The Children of Destiny

Chapter 17 - Just Like My Dream

"Well, this is where I drop you off," Kenai said as he landed.

He'd flown us as far as Thorn had taken me when I started my journey, but he couldn't go any further.

"I have to stay and help Thorn and the rest of the prophecy society. I'll see you around, hopefully."

He crouched down so that we could all get off his back and carefully placed Roxie on the ground. By this time, Scout was awake, though he still seemed a bit tired. I helped him down and let him lean on my shoulder.

"Let's hope we all live long enough to see you again," I chuckled, but there was some truth to my words.

There was a huge chance we could die, given that the whole world is divided on whether the war should end or not, and there was an even bigger chance that I'd never see my brother again.

"Goodbye, Kenai!" Maxine said. "We'll miss you! See you when the war is over."

I winced only loud enough for Scout to hear me, and he seemed to share my concerns.

"I'm sure we'll survive this," he tried to reassure me. "We have to, right?"

I didn't reply. Scout gave up on trying to make me feel better and just said his goodbyes to Kenai.

"Safe travels!" he called as Kenai flew away, back towards where I knew Thorn's den would be.

"I'm really going to miss him," I admitted. "Back when I was with my mother, he was my best friend. Even though I never said it, he knew I'd die for him. In fact, I almost did, once upon a time."

"You did what now?" Scout looked up at me with confusion in his eyes.

"I'm guessing you wanna hear about that?" I said.

"While we walk, please and thank you," Maxine replied sharply.

Roxie snarled her agreement. I could tell she and Maxine were both growing impatient and began walking, Scout still leaning on me. I told them the story of how Queen Falcon herself almost killed me and Kenai the day I found out I was part of the prophecy. After I was done, we just started swapping stories of all the trouble we'd gotten into before the whole prophecy thing hit us like a ton of bricks.

Apparently, Scout had tried playing fetch with a foxena once and it brought back a bloody bone instead of the stick he threw, which is why he was so scared of foxenas to this day. Roxie didn't seem to like that story. Maxine spoke about how she'd won a wrestling match with a dodger, but the dodger wasn't too happy about it. She then proceeded to show us a huge scar on her stomach and said that the dodger decided it wanted a rematch.

We then started telling each other about scars we'd gotten before. Scout told us how he'd tried to repair a huge machine and a huge, sharp piece fell on top of him. Luckily, he didn't suffer too much from the incident and only got a huge scar across his left leg. I didn't have many good scar stories, but there were still bruised areas from when I froze a crocodile, so I told them that story. Maxine said she had a nick in her ear from when she was wrestling a young foxena and it got a bit too rough and bit down really hard on her right ear. Roxie didn't like that story either.

Finally, night had fallen and we decided to set up camp. I found the cave I'd settled in the night I met Roxie and, lucky for us, it was still vacant. That night was a full moon, meaning we could still see quite well, and Scout suggested we try stargazing. He explained how elves read signs in the stars to see if hunting would be good the next day or if they'd have any other instances of good luck. Maxine turned down the offer because she was tired, and Roxie also stayed with her to make sure she wouldn't get hurt while Scout and I were away. We didn't stray too far from the cave since we wanted to actually be able to find it again and lay down next to each other in the sand. Scout began pointing out constellations he knew the names of to me, and I listened quietly. Soon, Scout ran out of constellations and just went silent, staring at the stars above us.