The Enemy of Adventure

After yet another magic lesson, and Serena had departed for wherever she went, Elias approached Kuchisake.

"Marcel mentioned roles to me," he said. "I don't have one though, do I?" Kuchisake did not answer him. Her gaze lingered on the direction where Serena had gone. "How do I get one?"

"Nooooo wooorriiiiies." She spoke no further and departed, leaving him on the beach.

The blissful days blended together. And blended. And blended. Elias remained unchanged. The island remained unchanged. The topic of roles did not come up, and people treated him no differently. 

After another such day, Elias had woken up after Serena. She held pieces of blue fabric, but hid them from Elias’ gaze when he glanced over.

“Kuchisake sent us letters,” she said, and pointed to a square of paper on the floor.

He raised an eyebrow and read it. Even Kuchisake’s penmanship had an unsettling tremble to the script.

“The lesson is canceled today,” the note read. “You two have been working hard, and you deserve a break. I have told Bill about your effort, and he is bringing lots of food and drink today. Please come and enjoy it around noon.” A light blue pair of swimming trunks lay beside the letter, which Elias put on in the privacy of the bathroom, and then wore his clothes over it.

Serena did not change in the middle of the bedroom like she had last time, but instead motioned Elias out of the bedroom.

“You go on ahead,” she said. “I’ll catch up.” Her cheeks were flustered, a sight that made Elias stare at her. He’d caught her changing and she’d caught him changing, but both times she’d shown no signs of bashfulness.

He stepped out. The morning was still early, so Elias walked around for a while. He savored the sweet smelling flowers. Something about the aroma and the way the flowers felt beneath his shoes made him feel as though he’d done this for a long time. Longer than the mere month he’d been here for.

Eventually he heard footsteps, and turned around. Serena had emerged from the dwelling and offered him a smile.

“We’ve got a few hours before noon,” she said. “Mind coming with me?”

“Where to?” said Elias.

“I found a secret spot the other day,” Serena said. “I’m pretty sure only I could find it.”

“And you’re fine telling me about it?” said Elias.

“I’m inviting you, aren’t I?” Serena laughed, before taking his hand. “Now come on Elias.” She pulled him along past the flowers, and through a path obscured by brambles and flowers. One hidden so well that Elias couldn’t help but believe Serena’s claim that only she would be able to find it. They walked along the path, his hand in hers. Wind made the branches and leaves sway above their hands.

“You told Marcel before that you like writing down other people’s stories, right?” said Serena.

“Yeah,” he said. “Why do you ask?”

“Maybe you can write down mine someday?” Serena said. “Once I figure out the trick to using magic. Maybe then I’ll have a story worth telling.” She laughed, but it was a hollow sound.

Elias squeezed her hand.

“Why’re you hinging it on you being able to cast magic?” he said. “Maybe your story is worth telling even without that?” But it was easy for him to say that. He wasn’t the person whose father was the Azure Mage, whatever that meant. But the title sounded important, at least.

“Why haven’t you written down your own story yet?” said Serena.

Elias noted that she didn’t answer his question, but his lips pressed together as he found himself at a loss for how to answer hers.

“Tibby’s story always felt like the one worth telling, between the two of us,” he said. “She’s the one that was driven, and I…I was…” He racked his brain, but he couldn’t recall anything vivid. Perhaps this should’ve bothered him, but his shoulders sagged. “I’ve always been second to her. Maybe I’m at fault for that. I should’ve tried to do more. To distance myself from her.”

“Well you’re here now, aren’t you?” said Serena. “You have a new start here.” She stared at him. “We’ll weave our stories together. How does that sound? It’ll be stronger than just mine or yours alone.”

The sincerity in her voice made him blush, and he looked away. His ears flattened against his head.

“Our stories? Careful, or I might misunderstand,” he said.

“And just what might you be misunderstanding?” She smiled. Elias couldn’t bring himself to put his thoughts into words, and his silence made her smile broaden. “Everyone here is frightened of me, Elias. Like they think I’ll run to my father at the first sign of trouble. But you’re different.”

