Falles 47, 1983 [E.o.S (7)]

“Now honey, you need to stay still so I can clean this up. This is one nasty scrape.” Mom said, trying to pin me down so she could wipe at the big cut on my leg, the splintery wooden chair squeaking as I squirmed around.

“Mom it stings! Ow, quit it! Ouch!” I whined. The cut looked big and nasty, but it stopped hurting on the walk back home. Mom was just making a big fuss over things, as usual.

“I know sweetie, but if we don’t clean it now, there’s a good chance it’ll get infected, and then we’d have to cut your leg off before it spreads to the rest of you!”

“Whaaaaat?! Really!? But that’s my favorite leg! And I need both of them!”

Mom chuckled quietly. “Hhhhm, well, probably not. It’ll probably just turn all green, gross, icky, and hurt like I-can’t tell-ya for a while. Worse than if you’d just let me clean it, I promise you that. So please just sit still and let me clean it. You’re a tough boy, right? You can take it.”

“Hmph, I am a tough boy. Okay, I guess….” I stuck my leg out at Mom and grit my teeth.

“Hehe, that’s my little man. This will only take a second, close your eyes if you need to.”

“I don’t need to! Just do it quick.” I took a deep breath and held it, puffing out my cheeks.

Mom bunched the wet rag up tightly in her hand. I don’t know what was on it, but it smelled really bad. Like pickles. And farts. I coughed, covering my mouth with my hand and pulling my head back as far away from it as possible.

“Alright, and go!” Mom said, smushing the rag against the cut and scrubbing fast.

“Nnnnngh!” Ow! Ow! Ow ow ow OW! My leg! My leg was melting!

“It’s okay it’s okay! Almost done, hold on.” Mom scrubbed faster for a second and then pulled away. “There! All done!”

I closed my eyes tight and took a big breath of air through my nose. Nope, wasn’t gonna cry. Wasn’t gonna cry. “It felt like my leg was melting.” I sniffed out.

Mom scooped me up in a hug, tucking my head into her shoulder. “Aww, I’m sorry sweetie. You did such a good job though, just like I knew you would.”

I sniffed again and buried my head into her fluffy red hair. It was super soft, warm, and smelled like strawberries. Mom laughed and rubbed my back gently. I smiled. It felt nice.

Mom walked the couple of steps that was our kitchen space over to our small table. It was weathered and beaten, just like everything else, with an ash gray look to it. She pulled out a chair and sat me down in it, patting me on the head.

“So, Mister Man, are you gonna tell me how you got that nasty old thing?”

“Yeah, some big jerks were picking on Gene again down by the bar!”

Mom frowned, her eyebrows scrunching up. She pulled another chair out for herself, the rough wood of the chair and floor scraping together in a way that made my teeth hurt. “Oh yeah? And what were you doing down by the bar? You know that part of the Ring is dangerous. I told you not to go down there by yourself.”

“I know Mom, but I went to Gene’s shack to play with him, and his dad said that two of his friends had already grabbed him and that they went down to the bar. But Gene doesn’t have any other friends. Well, none that would visit his place at least. I think his parents scare them.”

Mom nodded, her eyebrows scrunching closer. “I see. To be honest, I don’t blame them. Gene’s parents can be very……difficult to work with. Anyway, so you ran down there to help Gene out? That’s very brave of you.”

I smiled wide, my cheeks warming with pride. “Mmmhm! I ran down there as fast as I could. I wasn’t sure where he was, but I heard all the yelling and crying when I got close. They had him backed into one of the housing end alleys.”

“Okay. And who is ‘they?’”

I frowned. “Harist and Loke.”

Mom and Dad say I shouldn’t use ‘hate’ when talking about people. But I hate Harist and Loke. They’re two older kids from Ring Four and the biggest bullies I know, who always come down to Ring Five to pick on the kids down here who weren’t strong enough to fight back.

