Chapter 21: Caged Bird

The two continued their friendly quarrels while completely ignoring everything around them, and they soon reached the Redwood Basin without even paying any attention.

Dora stopped in her tracks and turned towards him.

“Let’s go to the Den together tomorrow, okay? Bye,” She said and left without even listening to Rion’s reply.

“Okay—” he closed his mouth and stared at her departing figure until she vanished from his sight. Then he shifted his reluctant gaze towards his home at the west end of the settlement and thought, ’I just have to ask for forgiveness and somehow get their approval…’

“I can do this!”

He made his decision and stepped forward. His steps were slow and shaky, hinting at the storm of emotions raging in his heart.

He didn’t know how his parents would react to him sneaking out, especially to do something they didn’t want him to do.

It took him a couple of minutes to reach the hut with his shaken steps. He clenched his fist and took a deep breath to calm the storm of emotions before stepping closer to the hut.

He stopped before the hut’s door and placed his ear on it to hear what was going on inside, but he heard nothing; there was no sound for him to hear, only silence — stifling and heavy.

He raised an eyebrow and shifted slightly as he tried to peek inside through the slight gaps in the wooden door, but it proved to be useless as he was unable to see anything.

He took a few steps back and began to have second thoughts, ’Should I really tell them? Can’t I wait until they ask me? I wouldn’t have done it if they weren’t that adamant on stopping me.’

He bit his lower lip and it stung, but the pain pulled him out of the spiral of dark thoughts, ’I have really fallen to shit… to think that I’d justify my actions with their worries… Was I always that much of a coward?’

’Have I truly become a child after acting like one for so long?’ He thought, a ridiculing smile split his face into something ugly.

After a few minutes of introspection, he pulled the hut’s wooden door and looked inside.

His eyes fell on a blonde-haired woman in a black fabric gown sitting upon a short red wooden stool placed on the ground as she cut a bowl full of vegetables.

Lara raised her head and gazed at Rion with her oceanic blue eyes.

His breathing hitched, and he waited for her words. A few minutes passed, yet no words reached his awaiting ears.

He looked up in unpleasant surprise — Lara had begun to cut the vegetables. She had denied him even words.

A sting, far sharper than any wound he’d ever known, struck straight through his heart at her cruel silence.

He felt like sinking into the hard ground at the weight of her silence. Rion had run through countless scenarios of his parents’ reactions in his mind.

He pictured them being angry, disappointed, perhaps even heartbroken, but he had never imagined their silence… and now he was part of that very scenario.

’No… not this, please!’ He cried inwardly, and tears welled up at the corners of his eyes.

His lips parted to ask for forgiveness, to ask for punishment, but no words came out. Finally, tears slid down his face and fell onto the wooden floor.

He lowered his head and stood frozen at the doorway, the sound of the knife cutting through the vegetables and striking the wooden chopping board echoed within the Dragonslayer’s hut.

A few minutes later.

Lara stood up from her stool, her silent gaze fell on Rion for a brief moment before she walked over to the small pit in the floor.

She crouched down, set the bowl of chopped vegetables and the chopping board on the floor, then pulled a few short branches of white wood — the kind found further south of the Red and Black Mountains. Redwood was too stubborn to burn, so the tribe relied on white wood instead.

She placed the tinder into the pit, struck the flint, and a small flame flickered to life, and she placed the white wood on the small flame.

The crackles and smell of burning wood filled the hut, and Lara spoke, “How long are you going to stand there?”

Rion lifted his head and looked at her with eyes alit with fragile hope, but all he got was an impassive look.

His expression darkened, he gave her a slow nod and stepped further inside.

She placed a black round pot on the flames and asked, “Do you feel remorse for your actions?”

“I do,” he muttered the next moment.

She nodded, poured some oil into the pot and inquired without sparing him a glance, “What do you feel remorse for?”

He answered without a thought, “For sneaking out.”

Lara raised a brow and asked in a heavy tone, “Do you not feel remorse for going to the Den?”

“I don’t. I did it because that’s what I wanted,” he replied in a low voice.

Her expression darkened as she spoke, “I see… You did it because you wanted to. But what about what I want?”

She turned toward him; tears streamed down her face as she spoke, her voice trembling under the weight of emotion. “I told you how cruel the path of blood is, yet you wish to tread it… I told you how dangerous this world is, yet you still wish to see more of it… Why… Why can’t you just stay with us?”

Rion’s expression hardened at her selfish question. He looked into her warm, tearful eyes with his cold ones and asked darkly, “Is life truly worth living if all I’ll ever be is a caged bird?”

Those words were not Rion’s… no, they belonged to that boy who had spent all fifteen years of his flicking life as nothing more than a caged bird.

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