“I knew she would bring you back here.”
Ral nearly jumped out of his skin at the sound of Mikol’s voice. He hastily wiped his face with his arm, but the tears had long dried and he was starting to doze off. He twisted around to find Mikol perched on one of the Standing Soldiers, a large carrying sack strapped to his back and a belt full of pouches and water skins. He was carrying as much stuff as they would when they changed camps.
“Sun’s mercy, how did you get here?” Ral spluttered.
“I walked.”
“Oh, apologies, here I was convinced that you flew here.” Ral settled back in his spot and watched Mikol deposit all of his baggage securely in a nook to the side so they wouldn’t fall off the rock he sat on. Mikol cocked his head as an indication he didn’t understand a word in standard Gaian. While Mikol finished carefully organizing his stuff, Ral wracked his brain, trying to remember words associated with birds. “Take-wing,” he finally said in Yscian. “Travel through air.”
“Aah,” Mikol said, sitting down. “Flew. I understand now. No, my people cannot do that.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if you could fly,” Ral grumbled. “It’ll be another thing I can’t do so there will be no difference there.”
“Did Bette bring you here to break your spirit?” Mikol sounded amused. “Or are you here to sit in your own sadness?”
The Somas barely had a term for self-pity and wallowing. “My spirit was already broken,” Ral admitted.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“Is it not?” Mikol studied him with pale blue eyes. He thought on his words briefly before continuing. “You are unhappy here. Sometimes angry but you try to hide it. My people give you these emotions but you stay. If you leave, you die in Ivassk to thirst and hunger so you must stay. Fault is part of me.”
“You treat me with kindness and you speak to me,” Ral said. “No, fault is not part of you.”
They sat in silence for a while, both with their backs against the same wall, heads tilted up to watch the stars. Mikol passed him a skin of water to share a drink.
“Bette brought me here to redo my milyssk jor,” Ral said after a while. “I thought about why I stayed with the Somas.”
“And?”
“I thought I stayed because I wanted to be stronger. I wanted to learn how to fight and move like a Somas but… I know it isn’t true. I mean I do want to be faster and stronger but that wasn’t why I begged Rask to stay.”
“Will you tell what you learned about yourself?”
Ral shifted down so he laid down on the rock, head cushioned by his right arm. Now he could watch the sky without craning his neck. Just at the edge of his vision he could see Mikol’s pale blue eyes watching him, like two smaller moons shining through the dark. Another breath of wind whispered past, this time calm and soothing. “I missed home,” Ral admitted. “I still miss it. It’s gone now so maybe I was hoping to find a new one. It’s why I stayed.”
“Do you think you found it with us?”
“No,” Ral replied. It surprised him how easily the answer came.
“I understand,” Mikol looked away, his gaze turning up to the sky. Ral thought the young Somas sounded unhappy. “Then will you leave to search for your new home?”
“I don’t know.”
Mikol looked down at him again. “Then perhaps your milyssk jor hasn’t entirely finished.”
“You said it yourself, I’m dead without the tribe. I can’t leave even if I want to. What was it that Bette once said? ‘Considering an option that doesn’t exist is like willfully sitting on sharp rocks.’” Ral sighed and shifted, trying to get more comfortable against the hard stone. “If I had the intention of finding a home here, perhaps I should try harder to fit into your lives instead of being a nuisance.”
But then again would he ever fit with the Somas? He left that question unspoken. Mikol studied him again in his unnervingly still way before speaking again.
“You can survive the Ivassk if you allow me to guide you,” he said. “I know the path to the closest Gaian camp.”
Ral looked at him sharply. “That would mean you’ll leave camp for a week at least.”
“Ten days, twelve if we are slow,” Mikol nodded.
“Bette will never forgive me or you if we did that. You can’t just abandon the tribe, you’re their best scout in training.”
“Guiding you out of here will be no different from my kind of milyssk jor,” Mikol said. “Sometimes scouts leave camp for days while on missions. I am not abandoning and Bette will forgive me when I return. But you will be abandoning her and she will be angry at you.”
Ral passed a hand over his face. “I mean, I’ll be gone, will it matter if she’s angry?”
“Does anything matter if our spirit dies and our body dissolves into the ground?” Mikol said, smiling slightly. Ral groaned - he should have known better than to get philosophical with a Somas. Just like their paradoxical view on stillness and speed, their view on what matters and what doesn’t is equally as confusing.
The difference between what matters and what doesn’t is divided by a thin line. Without a direct retort, Mikol pointed out the obvious that it will matter to Ral if Bette became upset even if he won’t be there to see it. “Okay, fine then, what was even the point of telling me you can guide me out of the desert?” Ral said.
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“It is an option that exists.” Mikol shrugged. “Beyond remaining here and being unhappy.”
“I mean, I’m not always unhappy here,” Ral said.
“Then perhaps a solution is to find more happiness with us,” Mikol said.
“Is there a way to replicate you?” Ral joked. Mikol cocked his head again and Ral thought hard on suitable Yscian words to explain. “Uh, same-same? Two of the same?”
Mikol’s puzzled expression dissolved into a genuine laugh, the sound ringing through the Ivassk night air. “Replicate, I understand,” he chuckled. “Same-same, that’s funny. Do I make you happy enough that you want more of me?”
Ral’s eyes flew to his, a wave of awkwardness passing between them. Then and there, Ral decided there was no need for that - just as he cared about Bette, he cared about Mikol. “Of course,” he said. “I wish more people in the tribe were like you. Thank you for bringing water here… and all this other stuff. Why do you have so much stuff?” He pointed at the carrying sack.
