Mother? What is she doing here?
Kean was surprised by the strange encounter in the nurse's tent. He hadn't thought, that she had a reason to go there. After all, she was in good condition.
She did have regular nausea and also morning sickness, but other than that, Kean never noticed something else.
His mother walked towards Kean, when she stood in front of him, she leaned down and gave him a light kiss on his forehead.
"You look tired. How about you go home and rest. Don't worry about training, father will surely understand."
"...mh."
Kean tried to answer back to her, but due to the bandages and the intolerable pain, he could only manage to let out a quiet noise. So instead he just looked at her and shook his head, telling his mother that way, that he understood.
Nurse Tanrel approached his mother and took her aside to a more distant chair.
Kean just thought nothing about it and stood up. He was ready to leave when he saw his mother, putting both her hands softly on her stomach, it looked like she was caressing it.
I wonder what they're talking about?
Kean didn't give it much thought, they were also too far away for him to understand even one single word. So he just decided to do as he was told and go home. If he wanted to, he could just ask his mother when she returned.
On the way home, Kean decided to fix his hair, hoping to manage to cover up some of the bandage. Did it work?
Not really as much as he had hoped.
Then as he was ready to go, he heard two people talk, a group of guys that went in his direction.
Isn't training supposed to end in more than an hour, what are they doing here? shit! I have to hide—fast!
Kean looked around him and hurriedly hid behind some wooden boxes. He wanted to wait for them to walk across, so he could just run home.
What made the situation worse was that they just decided to stand still, right where he had to walk by. So he just turned around and crawled through the bushes in search of another way.
If someone found me lingering around like this, they would think I'm an intruder and then i would surely be killed. These bandages just make it worse for me to be recognized.
After he crawled a few meters forward, he hit his head on something. It was a wall made out of wood.
"ahh...nghh! My head!"
Kean stood up to his knees, and held his hand to his head on the place where he hurt himself. He looked around to see if he could find a path where no one was around.
"This is not good, we lack the strength to defend ourselves against such foes! Not only that, but we also have no guarantee that the children of the village would survive."
Kean heard a furious voice complaining from what seemed to be the other side of the wall from him.
He found a little hole in the wooden wall and peeked through just to see what all the commotion could be about. Just as he was observing, Kean was able to see a silhouette that weirdly matched his father.
This hole is way too small for me to even see one thing. Maybe hearing will be enough to satisfy my curiosity? If they catch me eavesdropping, I would be in big trouble. The conversations in the conference hut are strictly forbidden for children.
"We already have sent out an expedition group of seventeen men—if they should encounter danger, then the messenger would rush over to inform us."
"What if they do not manage to return? How will we know what wanders around behind the walls?!"
One of the man slammed his fist against the table which was in the middle of the room, he stayed silent for a good time until he fixed his posture and said that the village is not specifically good in using their abilities.
"The group of men already sent us a message, they heard about a certain group that was being talked about in the nearest villages."
The man took a deep breath, as he got ready to explain further his eyes started to twitch.
"...It is said that they only wield fire as their weapon, burning everything and everyone that stand in their way—not only that, but they also are supposed to have tamed crawlers. If they can control them we would not stand a chance in a head on confrontation."
"We already heard word of them being close on the road northeast of us—and the closest village is a three days walk, we do not have any way of faster transportation at hand.."
The restless man answered, his worry was not very well hidden in the pile of emotions. One mistake could mean numerous deaths in the village, something that he wanted to avoid with all his might.
"Should we send the children to the village? Do we have enough time to evacuate and leave before something could happen to us?! We can't just stay here and hope for the best to occur to us"
What do the mean evacuate? Could it be that we are in danger?! What about mother, will she be able to stay safe?
"They are called the burners. Rumor is, that they have been terrorizing small villages for more than a decade—they burn down everything to the ground, leaving almost nothing behind. It is also said that they were never defeated."
Kean started to back up from the wall in front of him, he clearly did not understand one thing they were talking about, but from the tones that they carried with their words; he knew that it was nothing short of good.
He wanted to go back to his mother so that he could tell her about it, maybe even possible to warn her in that way. So he tried to remember everything as good as he could, if he just went and started saying that they were in danger, then nobody would believe him. Not that they would just believe him like that.
Something about a group that uses crawlers as a way of transportation, the nearest town is three days away... and what else? Oh right. We sent out people to look for information, i think that's about right.
Kean stood up in a hurry, not worrying about that he would be heard by the others, he rushed through and on the way home he bumped into several people, they complained and called him names, all while he was still running. When he arrived and looked inside, he called out for his mother hoping that she was there...but she was nowhere to find.
His whole body started to heat up from top to bottom, sweat ran down his forehead and along his cheeks till it reached his chin and dropped to the ground. He tried to wipe it away with his arm but it just didn't stop, his heart was beating faster than ever; he could feel it bumping against his chest, even the sound of it was hard to ignore.
In his head he kept reminding himself of one thing, 'breath, breath, breath, breath in and out.' He tried to calm himself down by just seeing the obvious, if she was not at home, then she was just probably somewhere else.
She's probably just on the way. Yes, it's that, she's just running late.
After he regained some sort of control over his body and calmed down to some extend, he closed his eyes for just a few seconds and as he slowly opened them, he saw—he was still in the bushes.
What? I'm still here, but how?!— I know I went back!
In the failed attempt of moving his body he realized two things. One is that he couldn't move anymore, he was glued to the ground. The second was that; that whole scenario of going home was just a part of his imagination.
That was a scenario he did not want to turn into a reality, he wanted to go and confirm that his mother was just waiting for him. That all the two men were discussing about was just a false alarm, only a conversation between two leaders.
Kean wanted to—he did, but he wasn't able to.
Every part of him was shaking to the point where he could not concentrate on his own thoughts.
Then he started to hear a strange sound, a sort of clicking. It was mostly silent around him, and the thing he could perceive the most, was the rustling of the bush that he was in. Kean looked around him, clearly confused by everything that was happening—then he realized that it came from him. His teeth were chattering.
Suddenly everything went silent, there were no birds twitching, no people walking around and having conversations. There was nothing, only for just a few seconds it felt like Kean went deaf, all until something happened which changed the whole entirety of the noise that Kean knew.
The ground had started to erupt.