Mom’s bright red eyes widened. “Harist and Loke? But they’re Adjusted! Emmanuel, you’re not supposed to get anywhere near them. They could kill you!”

I shifted my eyes from Mom’s face.

“Emmanuel?!”

I looked back at her and glared. “Mom, what was I supposed to do? Just leave Gene and let those two big bullies hit him until he can’t stand up again? Gene’s my friend, and I wasn’t going to abandon him just so I wouldn’t get hurt.”

Mom made a sheepish face, cheeks puffing as her lips pulled into a thin line. “You’re right. I’m terrified of you getting in over your head, but I’m also proud of you for standing up for him. That’s the right thing to do, even if it is dangerous. So…” she trailed off, looking over me again. “What exactly happened? No offense honey, you’re a strong boy,” She grinned and reached out to me, pinching my cheek, “And a natural born scrapper, but you’d end up with a lot worse than just that nasty scrape on your leg in a real fight with those two.”

I giggled and pushed her hand away. “Hehe Mom stop!” Once she let go, I grinned smugly. I was proud of myself for this part. “But you’re right, it wasn’t a fight. There’s a lot of junk behind Grindel’s, right? I climbed it to get on top of the roof.” I acted it out with my hands, my little finger guy climbing the giant mountain of junk that I’d used for a staircase to get on top of Grindel’s bar. “Once you get on top of the building, you can jump-”

Mom gasped, covering her mouth with her hands. “Jump? Honey, Grindel’s is four stories tall. If—”

“Mom! I knoooow. If I fell off the roof, or if I missed my jump, I would die.” I waved Mom’s concern away with my hand. “Don’t worry.” I gestured to myself, using both hands to highlight my whole person, “As you can see by my still being alive, I’ve never messed up that jump, and I’ve done it a bunch of times by now.” Which, you know, wasn’t completely true. I totally messed it up the first time I tried. If I hadn’t caught onto the ledge……well, even with the ledge, I still needed Dr. Harme to lend me a potion to heal up. So let’s just not tell Mom about that.

Mom’s lips pulled tight, clearly not happy with me, but she let it drop and allowed me to continue.

“Okay so anyway, jump off the back of Grindel’s towards and land on the houses behind it, roll for a smooth landing.” My fingers played it out, Mom looking like she was eating lemon the whole time, then I mimed a few long rectangles for the housing blocks. “Once you get on the house blocks, it’s easy pickings to get around the whole district! They’re super long and all connected together so you can just walk over everyone, anywhere you need to get to. Well, almost anywhere. Near the front where everything is nicer, especially right by the Gate, none of the buildings are close together, and even I’m not going to try jumping across the street.”

“Mmhmm. That’s interesting.”

Mom’s tone was much less impressed than it should have been, in my opinion. I was showing her my special shortcut, a secret path to get around the Ring super quick, but she sounded more like the time I discovered the exact number of flushes our toilet’s mana crystal had at full charge (Thirty Seven). I’m still not even sure what she was upset about. We have not once been surprised by the toilet suddenly not flushing since, which I thought was huge. “Go on.”

I pouted a bit, but kept going.

“So, like I said, you could hear Gene and the other two from pretty far away. I ran over the housing blocks right to them.”

My teeth clenched as I remembered looking down over the scene. Harist and Loke had gotten Gene backed up into one of the housing complexes many u-bends, leaving him no where left to run. Poor Gene—Lanky, gangly Gene—had been curled up into a ball, hands clutching his head, yells slowly devolving into painful whimpers while Harist and Loke towered over him, assaulting him with taunts and insults, punctuated with kicks to the ribs for good measure.

Even from my angle up on the roof, I’d been able to tell Gene was in bad shape, noticeably battered and leaking blood in several places. How long had it been going on? These two bullies beating on a small child, people not even twenty feet away hiding scared in their homes, too afraid to go out and help.

