Teras sat beneath a large tree in an open field with a strange book on his lap, watching men and boys alike work themselves ragged under the heat of Sol. Sat beside him was a girl and a boy around his age. The boy, Marcus, a brown haired youth with green eyes, fair skin and soft features. The girl, Eden, a boyish youth with red-brown hair and silver-blue eyes. The trio sat and stared out over the training soldiers, faces content.
"What about Reina?" Eden asked, breaking the silence. Marcus looked at her with disgust. Teras closed his eyes contemplatively. "What? I thought we were going through his choices?" She leaned forward as she retorted sharply. glaring at Marcus' disgusted face.
"Yeah," Marcus agreed, "but Reina's like, twice our age!"
"NOT EVEN, she's only six years older that us!"
"Why don't we ask Teras what he thinks?" Eden suggested with venom.
They both turned to face Teras who was staring off into the middle distance. He noticed their gazes and flinched. "What is it? Is there something on my face?" He asked confusedly, wiping his face with his sleeve. Eden and Marcus's expressions faltered. Marcus began to laugh as Eden leaned back with a frown.
Eden sighed with annoyance. "We were asking about your opinion on Reina."
"Oh?" Teras seemed to understand the situation at this point. "I don't know." He shrugged.
Marcus keeled over with laughter, falling to the grass. Eden's eye twitched violently. "Elaborate, you turd!" She raged, pointing at Teras accusingly, hey brows furrowed in anger.
"Ah" Teras' mouth opened but only a faint syllable came out. He shook his head as if to clear his head. "Well... I don't have anything against Reina. She's nice and conventionally attractive..."
"And about her age?" Eden egged on.
"I don't really care about that, it'd be awkward, I guess, but I don't think it really changes much." He answered matter-of-factly.
"So," Eden trailed off.
"What's the verdict?" Marcus finished.
"Meh, I don't think she's the one." Teras responded and immediately returned to staring into space.
Marcus cackled and pointed at Eden, who promptly sent him into the grass face first with a slap. Wiping her hands on her shawl like she just palmed a piece of dung, she turned to Teras and paused. A look of contemplation drew across her face. She hesitated for a moment. Almost as if she was afraid of her next words.
"Teras..." Eden started, pausing a beat to get her bearings.
"Hmm?" Teras hummed in acknowledgement, turning slightly to face her.
"Well," she continued, "I want to know... What do you think? Who do you have in mind?"
A pause. Marcus looked up from where he lay on the ground, awaiting the response to come. Teras paused as if he was rolling the question between his fingers. His expression almost returning to it's infuriating blankness.
"If I'm being completely honest," He started, a soft, melancholic smile on his face, "I really don't know."
His answer was curt and bland, it almost answered nothing. Eden and Marcus made eye contact, Marcus sat up to speak. Before they could, however, Teras continued.
"I don't really have anyone in mind. Not anyone that we know at least."
"The hells does that mean?" Marcus interjected, his confusion evident in his volume.
"For once, I agree with the dimwit. What the hells do you mean?" Eden chimed in with concern in her eyes.
Teras sat for a moment, contemplating whether he should answer them or not. Before either of them could start a row, Teras chose to speak.
"I never said anything, but...." He began, attempting to find the words, "I had this dream... vision? I don't know." He paused, his eyes clouding over. "I was dying. On a hill in a snowy place, far north I potentially. I was much, much older. I held someone in my arms on that hill... A crying lady. She was oh so very sad... It made me sad, but also not." He paused, his gaze turning to the clouds.
"She was tired, but she was safe. Safe in my arms. that made me smile. a big smile at that." A grin began to spread on his face. "I couldn't see very well since I only one eye would open, but what I did see, I can only remember faintly. Black or brown hair. very, very curly. Dull blue eyes, like Baker Sommer's flower garden." A chuckle escaped his throat. "I can't remember if she was a tanned southerner, a fair northerner, a Midrulian or something else entirely."
Marcus and Eden looked at his laughing form in shock and mild terror. Teras had never laughed like this in the half decade they had known him. They turned to each other, trying to confirm that neither of them was hallucinating. Now enlightened by the reality if the situation, Marcus shuddered bodily, very unsettled by the actions of his friend.
Eden closed her eyes and swallowed thickly, coating her dry throat. Steeling herself, she raised a finger, making to interrupt Teras's laughter. "Um" she began, building up the courage to confront their seemingly looney friend. "Teras, are you o-"
Teras's laughter ceased abruptly. A hand rising up and gripping his forehead as his eyes began to water. "I just don't get it..." He started, his eyes reddening. "I felt so much that I just don't understand." His voice began to rise. "My blood gets hot, my throat becomes dry. I feel my heart beat out of tune with my blood, I-I-I can't put it... Together." He shouted into his palms, both hands having come up to his face at some point in his tirade.
"I was so happy! I felt...whole in that moment. It's pissing me off!" He cussed, clear anger rising to the surface. "I'm sorry, I just... I just can't understand why I feel things I don't understand. I-I can't. I just can't."
The anger washed away as fast as it reared its destructive head, leaving only inexplicable grief in its wake. Teras sat, back against the tree. His head hung with the weight of a life that he never lived. A life he will never live... can't ever live.
Marcus's gaze bore into Teras, carrying the concern hr felt as one of his closest friends. Eden turned her face. She knew that she couldn't comfort him. How could she? they were only eight. Fairly grown and overly mature for such young children, but still only eight. she knew that they shouldn't be able to feel, let alone imagine such feelings. Even Marcus, clueless as he was, could sense that something wasn't adding up.
Before either of them could come to a decision on how to move forward, Teras stood, book in hand. His expression blank and gaze dim, he turned to leave. "I should head back now... I still have lessons with Teacher Rondelle." He gave no chance to confront him, already part way to the path that meets the palace's back gate. For a moment, his form flickered. Scales so dark they come consume light and release it as a faint red glow seemed to super impose themselves over his skin for a moment so short it may very well not have happened at all.
Eden and Marcus followed his form with their eyes, concern and confusion evident in their mirrored expressions. "What on Terra?" Eden asked, her gaze swinging back to find Marcus's pensive face. it appeared tat they had both seen it. A trick of the light, surely. A complex, imagination driven, ominous trick of the light.