Chapter 58. Hurry up

“Hurry up, we don’t have all day!” Orchid shouted, they were already further away before the group around Karns reacted.

“Holy moly, they’re going fast. Can you kids keep up?” Karns began to jog in place and ask. The kids nodded their head and trailed behind Karns who paced himself in front of them.

“Mr. Karns, is there anything we should be worried about on our way there?” Michael asked.

“Nahh, if there was something to be worried about it’ll be Orchid’s incessant nagging for being slow.”

“I heard that!” Orchid’s voice could be heard from afar.

“Shh, let’s catch up to them.” Karns whispered.

“Okay.”

The group caught up to the three who were in the lead and continued trailing a short distance. After an hour of nonstop jogging the adults slowed down and began to walk.

Arthur hadn’t noticed since he was just staring at their backs as he ran hoping to not fall behind. But the once mountainous terrain that surrounded them was behind and tiny strands of grass started to appear connecting to a lush grassland ahead. He looked around and marveled at the sight, there was some trees growing off to the side along with small animals running about.

“Beautiful eh?” Karns noticed Arthur’s eyes wondering about. The little boy nodded his head. Karns continued “If Rouge was the town surrounded by a thick forest and we’re the village encompassed by mountains, the spot between our village and Asmar is a beautiful meadow. Once you see this that means just one to two more hours and we’ll be at the bridge.”

Orchid who was leading the group turned around and walked towards the group. “How’re you kids holding up?” She asked.

“I’m good.” Boulder replied. He continued “I think they’re good too.” His words caused the rest to silently agree. While a few of them was breathing a little heavier it wasn’t much compared to the almost 30 days of training.

“That’s good, from now on we’ll be walking the rest of the journey, so if you kids don’t want to rest, we can keep going.” Orchid replied.

“We can go, we can go!” Arthur exclaimed.

Orchid nodded her head and continue. “There isn’t much between here and the bridge, we only jogged an hour to make sure we have enough time to walk everyone back before sunset. Ready to go?”

“Let’s go!” Boulder and Arthur shouted in unison and raced further ahead. Arthur wanted to run towards the beautiful meadow up ahead whereas Boulder wanted to impress everyone with his physicality.

The rest shook their head and slowly followed from behind. Harmick turned back and met up with Karns and the rest of the kids. He slapped Seth on the back and gave a friendly smile. “You sure you good? Breathing kinda heavily here.” Harmick remarked.

Seth embarrassingly scratched the scar on his face in response. “Yeah I’m good just a little tired. How did you guys ended up being the ones going on this escorting trip?”

“Cause our kids are coming home from Naturelle, why else? If we didn’t have to stay back and prepare for the festival, you’d bet your ass I’d be in Asmar right now. Ahaha” Harmick laughed in response. Some of the villagers could leave Boulderville and meet up with the kids early. However, for Harmick, Karns and Elroy along with the more physically abled men they had to stay back and prepare for the festival.

Harmick then turned to Karns. “I bet my girl did better than yours.”

“Pfft, wanna bet?”

“Whatcha wanna bet?”

Karns held up a finger. “1 gold coin.” Harmick furrowed his brows and contemplated causing Karns to tease. “What? You scared?”

“Pfft, as if, alright bring it on. Once I win, I’ll treat you to some good alcohol with your money.” Harmick replied.

“Likewise” Karns responded.

Harmick and Karns shook hands and tightened their grip already competing to see who gives in first, eventually both pulled apart at the same time when neither side budged.

The rest of the crew hurried to Arthur and Boulder a distance away who was waiting beside the lush landscape of the beautiful meadow. Arthur ran and knelt before a beautiful blue flower and plucked it up, holding it behind his back.

“What’re you doing with the flower?” Boulder asked.

“What flower?” Arthur raised an eyebrow and continued to hide the flower behind his back.

“The one behind you, I saw you pick it up.” Boulder replied.

“Oh nothing.”

Before Boulder could continue to ask the rest of the group caught up to them. Arthur quickly rushed over to Shelly. “Shelly, this flower will look good on you.” Arthur placed the flower on her hair and brightly smiled. His action made the rest of the group to smile.

Being stared at by so many smiling people Shelly calmly replied. “Yes, thank you, young master.”

“Hehe.” Arthur rubbed his nose and spiritedly continued. “Let’s go~” Boulder who saw this entire exchanged had his jaws dropped. Damn, I should’ve done that! He regretted not understanding what Arthur was doing and being quicker about it.