Not that I could really blame them. This kind of thing happened all the time down here in the Fifth. Some jerk Adjusted would come down from one of the higher Rings looking for some ‘fun’ with a Mundane, which meant basically anything the Adjusted wanted. Wasn’t much the Mundane could do about it.

You could try and defend yourself I guess, but that was hard considering even Adjusted children could put up a decent fight against the average overworked, undernourished Mundane adult. If you tried to fight and lost, it’d be worse than if you just took the beating in the first place.

Of course both of those were better than the third option, which was fighting back and winning. No, you didn’t do that. Normally they just came down to the Fifth for random acts, no real target in mind. But being beaten by a Mundane? How embarrassing! No one with any status could live that down.

So they would hate you specifically for it. Everyone in the Fifth knew a story or two of someone or another who’d finally had enough of the harassment, fought back, and actually managed to send the jerk packing somehow, either a crafty plan or just good luck. For a few days, or maybe longer, the person would know peace.

Then the Adjusted would come back. And they’d bring friends. Maybe their whole family. Hired thugs? It didn’t matter. It just mattered that they would come for you and they’d make you pay for the humiliation. It was never pretty.

No one wanted that. So they sat scared in their ramshackle houses, taking cover behind wooden board covered windows and bug-eaten blinds in some vain hope that it would make the bad noises stop and just go away.

But I wasn’t scared. No way some big headed jerks were going to scare me into submission. If they wanted to fight, I would fight, kicking and screaming.

“Emmanuel! Honey, are you okay? Is something wrong?” Mom’s honey sweet voice called out, sidelining my train of thought.

“Oh, uh, yeah Mom?”

“Are you okay sweetie? You’re really tensing up.” She reached her hands across the table and grabbed my fists, which were white knuckle tight.

I let out a deep sigh and unclenched my fists, then nodded my head at Mom. “Yeah, sorry. I was remembering looking down on them and……they really messed up Gene.”

Mom nodded and let go of my hands, withdrawing hers back to the other side of the table. “Mm. It must have been hard to see. So what happened then?”

“Well, my original plan was to call out to them and taunt them into chasing me—” Mom let out a deep sigh and pinched the bridge of her nose, but I kept soldering on before she could say anything, “—because I know they can’t catch me, but lucky for me, there was an even better option up on the roof I’d been on. I guess they were doing construction or something, because there were a ton of materials laying around, including a huge wheel-bucket of…uh……” I blanked, the word slipping from my tongue, “That……gooey, gray sticky brick stuff?”

Mom chuckled. “Mortar.”

I snapped my fingers at her with delight. “Yes! Mortar! Thanks Mom. So yeah, there was this huh-yuge wheel-bucket absolutely stuffed with mortar, just resting near a pile of bricks, couple of hammers, lots of stuff. Before doing anything else, I cleared a path for the wheel-bucket and pushed it a couple of feet from the edge of the roof. It was so heavy, I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to move it, but once the wheels started turning, I juuust managed it. Then I picked up a hammer and threw it right at the back of Loke’s big dumb head.”

I slammed my hand down on the table with a loud bang, mouth in a wide smile.

“Bam! Direct hit! Sounded just like hitting a reilanut. Hehe, Loke dropped right there, and couldn’t get up without help from Harist. When they picked up the hammer and turned around to see me standing there on the roof, another hammer in my hand…” I shook my head and let out a low whistle. “Man were they maaaaad. I mean they skipped straight from tomato red and went all the way into eggplant purple mad. For a second, they both just kinda stood there, so I threw another hammer at Loke. I dunno if the hit to the back of the head made him dumber than usual, but the idiot didn’t even try to dodge. He just flinched back and Harist had to step in to knock it away before his little brother got a face-full of freaking hammer.”

I chuckled impishly and rubbed my hands together. Hitting Loke with that hammer had been awesome.

Mom’s lips ticked downward slightly, but she said nothing.

