The Wanderers [6/6]
Title: The Wanderers
Pairing: Kris/Lay/Luhan
Genre: Friendship, Historical!AU
Rating: G
Word Count: 3,031 words
Summary: When the number of people you know only amount to fourteen in total, how difficult is it to leave them and start a new life for yourself with two others out of the fourteen?
A/N: I apologise for the weird ending. It's so off and sudden. :/
The first few years that they stayed at the island, Yixing and Kris were topics of gossip, and the housewives always talked about them when they were out at the streams washing the day’s laundry.
“…showed up with nothing but the clothes on their back and a rotten apple clutched in one of their hands…” They would mutter to each other with intrigue.
But as the years went by, the interest in them turned into something different. People generally avoided Kris, who had grown into an introverted young man. But people looked up to Yixing, who worked well with the villagers and he led them well. It didn’t take long before he was elevated to the status of an unofficial leader, someone who they all respected and asked advice from. He remained to be a kind person, but his past had instilled a steely quality into him and a heavy sense of sadness that blanketed the people who could look past his façade and into his darker emotions.
The village was huge, with a population of close to two hundred people, and Yixing still marveled at that fact every now and then. When the people finally decided to make it official that he was their leader, he felt immensely honoured, and promised to never let them regret putting their faith in him.
Of course, rumours still went around every once in a while. Ones of the long scar that stretched across Yixing’s back and of how Kris avoided Yixing like the plague, even though they had both arrived on the same boat. Neither never addressed their relationship with the other, and would immediately change the topic when asked. In Kris’ case, he was so anti-social that he holed himself up in his small mud hut at the border of the village so much so that no one ever really got the chance to ask him about Yixing.
Many people were astonished that Yixing had remained unmarried even as he got older and older. Most of the villagers there had gotten married at the average age of eighteen and possibly even younger. Children helped to tend the farms and bring the animals out to graze. Kris and Yixing found many mothers approaching them to introduce their daughters to them, but the both of them had turned down the offers. In Kris’ case, he just wished to remain solitary for the rest of his life. And in Yixing’s case, he just didn’t have the space in his heart to love anyone ever again. The two lost friendships had filled his heart with pain, and he couldn’t really focus on anyone else much in the relationships department.
And so, the two men remained surrounded by people but still so alone.
The days and months that went by turned into years, and Yixing had only just celebrated his twenty-seventh birthday when someone brought some strange news to him.
“Strange men have arrived.” The messenger panted. “Crazily tall, mean and wearing strange clothes. They talk weirdly too.”
Yixing hurried to the scene with many of his other trusted men.
When they arrived at the beach, Yixing saw a man about one head taller than him look down his nose at them.
“Well, now we have more of them.” He sniffed haughtily.
He, unlike the islanders, wore thick animal skins all over his body, and had a strange thing in his hands that he called a ‘binoculars’. They were poring over a yellowed piece of paper with unfamiliar shapes drawn on them, and foreign characters written on them with made no sense whatsoever to the illiterate locals. Frills and lace decorated his sleeves and collars, and he had powdered white hair that looked ridiculously rigid. Upon closer inspection, Yixing realized that the hair was fake.
“What is your business here?” Yixing asked them.
“None of your business, boy.” The man said, not lifting his eyes from the paper. “I told you to bring me to your leader!” The man hissed at the messenger.
“I am their leader.” Yixing asserted.
The man and his companion cast a look that spoke of their doubt at Yixing. One of them snorted with laughter and the other raised an eyebrow. “As if we should believe you.” But he seemed to say it with less conviction than his previous statement.
Yixing held his gaze until the latter grew uncomfortable and cleared his throat. “All right than, leader. I would like a tour of this island.”
At first, Yixing refused to lead them into the place where the villagers lived, until his men frisked the two explorers-much to their indignation-and took away their weapons.
As they walked through the village, both of them commented on how dreary the village was. “Oh, how droll.” One wrinkled his nose at the sight of a small naked boy bathing in the river with his friends.
