Truth did not like to wait. Especially for long periods of time. But then, who did. It had been a day since the Matriarch had given him lodging and no message had come. Perhaps this was nothing. Perhaps she was just busy running a town. But his patience was waning.

Another day passed with none coming in to arise and come to meet the Matriarch. This was quite a test if it was.

On the fourteenth chime of day, the Matriarch herself knocked at his door. Opening it, Truth said “I suppose you’ve been busy attending your people.”

“Yes, quite,” the Matriarch responded. “Come.”

“No.”

“What!” the old lady exclaimed.

“I said no. That is what I said.”

“Shut you mouth young man,” the Matriarch said with a sharpness greater than a sword. “You listen to me. Follow. Now.”

Truth was not a rule follower, nor did he disrespect all rules. But here, he had to speak. “What is it that you want to say? Can it not be said here, in this hall?”

The hall they were in had many mahogany walls and red carpet. Carpet the color of blood.

“Then we will sit in the lobby. I will send one from scones and coffee.” The Matriarch walked away in a huff down the hall. Her green cape billlowed behind her.

Truth looked down at his blue talons on the red carpet.

Tik-tok-tik. A clock went. Then again tik-tok-tik.

Truth got up and stepped in time with the clock.

Right foot.

Left foot.

Thump thump thump.

He soon entered an ornate room with a carpet, table and such. At the table,e which was only a foot high sat the Matriarch. She still looked peeved on the whole backtalking Truth had done.

“Sit,” she said, so calm that it may have been a passive-aggressive tone. “What is it you have to ask of me?”

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“I am here to be in control of my life. I do not want to be a pawn,” Truth said.

“But there is quite a difference between a pawn and having control. Is there not?”

“What do you mean?” Truth asked.

“A pawn is a piece on the board moved by another. Control over one’s own life is freedom of fate. You see, you were just a means to an end for another. But if you want control over your fate, well, can anyone come to an answer that all can agree on?”

“Then, I want control of my fate,” said Truth.

The Matriarch only sighed.

Time ticked by. Seconds, then minutes. Silence.

Silence is where the hidden happens. Silence is all in the dark. That is where we dream.

Truth got up and walked to his room. The Matriarch did not stop him. She only bid him well.

Truth wanted control, but was tat really a possibility? He had always wondered if there is a god or gods. And there seemed to be. Everything happened in such a way, in such convenience, that there had to be.

Truth thought and thought.

He was lucky he and Tiger and Maple were alive. But that was likely just planned by the god, if there was one.

Choice.

Though weird now, Truth made a choice to disobey and create his own destiny.

Picking up a pen and gathering paper, he wrote his life and choice.

I, Truth, will bacome great and in control of mine own life. It is so, is it not?

I have never met my parents to avoid my pain. But i shall meet them again. I shall meet them in the days coming. They will smile though I am a thief. The will still condemn me.

Truth started to wonder if he was actually changing history, creating another, or just perverting fate.

In his room there was a red-wood bookshelf with many a book resting atop each shelf. He went to the shelf and took a book and started reading.

Another world, in which these things called humans try to set up this young woman to get married so they can marry her young sister. Stange as this was, there seemed to be a nugget of truthfulness to it.

Picking up the pen again, he write

Kate is quite something. She be off with some boy and go to some farm in the middle of nowhere to start a weirder and newer life.

Truth wrote several more lines and grew tired. He dragged himself to his ‘bed’ and started to sleep.

***

His dreams were strange. He drempt that his parents did meet him the following day and that this human thing named Kate was at a farm.

Strange as this all was, Truth had other strang dreams. He once dreamed he was a cucumber being eaten by the king. So this was not too far-fetched for Truth’s strange, lonely, and sad mind..

He awoke shortly before dinner. A servant came and gave him what looked like some soup or stew as well as some sour-dough bread.

He continued to read the strange book of the “human’ things.

But he could not concentrate. He wanted to never be a pawn again and other thoughts of the like flooded his mind.