'02639 Did heroes ever get their faces shoved into excrement as a kid? If so, what went through their mind? Did they get angry? Sad? Confused? Or did they already know they were going to be a hero and, therefore, never let themselves get into such a situation? Did destiny not let heroes be treated as anything but? Drote didn’t think of himself as anything close to a hero, but he would’ve liked to imagine that even people of great feats could be brought to such low levels. It made him feel less… shitty. The sudden humor of the thought made Drote chuckle before wheezing into a groan as the greasy fingers wrapped tightly around his wrists twisted and the fat boy connected to them, Brock Millerson, dug his left knee deeper into the snow-soaked boy’s back, right boot pinning Drote’s other hand to the ground.
“Something funny, boy?” Millerson asked, even though he was but two summer’s older than him. He had Drote pinned in a patch of shit-stained snow, a small circle of the ginger’s sycophants gathered round in the lazy light of the street-fire above.
This was what Drote got for trying to go for a walk to town and enjoy some of the last of Winter’s snow drift down in the yellow glow of night. Couldn’t even enjoy the perks of not being in the windy city. Not without the perks of being in the city.
“He sees us as jokes, he even sees us as hill-hicks, I bet,” hissed a hunched boy in a nasal voice, he was lanky with a beaked nose, shiny black hair, pale skin and the mannerisms of a rat.
“Aye, he pro’ly think us shallifs,” muttered a short, block of a boy. His low voice muffled and monotone through the thick neck of his sweatshirt, up above his nose so that with his hat all that could be seen in the glow of lamplight were his big brown eyes, hollow like his voice. “He think us not’in but cows, up in his brick man’on, the forey.”
Drote felt a bit of warmth as anger sparked inside him. He didn’t choose to come here, he didn’t choose to go to some sodden town with no other family here.
“Ahhhh, that it?” Brock muttered loudly, raising one of his bushy red eyebrows. “You boys say he see us lowleys?” he asked, looking up at each of their grinning faces. They all snickered and nodded eagerly to the rhetorical question. Drote rolled his eyes. If he were to be bullied, could it not least be by people less simple. If his life were to be a story, could it not least be void of such tropes.
“So that is it,” sneered Brock, his grin flipping into a frown of contempt as he looked down at Drote who had his eyebrows raised now. He spoke with proper grammar that time, mused the snow-soaked boy. “You think you’s too good?” If only he knew what grammar was. “You think you’s above us? You’re not! You’s nothing! You’s a flesh-sacked faggot good for nothing but burning!” If I’m a faggot then you’re just a wilted weed, couldn’t even get a flame from your sod- Drote’s line of thought was wrought from him as he gasped from the piercing pain as the tendons in his arm stretched. “Wonder if he’d still burn soaked in snow?” The ginger asked with a sharp grin, an encouraging chorus of chuckles from his lackeys giving to another twist, the pain now like hot daggers in his joints and along the sinew. The ginger now put all his weight on his knee and Drote rasped in what air he could as he saw shadows creep into his vision. “Skin-sack looks too wet, seems like just gonna have to cut-”
“It looks as your game’s over,” boomed a voice from behind Drote’s head. “Seems like I’m going to have to ask you… fine boys to stop now.”
“What’d you say, old man?” asked Rat.
“Who is that?” Brock growled, lifting just enough weight off his knee so Drote could turn his head to look at where the voice came from.
“I said,” the voice answered, the man behind it stepping into the outer reaches of the fire’s glow, “I’m going to have to ask you to stop.”
Any saplings of hope for being saved that Drote might have had were washed away by the downpour of horror he felt when he saw the man. From the distance the boy could see that he was around his mid-fifty’s, dressed entirely in shaggy brown clothing, he stood slightly hunched to the right over an ornate cane. Great! Some senile old man with a cane, my guardian angel! I guess a God does exist!
Drote wasn’t alone in his dark humor as the boys around him cackled, the boy groaning as Millerson’s body shook with laughter, the shadows returning to his sight. “Now that ‘ight there’sa sha’if,” pointed Brown Eyes with a chorus of chuckles, a slight shift to the folds of his scarf the sign of what was probably him smiling. The man stepped forward, but Drote couldn’t get a better look, the black of night was spilling out all before him now.
“You boys dance with the old’n, I’ll try to start a fire,” sneered Brock. Color lost its life from Drote’s sight, the pain sapped away from the cold of snow, the sensations blurring together into one big lump of numb. He could hear the distant sound of thuds and slosh of muddy snow. They’re beating the old man now, the boy gave a sad smile. His eyes drooped. Night——a blanket of vision.
As air danced across his skin, Drote realized that it was well past his usual bedtime and decided that then was the perfect moment to fall asleep.
Drote woke up to the aching numbness of bruises and comforting warmth of a fire, his body almost asleep while his mind awoke. The young boy let out a groan as he propped himself up on one elbow and took in his surroundings. He was nude, covered by a large, fur blanket in a dimly lit room, the fireplace crackled as wooden boards creaked from winter wind.
“You’re awake, huh? Good, thought I’d lose you there, what with the cold and being knocked unconscious,” said a man that Drote had just noticed was sitting in a rocking chair. The boy opened his mouth to ask who the man was and how he got here, when a sharp pain stabbed his back and memories flashed before his eyes.