“Look, no shoes!” The other pointed out, and burst into loud, raucous laughter. “Everyone here is so uncivilized! This would never happen back in England!”
“They’re so unfashionable, too. Even though we’re world-class explorers, we would never let ourselves go like that!” He scoffed, and turned his nose up at the children making mud pies by the side of the beaten path.
Yixing didn’t like the way they talked about the village, his village. It was his now, and he didn’t like how they belittled all the things around him just because they came from somewhere that they thought were classier.
“We have slaves to do that. What dirty work.” One commented when they saw the farmers tending to their crops.
“Slaves?” Yixing muttered under his breath. “Never heard of them.”
It seemed like there was so much more about the world that he didn’t know. He thought that he knew everything when he was on that little island of his when he was young. And when he arrived here, he learnt so many new things such as the names of different animals and insects that he thought that there was nothing left to learn. It looked like he was going to be proved wrong again. This time by foreigners that he didn’t even like.
Yixing tried his best to accommodate the two explorers, who were a very difficult pair to get along with. He didn’t like how they treated the villagers, but curiousity burned inside him when he realized that they knew so much more than him, and it was the only reason why he put up with them. Because it meant that he would learn something new about the great big space out there beyond this island.
It turned out that there were other fair-haired and blue-eyed people out there where the two people came from, and that they all spoke in the same manner that the explorers called ‘posh’. Many new inventions were talked of, and they constantly compared their ways of living to the villagers’. It turned out that they were here to satisfy the King’s curiousity of faraway lands, that they come from some sort of court. The King’s job was much like Yixing’s, except that the King had a lot more power. Yixing found it a little ridiculous that one man’s words could command so much power from the people, but he didn’t say that aloud since he knew that the two wouldn’t take it in stride if he chose to question their beloved King.
Most of the time, the explorers would go out during the day with Yixing as company and spend time scribbling down notes on parchment paper with a long quill by night. Yixing would sometimes come across beautiful drawings of the island’s scenery on these rolls of paper, and he would be fascinated by their drawing skills.
As time went by, the explorers began to get along rather well with Yixing. In a way, they had begun to respect him as they saw similar traits in both him and their King. They still liked to belittle the villagers, although it wasn’t as bad as before, and it was never in front of Yixing now. Still, it was an improvement, and Yixing began to enjoy their company.
And then came the day that they would have to leave.
They were on the beach, saying their last farewells, when one of them asked Yixing to be their guide for the rest of their trip.
“We’re going to visit many small islands like this one here.” The first explorer with the haughty tone of voice said. “And we need someone like you who we can trust to guide us around this place. We heard that you came from a different island yourself, so you should know some survival skills. What say you come with us, eh? We could explore the world.”
Yixing froze. Explore the world? The wide, open space out there? It was a tempting idea, but Yixing’s responsibilities towards the villagers held him back. “No, I’d much rather stay. But thank you.” Yixing shook hands with the two taller men and turned back to head to the village, leaving the explorers to work on packing their supplies for their trip.
“You should go.” An unfamiliar voice came from behind him.
Yixing whirled around and winced as the old injury on his back acted up. When he refocused his gaze on the figure standing by the rocks, he stepped backwards in surprise. “Kris.” He simply stated. He hadn’t spoken to Kris in years, so much so that he couldn’t even recognize his deep voice anymore. It saddened him to think that the three best friends that had set out years before were no more, with one dead and two strangers.
This man before him, this man that he had falsely accused of killing Luhan years before. Just the very sight of him standing there brought back the overwhelming feelings of loss, hurt and regret. He didn’t know how to react, whether to be angry or to avoid him completely. He knew that time when he had hurt Kris was when he was misguided by a veil of anger and grief. But even the knowledge of that wasn’t able to bring him to apologise to Kris, and he ended up avoiding Kris instead because the sight of him brought back unpleasant memories. He knew that the past few years, Kris had been blaming himself for Luhan’s death. Not because of what Yixing had said, but because he hadn’t been able to stop Luhan from falling off the boat in the first place even though they had been standing next to each other.