Michael looked at the empty hair of Julie who was standing beside him. He wanted to also place a flower on her hair but was too embarrassed to do so. Julie turned her head over to Michael and raised a knowing eyebrow she quickly directed him with her eyes at a purple flower nearby. I want that flower. She hinted.

Michael gulped and slowly snuck his way over and quickly pretended to drop something beside the flower, picking it up in the process. He quickly hurried back to her and placed the flower in her palm. Julie returned the flower and tilted her head to Michael insinuating that he should put it on her hair.

Michael quickly looked around. Everyone else was already moving forward after Arthur’s display and saw that no one was looking at the two of them. He quickly placed the flower gently on her hair and sighed in relief.

Seeing how secretly he was doing it Julie released a slight chuckle and softly felt the purple flower in her hair.

“Oh? Julie you also got a flower on your hair?” Orchid asked.

“Yes, I saw that the blue flower looked cute on Shelly, so I wanted to do the same.” Julie replied, not once mentioning Michael’s involvement.

Orchid turned her eyes towards Michael who was pretending to maintain a calm face as if he had nothing to do with it and sighed. “I wish someone, would get me a flower too.”

The group continued to walk along the straight pathway until they finally arrived at a small river roughly 50 meters wide dividing the land between Asmar and Boulderville.

“We’ve made it!” Arthur exclaimed as he looked at the enormous 50-meter-long (~150 feet) 5-meter-wide (~15 feet) stone bridge connecting the two places. He squinted his eyes and looked further down the bridge. “I don’t see them.”

“We’ve made it here early, they should be arriving soon, though.” Elroy spoke and sat a spot beside the bridge. “Do you see this bridge here?”

“Mhm, did you build it?” Arthur asked.

“No, but my grandparents and great great grandparents built this long time ago. We’ve also made this trail all the way here so that it’ll be easier for us to go across.” Elroy responded.

“Did you know, if we walked a couple hundred meters north of us we can just make it across over to their side, but my great grandparents decided that the shortest distance was just a straight line from Boulderville to Asmar, so they built this entire bridge here.” Elroy smiled and felt the bridge before them. “I, to this day can’t tell if they were lazy or not.”

“Maybe they felt like it was more convenient this way?” Orchid replied.

“That is true, but my grandparents would often tell me that my great grandparents were actually quite lazy people, they would build stuff because they were too lazy to walk that extra hundred or two meters.” He smiled and continued. “They spent nearly two years planning and working on this bridge, just so they could walk across less.”

“Do you know what’s the funniest thing about this?” Elroy looked at the kids who all sat on the bridge listening to him. “The funniest thing is, they never even used the bridge! Ahaha, they built this stone bridge for when they wanted to go to Asmar, but they never even went to Asmar afterwards.

The group laughed. They all continued to sit on the bridge and listen to the once silent Elroy continue to tell stories about bridges and other things that he and his families have built over the years. It wasn’t for another thirty minutes that silhouettes of people started appearing on the opposite end of the bridge.

“They’re here!” Orchid spotted them and teleported to the opposite end of the bridge. The rest of the group saw that Orchid had already teleported to meet with the incoming people and hurried over the extremely stable stone bridge.

After running for a few more minutes, they arrived to where the villagers were. The once a dozen of silhouettes bloomed to nearly a hundred by the time, they made it across. Orchid who was standing before the bridge talking to the villagers turned around and released a smile. “They’re all here.”

“Dad!” A little girl’s voice could be heard within the crowd. “Daddy!” Her voice got louder causing Harmick’s ears to perk up. “I’m here!” he shouted when he heard his daughter’s voice.

“Daddy!” A girl appeared out of nowhere and wrapped her arms around her father’s neck. Harmick was surprised momentarily by the sudden weight upon his back before releasing a loud laugh. “Ahaha! Carson! You’ve got powers!”

She released her hold and planted her feet firmly onto the ground. “Yes. I. did! ~”

Harmick turned around and looked down at his 12-year-old daughter. She was wearing the standard dark grey Naturelle uniform with an insignia of their planet and it’s 3 continents on her upper left chest. Carson was a small little girl slightly taller than Shelly and had long brown hair with beautiful yellow eyes indicating her powers of teleportation.

Tears welled up in Harmick’s eyes as he picked her up and pulled her into a warm hug. It wasn’t until a couple seconds later did, he finally recovered from his excitement and softly placed her on the ground and patted her head. “I can’t wait to see the look on your mother’s face.”