“They totally forgot all about Gene, charging me like a couple of bulls, tearing across the packed dirt ground straight for my position. I stood ready, lobbing a couple of heavy brick pieces at them for good measure before ducking behind the wheel-bucket and bracing, ready to push it off as soon as they were in position. Harist and Loke graciously obliged, standing side by side directly below me. As they reached up the side of the house, grasping for windowsills, out-jutted boards and anything else to climb up with, I threw myself against the bucket of mortar to shove it forward and off the edge.”

My mouth was open to continue, but Mom cut me off, glimmering ruby eyes wide with shock. “Emmanuel! Were you trying to kill them?!” She sounded a combination of incredulous and outraged at the thought.

I instinctively recoiled back in my chair, waving my hands in front of me as a shield against any oncoming lecture. “No way! It was just meant to keep them off balance and slow them down. Come on Mom, you know I wouldn’t do that.” I snorted quietly to myself and mumbled out, “Not that I’d be sad if it had killed them.”

I shouldn’t have.

“Emmanuel.” Mom snapped at me. Ohp, here we go. “That’s enough. You know how your father and I feel about that kind of thing. Don’t stoop to their level. Throwing a hammer at them to take their attention away from Gene is one thing, and honestly I’m not happy that you’re so pleased about hitting Loke in the head like that. Trying to kill them is another thing entirely. We don’t just get to make the call on who lives and who dies. That’s not how it works.”

My eyes about rolled out of my head. ‘Oh right, right. Always let them hit you and then you can defend yourself, but actually dealing with it and fighting back makes you just as bad. I forgot. How silly of me. Thanks for reminding me, Mom.’ Is what I wanted to say, but I liked having my head attached to my shoulders. So I kept it to myself. Besides, Mom and Dad and I had had that conversation a couple of times already, and I really didn’t feel like going through it again.

So I took a breath and opened my mouth, acting like I was going to say something, but then paused and ‘thought about it’ for a couple of seconds. Then I put on a quick apology face and let out an appropriately defeated sigh. “*sigh* You’re right Mom. Sorry. Even though they do all that bad stuff, that’s not a good reason to kill someone. Normal people can’t take that kind of responsibility into their own hands.”

As expected, the serious air around Mom cleared up in an instant. She smiled and reached across the table, ruffling my long, bark colored hair. “That’s my boy. Good to see that you do listen to your father and I when we talk.” She laughed and continued, looking at me with a serious, yet gentle expression, “I know that particular point can be hard to understand and even harder to agree with sometimes, but you’ve got a good heart Emmanuel. Your dad and I are both very proud of you.”

Aww man, now I feel kinda guilty. Not nearly guilty enough to come clean though. So I just put on a ‘good-boy’ smile and nodded at her.

“Thanks Mom, I try. So, I threw myself against the mortar bucket to give it a heave ho off the roof. No good. The boards at the very edge of the roof were swollen and warped, forming a raised lip I hadn’t noticed. Just a couple of inches tall, but that was enough to catch the wheels. Without wheels there was no way I was moving this thing,I just don’t weigh enough. Harist and Loke were climbing quick, and I had about twenty more seconds before things went to total poop. I just knew ‘If I get caught up here, I’m not leaving’, and—not even gonna lie Mom, I totally panicked. I scrambled around the roof, desperately hunting for anything I could use to help.”

I frantically scattered my hands across the surface of the table, whipping my head back and forth in a mimed panic. “Uh, uh!? Bricks? No that won’t help! More hammers? Ugh, no! Fifteen seconds Emmanuel! I almost cut and went back to Plan ‘Just Freaking Run Away’, when I saw it. Partly hidden behind a tall stack of planks, there was a big, beautiful, sledge-axe. Axe-sledge? I’m not sure what part is technically the front. Either way, I bolted across the roof over to it, snatching it up and running back as quick as I could.”

