Silence squinted his eyes as they opened. He felt his body slump deeper into the bed and slowly he moved his hand up to lay it on his forehead. He had fallen asleep the night before perfectly fine, but now he felt sort of… sick.
Silence sat up and looked around the clean room. His eyes landed on his knives which were clearly tampered with. At first they were facing the wall, now they were facing the window. The paper that was on the desk was flipped over sometime in the night as well.
Silence stood up and felt his body wobble a bit. He stumbled and nearly fell down to the ground. Silence decided to stop walking and just stand there a bit, perhaps try to calm down and take deep breaths.
He had never felt this way before… was it because the food? He probably shouldn't have ate it.
Silence walked towards the door and opened it. He stumbled to the direction of the bathroom and leaned against the wall. Nahla walked out of a room holding onto a basket but she stopped when she looked at Silence. Her face became filled with worry.
"Oh my, your face is really grim. Here take a seat." She placed the basket down and guided Silence to the sofa. Lightly she placed her hand on his forehead and then began to walk to the kitchen.
"Mama," Leo called out from his room "is Silence up yet?"
Nahla sighed as she entered the kitchen.
"Yes, but-"
"Really?!" Leo ran from his room out to the living room. He smiled at Silence and sat down next to him. "Your eyes are way darker." Leo said and moved closer to Silence's face. He stared deeper into his eyes making Silence slightly back away.
Silence continued to stare at Leo's face trying to read his expression. Darker? No, that wasn't good, his face should've been brighter. Happier. Not darker. Leo's chest, once again heavily went up and down and his eyes dilated. He quickly backed away from Silence and looked down.
"Sorry." He mumbled.
"What do you mean by darker?"
"You just look like you haven't been outside in a while. We should go outside! Come on! Then you could see the village!" Leo stood up and exclaimed happily.
Before Silence could even come up with an answer Leo grabbed his wrist and began to force him out the door, calling out to his mom that they would be gone.
As Silence walked out he listened to the sounds of chattering people and crates being moved. Some people were standing near stands trying to get out their money while others were cleaning clothes or laughing.
Leo began to talk about all the things that they could do in the village while dragging him further away from the house. Silence just looked around in awe, there were so many people and they all looked so happy. Everything seemed so full of life.
It was nothing like what he experienced at home.
"So what do you wanna do first?" Leo asked.
"I don't know can you show me your favorite place here?"
Leo's face lit up and he began to turn and run pass a bunch of people. Silence began to try and keep up. Leo would accidentally bump into people and scream out the words sorry as he dodged and ducked.
Silence tried his best to stay close. Normally he'd be great at running, but when he had to move out of the way for other people and dodge things like carts full of food it was difficult.
Leo ran deep into the woods making the sound of people talking become distant. Birds sang loudly and the trees made whispers in the wind.
Silence followed close by and watched Leo slow down and breathe heavily. He gasped loudly for air and began to climb up a tree making Silence do the same and pant loudly as well.
Leo began to talk again, about how nice the view was, and how he found the tree in the first place. Silence pulled his body up, and kicked a branch with his foot as he continued to go higher up the tree.
What he expected was to stay in the village but if tree's were village kids source of happiness then he'd gladly climb one. Leo stopped climbing and sat down on a branch, he continued to talk about the tree and the jagged branches.
Silence sighed out of breath and looked ahead. Leo was right, it was beautiful. Down below he could see the village and the people going about their days. In the distance there were far mountains and trees were below them.
"And you see that really small place right there? That's my house. You can't really see it though." Leo pointed as he spoke.
Silence looked over at him, the light was still shining on him brightly. Leo began to to swing his feet back and forth.
"That's where they sell super big cakes. My mom took me there once for my birthday and she got me a large, giant orange cake that had my name on it," Leo expanded his arms as if to show how large he was talking about "did you know that orange is my favorite color?"
"You told me that already."
"I did? I don't even remember that. Anyway like I was saying we had this big cake and-" Leo stopped talking. He closed his mouth and looked down "sorry I was talking a lot wasn't I?"
"That's okay, I don't mind."
Leo didn't speak for a little, but then finally he opened his mouth again.
"Sorry if I'm coming off as obnoxious and annoying." He mumbled and held on tightly to the rough branch.
"Why would I think you're coming off as obnoxious and annoying?" Silence asked confused. He didn't find anything wrong with Leo.
Leo shrugged.
"Most people do, cause I talk a lot and sometimes I can't sit still." He began to play with his hands.
"Is that not normal for village kids?"
Leo laughed again, but this time it wasn't filled with as much enthusiasm.
"You don't travel to a lot of villages do you?"
"This is the first one I've ever been to."
Leo smiled and continued to look at his hands. Silence looked down at Leo's hands too and then up at his face.
"Most 'village kids' are calmer than me, and they don't forget stuff as easily as I do." Leo admitted.
"That's okay, I don't mind at all."
Leo smiled larger and continued to kick his legs.
Silence continued to look at Leo. He had a feeling that Leo was still worried about seeming annoying, but Silence truly didn't think there was anything wrong. He was just talking, it was normal to talk, even he knew that and he was the least normal person in the world.
Leo began to talk again this time speaking about traveling.
"I've always wanted to be a traveler like my dad." He said.
"Really? Why don't you become one?" Silence began to move his legs too.
"Well… when my dad was away, traveling and stuff, my mom was super sad. She was scared he wouldn't come back. So when I told her I wanted to be a traveler she said I couldn't. She said she didn't wanna feel the same…" Leo explained "what do your parents think about traveling? Do they worry about you?"
