Bittersweet

Cordelia ran around in the powdered wasteland in front of her, feeling a certain playfulness from the cold feeling. She reached her hands into the snow, the sight of it making me shiver from the lack of warmth I imagined it to feel like. She had scooped up a ton of snow into her arms, and with a quick motion threw it into the sky, creating her own snow to contrast the light falling of snow happening currently.

Some of the debris from the thrown snow had hit me and felt just as cold as I imagined it would be. Deciding on getting a little bit of revenge for this act, I reached to the ground and took a smaller bunch of snow. Padding it down into a softly packed sphere, I had created my very own snowball. It seemed Cordelia had been watching me in awe as I made the snowball.

Taking the opportunity of her shock, I lightly threw the snowball at her. Since it wasn’t packed too tightly, it exploded on impact, spewing snow all over her. For a couple of moments she remained in shock at what just happened. She stood there for so long that I started to get worried about how someone would react to a slave throwing a snowball at a child. But to relieve me, she started laughing at what just happened.

“My turn!” She spoke quickly, grabbing snow and doing her best to turn it into a ball.

Once she had decided it was close enough to a sphere, she threw it at me with all the force she could muster. I swiftly dodged it, making sure I didn’t get any colder than I already was.

“Hey, you can’t dodge!” She complained

“Of course I can! Why would I just take the hit?” I responded.

“Oh yeah? Well two can play at that.” Cordelia quickly grabbed more snow off the ground and began to make it into a ball.

Doing the same thing as her, I grabbed more snow and made the snowball far faster than she could. I threw it at her lightly, but seeing my sudden motion, she countered it with a dodge, returning my snowball with another. Seeing through this tactic, I moved out of the way to avoid it, only to get hit by another snowball in the face.

“Haha! I prepared two since I knew you’d dodge!” She laughed.

“Well played.” I sincerely responded.

She started running towards me but just as quickly tripped. As she made contact with the snow, she ended up sending even more into the sky, once again inadvertently hitting me with more snow. The frosty feeling caused me to jump in an attempt to get back some of the heat I had lost.

When I looked back to where Cordelia had fallen, she had vanished. Starting to panic that I had lost sight of her, which was something Flint would probably not be fine with, something grabbed my foot. Thinking it was a snake, I quickly jumped back only to pull out a lost girl with golden hair. It seemed Cordelia had tunneled over to me to give me a surprise attack. Recovering from the heart attack I was about to have, we both began laughing at what had just happened.

“Hey Cordelia. You want to keep playing here for a bit longer right?” I asked, wondering if maybe it was time to leave.

“Yes I want to play longer!” She responded, not letting me consider going back yet.

“Okay, but I need a break though. I’m gonna go sit on that bench and watch you play for a bit. I’ll join in once I’ve recovered a bit.”

“Okay!” She replied accepting that I had been a little worn out from everything that had happened today.

Making my way over to the bench, I was rubbing my shoulders and began to feel even colder now that I wasn’t moving around as much. Slowly walking to avoid pits in the snow, I had finally made it to the bench. The bench was made of nice wood which seemed to have been polished for the pleasure of sitting.

However, inhibiting the comfortable seating experience was snow covering the bench, blocking me from taking a seat without getting wet. Relenting to the circumstances, I used my hands to brush off the bench. Once an area on the bench had cleared off for me to sit in, I quickly crossed my arms to hopefully help warm up my hands from all the work they had just done.

Taking a seat on the comfortable bench caused me to close my eyes and relax for a moment. Opening my eyes once again, I noticed Cordelia was gone. Thinking it was just another surprise attack, I mentally prepared myself for a hand to grab my foot any moment now. After a minute or two, I still felt nothing. I was starting to get worried. Even if she was doing a surprise attack, staying down there for that long would make her sick.

Getting a strong pang of worry in my stomach, I quickly got up from the comfortable bench and started digging through the snow to find her. Not here! Not here! Not here! Where did you go? At this point I decided it was best to start calling her name at the risk of looking insane.

“Cordelia! Cordelia! Where are you Cordelia?” I called aloud hoping to get some type of reaction.

“Help!” A noise came to me ever so faintly.

Believing it was Cordelia, I realized that for the sound to be that faint, she couldn’t still be close to me. Looking further outside of the garden I could make out some figures. I could see two people standing, one of them seemed to be carrying something. Wasting no time, I quickly ran over to them. When they saw me approaching, they started to pick up the pace as they walked away from me.

Although almost immediately, they stopped in their tracks having realized something. As I got closer, I realized both the adults had tails and ears similar to others I had seen around the capital before. They were demihumans, and they were carrying a smaller figure who had started to struggle at the sight of me.

Getting close enough to make them out, one had the assets of a dog and the other a cat. I could also see the cat demihuman was holding Cordelia. There were tears streaming down her face, but something else on her face caught me before the tears. There was a large bruise on her cheek, most likely because one of them had hit her after she called out to me.

