'Ahhhhh! Alright pains off the list of words I don't quite understand yet that's for sure' His head was ringing with pain, he opened his eyes, then got scooped up by Irina.
While starring daggers at Damir, "He seems fine, but from the tears pouring down his little face I'd say that one really hurt." She says as pulling Jason closer to her chest and begins to rock him in her arms.
He felt the calm of her embrace wrap around him, he let himself melt into that warmth of her embrace that seemed to overshadow the pain radiating from the back of his head. She continued to hold him like this, still making sure to eye Damir who had an awkward grin across his face.
"His survival isn't the only criteria to abstain you, you know."
"There's no risk without reward"
"-_-"
"It's the other way around and that saying usually only applies to people who can stand on their own two feet"
Irina sat down in the rocking chair, Jason still sitting there in her arms hands wrapped around his head, with his face berried in her chest. Irina sighed looking at him lying there, "No more great pilgrimages to learn to walk across the kitchen floor with Damir for you, or you won't learn any peace until you're our age little man."
Irina tapped him on the nose and giggled then looked back at Damir sighing again, "Well he's fine like this for now, funny he didn't throw a fit. But anyhow you're headed into town again tomorrow aren't you, you hoping for any luck this time around?"
Damir grabbed the chair to his left facing the back towards Irina, startling it to sit down, then he slowly folded his arms over the back before sinking his lower face into them, still letting his eyes look at Irina directly. "Truth is, other than the Doc, who's gonna be wanting some eggs like always, even if he doesn't need 'em, and Erog's blind ass needing a new horse or two, we don't have much else for business. Everyone else would much rather wait until the Royals send the caravan on down from Malakcow before winter than even thinking of buying anything from us."
"The Rowbal's have been putting in every effort to stop what they can of the refugees from Polami or any Grenic citizen for that matter from making it up north to Malakcow. They showed up when we needed it, took us in, told us to call their land our home, yet now only years later now they refuse to let us leave, keep us on the broader out reaches of their borders, and say we need to stop leaching and stealing their work.
The other day when we went into the general store and that slow bitch Orellin says to Kassy over the counter, 'Their not just stealing or work and our food but our men now too.' this shit's spread to our neighbors, everyone we thought our friends besides those two old men have stopped buying from us. I'm scared to even bring Jason to Alec for his checkups, I'm not allowed to hear the end of how they'll say my lazy blood's the reason his hair's white, and that it's evidence that our marriage being a sin to the 'royal blood' of the Rowbal Federation. Might as well have been washed away with Polami, than get washed away in all this talk of the royal blood of the Rowbal people."
She scoffed, rolled her eyes and then making sure she hadn't woken Jason, who was now fast asleep in her arms, she rested her forehead on the top of his head.
"Hey hey hey, if you washed away with Polami I never would have met you and I'd still be eating those stone bowls of red sadness as you called them right? Nothing's lost yet and we won't let this red tide of royal blood wash us away from our home.
Erog's got the vegetables and fruits we need, Alec's got the medicine, and between the two of them we've got what we need to stay afloat, it all adds up to barely a living right now but the least we can do is try our best right? Erog even said he'll take the cattle into Borag during the next fair."
"Overly seasoned, barely done meat in a grey little stone bowl with some vegetables is a recipe for a quick life, not something to be eaten everyday, I stand by stopping that. But if you never met me, if you never spoke to me, you'd never have had to deal with any of this. I can't help but feel responsible for all this because if I wasn't me, your life wouldn't just be easier it'd be entirely different."
Damir pulled the chair up close to Irina, unfolding his arms and placing a hand on either of her cheeks as he lifted her head until her teary and tired eyes looked directly into his own.
"Never has my life or yours been our own, the people around us push and pull on our lives how they wish, but never in my life have I been upset once that you were the one to pull on mine the hardest my dear. My pain is yours, as is yours mine, and so is our happiness too, better days will shine for us once the clouds just haven't parted far enough so that we can see its shine.
Today might not be the day we can see it, but one day we'll take hold of our chances and turn the tables so long as we keep searching for that light. Damir means to give peace and yours means peace itself, our mission for right now is to make sure that this little one gets the peace he needs to grow and learn. I know I can find my own piece of happiness in that alone."
Irina nodded her head, Damir always seemed to only ever find the right words when she needed them most. Standing up with Jason balled up in her arms and weirdly placing one hand on Damir's shoulder as to not drop or disturb the little sleepers rest.
"You always amaze me with that ability of yours to pull out the right words when they're needed most."
"Thank you Damir."
Helping Irina and Jason into the bedroom, he stayed with them until the mother-son pair were fast asleep together, but rather than leaving right away he stayed to admire the beautiful scene, before heading off to finish the last of the tasks for the day.
Their lives went on despite the raging undercurrents of the Rowbal Federation, the days & years passed by with difficulty for the family. Damir was able to sell a couple of his best livestock each year through Erog's generosity, and Irina & Damir found ways around their other issues.
Jason had just turned five-years-old, able to navigate the world, but still not completely rid of his parents suspicions since his vocabulary has progressed remarkably from what they would assume a five-year-old should have. However, since no one else in town would let their kids near them they had no other points of reference.
