The nymph left Durand to himself. He got up and continued his search for the two kids, his head lowered, his eyes unfocused, his mind shut down so he wouldn't think about anything. The sun was about to set, so if he couldn't find them, he would sleep all alone, and that was the last thing he wanted.
Thankfully, it wasn't that hard to find them. Durand walked towards a small clearing; the sound of waves was close to his ears. This was the place they would rest after playing on the beach. He saw the two kids resting under a tree, lying on the grass.
The two kids seemed to have grown tired already and were sleeping. The blessing of this land protected them from any harm, including bug bites, so they could just sleep on the grass.
Durand looked on as the setting sun dropped behind the distant mountains. Then he turned toward the sea, now darkened, feeling its breeze on his skin. The wind was cold like it was never before. It reminded him of once when he had swum too far and felt the coldness of the sea away from the warm embrace and blessing of this land.
'Embark on a journey to achieve feats…'
Then he turned to Yel and Lav.
'Safety…'
He lay down next to the two kids. Durand joined their sleep.
Durand dreamt a nightmare of blood and death. He dreamt of the flood of blood gushing from his father's severed neck, sweeping the world. He dreamt of a maze made from corpses, where he desperately tried to find an exit. And he dreamt of laughter; he noticed that the laugh invading his sleep was coming from real life.
Durand opened his eyes slightly. It was the middle of the night. But the dark sky and forest seemed illuminated. Perhaps the kids woke up and were chasing fireflies with laughter. The image made him smile, and he decided to end his sleep to join them, but Durand noticed the sound of laughter was more than two kids could create. A chill ran down his spine as he opened his eyes wide.
Dozens of torchlights and cheers came from the dozens of men; they were dancing, swirling, shouting, jumping, and circling around with laughter. They danced like fairies, laughed like demons.
Durand turned toward the two kids next to him. They were awake, but their bodies were pinned to the ground by the burly men. Yel's screams were buried in the ground; Lav was silently crying. Then the men turned to Durand.
A hand grasped his hair. Two hands grasped his arm. Two hands grasped his feet. They curled him into a ball, roughly bending his joints and cramming him into a cloth bag.
Durand's resistance was futile; the cloth bag was small and tight. His feet were pressed against his back; his shoulder ached as he tried to move. The more he tried to move, the more pain he was inflicting on himself. All he could do was listen to the festive talk of the men.
"Three! THREE! HAHAHahahah You fuckers, we are rich!"
"Sir Nerwin, you will call me that from now on HAHAHAHAH! Fuck the pirate life! I am going to be one of those blood-sucking merchants of the River!"
"Sir Jonah declares he will be the greatest rich fucker out there. I will create a harem of young girls with this money!"
"Oh my, Sir Jonah, will you let us visit your harem? I am Sir Fanil, and this good fellow is my brother, Sir Efnil. Hiihihihi."
"You need to pay first. Wait-now that I'm thinking, I am fucking rich! I will build a second harem just for my guests, hahahahahHAHAHA."
"This is what I call good hospitality. Your heart is nobler than any noble, old Jonah."
"Sir hEHEHE Sir Jonah you guys Sir Jooonah~."
"HEHAHEAHA,"
"hikiHiKikiki."
"WUBhaBhaWHA,"
"KHAhahahaKHAhahaha."
Laughter continued for hours. Durand bit the cloth bag to make a small tear he could peep through; then he saw two other filled cloth bags next to him. He breathed a sigh of relief, finally able to see where Yel and Lav were.
With the sunrise, the pirates finally finished their party and carried them to the beach. They got on a longboat and sailed out to sea.
After the pirates rowed for some time, they got closer to a big ship waiting for them on the sea. The longboat was hoisted onto the ship's deck with ropes, and another party was held on the ship, a much larger one with more noise.
Durand's bag opened, and he was thrown to the floor. He heard two heavy sounds next to him. He saw Yel with his mouth sealed with cloth and his gaze carrying rage, and Lav looking around with fearful eyes.
"No girl? Pity…"
Durand turned toward the voice. A man with an air of importance, possibly the captain of the ship, was scrutinizing them with a cold gaze.
"Throw them into the cargo area."
"Aye, captain."
The captain's orders moved the pirates as they roughly held Durand and the kids and led them below deck. There, the pirates tied them with iron chains to a wooden pillar, locking their ankles in heavy iron rings. Then they left the three half-nymph kids alone.
"Lav? Yel? Are you hurt anywhere? Any bleeding?"
"No blood, but my ankle hurts."
Lav answered in a quiet voice. Yel's mouth was still covered with cloth preventing him from speaking; he raised the right side of his face in answer instead. A purple bruise ringed his right eye, perhaps from a punch to the face.
Probably their bodies ached too from being stuffed in that bag for hours, but the kids didn't mention it. They were childish but still smart kids. They appeared to understand Durand was asking about anything other than that.
