Things had always just happened around Dulio.
Like a rock polished by the surging river around it, sunk to the bottom, unmoved by the crushing, coursing rapids above.
Born on a farm in then Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, he had everything he could have ever wanted. Loving parents, a good home, a meaningful life. Even as a child, he didn't much desire more. This simple fulfilling happiness. Shepherding the cattle, harvesting the crops, being able to drive the tractor sitting on his father's lap. Life was perfect literally, almost supernaturally so. He never questioned it at first, why his house was never too cold in winter and too hot in summer. Always a perfect pleasant temperature.
Why a breeze always seemed to find him at the right moment, why the sunlight was ever just right. Why the clouds seemed to cover it whenever it got too bright and why the little rivers seemed to bubble so sweetly. The winds whispered to him and he never thought anything of it. It was just life for him, nothing out of the ordinary.
Then the droughts started. One summer, his fifth year of life, the rivers dried up, the reservoirs ran empty and the crops and cattle began to perish, partly from thirst and heat, partly from disease and grief.
His entire community was hit. They gathered at the church, farmers and ranchers all, and amid hushed discussions and tense services, he could feel it in the air. It was bad. His parents were distressed. His neighbours, his friends, his teachers, his community. His whole world felt like it was about to collapse. And the little boy that he was, he didn't know what to do but pray.
And pray he did, day after day, in the church and in the fields, with every foal and ewe that died and every field that withered. He prayed for salvation, he prayed for relief. He prayed for rain.
And then, miraculously, it came. The drought vanished, the winds moistened, the community came together again, if only for a moment, before the they realized, something he didn't until the fourth time it happened.
The rain did not stop. The rivers swelled, the reservoirs ran over, and the world seemed to drown in the deluge. The floods swept through their homes, wiping out what little was left. The crops washed away, the land soiled and waterlogged, and their house damaged beyond repair. But his community stood together.
They endured and weathered through. From the remains of nothing, they rebuilt everything. And they hoped against hope, such a thing would never happen again.
Until it did. Again and again and again. And by the fourth time, it was too much, too late. The community that had been once strong, the church once full, the schools and streets so lively had withered away.
People forced to sell their farms out of desperation, businesses that never reopened, friends he never saw again. People moved to the city, the government began cracking down on them unjustly and what was left of his perfect life dwindled by the day. Except this time, he knew. He knew who had done it.
It was him. It was his fault. And there was nothing he could do to remedy it.
The grief came to him, slowly, like the chill of a winter night setting into his bones through the blankets. A numbness that drew him away from himself. Dulio, once bright and cheerful retreated into himself. Shame and guilt. Things he could not voice even if he tried. And he had tried. His father had caressed his head, hugged him and dismissed his concerns as the rambling of a too religious boy, even after showing his father his ability.
But only Dulio knew. He knew. He could not explain it, what he could do, how he could do it. But he knew it happened. The world moved when he willed, the winds kissed him and the rivers embraced his being with love.
The winds still whispered, but he didn't bother to listen. The sun still shone for him, but it's light didn't quite reach him. The streams still bubbled but the world seemed emptier by the day. Then the militias came. He didn't know what they want but he knew they were up to no good.
His father met them always, outside, begging in whispered tones, his eyes ever hollowing with every time they visited. They wanted the farm. The farm that his father and grandfather and their fathers before him had inherited, the land of their toil and the history of their family. They wanted it all.
Naturally, his father refused. But those men, they didn't like the answer.
It started slow. Their locks found opened, their cattle poisoned, the tires of their tractors damaged and the fuel stolen. Then they escalated. Harassment at all hours. Mobbing the streets intimidating everyone related to them. Denying them services. Their neighbours sold, his uncles and aunts gave up. But his father and a few others held on. They believed they could weather it. Until couldn't anymore. Or rather, they weren't allowed to. They came in the night. With Molotov cocktails and signal jammers. With hatchets and axes. Some even had hunting rifles, and their sport, man.
They cut the phone lines, burned the houses and as the residents fled, they chased them down.
People died all around him, the women assaulted, the children butchered, his own parents…
They handed him over to a family friend, and spoke their last word to him. Just one word. Live.
