Winner
Here is the winning story by Kiarue.
~What You Were Looking For~ �Another long day,� I heard one of the elders drawl as I carried a couple of buckets filled with water to the encampment, �eh, Tomea?� I looked over at the huddled old man in the red of the setting sun and set my buckets down by the shelter of what used to be a city, taking a seat beside the him.
�How old are you now?� he questioned, his drooping eyelids almost covering his faded red eyes.
�Ten,� I said with a quick conviction,� ten and two months!�
�Ten eh?� he muttered, his wizened old face studying the harsh desert horizon for a moment. �You work a lot like an adult considering that you�re only ten. Why is that?�
�Ten and two months, Monz,� I corrected him disrespectfully. I opened my mouth to explain that I was a man now, but the feeling that crept its way up my spine stole all of my words away from me. I turned about when I saw a towering shadow engulf elder Monz and me and found a man as tall as a tree adorned in a long black coat. His eyes were like ice, and when they looked back into my own I felt like I was frozen to the spot.
He approached us with drawling, painfully long steps, his cloak flapping as the wind began to pick up.
�What is your business here?� Monz questioned calmly as the giant man continued towards us. He smiled a smile that held no happiness whatsoever as he pulled out a picture and tapped on a face within the photograph.
�Do you know anything about that one?� he asked, letting the elder take the picture into his own hands for closer observation. I tried to read the look on his face as he studied the picture just out of my frame of vision. It seemed like we had sat there forever as he studied the picture finally muttering, �Come along,� and he lead the way to the small encampment. I took up my buckets and followed without a word directed at me, trying to look like a tough man as I held the buckets steady in the now blazing wind.
People stared as the three of us traversed through the city, a few children feeling brave enough to follow Monz to receive his story for the night. Once we had reached one of the larger tents I set my buckets aside and tied back the flap for the elder and his guests to enter while I poured the water I had gotten from the old well into a barrel beside his collapsible home. The tall man watched me for a moment, his spiky black hair swaying in the strong winds before he entered as well. It took all the courage that I could find to enter the tent after the chills that had gone up my spine from the unexpected guest, but somehow I managed my way in anyways, tying the flap back to the tent as elder Monz lit a lantern and hung it from a tether on the ceiling.
�So,� he said, directing his question at the man, �you want to know about the girl in the picture�Mr. Kuriyami I believe?� The man simply nodded and stated, �Ookami Kuriyami,� from beside the exit, preferring to stand rather than sit with the drove of children. He smiled with his tired old lips. �Then I shall tell you all a story; a story about the fate of those who go against the will of the great Ishbala and the people who they doom to tragic fates with them.� Ookami made a small face at elder Monz�s words, but it was barely visible in the dim light provided by the kerosene.
�This story takes place before the war was over, back in a time where a few of our cities still laid untouched. The city I will speak of no longer has a name, just as all of our other cities have names that have been lost in the channels of time. But the city where the fates of those I will speak of had been twisted is a place once called home by me. I was a few years younger then, and I lived with my brother who had passed last year. Together we had run a small bakery, and as fate would have it we lived across the street from the most beautiful woman in town. Maria lived a happy life with her husband and their son for years before the war came. Her husband was an orator and her son was showing the same promise that his father held to be a speaker for the lands. Unfortunately, her husband had to leave to try and lead his people and help to stop the war.
�I remember it as if it were yesterday, seeing the two young lovers say their teary goodbyes under the moon��...� He paused for a moment, reflecting on something only he knew before continuing.
�He never came back. Whether he was captured or killed nobody knows, but we know he made contact with the military. They came in a flash, like a flock of locusts on our peaceful town with only a letter of appeals for our people from Maria�s husband. They took everything of any value that we had, drinking all of our liquor and destroying the homes of anyone who resisted them. They even went into Maria�s home and did unspeakable things to her and her child. The greed of men is a strange thing, it causes us to divert from the true path and create things like guns and alchemy.�
The elder paused in his long story to wet his mouth, the strange man speaking up when he got the chance.
�This isn�t the story I�m looking for old man, so either get to the point or let me take my leave.�
I shivered at the cold impatience in his voice, looking over to see how our wise elder respond. I watched his old fingers slowly screw the lid back onto the small flask of water he had, taking his time. �You�ll get what you came for,� he muttered, shifting to get comfortable again. �Now where was I� oh yes, only a few weeks after the men had come they left, taking almost everything we had with them. Most of us were able to rebuild and move on, but Maria�s family would never be the same. Her son had a stutter from the night when the men had beaten him, and to him it was like losing the last piece of his father that he had. And Maria was struck ill from the terrible deeds that those men had done, and left with a child. The night she had given birth to the baby I could remember her saying, �Isn�t she the most beautiful thing you�ve seen? She looks just like her father.�
�Maria loved that child more than anything else, caring for her and holding her every moment that she could despite all the suffering that the child had caused her. It wasn�t a long time, but every moment Maria�s son saw her with the child he seemed to grow angrier and angrier. On the day Maria died, her last wish was for him to raise the little girl and treat her as if she were a little piece of Maria herself. It was her last wish, so grudgingly he had to accept it.�
�Elder?� I questioned; the burden my heart felt too great not to be voiced, �Why did he hate the little girl? She didn�t do any of this to any of them. It�s not fair.�
The elder paused for a moment, his hand going to his chin as he mulled over his answer in his head. I couldn�t help but admire elder Monz, even though I could feel that man�s impatient glare at the back of my head. He always knew when to speak and how to speak. I listened attentively when he declared his insight, held spellbound like all of the other children.