I’m sorry Cordelia. If I was paying more attention, something like this wouldn’t have happened. An anger at the sight started to burn inside me. It was more than the guards abusing their power, they were citizens like Flint and yet they had done something so cruel. What were they even planning to do with Cordelia?

“Hahaha, I thought we had to run from an actual person, but you’re just a slave! You should be thanking us for doing this!” The cat-like human spoke.

“Yeah, you should show us some gratitude, slave!” The dog-like human continued.

“Shut up! You idiot’s think what you're doing is right? Don’t make me laugh! Let her go!” I responded.

“You think a slave like you can talk to us this way!” The dog demihuman growled.

“I’ll have to teach you a lesson, mutt.” Replying to his slave comment.

The comment caused the dog to start rushing me, with the cat telling him to wait. As he threw his first blow, the predictability of it was as if it was written in a cheesy book, making it easy to dodge. Countering with my own hit, I punched him in the face, knocking him down. Seeing this, the cat demihuman put down Cordelia to come back up his companion. He went for a blow but I beat him to it with a swift kick to the chest, sending him flying.

Both of them got up and this time decided that it would be better if they rushed me together instead of one by one. As they nodded to each other to synchronize, they began dashing towards me.

“If you think you can beat me with a puny tactic like that, I’ll show you!” I called them out for their mediocre plan.

This time standing perfectly still, they rush me and together punch me in each cheek.

“Hahah, you talked a big game but got hit by that!” The cat mocked.

“In the end you were nothing more than a coward, taking our hit like that!” The dog continued the mocking.

Grabbing both their arms which were still connected to my face, I pulled them towards me, having the two demihumans bump heads with each other. Their words had done far more damage than any of their fists. Finally seeing they had no chance of winning after that display, they picked themselves up and dashed away. I wanted to go after them, but I needed to tend to Cordelia first.

Approaching Cordelia who was still crying at what had happened, I took her into my arms, trying my best to comfort her. I kept trying to comfort her with words, but stopped myself each time. In the end, I agreed to myself that it might have been best to keep her in my arms in silence until she had calmed down. For a long period of time, we stayed on the ground with her in my arms until finally the tears had stopped and she looked towards me.

“A-a-are th-h-hey g-g-on-ne?” She asked, stuttering her words.

“Yes they are.” I responded warmly, trying to make her feel better.

“T-t-they h-h-it me.”

“What a terrible thing to do.”

“I want to go home.”

“Okay, let’s go.”

Believing she was not quite ready to walk on her own, I kept her in my arms and picked her up. We began making our way home through the falling snow which had started to dwindle. But our troubles were not finished just yet as the sound of two familiar voices caused Cordelia to squeak in fear and cover her ears and close her eyes. I looked back to scare them off once again, but this time they had brought someone with them. A guard. Those cowards.

“Oi. What are you doing with that child?” The guard approached and questioned me.

“I am her family’s slave.” I replied, showing him my information card.

“Sir, he was attacking that girl and when we stepped in to stop him, he attacked us!” The feline lied.

I gave him an intense stare which caused him to shut up. I see. So they didn’t come back for Cordelia, but me instead. The guard examined everything and paired it with the story he was given. He saw the bruises on the demihumans, the bruise on Cordelia’s face and her scared expression.

“Put her down.” The guard ordered me.

Obeying, I put Cordelia down, causing her to stop cowering and see what was happening.

“What’s wrong?” She asked.

“It’s okay. They won’t hurt you anymore.” I tried to quell her fear.

After I had put Cordelia down, the guard grabbed my shoulder and pulled me to turn around. As I turned around, I was met with a punch to the gut, which hurt far less than I was used to. However, it was enough for me to fall onto the ground, where the guard continued to keep beating me with his kicks. The demihumans watched, snickering at what they had accomplished.

“Hibiki!” Cordelia cried aloud at the sight in front of her.

I stopped her from saying more with a finger to my mouth and a smile while the guard was still kicking me. The sight caused her to stop saying more to the guard and she instead averted her head. The tears that had started to go away began to come back. The cruel sight continued for a while, with my body making louder and louder sounds at the guard’s kick, but my mouth staying closed.

As the guard's stamina began to wear thin, he decided he wanted to finish strong, as by this point I had not made a sound. With the full weight of his body and armour, he pressed down onto my ankle destroying it. The pain of this had caused me to let out a scream in pain, finally getting a grin to come across the guards face.

“That’ll teach you to disobey your masters!” The guard exclaimed. He turned away to leave along with the demihumans.

As they left, I grabbed my ankle as the pain was taking over. I tried my best to endure from screaming more so as to not scare Cordelia. Cordelia, seeing the other party leaving, ducked down to me and tried to comfort me from the pain.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” She cried, her tears back in full force.

Bringing myself back together I pet her head hoping to calm her down once again.

“Let’s go home.” I told her. “But I’ll need your help. Can I lean on you?” I asked.

“Of course you can.” She answered kindly.