Since he was finally old enough to attend schooling, Irina and Damir went on over to the only school house in their town to enroll him. Upon meeting with Orellin, the local teacher, the discussion quickly fell through between the couple and her.
"I just simply can't have him in my classroom! His complexion is too much of a distraction to the other students, they'll never get any learning done with him around. What part of this can't you understand?" Orellin waved her arms around wide as she didn't stop, "What's more is, the fact he probably couldn't learn anything thanks to your lazy blood in his brain. What's your point in even coming here? You knew this all wasn't a good idea from the moment you conceived him, you made your bed, sleep in it!"
The whites of Damir knuckles showed through like his skin was glass, chocking back ninety-percent of what he was about to say, he couldn't stop the last ten-percent of raw frustration and anger from flowing over.
Damir's gaze locked into Orellia's eyes so hard that the bravado she was putting up almost faded entirely before she recovered her face of 'righteous and well placed anger' with the two, "And what gives you the right to decide what's in someone's blood, if lazy blood is anywhere it'd be in your fucking brain. The only 'lazy blood' here is you, just because you say it'll be hard to get the class to pay attention you wanna cut off our sons opportunity to learn about the world so you don't have to do your job."
"The right!? The right I have is that of which my great grandfather built this school house, he ran it, then my grandfather ran it, my mother, then my sister and now me. I have every right to do this as the blood in my body is the right itself. And that's something your fucked up hybrid son will never have because you married this Grenin bitch and dirtied the royal blood of the Rowbal peoples. I'm done with this, feel free to never show up again."
Making sure not to miss her chance to get one more bigoted comment in before she closed the door, "I'm sure it was hard convincing your wife to come out of the house, and as hard as that must have been for you, I, as a teacher my only advice to you would be for you to next time just don't, you can't help the lazy after all."
Irina and Damir hopped on Odin beginning to ride back, and despite all their expected anger over the situation, they seemed unusually calm about it all.
"We knew she'd be an issue from the start, we didn't expect it to be good news but we still tried, she's hated you before we were together. Now that she has her freshly installed brand-new moral reasoning, fresh from the Rowbal family at that, she won't budge for anything we say." Damir sighed as he continued directing Odin's reins.
"I guess we'll just have to home school him, we can teach him the basic math he needs. Along with the few books we do have, I'm sure he can get a good enough grasp on reading."
"I hope so, I just hate the thought that he won't even get the chance at a proper education before he can even understand why."
Sadly, Jason was already starting to understand a little of the why; he'd watched humans harm each other for as long as they'd been roaming the Earth, but he was always blind before as to ever why. His thoughts of late had been drifting back to these old observations, bringing his thoughts of the past and those of now it caused him to have a realization about their behaviors.
'They don't always do anything with the body that's left after they kill, especially one another, unlike all the other animals they lived alongside. If any other animal caused harm to another, it was for reasons that required their immediate actions to be as such. When a human caused harm to another, their reasons did not always require their immediate action to be such, more so they would repeatedly cause harm at times for no reason.
Their very ability to create and change the world around them had done so to their problems as well. While their inability to change themselves in the same ways to which they did the world around them was what resulted in them defaulting to their basic natures lashing out to resolve those problems, rather than using that same complexity to which they created them in the first place to solve them.'
This insight applied to him as well, over the past five years at the peak of emotional stress he would often give in to and act not from his mind, more as if it felt from the core of his body itself. Originally, when he began to exist, everything around him captured his attention, he'd watch on at spheres that would glow and shift around in intensity and hue much like his own, others would be like these burning ones close to Earth his parents called the Sun, but would not glow.
He'd also seen many spheres like Earth, where they would have water, air, earth, and fire all in the same amounts too, but none had the life aplenty that Earth did. No matter how long he'd watch, there would always be something different to capture his attention, soon enough he found he hadn't left Earth for a very long time, his aimless wandering had been brought to an end.
This evolved into his interest in humans themselves, wherever they went something was always different from one second to the next, he never had to wait to see something new. And so they had changed him too, he would mimic, observe, and follow them constantly, they had never even touched him but yet they had still changed him too. These conclusions to his thoughts have made him come to believe that the changes they can produce truly can go beyond the world around them.
While he was home alone with these thoughts he suddenly heard a knock on the door, startled dropping his thoughts where they stood, he ran up to the window and looked out the left to the front door.
Standing at the door was an older man who stood just taller than his father, wearing a stiff grey overcoat that looked worn on the elbows, a pair of well-worn brown pants and shirt, with dirty leather boots. His face wrinkled with a small smudge of dirt at the base of his jaw. He appeared like his father did when he was out working, yet his skin didn't darken in the same places as his father.
The old man knocked again, "Hey Damir, it's Erog! I passed by while you and Irina were having that nice little chat with Orellin." The man adjusted what Jason had heard were glasses from his father, and he remembered him saying once that Erog couldn't see anything without them.
Jason walked over to the door and reached up pulling open the door, Jason's balance still wasn't the best, he lost his balance while pulling the door back but then stumbling back up straight, he looked up to Erog who was smiling in surprise looking down at his little display.
"Ho ho well hello there little man, I'm guessing your parents aren't back yet then?"