The Fields of Fire

Chapter 15: Tau Adana

"You'll be home for Yanitaz?" Xaren asked, "Promise you'll bring back some gifts!"

"I'll bring back lots of Zytrian Souvenirs. There's stuff over there that they don't have back here."

"And when you get back they'll give you medals and stuff?"

"Oh I imagine they probably will." He knelt down next to his son and rubbed his head, "But I won't be coming home for those, I'll be coming home for my family."

Coming home for your family. Tau flinched at the words. What about her family?

Xara looked at Xaren, "It's still very late. You need to get back to sleep Xaren."

He really did look sleepy, "Yes Mom."

"I think, I might go back to sleep too." Tau remarked. Brandon just nodded as Tau turned around and shut the door to her room. She set down her bag next to the door and put herself back into her bed. She couldn't sleep. She used to be able to, but not anymore.

This place, it had started to feel like home, like better than home. A place where magic was real. Where dragons flew in the sky, where every sunset was a painting as though made by the strokes of God himself, where the wind carried songs, where hate was like diamonds in its rarity. She had no reason to go back to Zytria, a place she could only remember as cold, filled with guns and great cities that pumped clouds of smoke miles into the sky, even the farm she grew up in seemed like a black and white version of the world she knew now.

And how could she go back to keep up the fight? How does someone go back to firebomb a land they've fallen in love with? To carry guns against freedom, against love, against magic? When you know they've lied, when you know the horror stories aren't true, that democracy and equality are not the end of all things. Could she really kill again for a war she no longer believed in?

But she couldn't shake those words. An Invasion. She'd been in Atheria for weeks, when her plan was only to stay that one night. But the navy had turned around, they'd left her. She couldn't shake the feeling that she'd lost her only real chance back already, but still she needed to know her family was going to be safe. She needed to know that Michael would be okay. She didn't know what she'd do if she got back, she knew she couldn't fight for them anymore, but she also knew that she couldn't stay.

She got up out of her bed and grabbed her bag. Maybe, she'd steal a sailboat, or something to get home, she didn't have a real plan other than to try. She opened up the window at the back of her room, and as quietly as she could she slid through it. Her feet made contact with the wooden porch and She was welcomed by the night sky. As she slid the door closed behind her, she heard a voice next to her say, "You too huh?" Brandon was leaning up against the house, "Can't sleep?"

She frowned, "Something like that."

"You want to go back home."

"I don't know." She shook her head, "Home is a complicated word."

"Not really. Home is just the place you want to be." He laughed, "Funny how people can live in a place for their whole lives, and it'll never be home because there's some place they'd rather be."

She shook her head, "I don't know where I'd rather be."

He smiled, "Yeah you do. You want to be with the people who care about you." He gestured back to his house, "The real trick to home is getting all of those people in one place."

"Okay sure," She nodded. "The love of my life is stuck on an aircraft carrier in the Naval Air Arm. My Mother and Brother are back in Zytria on a farm, and I'm here, in Atheria, with no real way back home other than to hope somebody finds me." She looked at him, "How do I get us all in the same place?"

He stared for a little bit, seeming stumped. Tau was about tell him That's what I thought, before he spoke, "Join the Atherian Army. Come with me to Zytria in the Invasion." Tau's eyes were in shock, "You said you were from a farm near Alisonville, right? That's near where the planned beachfront is against the Zytrians. When you get there, just change out of your Atherian Military Uniform, hike west, and go find your mother and brother. It seems pretty simple to me."

Ignoring that landing near that part of Zytria seemed impossible to her, she pondered it, "What about Michael?"

"I assume he'll be discharged when the war ends. Maybe you could get word to him, and encourage him to desert. Either way it won't be long before he's back." Tau couldn't imagine the idea of telling the man she loved, a man who she met at the Air Academy, to desert his duty to their common country. She guessed it showed how much had changed.

She shook her head, "And what about you? What's your plan to get back to your family."

He shrugged, "Win the war."

She paused, "Do you believe in the war? At least, on your side."

"Of course." He said, "The Zytrians, they would have killed me. The only reason I'm allowed to love my wife, or hold my son, or even exist at all is because of the freedoms that Atheria provides to me. I'm no fighter, I know that, and I didn't ever want to leave my family behind, but I do have a duty to my country. Plus I don't plan on dying for anything, the war will be over soon is what they say. None of us will even have to throw a fireball."

"Not a single shot?" Tau asked, the thought that startled tau the most that at first, she wasn't necessarily opposed to the idea of actually fighting for Atheria so long as she saw her family at the end, she caught herself though and realized she couldn't fight against the nation she was born in.

"Nope." He looked at her with a very serious face, "You saved my son's life, that's a debt I don't think I can ever repay. So if that's what you want, than Let me take you home."

Tau paused, can I really do this? She nodded to herself, Family comes first, blood and bone. He turned away from the Atherian Horizon and looked at Brandon. "Where do I enlist?"