Seeing them die, it wasn't the first time he had seen loss, but it was the first time he had experienced it so personally. For the first time, the world didn't move around him, and the river crashed straight through him. And he broke. For the first time in years, as the suns rays dawned on the horizon and the remnants of his community lay dead and burning, he opened his heart to the world again, and he wished for just one thing.
Revenge.
And the world answered. Lightning on a clear day. Charred corpses lay all around him. The nauseating smell of burning flesh and ionized air. Then came the horror. He had killed them. Evil as they were, trying to kill him, having killed his parents…he had killed them. Murder, his twelve year old mind could not reconcile with it. He hurled his guts out that day, there in the mud, and lay flat all day, staring at the sky till the tears in his eyes dried up for there were no more tears to shed.
He was a murderer. He was…a sinner. And it would forever be his cross to bear.
A too religious child, his morality gave way. If he was to be evil, he would be so to those who preyed on the innocent and the weak. He accepted his role in the world, that this cursed power had forced upon him. And he did what he did best, what his parents had wanted for him. He lived.
He joined a refugee caravan from another town nearby and made his way to the city with them.
And live he did. As they treaded the country trails. He lived. While other children died from disease or thirst, he lived. He used his power to cover their tracks. Thunderstorms propped up when their pursuers were near, clouds covered their retreat, nearly dry riverbeds flooded when they needed water and landslides formed barriers when they needed rest. Earthquakes shaved off the road their pursuers used and deadly summer heat melted their tires into the dirt.
He didn't want to think about it. But he lived. And all throughout it he learned. He learned to observe the adults, the way they moved, the way they talked, their little expressions and how they changed. How they spoke and how they lied. He learned to tell trustworthy from malicious and kind from cruel. A lesson learned in the school of hard knocks. Things he would never forget and things he would rather not remember. He had always been a smart boy. He used those smarts well. Through thick and thin, rain and shine, through stowing away on trucks and hiding in trains, somehow, he made it to the big city, to the orphanage. To all those kind people who took him in. Who fed him and clothed him. Who reminded him what it meant to live again. And their kindness rekindled his own. He remembered, who he was and he cried, for the first time in years.
That kindness that the matron showed him as she held him close, wiping his tears away. He would never forget it. They might not be his family, but they were precious to him all the same.
Good people deserve good ends. He believed.
So when the time came to answer for his sins and the winds whispered to him of the woman, of the danger, he knew. He had to do something. He had suffered, and all he knew was that he would not stand to see anyone else suffer as he did.
He confronted her, in the corridors, late at night as she skulked about. He knew she was here for him, and he wasn't about to let her harm anyone else.
He tried his usual tricks. Simply depriving her of air, and hoping she would die quickly enough, and quietly enough. Lightning would have awoken the rest and a wind blade would have called for questions. But spontaneous asphyxiation? She choked on her own spit they'd surmise. That was fine with him. He did not want them to worry needlessly.
Because good people deserve good ends.
But then she said something that he could not ignore.
"If you come with me, you can see your parents again."
That he could not ignore. If he had but one more chance to see them… to speak to them. He looked back at the kids, at the orphanage. He thought of how much they had done for him. And he decided to ask for a little more. They could do with a little more.
"Food. Beds. Clothes." All complaints he had had but never voiced, and the same complaints they would have too, no doubt.
She nodded, and he held out his hands, waiting for handcuffs, resigning himself to working for whatever spy agency she had come from. A faint hope that there were others like him. That she had an explanation for what this power was. What he was. Perhaps even, how to rid himself of it. To stop being this monster he had become.
But the handcuffs never came and a soft purple light surrounded him as she grabbed his hands. He closed his eyes and when he opened them again, what stood before him was the most beautiful sight he had seen.
A woman with hair that glowed like the sunlight, eyes bluer than the sky, the face of an angel and a gentle smile that reminded him of his mother. His heart skipped a beat.
"Ara ara~ Who is this adorable young man you've brought with you?" She spoke and her voice was a song he could listen to forever.
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An insight into Dulio. And mommy Phenex works her MILF magic.
Anyways. here's the chapter for today. Tell me what you think.
Next time, Urakyoto and Touki training negotiation.
Don't forget to donate your powerstones please.
Thanks.
Bye