I sat there for a few moments, and thought about what my father had just said to me. I closed my eyes, and really thought about it, I knew that my father was a smart guy, he had just made some stupid decisions in his life, that had brought him to the point that he was at right now.
Maybe a lot of it was not his fault, but the drinking was a lot to do with it. I saw the look on his face every time that John drank alcohol. John had once asked him if he wanted any, and he had reached his hand out to grab it, until he saw the way that I was looking at him.
If only John knew what our life was like before we had met him. It was almost as if I was the father at the moment, and I was the one that was making the right decision for him. He did not need to drink. I knew he was insanely depressed, but that would only make life worse for him.
He at least knew that. I kept my eyes closed, thinking about what it was that he had said. What did he mean by it? I felt the same why, but I did not know what it was that we were missing. I knew we were missing Julia, and mainly Mariah, my sister for him.
But I was not so sure that was what he had meant... I sat there for a few moments longer, thinking a bit more on it, as I opened my eyes to see Uncle toss a stick onto the fire. The fire shot up in the air very quickly, and then it disappeared. I thought that I had saw something on it however.
Almost as if it were dragons fight each other, I shook my head, wondering what it must have meant. I wondered how many dragons there really were. Was there any way we could win this war? It sure seemed like humans were dying out a lot faster than the dragons were.
I shivered thinking about all of it... I shook my head, trying to clear my head of those thoughts, but just as I got out of those thoughts, my mind swirled back into the thoughts that my father had just said to me. What had he meant when he said that something was missing?
I was a slight bit lost on what it was that he had meant by it. It did not seem like he was talking about my sister. He had hardly known Julia, so she was not a part of that at all. I just could not think of what it was that he had meant. Did he miss my mother? I missed her a lot as well.
I had gotten over it a while ago, I could tell that it seemed like my father had as well. I knew that he still had loved my mother, and I knew that he regretted all the decisions he had made to not help her, and not help with the relationship before she had passed.
Before she had been murdered more to say... I, truthfully could say, that not even I believed what he had said until I saw it for myself... Until I saw that it was all real and that it was all true. Not even the visions had proven it to me, I thought my mind was just going crazy.
I had heard of it before, people just losing their mind, maybe it was true, maybe they were right all along, and they were just going crazy because of the fact that no one believed them, and even they themselves thought that they were going mad.
I had never heard of it in the degree of my fathers... But in the end he was right. I knew that my father would not kill my mother, he would hit her from time to time... It just did not make sense that he would burn her in the middle of the park.
The first day, when we had escaped the city, with the horses, which we had in the pens as I looked over at them to make sure they were okay. He was laughing the whole time, even though we both knew that none of it was funny. His brain could just not comprehend what it was that was going on.
It took us several days to get to the place we were at right now. We were in the middle of nowhere, deep into some woods. The dragons would never find us here, we could live out the rest of our lives here in peace. But according to John, that was not really our plan.
He planned on us doing something, I had heard him talking to some of the guys that visited him, they were saying stuff about forming a legion, but that was all that I could hear, I did not want to risk getting caught.
There was a reason behind the fact that he was having private meetings in the first place. I just tried my best to listen to what it was that he was saying, I even moved my tent closer to his in the process. But all I could catch were just a couple of words from time to time when they raised their voices.
John had told me that the dragons were planning this for years, and the whole point in my uncles mission was to find and kill the dragon that was planning all of this. It seemed as if they got to him before he could catch them. After that the legion gave up because they had no spy.
But one by one, even after killing him, they kept on looking for, and killing my Uncle's best men. According to John, him, and another person that had gone of the deep end a long time ago, were the only big guys in my Uncle's battalion that were still alive.
John in fact was not sure if he was alive or not still, all he knew is that the guy had moved to another place outside of our empire, somewhere out in the woods according to him. No one had heard from him, or knew where he lived...
If you asked me, John was right to assume that he was dead if he had not gone to visit any of the members... Some of the members from the original legion came to talk to him still, John considered them his best men. There was even a women that had visited us before.
She was fairly good looking, and she looked back at me, and grinned when she saw me staring, but she was at least 7-8 years older than me, if not even more than that. I missed Julia, that is why, I was lonely not having a girl around me a lot of the time.
I got back on the subject, about what it was that my father had said in the first place. About there being something missing, and it was not my sister. I was starting to realize what it was. I closed my eyes trying not to think about it, but now it was practically killing me.
It was the world that was missing, not just them. Nothing was the same any more. I was not sure, even if we won in all of this, if things would even ever be the same again. I closed my eyes once again, and just let all of the thoughts drown my head.
I had to get it out, and this would be the only way, otherwise my brain would die on me over the next couple of days. I knew the world would never recover from this, people knew that dragons were real now, and they were not just things that were written in stories.
There was a reason that there were stories being made about them in the first place, it was because at some point there were people out there that knew that they were real. I shivered, wishing I could just go work at Pops like I used to, even before my life began to get crazy.