Karns who stood nearby saw this and his mouth went agape. He couldn’t believe Carson managed to do so well her second year from returning, home. He scanned the crowd hoping he could see his daughter too.

“Father.” A girl with short curly brown hair and cyan eyes slowly made her way up to Karns and locked gazes with him. “Why do you feel so anxious, did you make a bad bet with uncle Harmick again?” she asked.

Karns eyes were as wide as saucers when he saw his daughter walking straight up to him. His mouth was agape as he stared at her.

“Oh? You’re happy now? Calm down father you’ll have a heart attack if you get any happier than this.” The girl calmly replied, her bright cyan eyes continued to gaze into her father’s eyes.

“Wahaha!” Karns pulled the calm 12-year-old daughter of his and pulled her into his embrace. “Krystal… what the heck!” The one talkative Karns couldn’t say much more than that as proudly hugged his daughter.

Elroy who had turned around to see the spectacle that was Karns and Harmick’s daughters both returning with powers made him starstruck. “There’s no way…” Elroy muttered to himself.

Thwack

A small rock smacked Elroy on the back of his head in his inattentiveness causing him to turn around. He immediately saw the rock directly before his face and quickly closed his eyes and covered his face hoping to block the rock. However, he didn’t get hit. He peeked through the hole within his fingers and noticed that the rock was still there. “There’s no way…” Elroy muttered again as he released his hands and stared at the pebble.

“Yes way” The voice of a young boy could be heard as the pebble circled around Elroy and flung itself off into the river. A boy who was standing at the river beside the bridge looked up to his father who directly above him.

“Poe!” Elroy exclaimed in excitement as his son walked over to him. “You too?”

“Of course dad, do you think I’d be any slower than those two?” He pointed at Carson and Krystal, Poe rolled his eyes at his father and released a slight smile. He exclaimed proudly, “I was the first!”

“Come here! Let me give you a hug!” Elroy exclaimed proudly. “No, you come here!” Poe returned and opened his arms wide. Elroy obliged walked over and hugged his son.

Orchid who had witnessed what was absolutely a miracle for them was shellshocked. This was the first time ever in what felt like forever would Boulderville return with not just one child who had gained power, but four! The last time something even remotely close to this happening was when her, Pebble and Cobble returned with changes in their hair color, however even then they received them a few years apart.

“What’s going on? Was it always this easy for kids to get powers?” Orchid asked. Poe who was closest to her and Elroy responded. “I don’t know, but it felt a lot easier over there.” Poe replied.

“Hm?”

“The energy felt more abundant.” Poe stated calmly. He leaned over and whispered to Orchid, “your teacher wanted me to tell you, that he’s really needs your help in Naturelle.”

Orchid raised an eyebrow, “you’ve met my teacher?”

Poe nodded his head. “I think so, he was an old dirty looking grandpa with unkempt hair and beard. Is that him?”

Orchid nodded her head and asked. “How did he know you kids knew me?”

“By coincidence, Carson, Krystal and I were just talking about you on our way to class and he overheard us. He asked us if it was the same Orchid he taught 10 years ago that had dark bags under her eyes, messy green hair and was as wild as raging buffalo.”

“What did you say? You’ve better not have agreed that it was me, you saw how I looked like 10 years ago, did I look like a raging buffalo to you?” Orchid asked, her eye was twitching at how her own teacher described her.

“I don’t know how you looked like 10 years ago, I was like 1 or 2.” Poe responded. He continued “But we nodded our head when he mentioned your obsession— I mean your relationship with chief Gran and lady Roselyn.”

“Why did he ask you to tell me this? Couldn’t he have just sent me a letter?” Orchid asked.

Poe shrugged his shoulder, how was he supposed to know why a teacher wanted him to pass on this message? He was a student, he just had to listen to the teachers, and since it wasn’t something he felt was incredibly bad he just passed it on to her.

He then turned his eyes towards Boulder who frozen in place for the longest time, he was even more shocked by Poe’s appearance than that of Elroy.

Whish~ A small rock was quickly flung straight towards Boulder’s forehead causing the red-haired kid to smack the rock into powder.

“Poe!” Boulder was enraged.

“Oh? Not bad, how on earth did you manage to get red hair, I wonder?”

“Fight me!”

“No way, I’m not going to walk up to a red-haired bull, what do you think I am? You?”

“FIGHT ME!”

“No.”

Whish~

Thwack!

“THAT FREAKING HURT! FIGHT ME POE!!!!”

“No.”