my eyes peer up to see what fate lay ahead of me. At the door was a young man with refined features wearing the clothes of a Fighter. His brown eyes widened as he took me in, his mouth slightly apart from surprise. I stood as still as he, and just as speechless. What could I possibly say?

"Kyra?" His low toned voice found its way through the screaming child. The confusion in his word mirrored the confusion in mine.

"How do you know me?"

The man shook his head, relaxing his tense posture in the process. His brown, unkempt hair swayed from side to side like the ripples of the water from the lake. "This can't be possible." The veins pushed outward from his flexed arm as he held his head in his hand. "Then again, this wouldn't be the first time."

"What are you talking about?" My body was still rigid, and my hands still gripped the cradle while my fingers brushed against the smooth daisies lightly, hoping to find some comfort from the etched designs.