LogFAQs > #907663324

Then, Torin replied quickly. "No," he said firmly. "I agree there is something dangerous, and I agree it needs to be investigated. But right now we need to gather as one and make sure the entire group is safe."

Kidd didn't mind hearing that. He felt his body relax. "Good call, old man. It's been a long day..." He limped over to the wagon and touched his forehead against the wood. Leaning forward, he closed his eyes and disappeared into a mental realm of his own design.

They were playing Blue Swan, Gold Swan, Red Swan. He was supposed to be the red swan but things didn't turn out that way. For some reason he remembered his eyes gleaming gold as the red figure crumpled at his feet and began to form into a puddle. That was a memory that would be forever burned into his brain.

It felt like he never opened his eyes again after that. He remembered being offered a drink of water and falling back into a bed roll, and yet his mind never returned to the present. Kidd had a tendency to get lost in his own thoughts but that wasn't too bizarre.

And even as he saw himself as a child, in those memories, he was still tethered to the present by one thing -- the righteous pain that was burning in his fingers and his shoulder and his arm and his ribs. Hell, it would be more apt to say that most of his body hurt. Slogging through the marshy territory around the outside of the estate had made his legs quite sore as well.

The stress had created a headache which was causing pain behind his eyes.

This is what life was like away from the comfort of the city. Or... no, that wasn't true either. Weren't there people in the city who lived like this every day, as well? It felt like they should have been happy and comfortable. Food, shelter, what else did you need? Yet somehow the stress of living in a place like Hendrake had ruined their mental state and they spiraled down forever and ever without ever receiving the time needed to recover and return to a well balanced mental state.

Was he that kind of person, too? Would he know it if he was?

Birds were croaking at him now from the clothesline that hung out in the small amount of land behind his clay house. The fact that they had land at all meant he knew he was better off than most people in Hendrake. Hell, his parents were both still alive and together and they owned their own house. It might not have been the nicest place but he remembered having space to run around. He remembered the birds shrieking at him, as they did even now.

Gordy and Susal lived in an apartment building that was crammed right up against the street. Still, even when they went to the market, there were birds that followed them, and birds that always seemed to yell at him. At the time he didn't think, or didn't know, that he'd grow up to fall in love with Susal. He didn't know that Gordy would die the way that he did. But that would happen sooner rather than later.

Blue Swan. Gold Swan. Red Swan.

He was supposed to be the red swan, so why did it turn out like that? He remembered Susal clinging to him and wailing in terror as Gordy's corpse was laying there on the ground, still twitching. No, maybe not. Maybe he wasn't quite dead yet. Maybe Gordy had been laying there in pain the entire time, thinking about his life in those final moments.

Kidd didn't know it back then but he knew it now. Just how long it took a man to die, and how much a person could really survive. It was entirely possible that Gordy was still conscious even as he lay there bleeding to death with shrapnel embedded in his torso.
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~* Now I only see your dull imposter ~*
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