The two of them stood there, staring at each other for a few moments. Then, Yixing spoke. “I can’t. I have my own… responsibilities.”
“You’re responsible of being good to yourself.” Kris countered. “Do what you want, and you’ll be fulfilling that responsibility. No one can do that but you, and you’ll be unfair towards yourself if you deny yourself of happiness that you deserve.”
At that very moment, Yixing was experiencing some conflicting emotions. How could Kris still have Yixing’s interests at heart after being so cruelly hurt? How? Yixing felt guilt, sadness and shame surge up in his heart. How had he managed to still worry for someone after being ostracized for so long? Yixing felt his heart break bit by bit at the thought of all the hurt that Kris went through alone.
“Than… what about you?” Yixing replied softly. “You haven’t been very good to yourself either.”
They were broaching a subject that neither really wanted to touch on, and the silence that stretched between Yixing’s question and Kris’ reply was heavy and awkward, while at the same time full of quiet emotions.
“I… haven’t been a very good friend, to say at the least.” Kris murmured. “You, on the other hand, have always been there for Luhan and I, always the one taking the fall for us. Maybe it’s good that I bore the brunt of the hit this time. I mean…”
Yixing winced at Kris’ forlorn tone of voice. “Both of you were the most precious people in the world to me. When Luhan… left, I guess I kind of lost it, you know? I couldn’t really believe it and I didn’t realise that I was pushing away the other best friend that I had. That night, I had lost two friends instead of just one.” He felt Kris’ eyes on him, and he continued. “It’s just that… why were you so stupid? You could’ve come to me the next few days after I snapped at you, but you never did, and I thought that you never wanted a friend like me…”
Kris’ eyebrows furrowed in a frown and his eyes glinted madly. “What’re you talking about? You were the one who said you hated me! You were the one who drove me away!”
“I told you I never meant to!” Yixing scowled. “I apologised already, what more do you want?”
“Oh, so now we’re coming clean with our feelings, are we? You still haven’t forgiven me!”
The two of them continued to argue along that line, and suddenly, Yixing gave a strangled cry and threw himself at Kris. A fight broke out, and the two of them threw wild punches at the other. Yixing managed to catch Kris on the jaw, but felt the soft cartilage in his nose give way when Kris’ fist connected with his face. Still, the two of them continued to yell at each other, rolling around on the ground and getting sand on their clothing.
Finally, they broke apart and stared angrily at each other, panting loudly and nursing their own injuries.
Suddenly, Kris started to chuckle, and Yixing soon followed. And then, they began to laugh with carefree abandon, until their sides hurt and they had to lean against the rocks for support. All feelings of animosity melted away in those few minutes where they just laughed at the ridiculously immature way they conducted themselves in the past few minutes.
“Oh, what do we have here?” One of the explorers cut in. He had come around the corner to after he heard the sounds of a scuffle. He took in the sight of two injured young men, one of whom was the leader of the village, and the other the highly talked about village introvert.
Straightening up, Yixing took a deep breath. “I would like to join you two on your trip as your guide.”
Kris shot a surprised look at Yixing, who continued to explain that he wanted to see what the outside world was like, and that he needed to get away from the island for a while because of the stress that came with the job.
“Your job as our guide might be stressful too.” The explorer warned, but Yixing dismissed his words with his firm decision of joining them.
As they turned to head towards the boat, Yixing turned back and paused for a moment. “You could… you could always join us, you know.” He told Kris.
Kris smiled in a melancholy manner. “No, I’d like to stay here.”
Yixing knew what he meant. It meant that there was no way that Kris was going to set foot on another boat for the rest of his life, even if it meant living a long and dull one on the island. Even though he had known this, he felt a pang of disappointment in his heart. The thought of separating with Kris for the second time in his life so soon after making up was almost enough to make him stay. But he didn’t.