“Y-you,” the boy muttered, “you’re the man that told the boys to stop. I thought-” Drote whisked air through clenched teeth as he held a hand to his left ribs, “I heard them beating you.”
“Ha!” The old man laughed as he pulled a wooden pipe from his brown robe, “You heard wrong, young one.”
“But… how? No offense. It’s just… you’re old.”
The old man coughed as he chuckled again, this time in the middle of lighting his pipe, ash spraying from the bowl and smoke billowing from his nose as he pounded his chest with his other hand, pocketing the pipe back into his robe. The old man spat into the fire, took a few slow breaths and smiled, “Do you know what true age is? What it means to be old?”
“Wrinkly skin?” Drote asked in the way people do when they’re unsure and uncaring.
“Bahahaha!” The man in the chair buckled over with booming barks of laughter, a tear gleaming as it ran down his cheek. Drote was beginning to think that the old man might be a cracked shallif. “In most cases, yes. But, what is it that people tend to start losing as they get old?”
Drote pursed his lips and mulled it over for a second, nodding to himself as he looked up at the man, “Strength.”
“Yes! Yes, yes, yes. Good start. And?” The old man asked, an amused smile on his face. Drote looked around the almost barren wooden room before giving the man a smile of his own.
“Flexibility.”
The old man simply nodded, stood up, faced the fire, and bended backwards till his hands and feet were both on the floor, stomach up towards the ceiling. Then, with a wide smile, he gave a small humph and swung his legs through the air until he standing back upright. Drote gawked at him and the man beamed back, all teeth, glowing with pride. “See,” the old man explained, as he pulled the pipe back out from the folds of his robe. “You’re only as old as you are flexible.”
Drote simply stared, mouth hanging. The man looked like he was in his late fifties, yet had just moved more smoothly and flexible than Drote could have ever hoped to.
“Who am I?” The old man asked with an impish grin, saying the very question he had been wondering. Drote eagerly nodded, too awestruck for words. The robed elder sparked his bowl, rings of smoke drifting through the air as he sat down in the rocking chair with a groan. He stared at the fire, puffing his pipe absentmindedly. Drote sat in silence, he may have been a child, some might even call him a fool. But he had heard and knew the stories of old men granting powerful secrets to heroes in their adolescence, setting them on path towards destiny. And while he was one to scoff at the stories told to him as a little kid, he was still a kid, little or not. So he sat there in silence. As patient as possible of youth.
Minutes passed and the old man leaned towards the fire, tapping the ashes of his bowl into the hearth, falling back into his chair with a sigh as he slowly put his pipe away. Drote chewed his bottom lip with anticipation. The elder looked around the room, like he was forgetting something, settling on the spot of floor between him and Drote, then his eyes lit up and mouth opened as though he were about to call out for a long-lost friend seen across the street. As though he were speaking of times long past. “My name is Haskel,” he whispered, lips barely forming the words. “And I am-” he grimaced and took a deep, shaky breath. “Er, I was a… soldier.”
Drote barely stopped himself from saying ‘wow,’ some arrogant but knowing part of him said the old man was more than a simple veteran. It made him grip the blanket, sent sparks down his spine, raised the hairs on his neck, and came out his mouth before he even realized he was saying it, “Will you teach me?”
“Ha!” Haskel slapped his knee, glow of firelight reflecting off his earthen irises. “If I had known you had such a spark, I would’ve put you in the hearth and saved me the wood! A vague question, but I’m not blind to the object of your enthusiasm. You want to learn to fight, eh?”
Drote nodded feverishly, he felt like he was underwater, like he was in a dream. Like he was on the cusp of destiny.
“You want to be like the legends of greats? Like Neorn the Noble? Like Gruhkal the Great? Revered and remembered, even if forgotten?” There was a whimsical twinkle to the old man’s pupils as he twisted and stroked his grey beard. “Do you want to see the turning of things? Hmmm? Taste of what the Phelain could do?”
Drote barely shook his head in agreement, not even understanding what the man was saying. He felt drunk. He felt whole. He felt like he was lost to the unending motions of the universe.
Haskel nodded slowly and gave another short, booming bark of laughter as he leaned back in his rocking chair. “Ahhh, the enthrallment of youth. You’ve never seen or even heard the things I have,” the man looked down at the floor between his feet, Drote resisted the urge to frown. Blood flooded his cheeks as the boy felt like he was being patronized, and he had already dealt with enough of that when his face was being smothered in shit. Haskel slowly ran his hands over his face as he shook his head.
Drote gave a heavy gulp, his heart pounding in perspiration.
“Which is exactly why I was like you at my age; To become who I am now,” he dropped his hands to show a small, mischievous smile. “So… yeah, I’ll teach you.” It took everything in Drote to not jump up and scream, so he settled for a violent nod of agreement instead.
“Alright,” Haskel groaned while he stood up with a series of pops as he arched his back. “I’m sore, though not as much as you are, I bet. Haha,” Drote tried to come up with a response, but he was already back flat on the ground, mind as thick as the knotted bruises along his body. And as the young boy fell asleep, he smiled.