“They all hail from the same world that you and your father come from, don’t they?” said Elias. “I’m the outsider here.” He looked over his shoulder at his tail. He wondered where it and his ears had come from. Maybe they were just some kind of visual indication that he was different. As he looked at the furred appendage, he faintly recalled a memory about it. A pang of loss he couldn’t put a name to welled up in him. His jaw clenched.

Then Serena’s soft hand brushed against his cheek. “You’re hurting.” Her pace along the forest path slowed, and she gazed up into his eyes.

“I am?” said Elias.

“You are. Do you want me to take your mind off that hurt?” Serena offered. Her voice bore a weight, and her fingertips pressed against his cheek. “There’s a spot at the end of the path that should be big enough.”

A part of Elias didn’t want to take his mind off that hurt. It felt important. Like something he should never forget, but he heard the weight in her voice. His nostrils flared as he committed to memory the feeling of her fingertips. As he drank in those sensations, that voice receded to the back of his mind.

“Okay.” They continued up the winding path until Elias heard a distant crash of ink against the shoreline. The smell brushed his nose. Up ahead lay a similar curtain of flowers and brambles, much like the one that had initially obscured the path ahead. Serena gently moved it aside, and was about to motion Elias through when she saw what lay up ahead. Her lips pressed together.

Elias’ lips did so as well.

The path gave way to a small cliff, covered in blue flowers, that overlooked the ocean of ink that stretched out into the horizon. But Serena hadn’t been the only one to know about this secret place after all.

A man was already sitting there. His back faced them, but Elias recognized those broad shoulders and sandy-colored hair. It was Leon. Elias winced as he recalled the man’s reaction to whatever punishment Kuchisake had inflicted upon him. Elias hadn’t seen him since that time, and he wondered if Leon had been avoiding him.

The scrape of a knife against something hard reached their ears.

Before he could ask Serena about how to proceed from here, she pulled him forward, past the thicket, and onto the cliff. Leon twitched before spinning around. Upon seeing Serena and Elias, he scrambled away, running past them and down the path leading away from the cliff.

As Serena sat down and pulled Elias down with her, Elias saw Leon’s expression. Sheer anguish covered Leon’s face, as though the deepest betrayal had plunged into his chest like a knife.

Elias stared at his receding back for a moment. His tail flicked, and felt something hard off to the side. He reached for it, and found a small half-finished necklace of glass jewelry in the shape of seashells. A small whittling knife lay beside it, the edge somewhat reddened as though from heat. This redness had already begun to fade even as Elias looked at it.

“I thought you said you were the only one to know about this place,” said Elias.

“I thought I was,” said Serena. “But you shouldn’t worry about him.” Her voice was firmer than he expected, but before he could question it, she slunk an arm around his shoulder, and rested her head against his. “There’s only you and me here now. As it should be.” They gazed out at the ocean of ink for a while.

“My world really was destroyed,” Elias murmured. No matter how many times the thought occurred to him, or someone mentioned it, he couldn’t wrap his head around it. An entire world, gone in a single night. At the whim of a creator that he would never meet and whose motives he would never understand. As the enormity of that washed over him and dwindled his very existence, he hugged his knees against his chest. “What am I supposed to do now?” he whispered out to the ocean of ink that loomed before him as far as he could see.

“That’s obvious, isn’t it?” Serena said. “Stay here. With us.” Her hands cupped his cheeks, and she turned his face to meet his. “With me.” She smiled at Elias before leaning toward him with parted lips.

A beautiful girl leaning in for a kiss was like something out of a dream, but Elias pulled his face from Serena’s grasp.

“Wait,” he said. “I don’t…something doesn’t feel right.”

She pouted at him.

“What’s wrong? Nobody else is around.”

“It’s not that,” he said. “It’s just that I want to get to know you more, Serena. And I want you to get to know me more.” His tone turned gentle as he settled a hand on hers. “It feels like I barely know you.”

She turned away from him.

“So you’re saying that I’m not enough for you?”

