4
Once I wake up, Ace isn't there. I look over and see Hare cuddled up in my cape. Pathetic. I roll my eyes and go look for Ace. I look outside the cave and see that the rain has finally settled down. I walk through the trees and see berries lined on the floor. I smile and follow the berries. It leads me to the ocean. I look around and he's nowhere to be found, but then I see a head pop out of the water. A black head. He sees me and starts walking towards me. I walk up to the shallow. I notice a pile of fish on a handkerchief close to where I was stand. He puts his new catch into the pile and starts tying the handkerchief.
"S'Rabbit awake?" He says in one breath. His breath short.
"No. He was too snuggled to wake up." I said with a monotone voice. He stops and looks up at me, water dripping from his hair. “Sarcasm." I say.
"Yeah, I know." He picks up the tied handkerchief. "You plan on forgiving him?" He says as he starts walking. I follow him arms crossed.
"I don't know. Probably. I mean, I wouldn’t be here if he didn’t bother me always." I say. Again, he looks back at me. With the same face. Of faint disbelief. "No, I'm not grateful for him treating me like trash. But… I don't know." I give up on explaining.
"Yeah, don't stress it. I get it." We enter the forest. I don't mention the berries. Save someone from embarrassment for a while. We get back to where we camped. Ace kicks over Hare.
"What!" He sits up, his hair messy, drool over his chin. "Oh." He says after he realizes he wasn't being attacked. I fight back from laughing. My bully was this guy? What a nutshell. I feel stupid for even crying because of him.
"We're going to have to pass by Desert then Mountain to get to Sky." Ace says while we all pack our things.
"It's Mountain, Desert, and Mountain again then it’s Sky." Hare says.
"Desert has the division of Rock. Those rock mountains are Desert. So it's Desert, Mountain and Sky." Ace ignores Hare and looks at me while he talks. I nod.
"So how long is that?" I ask while putting my cape in my knapsack. It's too hot for that now.
"7 weeks." Hare says. Waiting for us. Ace looks at Hare irritated.
"7 weeks, but being realistic almost 9." Again I nod, more than a month of walking. How will we last on the little food we have? Desert or the Rock Mountains don't have any oceans. How will we even have the strength? "I have coins, so we can combine what we find and buy what we need. And stay for a couple nights when we arrive at Divisions." Ace said, reading my mind. We start walking on the path again. It doesn't take long for Hare and Ace to be arguing. About water.
"It hasn't even been 4 hours and you're already annoying us about water! We need this water to go through Desert!" Ace's strong voice can be heard from a mile away. I continue walking.
"Yeah, well you said we'll buy what's needed at Desert!" Hare screams back. His voice cracking like a little boy.
"Common sense to human is that we economize!" Ace stammers.
"How about we economize over a fight!" Hare yells. That made no sense but I turned around as soon as I heard fight. Ace throws his bags on the floor and walks toward Hare first. Hare throws the squared bag on the floor and the fish fall out, but they don't notice. I run in between them and put my arms out.
"I always wanted to punch a Forest's face in."
"STOP! Get a grip! What is wrong with you guys? You're fighting over water for crying out loud! Hare, you volunteered so you stop whining! We’re not even close to being there!" I shout, "Look at what you guys did!" I point at the squared box. Where the fish is being devoured by some sort of creature. It looks like a Forest Guardian.
"What the hell is that?" Hare asks. I stay quiet, because I also don’t know.
"It's called the Furry Malign." Ace tells us while grabbing his machete. "Careful, they're dangerous." He said stepping in front of us. But Hare steps in front of Ace.
"This? Be dangerous? That's stupid. Look at its size.” He went to the furry creature and reached his hand out to pick it up. The furry thing noticed Hare approaching and opened its mouth and bit Hare's arm. Hare starts screaming. "AH!" I run over to Hare and look at his arm. There’s red liquid but no cuts or bite marks. Ace starts laughing. Hare glares at Ace.
"Real mature. Maybe you're the malign here." Hare spat. Ace bends over, laughing. I've never heard him laugh but it's funny to watch him laugh. I start laughing too. Of frustration, our food is on the floor being eaten by a furry creature. Not like we can savage it anyways. It’s all full of dirt now.
"It is dangerous," Ace says in between his laughs "it's just that that's a cub, adults have wings. That red liquid is poison. It only works if it your wounded or it actually bit you." Ace started to catch his breath. Stood, sighed. I approach the Furry Malign and slowly put my arms out. The bizarre animal looks at me, its ear twitching with each sound that surrounds it. It stares at me with its big black eyes. I pick it up under its arms and close my eyes waiting for it to bite me. But it doesn't. I open my eyes to see the creature looking at me, making a noise, as if it it's talking to us. It tilts its head and stares at me.
"What! That runt!" Hare said with one hand protecting his red arm.
"Weird, they usually hate humans." Ace said picking up his bags. The brown soft furred thing crawled up my arm over my shoulder behind my neck and stood over my left shoulder. It stared at Hare and hissed. It's mouthful of baby teeth exposed.
"It just doesn't like you, Hare. I don’t blame it." I say while looking at the way this animal’s fur is. It has a long streak of red from in between its eyes and follows down its spine to its tail. The red outlined black. And it has a collar made of fur. It's beautiful. It suddenly lays on my shoulders and lets its tail loose over my other shoulder.
"Well now what? Our food is either covered in dirt or in that runt's stomach."
"It's your fault." Ace accuses Hare and picks up his spear.
"How is it my fault?" Hare asks while picking up the squared box.