He waved at Kris from the boat until they had become a speck on the horizon. Kris returned Yixing’s gestures and when they were gone, he turned back and walked to the village slowly with a heavy heart.
As he passed by the numerous straw and mud huts, he noticed the children playing by the roadside, screaming loudly with laughter every now and then. He turned back to the main street, but out of the corner of his eye, he saw a man around their age with the same honey brown hair as himself. He immediately turned his gaze upon where the man had been, but when he saw no one but a large crowd of market-goers, he shook his head and decided that his eyes had been playing tricks on him.
On his way back, the village oracle stopped him and made him sit down in her tent for a reading despite his polite refusals. “I see something interesting cast upon your fate and I must explore it. Do not refuse my simple request.” She licked her lips in anticipation and bent over a small pile of animal bones, white and jaded from use.
“Pick a card, any card.” She presented a deck of cards to him, and gestured for him to choose a purple sheet of paper. Around them, the ornaments in her tent glittered and charms swayed quietly in the breeze. Wind chimes tinkled softly in the background and the oracle’s clothing rustled with every movement she made.
Once he had picked out a card and handed it to her, she peered at it and began to consult the bones for the meaning.
Once or twice, she gasped. Finally, she looked him straight in the eye and began to speak.
“Your past has been a grim one, my dear boy. But fret not; your future seems to be rather fine at the moment. You might meet a special girl, even! But I cannot tell you who, if not, where will the fun be in watching your romance unfold, hmm?”
Kris raised an eyebrow at the oracle’s nonsensical fortune telling, and stood up, dismissing himself by using the excuse that he was to run an errand before it turned dark.
As he lifted the flap to his tent, the setting sun’s rays shone a bright orange hue, hurting his eyes, causing him to squint against the glare of the sun. Behind him, the oracle shifted in her seat and spoke once more.
“Do not forget the boy with the honey coloured hair. He is nearer than you think.”
Pairing: Kris/Lay/Luhan
Genre: Friendship, Historical!AU
Rating: G
Word Count: 3,031 words
Summary: When the number of people you know only amount to fourteen in total, how difficult is it to leave them and start a new life for yourself with two others out of the fourteen?
A/N: I apologise for the weird ending. It's so off and sudden. :/
The first few years that they stayed at the island, Yixing and Kris were topics of gossip, and the housewives always talked about them when they were out at the streams washing the day’s laundry.
“…showed up with nothing but the clothes on their back and a rotten apple clutched in one of their hands…” They would mutter to each other with intrigue.
But as the years went by, the interest in them turned into something different. People generally avoided Kris, who had grown into an introverted young man. But people looked up to Yixing, who worked well with the villagers and he led them well. It didn’t take long before he was elevated to the status of an unofficial leader, someone who they all respected and asked advice from. He remained to be a kind person, but his past had instilled a steely quality into him and a heavy sense of sadness that blanketed the people who could look past his façade and into his darker emotions.
The village was huge, with a population of close to two hundred people, and Yixing still marveled at that fact every now and then. When the people finally decided to make it official that he was their leader, he felt immensely honoured, and promised to never let them regret putting their faith in him.
Of course, rumours still went around every once in a while. Ones of the long scar that stretched across Yixing’s back and of how Kris avoided Yixing like the plague, even though they had both arrived on the same boat. Neither never addressed their relationship with the other, and would immediately change the topic when asked. In Kris’ case, he was so anti-social that he holed himself up in his small mud hut at the border of the village so much so that no one ever really got the chance to ask him about Yixing.
Many people were astonished that Yixing had remained unmarried even as he got older and older. Most of the villagers there had gotten married at the average age of eighteen and possibly even younger. Children helped to tend the farms and bring the animals out to graze. Kris and Yixing found many mothers approaching them to introduce their daughters to them, but the both of them had turned down the offers. In Kris’ case, he just wished to remain solitary for the rest of his life. And in Yixing’s case, he just didn’t have the space in his heart to love anyone ever again. The two lost friendships had filled his heart with pain, and he couldn’t really focus on anyone else much in the relationships department.
