For a week, my training actually progressed as normal, as if we were still just on the boat. I figured Sage was just waiting on Basil, but I couldn’t be sure. Every morning he’d wake me up, make me run with him toward the beach we ported, then he’d have me practice dodging, then he’d have me hit his hand for target practice, then we’d spar; it was almost the same as on the boat, the only difference being Sage himself. He never said anything about the first night we spent on Mango. I was beginning to get concerned. Outside of what he’d say during training, our conversations were diminishing, and Sage would often leave at night still, and through exposure I became more and more used to sleeping alone, unprotected.

The city of Kiyomi was a welcome change for me. Up until then, I had only known Basil and Sage, no one else. Sure I met Arsene and got to talk with him for a short period of time, but outside of that I had been away from home and civilization for nearly a month. Being surrounded by the hustle and bustle of an actual city was nice, even if that city was offbeat and strange. I became acquainted with their customs and curious about the origins of those people. Everyone looked different, and I mean everyone. When I used to watch the people of Persea outside my window or during holidays where we had many citizens out and about, they would always look pretty similar—I’d often compare them to an ant farm, unfavorably. We all have the signature green hair and eyes, we all have fair to tan skin due to the climate, we all are within the same height range, even our facial features get samey. It’s almost creepy how little changes from person to person.

In Kiyomi, however, everyone was a crazy color, with hair and skin the whole spectrum of the rainbow. No one seemed to speak the same, and everyone dressed in clothes that were probably from their country of origin. Our neighbors on the left, for instance, wore head wraps every day and matching clothes that looked to me like a dress but Sage said they were called curtas, and they were worn in tropical climates like the one we were in. Conversely, our other neighbors were from Cashew and they wore a modified tunic where the sleeves were cut off short so they wouldn’t sweat so much.

Until we had been there for a full week, however, I hadn’t gotten to experience much of the local flavor until Sage decided to stop in the middle of our training on the beach. I had just launched a kick and actually would have hit him had he not given up on paying attention to me and turning around, walking a few steps away to go stare off at the horizon.

“What’s up?” I asked, breathing heavily and having a hard time standing up. After one failed attempt at standing I gave up and sat in the sand.

“Take the rest of the day off,” he said, not looking at me. Confused, I looked to see if I could see anything in the direction he was looking. Of course I couldn’t. Nothing but water for miles.

“You sure?” I asked, still not willing to get up.

“Yeah, go ahead. Maybe see if you can make a friend.”

“I haven’t got any of those,” I said, laughing lightly.

He turned and smiled at me, then pulled me to my feet and pat some sand off of me. “Then how about you go make one, and don’t come back until you do, eh?”

“You feeling okay, Sage? You’re usually more serious about my work than this.”

Sage folded his arms and went back to watching the horizon. “Nonsense, it would be cruel of me to keep you working without any rest. A day of no work should help your muscles recuperate and get stronger. Besides, if you haven’t got any friends, then you haven’t got any reason to get strong.”

I didn’t see how a friend would correlate to me whooping his ass the next day, but I decided not to press further. Sage seemed out of it anyway, like he was focused on something that wasn’t there. So, after feeling less out of breath, I finally headed off into the direction of Kiyomi with a new mission: find a friend.

This task proved nearly impossible for me, however, due to a number of reasons. For one, the people in town were mostly older and without kids around my age, and it gets weird talking to someone older than you and attempting to establish a friendly relationship with them. Or at least, it did for me. For two, everyone was busy with their own work. Mango is the primary distributor of bell peppers across the whole archipelago, so most of the adults were busy tending to their farms, which were further north from the city. So for the most part, the whole place was a ghost town save for bottom of the barrel scum, the true good-for-nothings.

Most importantly in all of this was something that still affects me to this day, though. When it comes to initiating conversation, I’m pretty anxious. Especially when it comes to trying to befriend someone.

When I was six years old, I had already started to become accustomed to a quiet, lonely life indoors. I knew my teachers, but not as friends, just as teachers. I knew my cooks, but not as friends, just cooks. And I knew my mother’s attendants and my own attendants, all of whom spoke and treated me as they should, so not as friends but as a master to a slave. My mother was never my friend, as she shouldn’t be. She was my mother. I didn’t need to impress her, she cared about me due to the same intrinsic reasons as I did.