My heart raced as I got to the climax of my encounter with Harist and Loke. I told Mom that I was panicked, but I think that was underselling it a little. I’d been freaking the heck out, and was this close to wizzing myself in fright. Plus frankly, I came up with a few smarter ideas than this stupid plan after I started, but had already been way too deep in to back out. We’ll leave that part out to Mom too though.

“Ten seconds before Harist and Loke reach the roof. No time left. I stepped right up to the side of the bucket without a second glance, precariously close to the edge of the roof, hefted my new best friend up high over my head—Axe head first, and brought it down with as much force as I could muster. ‘WHA-CRACK!’ The axe smashed into the swollen board, biting right into the wood. Five seconds left. A spray of wood dust as I yanked the axe out of the ground, heavy bullets of sweat just pouring off of my face.”

I jumped up and onto the top of my chair and raised my arms above my head as high as I could, hands clasping the shaft of a great invisible sledge-axe. “Harist and Loke were reaching for the ledge, and I was out of time! With a desperate roar, I raised my weapon once more into the air and brought it down like a wrathful bolt of lightning! HAAAAAAAAA!”

I swung my invisible ‘weapon’ down towards the middle of the table. “KAAAAAAKROW!”

Mom jumped back at the force of my yell, grimacing and digging a pinkie finger into her ear. “His Majesty’s Mane, Emmanuel. How many times do we need to have the ‘indoor voice’ talk?”

I rubbed the back of my head sheepishly. “Oops, sorry Mom. I got kinda caught up in it.”

She chuckled and shrugged, re-leaning back into her chair to get comfortable again. “Hmm hmm, You always have been our little performer. I suppose it’s alright, this time.” She winked.

I grinned and moved into the middle our of cramped kitchen, giving me as much room as possible to act out the finale. “I’m not sure what happened. Maybe where’d I’d hit was extra crappy wood, or the whole roof had some sort of structural issue. A whole colony of ravenous termites? Personally, I think I just hit it real good. There was a huge cracking noise— like I just cut down a whole dang tree, the wood practically exploding into a dense burst of splinters that blasted out everywhere. I shut my eyes tight, the tiny shards of wood striking all over my face, though none actually stabbed me, thank His Majesty for that. Speaking of,” I paused for a quick prayer of thanks to the Godking. That wasn’t something I did a lot, but I really liked having both my eyes. I’m sure you can see why.

“Harist and Loke screamed in confused anger as jagged wood chips rained down on them, promising a fittingly painful punishment for ‘disrespecting’ them like this. And as they pulled themselves up, things really went belly up. Our particular section of the roof groaned under all the weight, then sagged a few inches. The bucket of mortar rolled forward on the new incline, wheels catching on the jagged cut. Crack! Crack crack crack! The fracture in the wood began to spread rapidly. Aggressively, like stepping on paper thin ice.”

“The roof groaned again, then suddenly plummeted several more inches. As gravity began to take over to finish the job, a heavy blanket of silence smothered all three of us, time seeming to slow as I turned to look at Harist and Loke. They were staring at me, and we locked eyes. Surprisingly, there was no hate. Just shock and fear. I never thought it’d happen, but we were actually on the same page for once. And then the roof collapsed.”

As I spoke, Mom’s face changed from shock, to fear, to abject horror. She shut her eyes tight and muttered a fast prayer to the Godking. “Godking help me.” She whispered, a forlorn emptiness in her voice. “You’re going to get yourself killed someday, I just know it. Always rushing in with no regard to your own safety, always looking to start a fight with anyone who looks at you a little funny.”

I grimaced, the sadness in Mom’s voice hitting me like a sudden punch in the gut. “I-wh-tha-that’s not true!”

Mom rested her elbows on the table, steepling her hands together and facing me down with the ‘Mom stare’. “Really? Emmanuel, you come home with injuries more often than not. And I mean that literally. I keep track.”

