Aura Blasé
****** Past ******
Aura sat on the bench, alone save for the few people walking past. No one paid any attention to him, but that was to be expected. He didn’t bother to give them any, either.
Staring at the wall never seems enticing until you want to be left alone. Then, it’s invaluable.
And he wanted to be left alone. No conversations—pointless conversations—leading to nowhere, and no endless questions—or interrogations, depending on how you look at things.
What was being a Harbinger, besides pain and suffering? Endless battles where the victorious slaughter all in their path, leaving none alive save for those cowardly—or smart—enough to race away, and to safety.
He remembered very clearly the day that problem had faced him. The decision that had been thrust into his lap, leaving him no time to think—only act. An attack on a Harbinger comes swiftly, with large numbers, always leaving many dead. His family had been involved that time.
He could still picture their lifeless bodies. His parents, shot in the dream world of sleep—still in bed. His little brother, mercilessly murdered without question. And what did Aura do? He did as his older brother told him to. He ran.
Never again. He had lost his family once. He would not lose it twice.
“So what are you thinking about?” A voice caught him by surprise. He hadn’t been looking for someone, hadn’t been expecting them.
“Y-you’re Seth, r-right?” Aura turned to the speaker.
Seth smiled—a smile that wasn’t out of happiness or friendship, but one that said he needed something. A bargain smile.
“What do you think about the present situations here? Food getting a little scarce?” He said
“S-scarce? I h-haven’t noticed.” Aura looked him straight in eye, resisting the urge to drop his gaze. He would not back down, no matter if his feelings said otherwise.
“The food here is almost completely gone, and there won’t be any coming in soon. There is only one way to go about this,” Seth said.
“And t-that is?”
“We take it,” Seth said simply. Blunt and to the point.
Aura jerked back in shock. “T-take it? F-from w-who? How? W-why?”
Take. That was what Seth said. Not buy or find, but take. He was sounding like a different person, not the boy he had met months before in CrossPress café, sounding honest and cheerful—wanting to be everyone’s friend and help everyone out. Something had changed.
“We go to a camp, we find the food, and we take it.” Seth’s voice dropped to an almost inaudible whisper.
“Why?”
Seth spread his hands. “They are our enemies. They have food, we don’t. They have resources, we don’t. It’s merely an equalization of the playing field. They took more than just our food, Aura. They took everything from us.”
“And what does Sarah think of this?” Aura asked. He held his breath in expectation, but he already knew what his answer would be. Sarah. The only person that he knew would never change. He didn’t know anyone else good enough to know their personality, but Aura knew that Sarah wouldn’t have anything to do with something as… hypocritical as this.
Seth hesitated. “Well, I wouldn’t be happy if you told anyone about this. Right now I am trying to keep it down—keep out of sight, you understand. If Sarah gets wind of this before I am ready…” His eyes looked sad, but still resolute in his decision. Aura could see his mind working, images of some other place—perhaps with Sarah there—flashing through his mental vision. “Sarah means everything to me, but I have to do this. If not, everything we worked for goes to nothing.”
He looked over at Aura and nudged him on the shoulder. “I have seen you in combat before. You seem alright. Why don’t you come along, too? We could use the help.”
Aura glanced away from Seth, and towards the entire building around him. The entire infrastructure had been remade so carefully to serve their purposes, each of them using their special abilities to modify the building to suit their needs. It was a symbol of what they were, an example of what they had done.
They were a family, and Seth was trying to break that apart.
“I stay here, where I belong. Everyone here is my family. The lives of all those Harbingers isn’t worth a few blocks of cheese.”
Seth snorted. “Think like that and we will all be corpses by the end of the day. This isn’t just about getting food, Aura. This is war. We are in battle. Risks have to be taken.”
“The end result doesn’t justify the means.” Aura said evenly.
Seth tilted his head. “I just noticed something, Aura. You aren’t stuttering. Why not?”
Aura licked his lips and looked Seth in the face once again. “I decided not to.”
Seth smiled and shrugged his shoulders. “And so you did.”
Punching Aura lightly in the shoulder—as a buddy would do—he pushed himself off from the bench and walked away. As he disappeared down the hall, he threw a few last words over his shoulder. Almost like a goodbye.
“Think about it. My side has more cookies. Literally.”
And then he was gone.
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