As soon as that question left me, I received another random thought, and before I could say something out loud, or mentally, my mother appeared before me.

Tears uncontrollably streamed from my face as I rushed to hug her. She patted me on the back of the head and all my fear, anger and rage left.

“There there lil’ Knight, it’s ok.” she said.

The realities of the ghetto didn’t feel so bad. She rubbed my back as she continued to embrace me.

“Mom, please,” I pleaded “Never leave me again. I need you! Anna needs you!”

My dad snapped his fingers breaking the spell.

“SON! Turn off your Attention Deficit Disorder and pay attention for five minutes. You can’t live here, your body would wither and die,” he snapped back.

My mom spoke up, “Lil’ Knight, if you don’ go back who will take care of Anna?”

I nodded in agreement, they were both correct.

“OF course we are correct, we went through the same thing when we lost our loved ones,” my dad replied, and mom smiling back at me.

“B-b-b-but can I come..come back right?” I asked expecting them to say no.

Arise, young Knight!

“Uh yeah,” my father said. “Wait, before you go, son FYI, about that Knight thing, you might want to look into that. I think it’s still valid. Check with the Royal Court of Records, not the Common Court of Records. We also own land, at least we should.”

“What? How did this even happen?” I asked, sounding excited and frustrated at the same time.

“Right, here’s the short version, before I left the Inquisitional Purification Bureau, Section 777 I think it was called, the team I was with saved the life of a Count and his family. So he knighted me and gave me some land. It’s more of an honorary title that anything else.” He oh-so casually said.

Before I could ask him for more details he punched me in the stomach.

My body felt weightless as I began to float up. Darkness surrounded me and slowly closed in. I quickly opened my eyes and saw Anna looking down on me. She was holding me on her knees. Her face was soft like mom and still wet from crying.

I reached up to touch her, to wipe the tears away. She took my hand with hers.

“You stupid trog, you scared the shit out of me” she whispered back.