And so, the two men remained surrounded by people but still so alone.
The days and months that went by turned into years, and Yixing had only just celebrated his twenty-seventh birthday when someone brought some strange news to him.
“Strange men have arrived.” The messenger panted. “Crazily tall, mean and wearing strange clothes. They talk weirdly too.”
Yixing hurried to the scene with many of his other trusted men.
When they arrived at the beach, Yixing saw a man about one head taller than him look down his nose at them.
“Well, now we have more of them.” He sniffed haughtily.
He, unlike the islanders, wore thick animal skins all over his body, and had a strange thing in his hands that he called a ‘binoculars’. They were poring over a yellowed piece of paper with unfamiliar shapes drawn on them, and foreign characters written on them with made no sense whatsoever to the illiterate locals. Frills and lace decorated his sleeves and collars, and he had powdered white hair that looked ridiculously rigid. Upon closer inspection, Yixing realized that the hair was fake.
“What is your business here?” Yixing asked them.
“None of your business, boy.” The man said, not lifting his eyes from the paper. “I told you to bring me to your leader!” The man hissed at the messenger.
“I am their leader.” Yixing asserted.
The man and his companion cast a look that spoke of their doubt at Yixing. One of them snorted with laughter and the other raised an eyebrow. “As if we should believe you.” But he seemed to say it with less conviction than his previous statement.
Yixing held his gaze until the latter grew uncomfortable and cleared his throat. “All right than, leader. I would like a tour of this island.”
At first, Yixing refused to lead them into the place where the villagers lived, until his men frisked the two explorers-much to their indignation-and took away their weapons.
As they walked through the village, both of them commented on how dreary the village was. “Oh, how droll.” One wrinkled his nose at the sight of a small naked boy bathing in the river with his friends.
“Look, no shoes!” The other pointed out, and burst into loud, raucous laughter. “Everyone here is so uncivilized! This would never happen back in England!”
“They’re so unfashionable, too. Even though we’re world-class explorers, we would never let ourselves go like that!” He scoffed, and turned his nose up at the children making mud pies by the side of the beaten path.
Yixing didn’t like the way they talked about the village, his village. It was his now, and he didn’t like how they belittled all the things around him just because they came from somewhere that they thought were classier.
“We have slaves to do that. What dirty work.” One commented when they saw the farmers tending to their crops.
“Slaves?” Yixing muttered under his breath. “Never heard of them.”
It seemed like there was so much more about the world that he didn’t know. He thought that he knew everything when he was on that little island of his when he was young. And when he arrived here, he learnt so many new things such as the names of different animals and insects that he thought that there was nothing left to learn. It looked like he was going to be proved wrong again. This time by foreigners that he didn’t even like.
Yixing tried his best to accommodate the two explorers, who were a very difficult pair to get along with. He didn’t like how they treated the villagers, but curiousity burned inside him when he realized that they knew so much more than him, and it was the only reason why he put up with them. Because it meant that he would learn something new about the great big space out there beyond this island.
It turned out that there were other fair-haired and blue-eyed people out there where the two people came from, and that they all spoke in the same manner that the explorers called ‘posh’. Many new inventions were talked of, and they constantly compared their ways of living to the villagers’. It turned out that they were here to satisfy the King’s curiousity of faraway lands, that they come from some sort of court. The King’s job was much like Yixing’s, except that the King had a lot more power. Yixing found it a little ridiculous that one man’s words could command so much power from the people, but he didn’t say that aloud since he knew that the two wouldn’t take it in stride if he chose to question their beloved King.
Most of the time, the explorers would go out during the day with Yixing as company and spend time scribbling down notes on parchment paper with a long quill by night. Yixing would sometimes come across beautiful drawings of the island’s scenery on these rolls of paper, and he would be fascinated by their drawing skills.