That would never happen, that is what it was that was missing. Life was missing, we were not alive, we were dead. I opened my eyes, that was enough thinking for me for now... I then heard the footsteps of someone drawing closer and closer to us.
I turned around and noticed that it was just Padre. When Padre cleaned himself up, he looked good. He looked clean right now, which right now was the time that you think someone would not look clean. Padre had told me his life story quite a while ago.
Thinking back on it was good to just clear out those other thoughts from out of my head. He had told me about how he was from a different nation, and his parents had snuck in because his father was friends with one of the old guard members that stood outside the boarders.
Or at least, that is what he had thought for a while. He had thought that he had snuck in, and that maybe his parents had been caught and taken back while they left him there. Or maybe his parents had been killed or might have died randomly.
But he found out the evil news when he was much older. In fact, his parents had not made it past the boarders. They had been caught, not making it across, like he had thought. But the people that had done it had killed his parents. The guard felt a bit guilty so he let him grow up in his household.
When he found out the truth, he left his home, and that is when he had become a part of all this gang life. He was a lot younger than I was when I had found out that my uncle had been killed. He was not that much older than me, as I found out when he had first started to clean himself up.
I had asked him how old he was, and he had told me that he was 23. He had truly not lied to me when he said he was no longer going to live the life that he was living before. He had told me that he was hiding from his gang, and his old friends the whole time because of all of it.
He probably enjoyed living the life that we were living right now if I was going to be honest with myself. This was an escape for him, I know he would deny it. But I knew after all that he had told me, not just that about his life story. He was happy to be at the place that he was at right now, he was around good people.
His parents were not good people, and neither was the guy that raised him, which was a lot to do with the reason that he had ran away and began to join the gangs as well. I suppose that I could not blame him for that, but I still was not ready to help him out after the day that he had a knife to my girl friends throat.
I nodded to him, as he walked past all of us. It seemed as if my father and Uncle pretended as if he was not here. I did not know if they liked him or not, I knew that Uncle probably did not like him for sure. But I saw no emotion on the face on Uncle, as I just saw him staring down at the ground.
I knew that he had been hurt even more than my father after his wife had died. They just had different ways of showing it, not to mention the fact that my father had been stuffed in jail and no one believed what had happened. I knew that Uncle had loved Susan a ton, I knew it hurt him even more when she had been murdered...
There was a lot of that going on, I had a small hope that my sister and Julia were still alive. Even if they were, would it really even matter? I would not get to see them ever again. Maybe it was better off for them to be up in heaven somewhere.
I shook my head, as I just watched, as Padre took the massive pan off of the fire, and put it in a small pool of water, so that the pan would cool off a little and he would be able to serve it to all of us. It was still going to take a few minutes but it was a lot faster way of doing things.
Padre had some great ideas sometimes that I don't think I would have ever thought of. He looked back at us, and he looked around, wondering why everyone looked so down, he then shook his head, and sat down on the log that I was sitting on.
He began to speak, clearing the silence that had been in the air for quite a long time now. I looked at him, and saw above the thick patch of leaves that was ahead of us, that it was starting to get dark right now. I did not see John with anyone so I was wondering what it was that he was doing in his tent.
Probably cleaning off his blade of I had to guess... I knew that dragons had a weak spot, but if you did enough damage to the rest of their body, it could kill them as well. Except the head, he said those were the strongest parts of their body.
Sometimes if humans ganged up them, 1 off them could get to a rough spot and cut it with its sword. The dragons were really not that big either, they were maybe 2.5x the size of a human. They did look scary though, and they were easily a lot stronger than humans as well.
The one thing that they did not have, is that they were not as smart as humans, and they were not as sneaky as we were either. When they came up on you, you could hear them from over a hundred meters at times. Unless they were in the woods.
It was often the least favorite place for dragons to be at though, I heard that dragons loved to be in the sky, so that they could fly around. It was actually quite a lot easier to fight them in the woods, because you could sneak around trees and shoot them from various different angles.
I shook my head as I realized that Padre was talking to me, not the others, and I too was paying him no attention. That was a problem for him as well, I knew that he was lonely out here. We were a bunch of guys, living together in a small camp in the woods.
"It'll be ready in a few... You got anything while hunting today? This is the last of what we got left, it should last us a few days if we ration out maybe even up to a week." He said to me. I looked at him for a few moments, and then I looked down at the ground a bit upset at myself.
I had a chance to catch something, I just had my mind trapped in some thoughts, and when I actually had the chance, I missed the shot because I had not been paying attention and did not give the bow enough time. So I had wasted an arrow and food that would provide for us for a very long time.
It was not often that I got food like that, that was so large. Luckily for us, one of John's old legion mates brought us some vegetables to start growing. It was not enough for us, and it would not fully grow until the beginning of next warm season.
It was already starting to get a bit cold for us, not to mention soon animals would be even harder to come by. We were lucky to be in pine trees as well, that way the leaves did not start to decay. John had chosen this spot out perfectly for us.
