-Break-
Location: Zaad Ziener: Northern Forest
Φ Walking through the forest in front of them both, Captivant, looking down at his feet, mumbles, "Now where the hell are we?"
Placing her head on his shoulder, Valda says, "We lost?"
"NO! I just need to regain my sense of direction."
"That makes sense. Let me help you."
In an instant, the girl moves through the trees, climping up their tall branches that block the sunlight, eventually reaching the top than hang backwards of one of the branches she point to Captivant's east and says, "That's the direction in which we came, it seems the way light interferes with the trees along with the slow curving path set us onto the wrong way."
Captivant's eyes glaze up at her, causing Valda to drop down and ask, "What's wrong?"
"It's just I am amazed at how great your physicality is, jumping from and climbing up trees isn't something I expected a frail girl like you to be able to do."
Moving closer, she says, "Well, I am full of surprises; if you keep looking, you'll find out more."
With his face turning red, he points west and says, "We need to keep heading in that direction to reach our goal. Let's keep moving."
-Break-
Moving through a series of bushes, Captivant smiles and says, "We are here. Take a look."
Piercing her head through the bush, her eyes are pleasantly greeted by a small dark blue pond in the middle of the forest with a series of tiny animals gathering around it.
Amazed, she says, "How did it get such a colour?"
"I don't know, aside from this oddity, the rest of the forest is perfectly normal with the exception of the height; you won't even find any wonderbeasts here. It's one of the strangest parts of this entire country, I could probably guess, but isn't it so beautiful?"
Nodding rapidly, she says, "I can't take my eyes off of it even for a moment, it's like the night sky is right in front of me."
"Funny for you to say that because it's true beauty can only be uncovered when the moon shines down on us all during nightfall. There you'll see something your eyes could barely ever handle."
"Really, we got to come the-."
Valda quickly grabs Captivant and pins him to the ground to his shock, and as he tries to move, she places her hand over his mouth and says, "Shush."
He looks around, confused, but his eyes are drawn to the eyes of the girl in front of him.
Φ Her hair, her nose, her eyes, her lashes, her lips, her smell, her touch. It's far too much, it's far too intense. The fact that someone like her should be able to do all of this to a person like me is nonsense. This is why women are so dangerous; their existence is nothing more than a poison to a logical life, a righteous brain. Yet I can't get enough of i-, "EKK!"
Φ A girlish cry bursts out of Captivant as a small fox with a live squirrel inside its mouth bumps into his body. His fall onto Valda as he quickly composes himself, yet she pays no mind to him as she relaxes and says, "It's just a baby fox, I thought for a second it could have been a ferocious predator."
Valda moves her hand to pet the fox on its head, and in that moment, the eyes of the young Captivant fall onto the living mouse, trying its best to scurry away.
He quickly grabs the fox's head and taps it until it releases the mouse. The fox growls at him in anger, yet he shouts, "FUCK OFF!" scaring it away.
Taking breath after breath to recover the air he lost, Captivant holds the mouse and looks at its body, examining it to check for any wounds. "Don't worry, little guy, I will make sure to protect you."
Looking at the ground, Valda plays with a broken bit of the fox's tooth and says, "What did you do that for?"
"What do you mean, the fox was going to eat the rat?"
"Why does that matter? Don't you eat meat all the time?"
"I don't, I only make sure to eat vegetables. I am not like these animals."
"It's rude to refer to them as animals as an insult; they can't choose what they want to eat, even if they wanted to eat like you. Not everyone has those options."
"Still, I can't just let this mouse stand for itself. I am not like others who just let things like this happen."
Picking up the tooth, Valda says in a sombre tone, "There are consequences to those kinds of actions. Nature is incredibly complex, with millions of actions deciding how things turn out. For a single man to inject himself into it and decide what's right or not is foolish."
"So it's better to just accept things like this!"
"Yes. Because it's just how it is. That fox eats mice for survival, grows stronger, while the small and weak, such as that mouse breed rapidly, to be eaten by foxes, otherwise they would become pests. That is the reality of the mouse's existence, and to deny that is simply arrogance."
"WHY SHOULD I BEND TO REALITY! WHEN DID THE HEROES FACED WITH INSURMOUNTABLE CHALLENGES EVER BOW? I DON'T WANT THIS TO HAPPEN, SO I WILL REJECT IT WITH ALL I AM. FOR THAT IS THE ONLY WAY TO TAKE BACK MY LIFE FROM THIS SELFISH WORLD."
Clicking her tongue, she slams her fist into the ground and says, "EASY FOR YOU TO SAY! WHEN THE WEAK TRY TO DENY REALITY, NO ONE REMEMBERS THEM AS THEY SIT BACK AND ENJOY ANNHALATION."