"For being so careless and throwing it anywhere." Ace walks past him, snatching the bag from him and picking up the handkerchief. He starts walking to the ocean taking his shirt off and pants leaving him with only shorts and spear.
"What is he doing?" Hare looked at me expecting me to do something.
"What does it look like? He's fishing. Someone had to get the fish. If you want to make yourself useful go and catch some." Hare looks at the ocean then looks at me, sighs and walks on the sand to the water. The creature jumped off my shoulders and landed on the floor. It began to eat the rest of fish on the dirt. I walked to the forest and started to pick berries. Near the ocean there are no poisonous berries so I didn't have to worry about someone dying. After I couldn't find any more I walked back to the ocean and saw the pile of fish and beside it a pile of crabs and large clams.
When the sun was directly above us, noon, the guys packed their catches in the squared bag. It overflowed and wouldn't close so we ate just then and gave the left overs to the fur ball. We begin to walk again until the sun begins to set. While we walk we gathered dried leafs, sticks or branches. We walk until the guys can't see our hands in front of us. I can still see clearly in the dark, but decide its better than hearing Ace and Hare tripping all the time. We camp in the forest again.
"By tomorrow there won't be any forests. Or seas." Ace says while sharpening another branch to cook the fish.
"So what are you suggesting?" I ask, looking up to Ace.
"That we fish a lot and put it in a different bag. The same day we eat the fish in that bag. And for water..." Ace drifts the sentence not knowing.
"There are plants in the forest that have a lot of water in it." Hare says. "I can make some bags with sticks and leafs that can carry the fruits and extra fish. Plus the leaves will make the fish last long-" Out of nowhere the Furry Malign comes out of the dark and scatters behind me.
"The Furr-" I begin to say but then it happens. Two Forest Guardians comes out of the dark. One attacks Ace with his fish and the other jumps on me, with the fur ball on my shoulder. The wolf drools as his teeth snatch close to my face. I’m on my back and scream as I hold him off, not strong enough to last long. Suddenly something pushes it off me. I look and I see Hare. I look at the Guardian on the floor. It stopped moving. Then I notice a burnt stick popping out from its neck.
"You okay?" Ace comes up to me, putting out his hand.
"Ye-yeah," I say breathing hard, "Hare saved me." I manage to say, grabbing hold of his hand.
"Because of that little demon, we almost got killed!" Hare pointed at the creature on my shoulder.
"I think those Forest Guardians would've attacked us anyways. They attacked Ace because of the fish." I said.
"These aren't Forest Guardians. Forest Guardians are composed. They don't prey on live things." Hare said kicking the dead wolf.
"Well, Guardians or not it doesn't take much to know that there's more of those here. We gotta change places and not build a fire." We agree on that idea and we move. With the fur ball on my shoulder, still trembling.
"Kekeke!" It suddenly yelled. I gave it a sharp glare.
"Pipe down." I say. It looked at me confused. And tilted its head. "What, I said piper down."
"Piper." It went. My eyes shot wide. It just talked. I mean, Forest Guardians speak their own language but not ours. "Piper." It said again.
"You like piper?" It looked at me. It's shining big eyes. "Piper." I repeated. If it’s going to stay I might as well give it a name. Then later on Ace told me that it was a male Furry Malign, because of the colour of its fur.
We continue moving deeper into the forest until we can't go anymore.
"We're going to have to stay together to stay warm." Ace said, and so we did. He and Hare were with spears in their hands while I stayed in the middle. It doesn't take 5 minutes to hear Hare asleep, Piper cuddled on top of him. I stay awake, wondering what might happen tomorrow. The next day and the next. Until I meet my father.
"Ace, you awake?" I whisper.
"Yeah. What is it?" He whispers back.
"The markings on your arm, what's the symbol mean?" I ask.
"The tattoo? Can you see it?" He lifts his arm so it’s visible. "You probably can, your vision is better than ours."
"Yeah I can." I whisper back.
"The shark fin is who the Deep Ocean went against. The Sharks. The three streaks symbolize the three wars it had. Two were with Sharks and one with Ocean." Ace explains.
"But why would Deep Ocean and Ocean fight? Aren't they like, brothers?" I ask.
"They are, but like any brother, they fight over what they want. Deep Ocean wanted three locations. But Ocean wanted six. There are seven in total."
"How many did Deep Ocean end up having?"
"Three. And Ocean four. But you see how the first streak is behind the shark fin rather than underneath?" He points out the tattoo. I nod.
"Yeah."
"It's because in that specific war more Deep Oceans died than Sharks. It was their first and most terrifying battle."
"Wow." Is all I can say. "That's amazing. But sad."
"Each flag for each division has a symbol. The streaks resemble how many wars it had. Do you remember Forest's flag?"
"Yeah, five streaks behind a leaf with two pedals."
"Exactly. The five wars it had to claim the jungle theirs. The forests. The grounded forests and so on. But the leaf symbolizes nature. And it's covering the streaks."
"So nature covers the wars?" I ask. I see his white smile appear in the dark.
"No, it means nature is so peaceful and beautiful it covers the traumatizing past the people have experienced."
"Oh. That's really significant." I'm speechless. I feel like I've taken five lessons within half an hour. "How do you know so much about the Division, Sections, The Making and all that?"
"I've studied, and when I finished my lessons I continued to study. I like knowing things…" He says smoothly.
"Yeah. Me too..." I turn, facing the sky and sigh.
“H-hey, it's not your fault.” I smile at his attempt to console me. I turn back to face him and put my hands in his.
"Thank you, Ace. For everything." I whisper. I feel his grip on my hands and slowly fall asleep.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I will be posting a chapter every week, I hope you'll be so kind to come back and read :) Thanks xx