There is tension in the air as the old man observes the eating child. On his face, there are so many questions that need answers that one finds it difficult to guess what the first question might be.

So he decided that he’d eat for as long as he could. He emptied the newly filled bowl that the man had brought him, then grabbed the bowl and extended both of his arms toward the man. He might see pity yet, and bring him another. This might buy him enough time to remember something of significance. Something useful that he might tell the old man. Perhaps a name, a place of origin, a quest, or a reason as to why he had entered the forest, but as far as he knew, there were no reasons for the things that he had experienced.

The old man peered at the bowl, then at the boy, then scoffed and took the bowl, only to place it aside and ask his first question either way: “Do you wish to stuff your face with more food to avert answering the questions that I might ask?”

“Don’t answer; I already know that it is so." He eyed the boy from head to toe. “Just looking at your frame and your physical state, it is more than obvious that you would not be able to fit another bowl."

The boy could feel a slight redness come to his face. “Want to see me try?” He found himself asking before being able to stop such words from coming out, or even before he thought of saying such words.

The old man scoffed again. “I’ve no time for your childish games, but to see you try and fail, is there anything else that could amuse me more greatly?”

“But I digress. I have no time for useless conversation; instead, I've got many questions that need answering, so let us begin."

“What is your name, and why are you here?”

The boy could only answer in one way. He shrugged slightly, only to cause almost an instant frown on the face of his savior.

“I see, and I assume that to the next question, you’d answer the same way? Am I dealing with an amnesiac, or worse, a child with no recollection of memory at all? Or perhaps a disobedient child who has no respect toward his savior?”

The boy shrugged again, and soon he could observe the old man’s reaction to such words: a simple smile, one filled with something he could not name, perhaps a revelation that the old man had gone through.

The old man soon shook his head, the frown leaving his face. “A nameless child..."

“What a world we live in.” He muttered to himself and soon met the eyes of the boy. “You have nothing, and for a lack of better things to do or other people to care for, I will give you something so that you no longer have nothing.”

“A name.” The old man got up from the chair and seemed to ponder for a moment before a momentary smile found itself on his scaly face. He chuckled humorlessly. "Ignar... one could say that it describes you almost perfectly.

“For aren’t there many things you know nothing about, especially things that are, perhaps, the most important for oneself?"

“Ignar, that shall be your name, and this house will be your house, and I will be your father and your teacher. I will feed and clothe you, and I will keep you warm. And to pay for such things, you will, in return, work for me.” The old man explained, and from his face, the memory of a smile had run away, and all there was left was a man who knew something about him that Ignar himself did not.

The child sat in silence, observing the face of the man that he’d call father. But to trust this man, how could he? Even if he did feed and educate him, he knew nothing about this man. And to know a man, one has to start somewhere: “And what, then, is your name?”

The old man stared at him, then smiled slightly. “Someone more ignorant than you, yet somehow more knowledgeable... My name is Kalla, and the name of my father..." For a moment, on his face, sadness could be seen: "He knows only war and death, and in his name, he carries the same."

“But alas, you still need time to heal; perhaps another bowl is what you need—perhaps a day or two in bed, who knows? But we will discuss more things in the future, about things that you have to do and how you can help an old man." Kalla said, at last, he took the bowl with him and soon brought him another bowl full of soup. “Just don’t engorge it this time—it is never good for one to eat too fast or too much.”

So Ignar ate, and whilst eating, he pondered this new name that he was given and the strange feeling it gave him. There was something about it that felt familiar as if he had heard someone being called as such. Perhaps it was a memory he had now forgotten that tried to push its way past the veil of forgetfulness to be remembered once again.

The next few days he spent recovering, hardly saying a word, as there seemed to be no need for words, for Kalla would provide for him all the things that he might need. The rough-seeming old man was much more gentle than one might think—perhaps, before, they had had a child of their own, one who had grown up long ago and left the haven of home.

But the old man never mentioned such a hypothetical child, nor did he speak much about himself; when he spoke, he only asked how Ignar was, how he was feeling, whether he was hungry, tired, or really anything. All this was to make sure that his new child would be alright.