�Though the child never did the boy any wrong of her own will, to him the girl embodied every bit of suffering he had experienced. She was brought into this world by some nameless face in the military, the same military that had caused his father to disappear and his mother to die. To him, that girl was the military that he had grown to hate. But as his mother wished, he raised her and treated her right, acting the part of a loving older brother. I remember seeing the two of them laughing together, and knowing that he was never really laughing. I couldn�t blame the boy.
�She grew older as time went by, and she became the spitting image of her mother, though she never really knew her. The boy became bitter when he saw little bits of his mother showing through in the little girl. It wasn�t until she was around four that any reprieve had come for the now young man. A little boy, white as a streak of lightning, appeared on our doorsteps one fateful day. We were all afraid of his pale, fair skin, and the only one to take the poor boy in was Maria�s son. He was a smart boy, and he had no parents or even a place to call home. To the young man the little boy was just like him. They became like family, the young man loving the boy unconditionally while the girl adored him just as much. The young man hated seeing the two of them together, holding hands while they ran out on the small makeshift playground, his soft articulate hands pulling her up on the jungle gym and pushing her on the swing as her beautiful red hair swayed along behind them. It had made him sick.
�The young man slowly began deviating from the path all good men travel, studying that abomination that people would call alchemy and leaving the children and the town for weeks at a time. After a while he stopped coming outside or working around the town to support his motley family. He became a monster to everyone but that poor little boy. Our town panicked; slowly interest in alchemy and his pestilent mood were sweeping through the youths. Something had to be done.
�The day we went to the young man�s home he wasn�t there. The little girl had been out gathering anything she could find for them to eat and the boy had been trying to clean up the mess that had become their house while he was away. We addressed him, and accused him of bringing this to our once peaceful city. We cowardly blamed him for everything that had happened. His skin bore the same sheen as those who had first disrupted the town. We told the boy that we had to take action, and pull the problem out by its roots.
The elder paused again, and to me it almost looked like it was hard for him to say the next part.
�The boy, he cared for that family more than anything. They had become his family. So for the sake of protecting them he took all the blame for the things we had accused him of, saying that he did it all. And like we had promised we pulled the problem up by the roots. We beat him to death in his own home, leaving his broken and lifeless body in the home. The young man returned to the house before the girl, a blood red sunset welcoming him home with the blood soaked boards of his floor.
�I think we broke him that night. He went mad and did things that only the greatest of nightmares could even begin to portray, and by the morning, the young man and the boy and the little girl were no more. The person that we called Maria�s little boy had disappeared long before that night, and we never saw the thing that had taken his place again. The next day the military returned to our town one last time before they would make their final sweep and our town would disappear forever. They said that the young man had killed innocent soldiers and stolen from the military. When they went into his house the markings of the devil were all over it and he was nowhere to be found. The only thing that I saw in that house wasn�t human anymore. I remember seeing those horrible orange eyes one last time before they took every little trace of that home away forever.
�From the tales I have heard on the wind, only misfortune follows that thing that is no longer either that boy or that girl. Nobody knows what has become of it, or maybe nobody wants to know anymore. And that is my story.�
The other kids took that as their cue to wake the ones who couldn�t stay awake long enough to hear the great tale and all of them headed out of the hut. I tried to leave as well, but Monz uttered, �Please Tomea, stay and tend to everything before I rest myself. I�m afraid I�m not as young as I once was and it would be rude to ask a guest.� I looked over to see that the man was still there, his face looking ominous in the dim lighting.
�Is that what you were looking for Mr. Kuriyami?� the elder questioned as he handed the photo back. The other man took it, staring at it quietly for a while before letting it hang in his hand by his side.
�No,� he said with a wry smile, his words heavy as he moved towards the door, �I don�t think it was.� He dropped the photo complacently as he left through the flap in the tent. I picked up the picture while elder Monz was looking away and stared at the two people in the photo. It was a young man and a woman, both of them with matching tan skin and colorful red hair, looking happy and in love. I didn�t understand what the picture had to do with the elder�s story until I looked at the girl�s orange eyes, something inside of me shivering at how disturbingly happy she looked.
�You can turn out the light and shut the flaps on your way out now Tomea,� Monz said, stirring me from my thoughts as I wiped away the moisture at my eyes. �Yes sir,� I muttered, turning out his lamp and leaving the tent and the picture as fast as I could.
