The Fate of Kane (ONC 2023)

Inception - Chapter 4

If I expect you to understand what happened, I will have to admit that I was wrong.

Ultimately, we all have a moment when we realize everything has changed. Always in hindsight, of course, we can watch the tides of our lives shift, pinpoint the moment we chose the untraveled road over the status quo. And if we spend too much time thinking about it, too deeply, we will find ourselves questioning the very foundations upon which we have built our lives.

This moment will never be the one at which the fateful decision was made. No. For many, realization is instantaneous, but too late. For others, it takes years of walking down the new path, the wrong path, the difficult path, a descent to rock bottom, before the necessary introspection reveals that there is no "should have been" or "could have been": only what is.

The beginning was, for me, a seemingly benign moment, which I would come to learn transpired in the midst of the changing of the tide of my life.

A pounding emptiness riddling my mind, I couldn't have moved even if I tried. Struggling to recognize where I was and how I got there, I listened to the voices of Ava and my brother ebbing and flowing through my conscience. They were discussing me, that much was definite; though why, I could not discern. Swirling through me were both a strange sense of awareness, and an utter darkness.

My brother spewed what was beginning to sound more like a series of justifications than an actual recitation of events.

"No." Ava's soft voice cut clearly through the confines of my mind. "I don't understand."

"Have you not been listening?" Seemingly always annoyed in Ava's presence, Milo couldn't help but raise his voice to her. A chair scraping across the floor, I could imagine him standing abruptly, glaring down at her, always using his size to intimidate. "The succession of events is neither difficult to follow, nor relevant to the present. Wake him."

I struggled to suppress a groan, maybe a sigh, and contemplated whether I should attempt to move or lie so still they would think I was still asleep.

Footsteps and a rush of warm air flowed over me as the creak of hinges told me someone had opened a door; a cool hand brushed over my forehead and into my hair.

"Does he really believe I haven't tried?" Ava whispered.

She was talking to me.

Had she tried? In this unmovable prison of my own body, I couldn't recall.

"Brought to me draped over the shoulders of your companions," she continued, patting a swatch of something cool and fragrant along my neck, pausing on my chest, hand over my heart, she sighed. "What happened last night, Kane?"

She must have been seated next to me on the cot, a warm weight lifting as she rose, I opened my heavy eyes just enough to see her slip through a doorway.

"I cannot wake him," her voice rang clearly and confidently.

"Fool," Milo sneered quietly, his thunking footfalls approached the cot where I lay, seemingly dead to them.

He leaned over my face so nearly that I could smell the soap mulled by our mother on his skin, the musky odor of a horse's mane on his hand as he patted my cheek. "Kane," he was stern, as though I was simply ignoring him.

I was.

I could feel his glare looming above me and while I struggled to open my eyes, my will to see him or speak to him was sufficiently weak that I relented to my failure.

"Hmph." The arcing scratch of a shoe upon the rough floor told me he had turned to leave. "He must be present tonight," voice booming with unnecessary authority, I could only assume he was addressing Ava again. "I suggest you find a way to wake him."