On a downcast, rainy day back then, my mother decided that it was time for me to train as a man. I know, being six means I’m as far from manhood as it gets, but in our society it’s important to demonstrate your value as a warrior even if you don’t become one or are not even very good as one. A bad warrior is still a good man, they say. So on that day she presented me with what I would refer to as slave garments but were in fact the traditional wear for warriors in training, something called a goh. They were just plain clothes, white ones that were supposed to turn colors the harder you worked. Mother called it magic, I called it sweat. You can see where the slave garment name came from.

Once I was dressed and ready to go, my mother sent me off with an attendant to go to the training grounds for our standing army. A few members of that army were given the task of training the young men in our city, and they treated the task with indelible fervor, something I learned the hard way.

My attendant didn’t speak to me much, mostly she just spoke to herself and held my hand so I wouldn’t get lost. They would often do this, speaking to themselves as though I were not there. Because to them, I was just a job. They were glorified sitters.

When we reached the training field, there was already a large group of boys there, all different ages, probably ranging from my age of six upwards to maybe fifteen or so. It’s hard to tell once puberty is reached. Regardless, we weren’t separated by age, and they were all being spoken to by a massive, rough piece of work I got to know as the Passer. He never wore a shirt, instead choosing to show off his physique and his many tattoos, which I thought was strange since tattoos were forbidden to have or show in Avocado. I asked my mother about it, she told me he wore them proudly to intimidate his enemies.

After a day of training with him, I decided he was simply a bully.

That isn’t what this is about, though. My attendant introduced me, said I was the prince and was there to begin my training. None of the kids took me seriously immediately. Not only did she place a target on me by referring to me as the prince, but she held my hand the whole time and treated me like a baby. Not speaking up for yourself is bad in most social situations, and as I came to find out it was horrible in front of a group of boys learning to fight.

Every day for the following three years, I was fought by the other kids and defeated soundly each time, not only because they were straight up better than I was but because they hated me. Kids are cruel, and that testosterone fueled group was ready to break my neck every single time. Somehow, though, I never really cared about that. Even when I was young and living those days that are now faraway memories, I never felt the same sort of animosity they felt towards me. I just wanted to be friends with those kids. It never worked out, and I tried coming up with plenty of sound rationalizations in my youth. When I was thirteen and on Mango island, I think I believed they didn’t like me because of my approach or my age. The truth was that it had more to do with me being some uppity prince who got in at age six despite not showing prowess, and I’d feed their hate more and more by being indifferent, quiet; simply existing was my crime in their eyes. Had I been a little older, a little wiser, or at least talented, then perhaps they could have respected me, or even befriended me as one of their own.

An outcome like that sounds wonderful, like a passing daydream.

The cruelest of them all, though, was the Passer. Every single time I had a match with someone, he would grin with those foul, pointed teeth of his and shake his head, knowing I’d lose. Most of the time he’d pair me with one of the older kids with much more experience, and give them a weapon their size, which obviously makes sense to do but that also gave them so much reach compared to me that my little wooden stick would never reach them even if I was semi-good at what I did. I’d get trounced, and the Passer would laugh and pick me up—often, I’d be knocked to the ground, face down—and he’d say, “See, boys? This is the boy you protect for a reason! He can’t protect himself. So keep getting better, because obviously he won’t.” Even worse, I’d hear him sometimes mutter to himself that I shouldn’t be there.

Anyway, long story short my experiences with meeting new people were pretty bad up to this point. The memories of those days replayed in my head the whole way back to Kiyomi, and I found myself stopping a few times to turn back, or contemplate just hiding away in our shack. I wandered the nearly empty streets and avoided eye contact with everyone, eventually making my way to the open square in the center of town. In the very center there was a gazebo, with some rocks scattered about to use for seating. There were a few people there, but there was a spot far enough away from everyone that I decided I’d sit there and just wait. I couldn’t muster up the courage to speak to someone. How would I even go about introducing myself? What if they didn’t like me?