As time went by, the explorers began to get along rather well with Yixing. In a way, they had begun to respect him as they saw similar traits in both him and their King. They still liked to belittle the villagers, although it wasn’t as bad as before, and it was never in front of Yixing now. Still, it was an improvement, and Yixing began to enjoy their company.
And then came the day that they would have to leave.
They were on the beach, saying their last farewells, when one of them asked Yixing to be their guide for the rest of their trip.
“We’re going to visit many small islands like this one here.” The first explorer with the haughty tone of voice said. “And we need someone like you who we can trust to guide us around this place. We heard that you came from a different island yourself, so you should know some survival skills. What say you come with us, eh? We could explore the world.”
Yixing froze. Explore the world? The wide, open space out there? It was a tempting idea, but Yixing’s responsibilities towards the villagers held him back. “No, I’d much rather stay. But thank you.” Yixing shook hands with the two taller men and turned back to head to the village, leaving the explorers to work on packing their supplies for their trip.
“You should go.” An unfamiliar voice came from behind him.
Yixing whirled around and winced as the old injury on his back acted up. When he refocused his gaze on the figure standing by the rocks, he stepped backwards in surprise. “Kris.” He simply stated. He hadn’t spoken to Kris in years, so much so that he couldn’t even recognize his deep voice anymore. It saddened him to think that the three best friends that had set out years before were no more, with one dead and two strangers.
This man before him, this man that he had falsely accused of killing Luhan years before. Just the very sight of him standing there brought back the overwhelming feelings of loss, hurt and regret. He didn’t know how to react, whether to be angry or to avoid him completely. He knew that time when he had hurt Kris was when he was misguided by a veil of anger and grief. But even the knowledge of that wasn’t able to bring him to apologise to Kris, and he ended up avoiding Kris instead because the sight of him brought back unpleasant memories. He knew that the past few years, Kris had been blaming himself for Luhan’s death. Not because of what Yixing had said, but because he hadn’t been able to stop Luhan from falling off the boat in the first place even though they had been standing next to each other.
The two of them stood there, staring at each other for a few moments. Then, Yixing spoke. “I can’t. I have my own… responsibilities.”
“You’re responsible of being good to yourself.” Kris countered. “Do what you want, and you’ll be fulfilling that responsibility. No one can do that but you, and you’ll be unfair towards yourself if you deny yourself of happiness that you deserve.”
At that very moment, Yixing was experiencing some conflicting emotions. How could Kris still have Yixing’s interests at heart after being so cruelly hurt? How? Yixing felt guilt, sadness and shame surge up in his heart. How had he managed to still worry for someone after being ostracized for so long? Yixing felt his heart break bit by bit at the thought of all the hurt that Kris went through alone.
“Than… what about you?” Yixing replied softly. “You haven’t been very good to yourself either.”
They were broaching a subject that neither really wanted to touch on, and the silence that stretched between Yixing’s question and Kris’ reply was heavy and awkward, while at the same time full of quiet emotions.
“I… haven’t been a very good friend, to say at the least.” Kris murmured. “You, on the other hand, have always been there for Luhan and I, always the one taking the fall for us. Maybe it’s good that I bore the brunt of the hit this time. I mean…”
Yixing winced at Kris’ forlorn tone of voice. “Both of you were the most precious people in the world to me. When Luhan… left, I guess I kind of lost it, you know? I couldn’t really believe it and I didn’t realise that I was pushing away the other best friend that I had. That night, I had lost two friends instead of just one.” He felt Kris’ eyes on him, and he continued. “It’s just that… why were you so stupid? You could’ve come to me the next few days after I snapped at you, but you never did, and I thought that you never wanted a friend like me…”
Kris’ eyebrows furrowed in a frown and his eyes glinted madly. “What’re you talking about? You were the one who said you hated me! You were the one who drove me away!”
