write-hand-side

[write-hand-side]

“Hello, this is Perry’s Party Pizza! What can I get for you today?”

“…Liam?”

He jolts.

“Roy?”

There’s a sigh on the other end. “Hey, yeah, it’s me. I’m, uh, I’m not really needing much today.”

…okay.

“Well, you know we’re always happy to hear from you! Are you here for the thin crust special? Or are we feeling something extra special today?”

“No, uh, just- just…”

There’s a long pause and a soft static like distant chatter before his voice comes back on.

“Hey, sorry, you have my address already, right?”

Something is undoubtedly wrong, but Liam forces his lips into the usual smile.

“Of course, we’d never forget our favorite regular!” He doesn’t bother asking about the special again. Something is wrong.

He forces a little chuckle through his lips and says, “Are we ordering for a celebration? We’ll always be happy to give a party discount, if you’re planning an event.”

There’s another pause and Liam swallows.

“…Roy?” There’s no response. “Hey, man, we can get you something small, too. You can get a little frequent-buyer discount, how ‘bout that?”

That, at least, seems to get a response.

“Right. Uh, surprise me? I can’t pull up the menu right now - I’m sure I’ll like whatever you pick.”

“Sure,” Liam says carefully, still smiling. He doesn’t want to hang up, because something is wrong, and the last time Roy sounded like that, he came back with bandages poking out of both sleeves, three months late.

It seems like Roy feels the same because he starts, “Can you st- sorry uh, just, sorry. I’ll hang up.”

Before he can, Liam cuts in, “Could you stay on the line for a few more minutes? It’s standard for us to ask anytime a customer requests a surprise order — just in case they change something last second.”

It most certainly is not standard, and they both know it, but Roy’s quiet tells him anything he needs to know.

He moves the phone to his shoulder and grabs a random finished order to put in his car.

“Alright, and are there any extra notes for us? I know we have you down for no allergies, but has anything changed between last week and now?”

There’s a choked gasping laugh on the other end.

“Changed? Oh god- yeah, yeah lots- lots have- god, I can’t. Sorry, sorry. Liam, just- just cancel the order, it’s- I’m not going to need it. Sorry, I just- I don’t know why I tried to call here, I just couldn’t- sorry, just, uh, just ignore me, pretend I didn’t call tonight. Please?”

His grip tightens on the steering wheel.

“Ah, nope, I’m already too close by. We’ll just make it on-the-house, don’t sweat it, no one’s gonna mind — you know we’d all miss you too much if you stopped coming by.”

That seems to do it. The line crackles with crying and heaving, wet sobs sound through the phone. He can barely make out a “sorry, I’m sorry” between cries and then he’s at the door, scrambling for the spare key he knows Roy keeps buried in his plant pot.

“Hey, hey, no worries, man, I’m already here, I’m right outside, it’s fine, just come grab the food, come on, I got your favorite!”

His heartbeat is in his ears, drowning out the crying on the phone. The lock finally clicks open and it’s so loud, so screamingly loud in the apartment hall that he almost doesn’t hear the click of the phone.

“I’m sorry.”

The blood on the floor is dry.

When you die and go to Heaven you’re entitled to make one phone call to any living person you knew in life. With no loved ones in the living world you decide to call the cashier of your favourite pizza place.

[write-hand-side]

It’s been 8 years. Three years of training, and on the last year, when he could finally get out of his service, they got news of Elydia laying siege to the Western Fortress. He hadn’t realized things could get worse than academy days.

Beside him, Rynsed pushes himself up to his knees, eyes unfocused and alarmed where they land on his. His hair is matted and wild with blood, and his 8 years means he knows exactly what Kirin means by rain.

Across from him the general barks a laugh.

“Insane. Of course.” He turns to his men with a snide smile. “I told you, didn’t I? We couldn’t catch the code because there wasn’t one.”

For an Elydian, that’s almost surprising. They’re a superstitious lot, even for a fighting clan, and there’s no shortage of mages or Lesser Living in their ranks, besides.

For an Elydian, it’s remarkably non-superstitious. Even living in military camps, there can’t be any shortage of mages or Lesser Living to keep them apprehensive.

Perhaps he’s just stupid. Perhaps he is crazy. Kirin certainly felt crazy back then.

The academy was posh and pristine, something for noble second sons and the luckiest guards’ sons. Even with a put-upon accent, everything else about Kirin stuck at odds, like a cowlick on a groom. A boy like him — and he was a boy then, though he hasn’t been in years — didn’t belong near Central, too far to tend at fields and too shaded to tan his face.

Still, he knows the bishop showed more mercy than most would have when he found Kirin with the cockatrice.

He hadn’t known about the poison then — he was a boy, only a boy, and every child made mistakes. But. Well. Most kids’ mistakes weren’t murder, and the Bishop’s draft had been a kindness over the other villagers finding out that he’d been playing with a cockatrice by the freshwater.

Either way, there was little choice, and then Kirin was a Western Villager in the Central Capitol.

He was put with the Spearman for a week, an effort, he’s sure, to push him as far as they could in the “right” path away from the animals and into a hunting brigade.

They moved him by the week’s end.

They tried the Armsmen next, and, when that didn’t work, the Line Closers, the Swordsmen, the Armor Front, and the Crease Breakers; on and on for long weeks and lucky seasons, where Bishop and Headmaster tentatively relaxed in the quiet before another transfer demand.

The mages were a last choice. Inyed’s was sparse in its use of magic and military mages were only even instated in the last century. That made it an interesting mix of tight-knit and closely monitored that meant the Bishop and Head were always a little too aware that they didn’t know all Kirin did under cover of his comrades.

There were no more transfer orders.

He would have gladly learned there, let them control his movements and teach him to never catch another eye. Of course, he was encouraged to work past that, but three years of service, even with only two under mage unit command, meant he was more than equipped to return to his village and make a living. Even if they had found out in the intervening years of his role in the village poisoning, inadvertent as it had been, he’d be able to make do just fine in a neighboring village and keep in contact with his family in a way his Bishop-read, military-approved, quarter-annual, one-way letters from the Capital could never come close to. Either way, he wouldn’t know his family’s views until he visited.

And he’d never know after the Western Encroach took their village.

It helps to think about it sometimes, to imagine their faces and their unmarked, curtained corpses every time he needs the power to kill. Here, on the battlefield, he doesn’t hesitate.

“Any last words, Commander?”

In one smooth movement, the cold steel of the general’s sword comes to a rest beneath his chin and Kirin glances up.

“You really don’t believe me,” he says absently.

It’s a wonder sometimes that he keeps managing to pull this one off.

A huff. “Even the heavens opening up won’t help you. I’ll take that as a no, then?”

“Well, maybe not the heavens, no, but it doesn’t have to be rain water for it to be a rain-“

-drop.

The first scream rings out.

The general’s head snaps over and Kirin takes a quiet stand and steps back.

“I never said it was just a rain shower, General.”

His eyes shoot back to Kirin’s, frantic and wide, still uncomprehending as dragonflame lights the air and more men fall. It’s an understandable confusion, he supposed.

Even in Elydia, it was rare to find a Beast Speaker.

“You gaze upon your crushed army and my massed forces, why do you smile?”. The captured general looked to the cloudless sky before answering “Because it’s about to rain”