Heroes of Dreamland Rewritten, Book 2: Stars in Far Places

Chapter 8

Blue | 青

"We can't keep letting him take lessons from, from... well, you know. From someone like her. And with her teaching him those Star Power-forsaken weapons things, too. The boy will never need to know how to use a sword; if anything, she's just making him a delinquent. I'm tired of saying this over and over. I'm tired of having this fight. This whole abomination has gone on for far too long."

"Truecure, you're being absolutely medieval about this, dearheart. She's already been all but barricaded out of the town because of what people think of her kind; what more do you want? She's obviously been set apart as someone who's not one of us. Now, dear, be logical about this for a moment—where else in the Galaxy could you find a private tutor of her caliber willing to work for such little pay? Not only that, but ever since that first time we had her watch him overnight, his nightmares haven't been nearly as bad—"

"Forget all of that. Honesty, can't you see the shame in it? Our son, the oldest son of the oldest son of a long-standing, upright, proper Knowledge Clan family, being taught, trained, and all but raised by a disgusting, blasted, abominable—"

Sighing, I turn up the music on my cassette player so the noise from my headphones drowns out the voices of my arguing parents, and burrow a bit farther under my blankets. Mother and Father have been having this fight ever since I was five and Blossom first started being my trainer and tutor. Now, here I am, going on ten, and totally used to it by now.

My father is always very quiet-spoken outside of the house; everyone thinks of him as some sort of patient, ever-calm saint. I guess he makes up for it by being noisy here.

Nestling down farther into the bed while resting on my tummy, I readjust the flashlight set down next to me and sift through the pile of comic books lying in front of me, trying to decide which one to read next.

The only good part about basically having the earliest bedtime in town for someone my age is that it means I can get away from Father earlier in the evening. Anytime I'm around him, he never stops with the scolding. "When are you going to stop fooling around out in the woods and start being my apprentice at the clinic?" Forget the fact that Star World law says you can't officially apprentice a Star Warrior child until they're at least twelve (I know because I checked the law books myself); Father wants me to get unofficially started early. You'd think he'd be happy with the fact that I'm almost two years ahead of all of the other town kids my age in my studies; he acts like that's average and simply to be expected. No matter how hard I try at my piano lessons and no matter how much better I'm slowly getting over time at playing, he still always complains that my performances sound mediocre (a word that other kids my age probably wouldn't even know how to correctly pronounce).

No matter what I do, it's not enough to make him happy. And while Mother seems happy with me whenever he's not around, and compliments my skills in everything from math to music, the second Father is there, she pretty much always takes his side. "You need to be more serious. You need to stop being so wishy-washy, always out daydreaming in the woods with your Warp Star and those mind-numbing illustrated piles of garbage," Father will say, and she'll just nod and quietly acquiesce that "Your father knows what's best, Little Boy Blue."

"Do you know what the neighbors are saying?" Father now roars so loudly that I can hear him over the blaring Mozart being piped into my ears. I wince a bit. "The Forest-Fire twins' parents, I always forget their names—"

Even though I can't hear her reply, I know my mother calmly interjects for the millionth time, "You mean Lochan and Ros?"

"Yes, them," my father blasts onward, still overpowering my music. "They still bring up that stupid incident back when the boy was six, when he gave her that blasted flower, that wretched little wildflower that it seems no one will ever quit going on about; he was six; he should have known better, but he was six; it's not like we're ever going to let him actually—"