“I told you I never meant to!” Yixing scowled. “I apologised already, what more do you want?”
“Oh, so now we’re coming clean with our feelings, are we? You still haven’t forgiven me!”
The two of them continued to argue along that line, and suddenly, Yixing gave a strangled cry and threw himself at Kris. A fight broke out, and the two of them threw wild punches at the other. Yixing managed to catch Kris on the jaw, but felt the soft cartilage in his nose give way when Kris’ fist connected with his face. Still, the two of them continued to yell at each other, rolling around on the ground and getting sand on their clothing.
Finally, they broke apart and stared angrily at each other, panting loudly and nursing their own injuries.
Suddenly, Kris started to chuckle, and Yixing soon followed. And then, they began to laugh with carefree abandon, until their sides hurt and they had to lean against the rocks for support. All feelings of animosity melted away in those few minutes where they just laughed at the ridiculously immature way they conducted themselves in the past few minutes.
“Oh, what do we have here?” One of the explorers cut in. He had come around the corner to after he heard the sounds of a scuffle. He took in the sight of two injured young men, one of whom was the leader of the village, and the other the highly talked about village introvert.
Straightening up, Yixing took a deep breath. “I would like to join you two on your trip as your guide.”
Kris shot a surprised look at Yixing, who continued to explain that he wanted to see what the outside world was like, and that he needed to get away from the island for a while because of the stress that came with the job.
“Your job as our guide might be stressful too.” The explorer warned, but Yixing dismissed his words with his firm decision of joining them.
As they turned to head towards the boat, Yixing turned back and paused for a moment. “You could… you could always join us, you know.” He told Kris.
Kris smiled in a melancholy manner. “No, I’d like to stay here.”
Yixing knew what he meant. It meant that there was no way that Kris was going to set foot on another boat for the rest of his life, even if it meant living a long and dull one on the island. Even though he had known this, he felt a pang of disappointment in his heart. The thought of separating with Kris for the second time in his life so soon after making up was almost enough to make him stay. But he didn’t.
He waved at Kris from the boat until they had become a speck on the horizon. Kris returned Yixing’s gestures and when they were gone, he turned back and walked to the village slowly with a heavy heart.
As he passed by the numerous straw and mud huts, he noticed the children playing by the roadside, screaming loudly with laughter every now and then. He turned back to the main street, but out of the corner of his eye, he saw a man around their age with the same honey brown hair as himself. He immediately turned his gaze upon where the man had been, but when he saw no one but a large crowd of market-goers, he shook his head and decided that his eyes had been playing tricks on him.
On his way back, the village oracle stopped him and made him sit down in her tent for a reading despite his polite refusals. “I see something interesting cast upon your fate and I must explore it. Do not refuse my simple request.” She licked her lips in anticipation and bent over a small pile of animal bones, white and jaded from use.
“Pick a card, any card.” She presented a deck of cards to him, and gestured for him to choose a purple sheet of paper. Around them, the ornaments in her tent glittered and charms swayed quietly in the breeze. Wind chimes tinkled softly in the background and the oracle’s clothing rustled with every movement she made.
Once he had picked out a card and handed it to her, she peered at it and began to consult the bones for the meaning.
Once or twice, she gasped. Finally, she looked him straight in the eye and began to speak.
“Your past has been a grim one, my dear boy. But fret not; your future seems to be rather fine at the moment. You might meet a special girl, even! But I cannot tell you who, if not, where will the fun be in watching your romance unfold, hmm?”
Kris raised an eyebrow at the oracle’s nonsensical fortune telling, and stood up, dismissing himself by using the excuse that he was to run an errand before it turned dark.
As he lifted the flap to his tent, the setting sun’s rays shone a bright orange hue, hurting his eyes, causing him to squint against the glare of the sun. Behind him, the oracle shifted in her seat and spoke once more.
“Do not forget the boy with the honey coloured hair. He is nearer than you think.”