I sat there alone, still, locked in my head so much that I could feel my chest pound and my head spin, and my eyes couldn’t focus. My breathing became faster and faster, and by the time I got up and went to our shack I was sweating up a storm. I couldn’t do it. Maybe if I wasn’t thinking so much, sure, but sitting there alone and stewing on those memories and the different imaginings of what might happen if I walked up to any of those people… I was in my head. And my head was sick.

When I walked inside, I went physically insane. I paced back and forth, I screamed, I muttered, I hit myself, and I kept doing these things until the palpitations subsided, my breathing steadied, and my thoughts became less hazy, less primal. And when I felt better, and I was able to sit down and really think about everything, I realized how much of a fool I was being. I mean, nothing had even happened. All of the pain that I was feeling was in my head, there was nothing to be afraid of yet. The sun was nearly set, but with a newfound resolve I decided to return to the spot and give it another try. After all, without Sage’s training I wouldn’t be able to help anyone. So I went back and sat on the same rock, staring into the ground until the sun was gone and all the people disappeared into their homes. No one spoke to me, but I sat there, out in the open, hoping someone would speak to me.

Baby steps, right?

♣ ♣ ♣

It took me three days to meet a friend. I damn near lived on that rock in the square the entire time, despite a new problem arising in the form of Sage’s disappearance.

Let me back it up:

Sage never returned that first night. I came back to the shack and saw no one, so I decided to try and sleep after a fitful day of absurd amounts of silence and bombardments by my own imaginative armies on my own psyche. I woke up when the moon was high to an a distraught looking Sage, and I asked him what was wrong but he just shook his head.

“I’m going to leave the island for a while. Basil really should have been back by now, and I’m getting worried. Sorry, boy.”

Nothing he said really hit me hard at all, and it never set in later that he was gone. I already felt like he was gone, I guess, so it wasn’t a huge surprise to me. In some ways it made me a lot happier that he was leaving. I could do things at my own pace, and give up on befriending any of the heathenous common folk living on that putrid island. Those were my thoughts then, I think.

I asked him if he wanted me to come with him, just to be sure, and he shook his head. “The further you stay away from the mainland, the better. It will take me no more than a few days, a week at most. Stay here and lay low.”

“But what about my training?” I asked, yawning.

“Try keeping up with it. At the very least get in some exercise to maintain your health, otherwise when I get back you won’t be able to keep up with me.”

In a moment of clarity, I sat up and decided to ask him what had been on my mind since we had set out.

“Can I even get stronger? I still feel so weak.”

Sage was silent for a moment, silhouetted in the windowsill, the whites of his eyes the only thing visible on his darkened frame, he appeared as a shade. “I believe in you,” he finally replied, simply and with finality. I nodded and went back to sleep, too confused and tired.

I would have forgotten any of it happened at all except when I woke up he wasn’t there, and the fact that everything about him was missing helped remind me of our conversation. It was the first time in over a month that I had no real direction or reason to do anything, for once I could do things based on what I wanted. And, ironically, there was no reason for me to do anything at all. I was stranded on an island, surrounded by people who didn’t know or care that I was a prince, and all I was told was to wait for people who had proven that they would only do what they wanted to do for themselves, not for others.

Without much thought put into it, I ended up doing the same thing that day as I had the previous day. I sat on that rock, alone and hungry, stuck in my head.

My entire life I had been told that I couldn’t get stronger. Not only had I been told this, it had been proven in numerous instances. I couldn’t pick up anything heavier than a child sized sword, I couldn’t run very far, I couldn’t row very well as Sage and Basil learned on our trip to Durian, my fighting prowess was poor, and my self worth was too low to qualify as a warrior, as you probably are well aware after that onslaught of self-deprecating insight. Though I’m loathe to write it, it’s true that I thought this way back then. From dawn to dusk that day, I played out the memories and thoughts in my head, and not a soul came to my aid to speak with me, which really reinforced my thoughts. I wasn’t worth fighting for, so why should I get stronger? What was the point? I may as well just die.

With this thought in mind, I headed back to the shack, slept, woke up and did the same thing. The second day was further removed from everything, and I was slightly less depressed. Slightly. Everything played out normally, right up until sunset on that third day.