Oooh-kay, I didn’t know she did that. It’d be useful to keep that in mind. “Okay yeah, but most of those are just small fights with the kids around here. You know like, if some jerk pushes me down or I see some other kids getting harassed or something, I’m gonna go and throw a few punches. That’s no big deal, really.”

Mom sighed, closed her eyes, and took in a deep breath behind her hands before opening her eyes again. “And what about the ones that are a big deal, Emmanuel? Those are the ones I’m talking about and you know it.”

I shook my head. I really didn’t want to talk about this right now. “No Mom, I really don’t. I can’t even remember the last time something seriously bad happened.”

Mom scoffed at me. “Emmanuel, you were literally in the middle of saying how the roof of a three story roof collapsed underneath you. That’s not something seriously bad to you?!”

I shoulda known that would happen. Guess we’re talking about it. I tried to play it cool, shrugging my shoulders and cocking my head to the side. “I mean, not really? Besides this one scrape I’m totally fine. If I got hurt really bad it would be, but I didn’t. Can I…just finish my story?”

That was single handedly the wrongest wrong answer I had ever answered wrong.

Mom’s brilliant red eyes sharpened, hardening into two flaming daggers that beamed warning signals directly into my brain. I shivered, sweat beading on my forehead, my hackles prickling. I’d never seen Mom so intense before. “Oh, is that how it is? Because you didn’t get hurt it’s not a big deal? Sit. Apparently Momma needs to explain something to you.” She barked at me, motioning to my chair back at the table.

I approached the chair like a rabbit approaching a den of wolves. Maternal discipline radiated off of Mom in waves, the shadow of a strict punishment hanging over me. Mom was as nice as can be, but when push came to shove, she would shove right back. So as much as I didn’t want to take that seat, I didn’t have a choice. I sat, knees weak, palms sweaty. My stomach was turning, the spaghetti from last night making a ruckus.

My eyes slid across Mom’s face like a skater on ice, staring patently past her at a very interesting dirt speck on the wall.

“Emmanuel. Look at me, not the wall.”

My lips pulled back into a pained grimace, but I did as she said, wrenching my eyes away from the dirt speck and meeting Mom’s fiery gaze.

“Emmanuel. Do you know why I’m so upset right now?”

Ugh. That was a favorite of Mom’s and I hated it. I never knew why she was mad about something, and she always got even madder about it. I’m not a mind reader! If I was, I’d be able to avoid these messes in the first place. Of course, as good of a point as I thought that was, mentioning it was likely to get the ever-loving crap slapped out of me. So I just kinda shrugged my shoulders a bit and shook my head no.

Mom closed her eyes tight, pinching the bridge of her nose with a deep breath. She gave a full bodied sigh and whispered, “He’s only eight. He’s only eight. He’s only eight.” Like some kind of chant to stop her from laying me out. After a couple of seconds she opened her eyes, the fire having cooled—at least a little bit.

“Emmanuel, the reason I’m so upset is because I am scared to death something is going to happen to you.” Mom’s voice was soft as she looked down at her hands, then back to me. “You constantly put yourself in harm’s way. Constantly. You come this,” Mom pinched her thumb and pointer finger together, leaving just a hair’s width of space, “close to being horribly maimed. Or, His Majesty forbid, killed OUTRIGHT!”

Whelp. Soft’s gone, fire’s back.

“Then, when you somehow miraculously scrape by with nothing more than a broken arm or nasty scrape on your leg, you take that as evidence that you should just keep doing it, no matter how often your father and I ask you to not be so damn reckless! Do you even take a single second to think about how your actions effect other people?!”

She was yelling again, hammering the tabletop with her pointer finger over and over again.

“Every action has a consequence, Emmanuel, and every time you pull one of these stupid stunts—”

Hold on! I resent that! Said like that it made it sound like I was just doing it for fun or attention or something. Which was completely wrong! I was just trying to help people!