For some reason, Ignar felt like he never truly had a father, not before, yet still, he had an understanding that such a thing as a father had existed and had perished in the fires that raged, as a part of a large pile, a collection of the deceased. The mangled men and women were slain for reasons unknown.

A horrifying vision of it kept playing itself in his head, in his sleep, and even in the moments he thought that he was free from it. Yet his reaction was not one made out of horror or disgust, as one should feel about such things, but rather a strange detachment from it all. He understood that such terrible things had happened, but they felt so unreal, too horrible for one to truly be able to comprehend them as such.

Perhaps this was a way for a child to keep his mind sane and to keep hold of some sort of faith in people and the future of the Sharan.

As the days went by, he noticed many things about the old man that were quite interesting. Like, how he’d have tea at specific times of the day, and how he’d always take two walks outside, strolls during which, at first, Ignar did not attend but later on would.

The man would simply, fairly leisurely, walk in the woods. He’d always take the same path, one that would take about thirty minutes for him to finish. This path would take him to the edge of the forest, from where he’d be able to see fields and a village fairly far away from him.

The village was a place that he’d visit at times, mainly to purchase goods and sometimes to offer his services as a medicine man and a teacher. Kalla explained that he didn’t do such things out of pure goodwill but to always receive something that was worth his time. Sometimes, it would be wealth or food, but the village was fairly poor, so he most often received food as a reward.

And when he got neither, he knew that he would get the appreciation of the people. His good deeds would be noticed by the villagers, and this would make them treat him more fairly and with more goodwill.

Explained like this, the simple act of doing a good thing seemed like a calculated move. But from the outside, it was apparent that he was a calculative man; he would be one to think of things like social status and the worth of making an action that gave no apparent rewards.

Soon, Ignar could do things normally. But never did he feel quite normal; his body still felt strange to him, and so did the holes of memory and assumptions of memories that he couldn’t remember but could instead feel.

If asked a question about his past life, he could not answer with certainty, but about things, he had a feeling that it could be true and that it made sense to be true.

But what felt the strangest were the answers that he gave, for they weren’t always the answers that he would give; often the answer that he’d say out loud would be something that he had never even thought of. It was almost like he didn’t make decisions based on what he thought, but instead, a strange intuition made him do something that he barely had any control over.

But as he felt more "normal," Kalla finally decided that he should start paying for the transaction that they had made. For fatherhood and its benefits, such as a name, Ignar ought to work. So he worked, at times feeling annoyed by the little tasks that the old man would make him do.

They were mostly menial tasks, like cleaning and washing clothes and dishes and even chopping firewood to be stored for the coming winter and used for cooking. For some reason, he was not allowed to use magic for these tasks.

Kalla didn’t explain why, but Ignar assumed that it had to do something with his withered frame—this body that needed food and muscles to grow—to be more useful and healthier in the long run.

At first, things like chopping firewood felt like a great labor, one that would take hours to finish, but as the days went by, then weeks, and finally months, the seasons changed, and so did his body. He was no longer skinny and malnourished, but instead fairly strong for his age; he had slowly turned into what any well-fed farmer’s child would be.

Happy with how things were, Kalla decided that to challenge Ignar more, he should teach him things like writing and reading, things like controlling one’s innate magical abilities, the history of the world, and other things any man ought to know.

In the cabin, there was a large collection of books, some of which were written by the old man himself, but mostly books that he had collected during his travels as a much younger man. Books about history, books that held philosophical dialogue from times long past, and books that had no other purpose except to entertain.

Ignar already had an inclination that the old man was someone who had seen many things, and the first time that he laid his eyes on the bookshelf, he figured that the man was well-educated as well. He was someone who held himself with a certain dignity, although he often contradicted this dignity with a cruel joke about an event or a group of people Ignar had never heard of before. But then, he’d soon return to that visage of dignity and wisdom by adding a philosophical realization a given joke had brought to him.