A man who I had seen each of those days got up from where he sat and sat down next to me. He wasn’t very tall, but he was lithe and his muscles were well toned from daily use, his clothes were sandy and faded, his hair dark and stringy. He had a stringed instrument in his hands, which he later told me was a lute, which he tuned idly while sitting on his rock. I glanced at him and quickly averted my gaze to another spot unoccupied by living bodies, and in my peripheral I saw him smirk.

“How are you doing?” he asked, his voice clear and soothing.

I went to reply, but my lips were stuck together from a lack of use so I simply shrugged.

“I’ve seen you here each day,” he said, then he pointed to where he had been sitting previously. “Normally I perform over there. Have you seen me here?”

I nodded, still reluctant to pull my lips apart from their disgusting saliva-caked prison.

He removed a hand from his lute and held it outward for me to grasp. I stared at it, wary. “My name is Conifer,” he said. “What about you?”

He seemed nice, but after brooding for a full three days I wasn’t going to quit just because of a friendly face. So I continued to sit there and attempt to not pay any attention. The man named Conifer just went back to tuning his lute, smiling.

“Well that’s fine. You’re from Avocado I’m assuming based on the hair? Your people always have such nice green hair.” I nodded at that. “Good, you answered. I’ll just ask yes or no questions then.”

After that I expected an immediate interrogation and braced myself, but instead he finished his tuning and began playing a beautiful song. I’d heard inklings of his playing over the past few days, but he was far enough away where I could barely hear it and it was just something in the background. So I’m not entirely sure if he was playing better when he played that song for me, but it felt like he was. There was no way he was playing such serene melodies right there in front of me for the past few days without my hearing it, right?

I’ve since heard music from a plethora of musicians all across the Tamarind Sea, and there have been players and songs that were similar in quality to Conifer, but none that were better. More importantly, no song was more necessary than the one he played for me in that moment. It was like he hit a pressure point with a trained hand. In moments I was sobbing silently, my gaze averted so this stranger I just met wouldn’t see me at my most vulnerable.

When the song was over, there was a haunting interlude of him strumming idly, a slow and tuneless tick he had. My chest was filled with butterflies, and I sat there in awe of it.

“Have you eaten today?” he asked me next, as if he hadn’t just played something breathtaking. For him, it was just another song.

“Yeah,” I finally said to him, the act of steadying my voice a conscious effort.

“Oh, he speaks!” he said, laughing lightly. Then Conifer switched to a steady rhythm with his lute, strumming harder and softer notes to the beat of the conversation. “Let me ask you this then. Did you come here with King Sage?”

It was strange hearing him referred to like that, but I nodded.

“Has he left once again?”

He strummed faster.

“Yeah, and I’m not sure where he went exactly.” I was about to just tell him everything, but thought better of revealing secrets to a stranger. “He never said what he was doing, he just sort of left. If I’m honest, I’m not sure how he left without using the boat we came on.”

Smiling knowingly, he said, “Oh that’s probably simple for him. That man is stronger than he likes to let on.”

Rubbing my eyes, I turned to face him and sat a bit closer to him. “Do you know him personally then?”

“Oh, of course not! He’s our king, and I’m just a resident here like everyone else.” He returned to idle plucking, heaving a sigh filled with longing. “He’s a rather easy king to know about though, considering his history.”

At first I didn’t understand, then I remembered what Sage had said all those weeks ago. “You mean that he was the Moss Knight?”

“Aye,” he said. “He still is, in fact. Your country simply doesn’t use him after what he did a decade ago.”

“What’d he do?” I asked, speaking a faster. My knowledge of Sage was so miniscule, he was such a mystery and it felt like he was never going to open up about himself. Even if Conifer was wrong and what he told me was some common rumor, it would be better than not knowing a thing about him. At least then I’d know what the people thought of him.

Conifer looked from me to his lute and back again, deciding whether to continue playing or not. He decided that he needed to concentrate on the conversation and rested the lute on the ground, neck tipped against the rock he sat on. “Well, this all happened probably around the time you were born by the look of you, perhaps a little before. Cashew and Avocado were in the middle of a major war, one I’m sure you are familiar with.”

I nodded. “The Attrition War, yeah. We fought on and off for centuries over control of the border between our countries, since it’s such a small piece of land.”

“You know your history,” he said, obviously impressed. “You must have been a scholar back home. Most kids your age aren’t familiar with their history.”