It leapt out of my mouth before I could stop it, cutting Mom off mid syllable. “Hey! They’re not stunts Mom! And they’re definitely not stupid either! I’m just trying to help people, am I not supposed to do that? Isn’t that what you and dad tell me to do all the time?”

“Ohooooo! Right, because we always tell you to take the most violent, over the top, and dramatic way to help people. Like that time down by the Gate where you unhitched someone’s horse and hijacked it to run down that mugger?”

I puffed out my chest proudly. “Well, I did get him!”

“Oh yeah, you sure did. After causing an entire eight silvers in collateral damages to the surrounding market stalls. Eight silvers in collateral damage that we were responsible for. Did you know that?”

I winced, sucking in a sharp breath. I hadn’t known that, and eight silvers was a lot. And we didn’t have anything close to ‘a lot’.

Mom noticed, of course.

“Mmhmm. Its a lot, isn’t it? Took us months to recover from that. Tell you what else, every time you get really hurt and drag yourself down to Dr. Harme’s place? Those potions he gives you aren’t free you know. Your father goes down there once every tenner to pay off our ‘tab’. Thankfully, you’ve been uncharacteristically low profile the past couple of tenners so that’s let us save up a bit extra,” Mom trailed off, leaning far to the right to take a glance at the gash on my leg, “Well, till today at least, I guess.”

I cringed, shoulders slumping. I’d never thought about that. “Dr. Harme always said they were just extras, or an ‘off’ batch he wasn’t gonna sell anyway.”

Mom shook her head and crossed her arms. Then her eyes softened, her tone becoming more gentle, blunting the heat in her voice. “Honey, I’m sure he did, but nothing in life is free. For Dr. Harme, it takes time, effort, and a lot of materials to make even one potion. He gives them to you because he’s a good man, and doesn’t want you to suffer for not being able to afford a heal. As a matter of fact, the first couple of times we went to pay him, he put up a real fight about actually taking the money. Said we needed the coppers more than he did.”

“But, but he……he never said…” I sniffed. Every word coming out of Mom’s mouth hung on me like a lead weight, and I had a real sinking feeling that I’d been a huge jerk.

Mom shook her head, her mouth crooked in a sad smile. “Because he thinks that’s the right thing to do. And for us, for you, the right thing to do is to consider his side, his work, and make sure to try and pay him anyway. That’s one of those things you have to think about Emmanuel. That’s one of the biggest things being a good person is really about, I think. You can’t just do whatever you think is best, you need to really think about what impact you’ll have on someone.” Then she went silent. Just letting me think on it.

For a second, I just sat there, letting Mom’s words sink in. Then it hit me. Really hit me.

I was selfish. Like, super selfish.

Just the story with the horse would have been bad enough. Eight silvers that we couldn’t afford to lose. Eight silvers of other peoples’ stuff that I busted up. Did the money Mom and Dad paid fully cover it? How many of them had losses because they couldn’t make a sale they had lined up, or had something that they couldn’t replace? Oh, by His Majesty, how much collective time I did waste by doing that?

But it wasn’t just the horse story. I could name at least five other stories where I did something stupid and reckless to try and play hero, and ended up causing a lot of damage in the process. Not even including today with the roof.

With a cold sense of dread, I realized that wasn’t the worst part. I didn’t just go around looking for Mundane kids picking on other Mundane kids. Oh no, I just had to go and mess with the Adjusted! Adjusted teens. The ones that could and would throw their weight around. The kind that would happily hold a grudge.

I can run, and I can scrap, but what was I supposed to do if Harist and Loke showed up here at the house or something? Those two were dumb as a pile of rampa dung, but they were strong, even if they did still have a couple of years to go before getting Blessed. If Mom and Dad were both here it would probably be okay. But what if they weren’t here? Would Harist and Loke just destroy the house, or worse? I sure as hell couldn’t stop them.