Durand's nerves calmed considerably seeing there wasn't anything life-threatening. Those pirates were planning to sell them, so at least their lives weren't in danger. From how much they celebrated, the pirates were unlikely to wound them; at most, they would treat them roughly.
"Do you guys remember the pirates I told you about?"
"From the stories?"
"Yes, it looks like we were kidnapped by pirates like those in stories."
Durand mentioned pirates to make them less scared; it seemed it worked as their gaze gained curiosity. They were looking around, seemingly saying 'So this is how a pirate ship looks.'
"What are we going to do? Can we escape?"
Lav probably remembered one of the stories where slaves escaped from the pirate ship.
"Well in that story, slaves were more numerous than the pirates, but we are just three so probably not."
"Are we going to become slaves?"
"...I don't know. Don't worry, there will be an opportunity for escape, we just need to watch for it, okay?"
Lav and Yel nodded.
Their faces now looked less pale. It was all Durand could do for now. No, he could do more.
"Do you guys want to see my magic again?"
Yel and Lav nodded enthusiastically but Lav stopped with disappointment coloring his face.
"There is no paint."
"Oh… you are right."
Durand had brought up his magic without thought, but now seeing the disappointed expressions of Yel and Lav hurt his soul. He wanted them to ignore what happened and focus on different things, and it felt like he was failing miserably at that. No, he could still do his magic; he refused to disappoint his little brothers. Durand looked to his own hand, took a deep breath, and bit on it.
"Big brother?"
The blood dripped from his hand to his fingernail and he drew on the wooden floor with his own blood. He drew a little dragon baby.
"Now, I can do my magic."
Durand chanted his magic inwardly.
'On this day, I grant you existence.'
It was gentle and gradual, eased to their minds' fragility because it would be too easy to break alongside, if the rules that govern the reality were to be broken before their eyes in a lightning flash.
So it unfolded in steps:
First, the drawing of the dragon rippled like a pond of water.
Then, out of the lines of the drawing, from the blood he used for the paint, crimson light burst out. The light rippled too. It darkened and lightened, moved freely unbound to its source nor bound to a line to move in accordance.
The light turned into myriad crimson threads, and finally, those threads came together to weave his imagination into the reality he breathed.
The same height as his drawing, his drawing came to life with a crimson outline and wooden texture. The outline was as if painted onto the world with a brush, defining its own perspective as it followed Durand's gaze.
The dragon spread its wings and rose into the air.
This was the other face of Durand's magic that allowed him to remember his past: the ability to make drawings come to reality. He had done it countless times to entertain Yel and Lav and he wanted to do it countless times in the future for them, no matter the circumstances.
"Woah!"
Lav exclaimed and Yel looked with bright eyes. Durand feared using blood might scare the two, but they were charmed by his magic like always. The dragon flew around for hours then it lost its form and turned to wooden and crimson dust.
Using his magic made him feel the tiredness in his body; he felt like sleeping.
It was well past noon when the deck hatch above opened. Sunlight flashed onto Durand's face, erasing all his drowsiness. One of the pirates came down with the light of the sun. He carried one big cup. He forced Durand's mouth open and threw the contents of the cup into it.
It was a weird-smelling porridge. The pirate removed Yel's gag and poured the porridge into Yel's and Lav's mouths.
After that, nobody came again until the next day around the same time. This time the pirate poured beans into their mouths.
"I missed eating fruit."
"Me too."
"Is that so? Which ones did you miss most- No, tell me which fruit is the best fruit ever instead."
Durand didn't want to ask easy questions. The two kids would run and play in the greenery in their normal days, so Durand wanted them to do just that in their minds and with this conversation. He wanted them to play with ideas and words.
His question sparked success as Lav and Yel got into a heated discussion on whether plums or cherries were better; Durand too joined, claiming berries were best.
Weeks passed. Though they could only see the pirate who was delivering their food, Durand felt they knew all the pirates on the ship. The pirates were loud, and the wooden deck didn't cut their voices. Frequently, the pirates would have conversations right above them, where Durand and the boys could pick up each of their words clearly.
Yel and Lav would ask with soft voices what some words meant, and Durand would answer. Some of them he had heard from the nymphs, some he had known from his past life though they were weirdly pronounced by the pirates so he wasn't entirely sure, and for some, he answered honestly that he didn't know. So, Durand turned that into a game to guess the meanings of the words from the context. Another distraction for two kids; he hoped they didn't catch on to his desperate attempts to make everything a game.
But this one was a great success; they developed the game rules and played with full focus.
If the meanings they came up with made sense in three sentences, spoken by pirates, that meaning would be crowned the winner.
Unsurprisingly, Durand beat the two to dust, but as he explained his thought process to the two boys, they started to catch up quickly.
After one month, the score was:
Durand: 187 words
Lav: 52 words
Yel: 9 words