My 19th birthday had gone past recently, and no one had thought about it at all. Not even my own father, and I was not going to be extra and bring it up on him either. It was a bit of a sad day for me, but it also was the first time I had caught some food for us.
Even if it was a simple as a rabbit, it still was enough, and it was nearly enough to feed all of us for a full meal. I looked over at Padre, as he too now had his head down at the ground. I felt a bit bad for him since I had not responded to him.
He still thought that I hated him, and he did not know that I did not hate him. I strongly disliked him due to the fact of what he had tried to do that day. I got over it at this point, it was all in the past now, and I could tell that he was a better person compared to what he used to be like.
I figured, since I could tell he was a bit sad and lonely at the moment, that I may as well start talking to him, and respond to what I had said. I had to be truthful with him as well, John had told me that it was the only way that we were allowed to live in this camp, we were not allowed to have secrets.
"No... I had a chance, but I had my mind wrapped up, Ill catch something next time." I said to him. He kept on staring down at the ground, as if he was pretending he did not hear what it was that I had just said. He was being extra right now, and he was acting like my father and Uncle.
After a few moments, he finally looked back up at me, and then he nodded at me. He then looked back down at the ground sadly, just like the rest of them. I shook my head, and then got up from the log, I could not just sit there like the rest of them, and think of what could have been.
There was a lot of that energy in the air right now, and unfortunately I had to say, I did not want to be around that at the moment. There was a lot of what could have been things. But unfortunately what could have been did not happen for us at all.
My father wanted to blame himself for the death of my mother, and say that it was his fault because he was the one that had given the idea that they should go out that night, and just go walk on the trail at the park. I did not blame him for it, he did not know that something like that would have happened to him.
As I began to walk to my tent, which was right beside John's tent now, he popped out of the tent. And he then nodded to me. I kept at walking over to mine, figuring that Padre would notify me when the food was ready to be eaten. He then stopped me as he realized where I was going.
"Joseph... Don't go, let us eat, and then once the others go to their tents, I would like to speak to you." He said to me. I looked at him, a bit surprised and a bit confused at what it was that he so badly wanted to speak to me about. I had a feeling it was going to be about the Buck that I had missed.
He was always a bit harsh on things like that, and I almost wanted to go back over to my tent, and just completely ignore the fact that he had told me to stop in the first place. I turned my head as I watched him sit down on the log that I had been sitting at, and he began to speak to Padre.
I shook my head, and walked back over to them anyways. It seemed like Padre was the person that everyone went to when they felt like they needed to talk to someone. And maybe a lot of that had to do with what had happened in his past, and him being able to understand things a lot more than most others.
We had all been there that day that he had told us the story of his past, and all the mistakes that he had done after that. It all made us feel a lot worse about life, besides John maybe. He always seemed to have no emotions, and he never told us about his stories either.
No one pushed him on it, it was not like we were at group therapy. I sat down at the log beside them to try and catch the end of the conversation, thinking that he probably was telling Padre about me not paying attention, and missing the shot on the Buck.
He tended to point out other peoples failures a lot. I pointed it out to him one time, because I was getting a bit tired of him doing it, not just to me, but to the others that were in camp. He would do it in front of everyone as well, and it made things even more embarrassing.
Then he told me after I had pointed it out that "it is to make people not want to do stuff like that again... To make themselves better". I was not too sure about all of that, it certainly did not make me feel better, that was one thing that I knew for sure.
As I sat down on the log, I turned my head away, trying to pretend like I was not listening to their conversation, but really my ears were quite in tune to hear what it was that they were talking about to each other.
"We will catch something soon, we can eat a good meal tonight, and we can ration out after that. Right now is the perfect time of the year to be hunting, just before the cold months, which is when they spend the most time looking for their own food." He said to him. My body automatically just shivered thinking about the cold months.
That is when we had first started last year, and that was the worst time of the year for us. We were all locked up in our tents trying to keep ourselves warm, while also nearly starving as well. Not to mention the fact that we were insanely depressed as well.
Padre nodded to him, and then pointed him over to the pot that was sitting in the small little pool on the table. John got up and began to walk over to it. He looked at it for a few moments, and then looked at Padre and then smiled at him.
The smile had hardly any emotions on his face, so I had to guess it was more of a smile of thanks. Padre nodded back to him, and then looked back down at the ground. I got up from the log, and then I touched his shoulder and nodded to him as well.
It made him feel a little bit better I could tell. I then walked over to John as he was beginning to put the soup into the bowls for us to eat. I was tempted to ask him what it was that he was going to say to me in a little bit, that he did not want the others to hear.
It was a bit strange to me, because usually when he had to say something, he said it to the entire group. It must be something important, like it usually was when he talked to the people in his legion. He told us to not try and spy on us, or he would throw us out of camp, but I always managed to.
No one else tried, or even cared to as far as I had seen. I was about to speak to him, but he spoke over me just before I began to talk to him. I payed attention to what it was that he had to say to me... I then gulped to myself as I heard what it was.
"Ill talk about it when the others are gone, just be ready, because from now on, you're only going to have busy days..."