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Half of the time, Ignar could barely understand what the man was talking about. Perhaps it was because of how little he knew about things that Kalla knew about. Or it was simply because the man himself was enigmatic and obscure at best, or he was lacking in the ability to have a normal conversation with those less educated than himself.

Either way, his father, Kalla, had become someone he deeply cared for and respected, and he learned to value the things that he was taught, though the practical need for some of the things that he was taught was yet to be seen.

“Boy… What do you think of good and evil?” Kalla had, during one of their study sessions, asked a question that came almost out of nowhere, and prior to this question, they were simply studying a history book, one that dealt with the times and wars that led to Kalma’s ascension.

He had to think for a moment since it felt like Kalla never asked a question without being ready to correct an opinion or an assumption that he thought to be wrong, and the little game that he had developed was to figure out the answer before the old man was to give him the correct answer.

"Perhaps they are words and concepts that we use to describe things that are for or against our own morals." Ignar guessed.

Kalla nodded. “Sure, that explains what they might be, but it doesn’t answer my initial questions, so let me ask it again."

“What do you think of good and evil?” He asked again.

He pondered through the question again; in a way, he had answered it correctly, but apparently, he had answered incorrectly.

“I think that there is no good or evil; I think they are just words. I think that and my previous answer is my answer to your question.” Ignar answered at last.

Kalla nodded. “Then what is good and what is evil? If they are just words that, depending on the person, have different meanings, then what to you are the things that make good good and evil evil?”

“I suppose… A good thing is something that has fewer negatives attached to it, like, does this good thing produce happiness for me or for the people around me? If it does produce happiness, then it must be good. And if it produces unhappiness or pain, then it must be evil.” He answered.

Kalla smiled. “So good and evil, to you, are just happiness and unhappiness? Pain and painlessness?”

“In a way, yes.”

“Then we agree to a degree... I believe that things like good and evil are indeed subjective truths, but mostly, if you look at the history of the Sharan, then the things that are evil are things that produce suffering, and often that suffering is suffering that has no reason to exist.”

“For example, if I go and murder another, I might not suffer for it, but the person who dies will suffer the pain of death, and if they have a family, then they would suffer the pain of loss.”

"But if I were to kill them all, and if there is none to suffer from loss, then is it then evil?”

“And if good or goodness is just the lack of pain, suffering, or happiness, are things that just are and do nothing, by nature, good? Or does something good or evil, to be defined as such, have to be behind an action?”

“Can a tree be good or evil? Or is it just something for creatures that can think of concepts like good and evil?”

“Is there nothing that is by nature good or evil, and for it to be so, does it need a mind to perceive it as such?” Kalla said, not really giving answers but instead more questions.

“Then what is good and evil?” Ignar asked.

Kalla scoffed, “A great question to which only you yourself can give an answer, for I believe what I’ve said: There is no good or evil in nature; it only exists for those who think of such things and then judge it upon others.”

“But if it exists in thought, why not just claim that it exists? Does it not have an effect on people either way?” Ignar asked.

“Sure, we can claim that thoughts exist; many things that don’t actually exist we bring to reality in this way; things like laws and concepts like righteousness, things like good and evil; we think that they exist, and for us, they do exist, but like laws, they only exist as such if they can be enforced, right?”

“A tree has none of these things, but we may decide one day that a tree has such things; they don’t in reality, as physical phenomena have such things, and it is clear that our decision of good or evil, righteousness or laws, or anything really, will not have any effect on the tree until we take physical action toward it. So is the same for people.”

“A tree remains uncut as long as someone takes a physical action towards it, an axe, and takes it down; the same is true for us.”

“Thus, such things exist, yet they do not exist; and if we take action inspired by such thoughts, then we might as well claim that the thought itself exists, as it has manifested itself into reality, into a physical shape, from action done by men.”

“The same is for good and evil; in reality, they do not exist, but then we give meaning to an action which we have committed or that someone else has committed, and under the scrutiny of our eyes, the action which we judge then becomes good or evil.”