The blood drained from my face. It didn’t stop there. I didn’t just run in and save Gene. I could have…I dunno, run them through a crowd and then gone back for him or something, but I didn’t. No, I made Harist and Loke chase me up a three story building, and then dropped them (And myself) off of it. I caught onto a window clothes-hanger (Aka: How I didn’t just straight up die) but those two weren’t so lucky. I saw the landing and it was not pretty.

Oh sure, on the whole they’d probably be fine. But they’d be pissed. And worse, their family would be pissed. And that was bad. Really bad. Any one of their family’s Blessed would be way too much for even all three of us (Mom, Dad, and I) to handle. Like, Harist’s older brother is a Tier Two B Grade! He could legit just walk into our house, kill everyone without breaking a freaking SWEAT, and walk out like nothing even happened!

My heart kicked into overdrive, my breathes coming out fast and shallow.

What had I done? I could have literally just sentenced my family to death. And for what?

Burning hot tears of shame brimmed in my eyes. I hung my head, holding them back with ugly sniffles.

I knew exactly ‘for what’. I did it because I hated them. I wanted them to pay for how they treated me and my friends. They were just big, stupid jerks who enjoy making other people hurt just because they can. Getting dropped off a roof was exactly what they deserved. In fact, I’d actually argue that they deserved even worse!

But it didn’t matter what I thought.

The world doesn’t work like that.

And because of that, and my stupid ‘revenge’, my family was in grave danger. Stupid stupid stupid.

Ugly sniffling turned into full on sobbing. A stream of hot tears poured from my eyes, my nose making gross snot bubbles.

*Thunk* My forehead crashed into the tabled as I weeped. Emotional tremors wracked me, interrupting my words.

“Uuuuughuhuhuuugh! I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to! I thought it was the right thing to do, but it was stupid! I was just so mad at them! It was really stupid! Uuhuhuhuugh!”

Distantly, I heard the dull scrape of chair on floor, then I was suddenly swept up in warmth and the scent of strawberries.

“Shhhh. Shhhh. It’s okay now honey, it’s okay. I know you didn’t mean it on purpose.” Mom’s voice was sweet as honey as I cried into her shoulder. She gently rubbed my back saying, “It’s alright, it’s alright. As long as you understand, every thing’s gonna be okay. Sorry for yelling at you honey. I promise I’m not mad at you.”

I sniffed hard, sucking up some runaway snot back up into my nose. “R-Really? You sounded pretty mad…”

Mom sighed, a guilty look on her face. “No sweetie, I wasn’t mad. Just…upset. Scared that you wouldn’t take it seriously. If you got yourself killed, I just don’t know what your father and I would do.”

Sniffling again, I grabbed a handful of Mom’s sweater and wiped my face off, leaving a patchy stain of tears and mucus. Ooops, sorry Mom, that was gross. I unburied my face from her shoulder. Then I stepped back and lifted my head, meeting her gaze. “I’m reeeeally sorry Mom. I never meant to worry you guys. I…I know I said it already, but I realize just how stupid and dangerous all that stuff was. I’m not gonna do it again, I promise. Making you guys worry, maybe putting us in danger by making the wrong people mad……The fun of playing ‘hero’ just isn’t worth it. Sorry for being so selfish.”

The cloud of tension hanging over Mom vanished instantly, her cheeks dimpling as she gave me a bright smile. “Honey that is exactly what I wanted to hear! Oh, you don’t know how much of a relief it is to know you won’t be throwing yourself off of rooftops anymore.” She crouched down to eye level with me and pulled me into a crushing hug. I’m pretty sure I heard something pop. “Your father’s going to be overjoyed when he gets home later and I fill him in.”

I let Mom hold the hug for a while, but a guy’s gotta breathe, so I squirmed my way out once I couldn’t put up with it anymore. “Ugh, gosh Mom, a little air please!?”

Mom chuckled softly and stood, going back to sit in her chair. I smiled and sat back in my seat too.

I’d let her have that for now at least.