The old man took another painful step up the steep mountain path. The heat of the midday sun was relentless, and his dark skin surrendered to it with beads of sweat that sparkled on his white whiskers like dew. He paused for a moment’s respite and mopped his brow with a tattered shoulder cloth. He shrugged to shift the weight of the knapsack on his back. Then, leaning heavily on his walking staff for support, he walked forward resolutely towards his doom.
In his youth, Branu had made this journey countless times, and on days with much worse weather. He would start before daybreak and take only a few hours to reach the Oldforest at the mountain top. The day would be spent in gathering rare medicinal herbs found at the edge of the forest. The return journeys were equally quick and he would easily make it back to the village right around sun-down, rarely having to worry about travelling through the wilderness at night time. But today, it had taken him until noon just to reach the halfway point.
Of course, this time he didn’t have to worry about the return journey. There wouldn’t be one.
Branu’s knees pulsed in pain, protesting the ordeal they were being put through. He ignored the pain and trudged on a while longer. At this elevation, the simple dirt road was bordered by only brambles and tall grasses that made no effort to hide the sun. But Branu, with hard learnt experience, knew where to find a resting spot. He continued round a bend, and down an incline to the side of the path until he reached a meagre trickling stream, its waters warm and thin. He followed it to its hidden secret - between an outcropping of large boulders sat a massive, leafless tree; dry and dormant; its bare branches and roots clawing at sky and earth alike. It was not a welcoming sight - its stark branches cast no shade for weary travellers. To a grizzled veteran, however, the Aro tree was an old friend. Branu sank down on the ground and leaned against its trunk. The pain in his legs flared, as though his joints were taking advantage of this break to complain all the more stridently.
Drawing a knee to his chest, he placed a palm on it and focussed his mind. Heat blossomed in immediate response around the joint, soothing his aching tendons and easing the knots in his muscles. Branu sighed in relief. It was at times like this when he was most thankful that he had been born with the Touch of Heat instead of any of the others. Like all birth Touches, even while his body had grown weathered and weak over the decades, his ability to command Heat had only grown stronger and more intuitive - even for someone as incorrigibly inept as him.
He worked one knee and then the other, channelling Heat in gentle eddying bursts of intensity, massaging into his bones. Then, satisfied, he stretched his legs out with a groan of effort. The sun still blazed overhead. Time to do something about that.
He groped at the trunk of the Aro tree behind him with a single hand until - yes, there it was - he found the softer, tender surface of the receptor nodule on the hard, gnarled bark. Once again, he sharpened his mind and sent a few bursts of Touch-heat into the tree.
The Aro tree creaked and groaned like a crone rising from slumber as it burst into life. Rivulets of white grew from the roots, snaking their way up the dark branches like vines. Leaves emerged from hidden pockets along its branches, unfolding into verdant, wide disks the size of plates. From the nodule Branu had awakened, a single flower grew, a blazing orange little bloom with a hundred fierce petals around its brown core. The sun overhead twinkled in dots through the leaves, suddenly eclipsed by the growth. Branu sat enveloped in cool shadow.
He gave the flower a gentle flick.
“So, you have not forgotten me, eh?” he whispered to it with a smile.
He shut his eyes and took the fading yellow turban off his head, letting it drop to the ground next to him. In the embrace of the Aro tree, with the tension in his muscles released, Branu suddenly felt exhausted. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to take a short nap before resuming the journey. He laid his head down on his old turban and breathed deeply.
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As though on cue, memories came flooding back. They seemed to have been just waiting for his body to rest so they could torment his mind instead.
Involuntarily, unwillingly, Branu recalled -
returning home in the dark...
seeing Vinthan with his face buried in his hands...
hearing the words that pulled the world out from beneath his feet..
Branu sighed and cursed his thoughts, trying to force them elsewhere, but they kept coming back with the same nagging questions. Where had he gone wrong? When had he failed his son?
He was too tired to push the thoughts away, so he gave up and simply let them flow, as they pored over every little detail of his life trying to find the answers.
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Branu had always considered himself the classic doting parent, even if he was as short tempered and stubborn as people made him out to be. When they had first found out that Vinthan, at the age of two, had the Touch of Heat as well, he had been thrilled.
“Taking after his old man, with a sensible, practical birth Touch!” he proclaimed to everyone, at the grand feast they had thrown in celebration. Most of the guests nodded politely and offered a few templated words of praise.
Thooren, the small, wiry man who ran the grocery shop was not as charitable.
“Take care he doesn’t inherit his father’s temperament too,” he commented with a smirk, “You know what they say, Hot-hands, hot heads, eh?”
Thooren had the Touch of Strength of which he was inordinately proud. Branu scowled at the man.
“Better hot-headed, than wooden-headed,” he shot back, playing into stereotypes of brawny but slow-minded users of Strength, “He can use his head to solve his problems instead of his muscles”.
Thooren, who looked nothing at all like that cliche, only smirked more, causing a hot flush to rise in Branu’s cheeks. Things might have escalated if his wife hadn’t stepped in to calm things down.
“What are you two going on about?” she interjected. She shot a glare at her husband and plopped their two-year old son into his arms.
"Here, do something useful and hold Vinthan for a while. Go and show people what he can do!” she scolded. Branu went away grumbling while the little boy squealed excitedly in his arms.
Aima had always been the more sensible one. She was smarter than Branu too. Aima had been born Twice-bound, with two birth affinities: a strong connection with Water and a minor one with Air. While this was not exceedingly rare, it was also not common, and she was the only Twice-bound in their village.
Her capabilities hadn’t ended with that though. She might have been as illiterate as her husband, but it hadn’t stopped her from adding several basic Touch-forms of Strength, Light or Heat to her skills. She had even picked up a couple of basic Healings from here and there.
Branu, on the other hand, had stubbornly refused to learn any more than what he had been born with.
“What’s the point?” he would say dismissively, in response to Aima’s nagging to learn at least a simple Strength.
He would pick up Vinthan, hoisting him onto his shoulders.
“Look, are my own arms not strong enough to carry us both?”
And indeed, in those days he had been a broad-chested, stocky man.
“I have Heat, and that can create fire, warmth, light. With it, one can brighten the darkest day, quicken the laziest spirit! Why should I reject what I have been blessed with and seek something else, simply because another has it?”
However, as gratified as Branu was that his son had inherited his Heat, he secretly hoped he would take after his mother in other aspects.
Two years later, his wish was granted. One evening, as he returned home from a trip up the mountain, the four-year old had run up to him in excitement.
“Ava, Ava, look at me! I can do what Ama does!”
Branu watched with bated breath as Vinthan held his little palms close together and focussed. A single shining drop of water formed between them and quickly dropped, splattering on the rough dirt floor.
“But… but... That’s amazing!” he said, looking up to the boy’s mother who was standing behind him proudly, wearing a smile that clearly said “Whose son is he now?”.
Vinthan’s tiny face went into a pout, however.
“It was much bigger before,” he said, eyes downcast, disappointed with the tiny droplet.
Branu burst out laughing and picked up the child and swung him around the hut while the boy giggled in delight.
The next evening, they had thrown an even bigger feast to the village, to show off their little prodigy. Even Thooren wasn’t able to come up with any wisecracks this time, and stayed silent throughout the function.