Chapter 10: Mottos

Sana and Jumatatu promptly started distributing the cakes on the table. The family started chatting as they ate making for a lively scene.

“You can have the cloud and maybe that dove”

“A dove?”

“Well maybe it’s a bit fatter than other birds.”

“Moooooom, I want the deer, I want the deer.”

“Nooooo! The deer is mine! I saw it first.”

“Calm down kids,” their uncle Wapili said as he gulped down on that ‘deer’. Chenga and Sawa had an incredulous look as they watched ‘their deer’ being gulped down.

“Aaaah, I’ll have the… what is that? And the fish.”

“Fish…or some animal?” Moyo replied with a chuckle.

“Well it’s definitely an animal, haha.”

“Not just any animal, It’s an eel. At least that’s what I think it is.”

“When you kids were little I used to label them to hide how bad I was at making those shapes,” Sana blatantly admitted. She was more jovial today as it Mwana’s big day.

“The flavor is there but I guess the shape isn’t.”

“Well the secrets finally out.”

“It isn’t a secret if we all knew,” Jana added with a mouth full of food but the moment he said that, he regretted it. He saw his father’s eagle-like gaze on him. ‘Here it comes. I should have just kept a low profile!’

Jua Vumilivu could see the sheepish look on his son’s face. He turned to look at Mwana and felt that this kid fit his personality much better. Every time he would wake up early to train while his own son was deep in dreamland. Jana was basically in love with his blankets. One time Vumilivu and Moyo had decided not to wake him up in the morning as a test and the kid slept all the way to the next day. When Jana finally woke up, he didn’t realize that more than a day had passed and thought it was still the same day! Vumilivu could only shake his head internally when he remembered that incident.

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“Mwana kid, you’re hard working as always, I feel you were even awake earlier today.”

Mwana was not someone to shy away from praises so he replied with a smile, “Of course! The young should be hardworking.”

“Bravooooo! Did you hear that, brat? I hope you’re taking notes.” Jana already knew this was coming. At this point he was already used to his father comparing him with Mwana. ‘Be like your cousin this…, be like your cousin that…,’ he already had these types of lectures at least three times a week.

“Don’t let up on him,” Jua Vumilivu said while letting out a boisterous laugh.

“You know I won’t show this brat mercy,” Mwana added confidently. He always took his job at training Jana seriously.

Although the pancakes were tasty, Jana still found himself scowling as he listened to his father and older brother plot for his downfall. His motto had always been, ‘a part of me doesn’t want to get out of bed at all and the other part of me wants to stay in bed all day.’ Simply put, waking up in the dead of night to train hard just wasn’t his style.

“Father, didn’t you always say, ‘Let us find ourselves and be ourselves’,” Jana could only protest by throwing his father’s own sayings back at him.

“Right, right. However this doesn’t apply to you, lazy bones, only to the hardworking. If I let you ‘be yourself won’t I just be raising a lazy bum?”

Jana could only pout as everyone else chuckled secretly. Seeing his younger siblings taking joy in his situation he couldn’t help but smirk. They might be young now with their school activities mainly involving seated learning and a little meditation, but a year later it would also be time for them to begin hardcore training. He might even be their trainer then. In fact just by thinking about it, Jana couldn’t help but let out an evil laugh before coughing awkwardly.

Mwana was even more enthused, “My motto has always been, if you cannot be the tree at the top of the mountain, be a tree in the valley by the lake, if you cannot be a tree be a strong vine, be a bush, be a healthy shrub, if not, be the best of the grass! And I’m beating the same wisdom into this brat. In fact…”

He was about to ramble on when his mother interrupted his passionate speech to remind him about his Awakening Ceremony which would be held the same day as ones Bloodline Awakening. Apparently she had informed the village Night Guards as they got off work early in the morning when Mwana was still training. This information would naturally be passed on to the relevant people: the school head and especially the village priest who was in charge of all awakening ceremonies.