"But, I suppose, the issue is that there are many eyes that then judge an action committed by someone else. For each of those pairs of eyes, a different understanding of good and evil might exist. Then who is to claim that whose understanding of good and evil is more correct than the one of the men next to you?”

“So I again ask my question: What do you think of good and evil?” Kalla finally finished his thought with yet another question.

In silence, Ignar was left with just the echoes of the words that Kalla had spoken.

“I think that it is a complicated mess.” He answered after a few moments of silence and deep contemplation.

Kalla smiled widely. “And I completely agree with you; what a mess and what a waste of everyone’s time to even ponder or argue about..."

“But then again, such arguments are necessary, for how else is a collective of people to agree upon such fundamental things, like good or evil, when questions about such very things often lead to ethics, morals, and laws?"

"Obviously, evil is evil, and good is good; for us, this is only obvious because together we’ve decided which is which, what they mean, and even why they exist,” Kalla exclaimed, then shut the book he was reading before his long rant.

“Why I went on this rant in the first place is for the very study of history. We study an event, let’s say a war, and for us, it is easy to say the evils of said war, but for them, at that time, perhaps the understanding of what is good or evil, and right or wrong, is by their societal definition very different to ours.”

“And this book,” he said and tapped the cover of the book, “was most definitely written by someone after the war, possibly by a historian, who agreed or disagreed on the wars or the actions that were taken during the wars. This someone gives us another view on the things that transpired; what we have to understand is not only the beliefs of those who fought in the wars or commanded the armies during the wars, but also the beliefs of the person who wrote about the wars, and then our beliefs.”

“There are many things with which we might agree or disagree, but to truly understand why something was done, one has to understand the person who made the decision and what the things were that led them to those decisions. And there may be numerous reasons, personal and societal.”

“But do not forget that one often veils their committed crimes behind a story—a personal reflection on how they were led here, to a point in time where they have now committed said crimes.”

“But that story, however sad it might be, those crimes still exist, and a sad story is never a good enough reason to commit them.”

“We all have a story, they say, even those who we hate; even those who have committed the most heinous acts of terror and/or murder; their stories might touch us; the difficulties they might have gone through in their lives are the very same ones that led them here. They, too, might be victims of an unfair system.”

“But what you must have noticed is that many have gone through similar and even worse things, yet they have not done similar or worse things."

“A story, however sad it might be, will never excuse such acts; it will never make it just.”

“You see, boy, our inner truth is the lie we construct to be able to live with the misery of our actual lies.”

“And the mask we show the world is the story that we chose to share with it.”

“History, even in its tendency to be nonpartial and truthful to reality, is also a story. One might have more facts right than the one told at a nearby pub, but it too is often made victim to this inner truth, which we so much like to reflect in our masks.”

“And the history that we, the winning side of all of these wars that have happened, have constructed is one that is constructed by us, with the facts that we’ve provided and the truths that we believe in; history is the story that holds the mask of our society.”

"We, the Sharan, believe in our heavenly right, as much as did the many other nations and ethnicities that we conquered, enslaved, and cleansed from this earth.”

The old man scoffed, "The Sharan... What a self-indulgent name for our people... ‘The Heavenly’…”

“There is truly nothing 'sharan' about us, boy."

He then spat at the fireplace, “We are more like the 'Tarna,' the enslaved... Our history is the proof of it, and in our present, we are forced to dance to the fine tune of our all-loving father, Kalma."

“And boy, never ask me about the future... If I have nothing good to say about the past or the present, then just imagine how little I have to say about the future.”

They had many such conversations, and it made clear the pessimistic view of the world that Kalla had of many things, like their divine leader Kalma, the future and the past of their people, and even the taste of pea soup. Since surely last week, it tasted much better than today!

Perhaps the old man had once been an aspiring idealist, one who had believed that goodness would, in the end, conquer all evil and that the world would slowly turn into a better place for all, but when one gets dissatisfied with the reality with which they are presented, what else will one become other than pessimistic and cynical toward that which was, which is, and which is to come?