“Of course not,” Elias said, wondering how she could’ve interpreted his words that way. “It feels like I’ve only scratched the surface. I want to peer deeper. To really see you, if you’ll let me.”

Her face remained turned away.

“And what if there is only the surface?” she murmured. “What if there’s nothing deeper?”

That drew a long pause from Elias. His eyes closed. It left him wondering who he was, now that he was in a world where Tibby was not here with him. His mother wasn’t here to compare himself with Tibby either. So where did he stand? A man that liked napping? A man that was never as talented as his sister, and languished in obscurity while she excelled? A man that helped his mother around the house while they lived off of his deceased father’s accumulated riches and life insurance money? His life had been a waste, looking back. Maybe he should’ve worked harder in school, or joined the right clubs, built connections, and he could’ve turned out just like Tibby.

Elias squeezed Serena’s hand.

“Then we’ll both have some work to put in,” he said. She didn’t respond, and he gestured toward the flowers surrounding them. “Did Kuchisake help you plant these? They look nice.”

Serena shook her head.

“These were already here on the cliff when I found it,” she said. “But they’re my favorite.”

“How…nice.” Elias’ smile twisted a little at the edges. He remembered the familiar way Leon spoke to Serena when he first met the man, and now they’d just seen the man flee from Serena’s supposedly secret place filled with her favorite flowers. “You’re sure you haven’t been with Leon before?”

“I haven’t,” she said. Her tone was firm. Her eyebrows knitted together. “So you can stop saying that.”

“Fine, but…” He sighed. At a loss for how to proceed with the conversation, Elias peered over the edge of the cliff. A brown rectangular shape floated in the water down below. “What’s that?”

“That’s the spare rowboat I told you about earlier,” she said.

“Have you ever gone anywhere with it?” said Elias.

“Why would I need to?” Serena said, tilting her head. “Everything I need is here.”

“You wanted there to be more to you than just the surface, right?” said Elias. “Maybe we could go on a little adventure to deepen things. Doesn’t it sound more fun than just being on the same island all the time?”

“It does.” Despite this, Serena swayed back and forth with an unsure hum. “Father isn’t keen on people leaving the island. It’s unsafe. And if we capsize, we end up in the ink. And that’s…” She shivered. “You don’t want to end up in the ink.”

“I know.” Elias remembered the sticky fluid all around him, and the way it burned his lungs when he inhaled it. His tail twitched and his ears flicked. A pang of mourning shot through him. Again he vaguely remembered something important. Something he shouldn’t forget.

“Where would you want to go?” he said.

Serena’s eyes closed for a moment.

“I don’t know,” she said. Her tone was empty, as though she’d never given it thought before. Never given thought to what lay beyond the rolling waves of ink. “Where would you want to go?”

“Finding Tibby and my mum,” said Elias. “But after that…Tibby practiced fencing in college, but I just played video games with my friends after school. I don’t regret hanging out with them, but…we had lots of money. And mum knew some pretty well-connected people. If I wanted to, I could’ve gone to school abroad, or paid to attend some niche hobby thing. Maybe even learn some languages. I had the whole world in the palm of my hand, and I did nothing with it. I don’t have that money now, but I wouldn’t want to do that a second time.” And now it was too late. “But there has to be some place I can go.”

“You’re not satisfied here?” said Serena.

“Huh? No, I just…” As he tried to formulate a response, a reason for why he wanted to leave, that same pleasant fog descended over his mind. Was it really wise to leave? Out there was a scary world. Who knew how far he’d have to row till he reached land? If he capsized even once, he would’ve been dead. Maybe staying here wouldn’t be so bad, where everything was given to him. Where he never had to work for anything.

“Maybe I don’t satisfy you?” Serena leaned in and pecked his cheek. The soft press of her lips against his skin stunned the thoughts from his mind. He stared at her, dumbfounded. When his mind finally caught up with what just happened, his cheeks burned, his tail swished, and his ears flattened against his head.

“That wasn’t fair,” he muttered, averting his gaze. She laughed.

“Don’t think unnecessary things,” she said. “Just focus on what feels good.”