Pristine Future: The Guardian of None

Chapter 1: Where it Began

People were running all around me. My hand was tethered to my lifeline. My mother. The best person in the world, to my knowledge. She pulled me through the crowd, tightening her grip on my slipping hand. I looked up at the giant white ball in the sky. The Traveler. “It’s gonna save us, isn’t it, mommy?” My voice came out high pitched, almost a squeak. I was only four. “I don’t know,” she said back to me. I got a great deal more scared. I started crying. Someone told me to shut up. I cried louder. If my mom didn’t know, what hope did I have? She drew me close and picked me up, still fighting against the growing crowd. I think they called it an evac. “It’s okay baby, we’ll be fine,” she spoke into my ear, soothing me. I held on to her tightly as she ran. Was she running the wrong way? I wasn’t one to question things at this age. The teachers had called me the smartest one in my class, but I hated things that didn’t have answers. While the other kids played with blocks, I worked out ‘basic addition’, or at least that’s what the teachers said it was. The crowd seemed to be a mile long. Eventually we got to the end of it, and I looked up into the sky once more. A shadow blocked the Traveler. My mind didn’t comprehend at first. Until I heard the sounds. Sounds like things breaking. Paper tearing. A flash illuminated the sky. Fire fell from it. I looked back to my mother, An emotion that I had never seen before patterned her face. “Mommy?” I asked worriedly. “Are we gonna be okay?” I was scared, because of the fire, because of the shadow, and the look on my mother’s face didn’t help that. I looked forward. Small blue lights illuminated the otherwise dark forest. “You will be,” she told me. “What about you?” I questioned. “I’ll be okay, buddy, you don’t worry about me.” We entered the forest. The blue lights got closer and closer. A blue humming started up, and the trees were aglow with blue. “Wait!” My mother yelled. She then spoke in a language I didn’t understand. I couldn’t tell at all what she was saying. Suddenly the trees were dark again. The strange humming stopped. A light detached from the others at a pace I could barely follow, and stopped in front of my mother. She gave him to me, and spoke silently. “Take care of him, Dedonee,” she told him. I looked up at the creature who was holding me now, fear gripping me.  It just nodded to her. “Mommy? Don’t leave me,” I begged. She leaned in and kissed me on the cheek. “You’ll be okay, Crow. Just trust the nice Vandal. He’ll take care of you.” She turned around, running back toward the crowds, the big ship, and humanity. “Mommy?” My child’s voice came out a squeak at first. “MOMMY!” I screamed. I had not known at the time that she was not coming back. “Shh, child,” the Vandal, as she had said, told me in a quiet voice, but still firmly. “You speak English?” I asked in the same voice. I had no idea why I was whispering, but just felt the need. “Yes. Don’t let any others know.” With that, he moved me to his back and scurried across the forest. I was intrigued more than scared now. He moved across the ground at a fast pace, no obstacle stopping him. He scurried into a cave, and down a number of spirals I couldn’t count, much less see. We stopped in a wide open, lit room carved into the cave. Dedonee plopped me into a stone chair. He pulled up another and sat down in it. I looked down at the ground. “It’s okay, Ethan.” Dedonee claimed. It wasn’t okay. Nothing was okay. I looked at him. “How do you know my name?” I challenged. He was unaffected by my sudden hostility. I had stopped crying now. I wasn’t even sure how I felt. “I knew your mother. She talked a lot about you. You were the light of her life, you know.” I didn’t understand what he meant by this at the time, but didn’t show it. “She trusted me to take care of you. I know you’re scared. I sometimes get scared too. But you will be okay. Now, I’ve never taken care of someone before, but I’ll manage.” He waved his hands in a manner I couldn’t describe. I didn’t even know how to react. I felt weird inside. After a few more hours of sitting there staring at each other, he showed me to my bed, a mess of blankets and cloth on a stone that looked almost like a mattress. I watched as he went to his bed, a simple stone block in the room. I finally turned over, and quietly cried myself to sleep.