“It’s for me,” Mikol said. “A mat I can sit on while watching you suffer. I also brought dried fruit to eat while being entertained.”
Ral narrowed his eyes at him. “I take back everything I said.”
Mikol only chuckled and got up to unpack. Indeed he had a mat, but he had two rolled up tightly and he offered one to Ral. They arranged it the best they could on the small space on top of the Standing Soldier. It was a slight improvement from simply sleeping on rock.
“How did you even find me here?” Ral asked when they were settled for the night.
“I am a scout, I know the path,” Mikol said.
“I mean here with the Standing Soldiers. There are endless other places Bette could have taken me.”
“My spirit melds into form by a force unseen,” Mikol said in Yscian. Ral could hear the smile in his voice.
“You followed us, didn’t you?”
“Maybe.”
“Not everything has to be so secretive, you know,” Ral said.
“A good scout keeps hidden, both body and mind.”
Ral snorted. “You sound like my sister. We used to play hide and seek and hiding was her favorite pastime. If she was here, she would probably be a scout too.”
“She is born of same womb as you?” Mikol asked. “Born at the same time?”
“Yeah, my twin.”
“Then she is born year of Burning. They don’t make good scouts.”
“You don’t actually believe that, do you?” Ral laughed. “That the year that you’re born affects what you’ll do in life?”
“I am born year of Stalling, I have to believe it,” Mikol said. “And what further proof do you need when your people call you the Sun and you’re born during the Burning?’
Ral shook his head. “My sister was supposed to represent the moon, that kind of logic doesn’t work for everyone.”
“The moon burns, can you not see?” Mikol murmured. They both twisted to glance at the moon now hovering over the horizon behind them, still giving off a persistent silver glow. “Do you miss her?”
“Yes.”
“Why did she not travel with you and the Freerunner man?”
“The Academy allowed her to stay. A… kind of tribe accepted her but not me.” He had thought he was over the sting of rejection - it was a decade ago when Camaz told Rask he’ll only be taking in Aris. Perhaps he never really got over it. “They had their reasons for separating us so I don’t blame them.”
They fell silent again and Ral dozed until he heard Mikol speak softly. “I have a half idea, if you will listen.”
“What kind of idea?”
“If you want to make the Somas your home and have the Somas to treat you like one of their own, maybe there is a path,” Mikol said. “But it is a half idea because it may not happen.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“The Trial,” Mikol said simply. “Like one Ressol completed. Ressol became a Leader when he succeeded. You won’t be Leader, but perhaps you will be more Somas. More acceptance.”
“When will the next Trial take place?”
“This is why it may not happen. Like the milyssk jor, a Trial happens when the time is right. We search for the enemy, the monsters in order for the Trial to happen.”
Ral frowned in thought. During his time with Rask, they learned as much as they could about Gates, but the devastation they caused villages and surrounding areas made it difficult to obtain any information on them. One thing that Rask was adamant about was that there were two types of Gates - ones that opened on their own and ones opened by an enchantment. He often spoke of how he and Nilda witnessed one such Gate purposely opened back when they were at the Heart, the Gaian capital.
Ever since then, Rask had been in search of information for Gates opened with runes. Instead, they only received increasing reports of ‘natural’ Gates opening in small villages and settlements East of the Nossan mountains, right around where Caelis used to be. There were rumors that the Gates refuse to open in the far East, where dense forests mark Yscian land belonging to a tribe called the Munna. Some bolder researchers state that Gates are a Gaian issue caused by abilities that used the Solvent - some who worship the Parts think it is the hubris of Gaians that brought about this calamity and that the Gates existed as punishment.
Rask and Ral spent years contemplating these theories with no proof to back any of them. Then three years ago, Rask accepted a freerunner contract to travel down to Ivassk partially because he wanted to see if the Gate troubles had reached Somas land. He wanted to see if the theory that Yscians were not affected by the Gates held any water. As Ral has yet to see a single Gate or even any evidence that they ever appeared seems to prove that theory.
That is, until the story about Ressol the Hero. If the story was true and the ‘doorway’ in the story was a Gate, it would change the entire theory that the Gates were a Gaian phenomenon. Ral realized Mikol’s suggestion was simply brilliant: it would give the opportunity to see if the Ressol did fight Unseeing and if a Gate had opened in Somas land and if said ‘doorway’ was actually a Gate. Even if it wasn’t, the Trial would be an opportunity to prove himself to the Somas and to Bette.
“I will stay here,” Ral suddenly said aloud. “I will wait for a Trial and participate. That is my decision.”
“Then we must prepare,” Mikol said.
“We?”
“Yes, I also want to join a Trial. We will succeed together. Now sleep so we start the path tomorrow rested.”
“Shouldn’t you return back to camp?” Ral sat up to glance at his friend. “Bette will chew you out for doing all this.”
Glowing pale blue eyes opened and gazed back at him amusedly. “Bette will be thankful I helped her favorite student finally pass his first milyssk jor. I assure you, I won’t be ‘chewed out’. Now please let us both rest.”
It was polite Somas speak for ‘shut up and go to bed’, but Ral couldn’t sleep. He watched the stars for the rest of the evening, well after the moon disappeared and into the dawn. Then he quietly got up and climbed up to the tallest rock among the Standing Soldiers rock cluster and watched the sun rise on the horizon.
Mikol was right: a new path was starting.