The words, “I was a prince back home,” were on the tip of my tongue, but I decided against it and instead just nodded.

“In any case,” he continued, “that war had gone on forever, and it had a lot more to do with the strength your country holds in its magic. About fifteen years ago, Cashew gave up on the war of Attrition and chose to send every single troop they had to your border, unannounced in the middle of the night, during King Merano’s birthday no less. Avocado was unprepared for such an attack. The border was nearly taken in no time. But…” he trailed off, shook his head in disbelief.

“But what?” I asked, breath significantly bated.

“But you had your Moss Knight,” he said, somber. “Sage showed up out of nowhere. Some survivors said he flew in through the sky, some said he materialized out of thin air, and I’ve heard at least one account say that Sage came from Cashew itself, disguised as a warrior in the middle of the ranks before exploding from within. Either way, he came through and devastated the entire Cashew army single handedly.”

“How is that possible?” I asked. I’m sure my face was as much lacking in belief as his. “I just can’t see Sage being such a savage warrior.”

Then my memories shifted to him taking out those guys on our boat without a second of hesitation, not a bead of sweat broken on his face. And I started to wonder.

“It gets stranger,” Conifer said. “The fact that he decimated them so soundly was already insane, even with the power of Avocado magic on his side. Cashew lacks a magical art, but their warriors are some of the best in the land, and they are the most well armed and armored by far. Most of their generals are said to carry magical artifacts they’ve gained through trades with Kiwi, their opposite neighbor. Even with all that, Sage just came through and demolished them. Normally, he’d be treated like a second king, I would think. He was a war hero.

“One of the men from Avocado who witnessed the battle eventually brought information to your King, and as the story goes it was information regarding something Sage had done that night. He did something traitorous.”

“What did he do?” I asked, feeling myself lean closer.

Conifer just raised his hands up in the air and shrugged. “No one knows, but whatever he did got him put in prison. Guy’s forbidden to use his power or leave the country, which is part of why he never stays here long. He’s got to make regular check-ins so they don’t get suspicious over there. Least, that’s the explanation we get over here in Mango. You ask me and I think there’s more to it than all that. He’s a mystery.”

“Yeah, he is isn’t he?” I said.

Most of that information about him winning the battle seemed right, albeit exaggerated. The part about his sentencing seemed sort of right, too. He was locked away in some empty castle, after all. He was the king of nothing back home, just living off the land with Basil. And even though I was the prince, I had neither met nor heard of him and his exploits, his strength, his importance as the Moss Knight, or even the existence of him and a position like that.

He definitely wasn’t leaving to check in. He checked in with no one when I was there, so that seemed more or less like he was simply moving about freely despite his sentence. Which made sense to me, how would you keep a guy who could do the things he can do confined? From what I could see, he could break free from any prison. Put him in an active volcano, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he could just jump out of the lava without a single singed hair.

Out of everything Conifer had said, though, the most interesting was arguably that he referred to Vastmire as magic. Basil and Sage were convinced it wasn’t really magic, so the fact that common folk thought it was seemed interesting to me. Maybe I wasn’t the only one who didn’t know anything of my own country’s power.

The secrets of Vastmire ran deep.

We talked more after that, the subjects mostly revolving around the pepper harvest and how hard he and the rest of the citizens were working to ensure there were enough peppers for the archipelago during the winter. The solstice would approach fast, he said. It always comes faster than you think.

Then he asked, “Where are you staying? You’re all alone in your shack here, I’m assuming.”

I nodded and said, “I can show you my place.” He got up and followed me around the corner to where our spot was, and he saw how empty it was and that I was sleeping on the floor and his mouth turned into a straight line, not quite a frown but certainly displeasure.

“My home isn’t quite as big as this,” he said, “but I’ve got enough space for you, and enough hay to sleep on. Besides, I think you could use the company.”

I protested but he just laughed. “Look, you started out acting stoic but the moment I sat down you opened up like an old book. Just suck it up and enjoy my company.”

Reluctant though I was, I went over to his shack and found myself asleep very fast in his hay bed. It wasn’t ridiculously comfortable, but it was a massive improvement.

Though I don’t remember, I’m sure my final thought before sleep was that I made a friend, and I’m even surer I smiled.