My Child

Moirallegiance Bracelet

~Equius POV~

I keep my arrow trained on what appeared to be the leader of the party until every one of them disappeared in the trees. I captalog my bow and quiver as I spin around to face Signless. He looks both shocked and proud. This confuses me to no end. Why would he be proud of me? All I did was make a threat.

"What?" I ask, my confusion clear in my expression.

"You did good, Equius," Signless says before ruffling my hair.

"Are you two going to just stand around while we pack up?" Disciple asks. "Or are you going to help?"

An idea pops into my head. Why didn't I think of this earlier? I make my way over to Dolorosa, who's taking down a tent, and ask, "May I try something?"

She smiles and nods. "Of course."

I touch the tent and it disappears into my captadeck. I rush around the camp and captalog everything that we would normally have to carry. With a lighter load, we should be able to travel faster. When I turn around and see the looks of surprise on everyone's faces I explain, "I just captalogged everything." I remove a card from my fetch motis to show them. The one I chose was the one with the tent Dolorosa was taking down. "See?" I deploy the tent then recapta it.

Dolorosa is about to ask something when we hear rapidly approaching footsteps. Lots of them. There's a large group of armed Trolls making their way through the forest at a swift pace. The group I had threatened had called for reinforcements. I guess it's time to go. Signless must have the same idea.

"Time to leave," he says as he directs our small group towards the tree line on the other side of the clearing.

I look over my shoulder and see that the angry blue, and now purple as well, bloods aren't stopping and looking around for us. They keep running in our direction. On instinct, I run right at a tree, push off and grab ahold of a low hanging branch on another tree. From there I climb. Before I realize it, I'm half way up the tree.

Signless must have noticed I wasn't there. "Where's Equius?" he quietly asks Disciple. Both of them look around.

I roll my eyes and climb down to the lowest branch. "Guys," I whisper yell and get their attention. "Climb the trees." I don't wait for their response before I'm climbing again. I look down for a second and see that Signless is the last one in the tree. He had helped Disciple and Dolorosa up before doing exactly what I did, jumping off the trunk of one tree and onto the branch of another.

Only difference is that I caught the branch. He misses, the tips of his fingers barely grazing the blueish-purple bark. He was so close too.

Letting go of the branch I was holding on to, I allow myself to fall a few feet before landing on the branch Signless had missed. I drop from crouching on the branch to hanging upside down from the branch. Before he can fall too far out of my reach, I catch Signless's wrist and pull him up onto the branch beside me.

"Are you okay?" I ask him as we all start climbing to the top branches, not missing a beat.

"I think so," he replies. "How did you do that?"

"Exploring on LOCAS." He looks at me weird. "It was my world in the Medium. The Land of Caves and Silence. Your descendant's world was the Land of Pulse and Haze." We reach the top and situate ourselves as close as possible: Dolorosa on the next to highest branch close to the trunk, Signless on the highest branch close to the trunk, Disciple next to him, me in his lap. "The world we were assigned to in the Medium reflected in some way our aspect. LOCAS for me as the Heir of Void. LOPAH for him as the Knight of Blood. LORAF, Land of Rays and Frogs, for Kanaya as the Sylph of Space. And LOLCAT, Land of Little Cubes and Tea for Nepeta as the Thief of Heart." I wipe away the tears that had formed without my consent. I need to stop thinking about my friends. "That was off topic. I learned several interesting ways to climb while I was exploring the caves of my planet. Nepeta came with me sometimes but she couldn't climb as well as I could. It's a bit ironic considering that she lived her whole life in a cave."

"Nepeta is my descendant, correct?" Disciple asks.

I smile. "Yes." I look down at the moirallegiance bracelet Nepeta made for me when we were four sweeps old. I've kept it securely tied around my wrist ever since. The ends of the yarn are frayed, and the beads are dented and scratched, but it reminds me of her, so I keep it around my wrist. "She's also my Moirail." My hands are shaking. "She made this bracelet for me when we were about four sweeps. I've never taken it off."

"That's so sweet," Disciple says. I can tell she's planning something now. She has the same glint in her eye that Nepeta gets when she gets an idea. More tears form in my eyes as I mentally compare Disciple's face to Nepeta's. The differences are few and far between. She looks just like Nepeta.

"You look just like her," I whisper, fighting to keep blue tears from spilling over. Signless wipes the tears away before they escape as I rest my head on his shoulder and force myself to stop staring at Disciple. I instead stare at my bracelet, turning the beads with her initials over repeatedly, until we hear our very angry pursuers footsteps receding into the distance back the way they originally came from. "We need to keep moving."

"Agreed," Signless nods while we climb out of the tree.

~Author's Note~

Thank you again for reading my story! So far my promise of a weekly update has been kept. I intend to start writing the next chapter and drawing the next picture as soon as I finish posting this one. As usual, the picture is mine. I figured you'd be wondering what Equius's bracelet would look like so I drew it (also I was too lazy to draw entire people and just drew Equius and Signless's hands). Hopefully you've enjoyed my story. If you have any comments or suggestions or even edits that I missed, please use the comments box and leave me a note. Until next time, stay tuned my shining diamonds!