Her hands quickly fly over her mouth, and Captivant, crouching down beside her, says, "The Village of Frétck. If I have it right, it exists on the border of Gevurah and Ritania."
"How do you know about ou-."
"Ghost Country? It must be surprising for you. Ghost countries are small territories usually within larger nations that, despite having existed for centuries, are not officially recognised. Many are kept off official maps, though Cordum tries to rectify this, but the countries in the surrounding areas keep distributing maps that run counter to this as a form of propaganda. My family's produce often has to move through those areas, so I happen to be pretty well versed in it; that's how I know of your village.
The people of Village Frétck often lived at one with nature, with their buildings carved into the sides of mountains, in a rather unique fit of architecture. You were all small but utterly ingenious, makes my heart flutter thinking about thi-."
Looking at her eyes, he sees tears pouring out of her sockets, causing him to say, "ARGH! Are you okay? Did I upset you?"
Wiping her tears with a smile, she says, "No, nothing like that. I am fine. But I have to ask, can you really upturn reality?"
Smiling, he says, "Of course, I can. Who do you think I am?"
A little eek moves through the bush, and from it the fox comes out, slowly walking over to Valda, before showing its teeth to her in pain. Rubbing its head, she says, "Don't worry, it will grow back. Everything will be fine."
Seeing them both, Captivant picks the fox up, and says, "Don't fret because from today on you're going to be my friend as well. Now let's head off."
-Break-
Location: Zaad Ziener; Captivant's home
With the fox in his arm and the mouse on his shoulder, Captivant scales the mountain back to his home with a smile on his face. Walking beside him, Valda says, "Are you sure you'll be able to handle them both? If you drop your guard, I am sure that fox will eat the mouse."
"Don't you worry, despite being animals, they aren't all dumb. If you train them under a proper and elegant master like myself, you can get them to act in an almost human way. Isn't that right, Genuis the fox, and Rebellion the Mouse, the Divergent brothers!"
"You've already named them?"
"Don't you know names are our power to separate ourselves from every other being on the planet. That's why we do so, to reaffirm our ability to rewrite reality."
"You're a really funny man, Adrian."
Stopping and turning around, Captivant looks her dead in the eye with a nervous smile and says, "You can call me Captivant."
"Captivant?"
"It's a curse. One I have placed onto myself, a curse to command my existence to Captivate all those around me. So please, would you call me Captivant?"
Smiling, she says, "Of course, I will Capti-."
As she speaks, a ball flies and smashes into Captivant's face, knocking him right onto the ground, and seeing this, her eyes open wide as she quickly moves to catch the Genuis and Rebellion, who have been thrown high into the sky.
Grabbing them, she says, "Safe," as Captivant's head smashes into the ground.
Looking at her, he smiles, then soon sits up and shouts, "WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT!"
Staring down the hill, he sees a large group of kids his age walking up, and as they see him, they all roll their eyes. A boy in front says, "The ball got lost while we were playing. Sorry about that, Adrian."
"Why the hell are you even playing up my property? Don't you all have your little plots of land all the way over there, and I told you pests to call me Captivant."
"Stop being such a brat, Adrian. We just want to play on an open field; it's not like you're using it. Besides, your grass doesn't have random twigs everywhere."
"THEN MAYBE TAKE CARE OF YOUR OWN PATCHES, YOU INGRATES! Get out of here."
"Yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada. Your mouth never stops moving with nonsense. Can you be a normal person, for even a moment, you giant, big foreheaded asshole. Like we care for the opinion of some loser with no friends, who doesn't ever leave his home, give us the ball and go back to your bed bab-."
The ball flies past Captivant and smacks the boy right in the face, before rebounding off and slamming against all of the others, knocking them down. Turning his head, Captivant sees Valda with her leg sticking out, and says, "Whoa."
Looking at all the kids, Valda says, "Now scram, you brats!"
They quickly pick up the ball and take off, with the boy in front saying, "WE WON'T FORGET THIS!"
Soon, a wave of embarrassment rushes over her face as she says, "I think I might have gone a little bit too wild there. Sorry about that!"
Standing up and grabbing her hand, Captivant says, "Not at all, that was one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. You're a real cool girl, almost just as much as how b-. Ugh, sorry."
"Thank you, but are you okay?"
With his head hanging towards his feet, Captivant says, "Yeah, don't worry about them, they like to act all big now, because those idiots don't know that when I inherit all this land, I am going to pay it all back to them."
Kneeling, she puts both her hands on his face and says, "Are you sure about that?"
"Of course, I never lie. Now, let's head back inside. She might be annoying, but my mother definitely knows how to cook better than even the Messiah himself, I can bet."
Standing up, she says, "That sounds like fun."