Silence looked up at the far away mountains in front of him. He thought about his parents, truly he didn't like thinking about it. They could be right behind him, they could be hiding in the shadows and he wouldn't even know it.
"They didn't approve of me leaving, but I went anyway." Silence shrugged.
"Really?! That's so cool!" Leo excitedly moved up to Silence's face.
Silence stumbled and fell back. He screamed as he fell down on the ground and hit his back on the dirt. Leo fell after him and landed next to him. The two groaned at the same time. Leo quickly sat up and looked over at Silence.
"Sorry!"
Silence sat up and rubbed his forehead. He picked up his knife which fell out of his pocket and stared at it.
"It's okay, I'm hungry anyway. Is there a place we can go to eat?"
"Oh yeah there's a bunch of places we can eat at the village! There's that one tavern…" Leo began to talk about the places they could go and started to walk.
Silence stood and followed. He listened to Leo go on and somehow fall off topic. Silence began to think about Leo as he stared at his face glow. There something about him that Silence couldn't really put his finger on. It wasn't the happy bubble that surrounded him but it was something else.
After a long while of walking, listening and talking the two boys arrived at the village again. Some people called out to Leo, telling him to stay safe and not to cause any trouble and he'd only laugh and assure them he wouldn't. Everyone would glance at Silence and made a weird face.
"That looks like a nice place." Silence pointed at the door.
Leo stared at the door longer than normal and swallowed.
"Can we go somewhere else? Somewhere that's not inside?" He asked.
"Sure."
Leo walked around for a bit more. He smiled as he looked at the stand and happily walked up to it.
"I see you got a new pitcher." He leaned on the stand.
The man smiled. He looked up at Silence then looked between him and Leo.
"Hey, your the new villager from yesterday. My names Paul." He extended his hand out.
Paul.
"Hey Paul, I'm Silence." Silence shook his hand. "How'd you know I was a new villager?"
"What are you kidding me? This village is so small I bet I could tell you every ant that's living here." Paul joked and grabbed two cups. He began to fill the cups with ice and poured some juice into them. "Here this ones on the house." He pushed the two cups towards them.
"Really?! Thanks man your the best!" Leo took a cup and began to drink from it.
Silence grabbed his cup and moved it up to his lips. He tilted his head back as he began to drink from it, and felt the cold liquid go down his throat. The juice was refreshing and cold, but it wasn't much different from the juice he used to get. Maybe the juice wasn't what made village kids so bright…
Silence wiped the juice that was on the corner of his lip and looked over at Leo who was staring at him. Leo jumped as if not expecting him to look at placed his cup down.
"So what brings a traveler to our boring village?" Paul asked as he began to wipe off the table of the stand.
Silence shrugged.
"I'm just getting away from my old house." Silence half lied.
"Ah, I feel ya. Once I get enough I'm leaving this village for good. Maybe I'll move into the city." Paul smiled.
Silence stared at him closely. He too was radiating with light, but his eyes were different. They were filled with hope and memories. Leo impatiently shifted his weight side to side and looked around the area. He forced his hands in his pockets and made a low whistling sound leave his mouth.
"Do you wanna-"
"Yes!" Leo looked at Silence.
Silence couldn't help but smile at his sudden desire to move around.
"Where can we find a place to eat?" Silence asked.
"Oh! We should go to the market! They have the best food there, come on!" Leo grabbed onto his wrist and began to force him to walk.
"Cya later Silence!" Paul called out.
"Cya later!" Silence repeated what he said, hoping that saying their words and phrases would make him more like them.
The closer that Silence and Leo got to the market the more the smell of food danced in the air. Silence looked around at the people waiting in line at different, larger looking stands and giving out their money.
The smell of the tasty pastries and meat made Silence's stomach grumble and his mouth water. He hadn't ate since the night before, suddenly he started to remember about the morning sickness that he had felt earlier.
He still didn't figure out what caused it, but there was no way he thought Nahla could've poisoned him. Even if it was poison that was in the food, he grew fully unaffected to nearly any poison and the ones he hadn't been immune to were almost impossible to find.
"Oh we should get funnel cake!" Leo screamed happily.
"Funnel cake? What's funnel cake?"
Leo gasped surprised and turned to look at Silence.
"You've never had funnel cake?" He spoke shocked.
"We don't have that in the mountains…"
"You've gotta try it!" Leo grabbed his arm and again began to run.
Silence was starting to get used to being dragged around. It wasn't long before Leo stopped at a line that was full of a few people.
"This is the line for funnel cake." He said "I kinda wish it were shorter." He muttered to himself and stared at the five people in front of them.
Silence looked at the few people and watched them order. The workers were smiling and putting powder over a pastry of some kind. Leo began to talk about the line and how good funnel cake was. He tried his best to explain in detail what taste like but he only continued to confuse Silence.
The first lady moved and walked away with her food. Leo looked up at the line again as if it would be a lot shorter and began to move side to side. He sighed loudly and lightly jumped up and down.
"Are you okay?" Silence asked.
Leo swallowed and began to fidget with his hands.
"Yeah, sorry this line is just really long." He stood up on his tip toes and looked at the workers.
"We can get something els-"
"No, I want funnel cake." Leo hopped up and down.
"Okay…" Silence furrowed his eyebrows.
Leo was clearly anxious or at least impatient, so why didn't he want to just get something else? It didn't make since to Silence. Easily they could just eat something different. The line moved up and Leo bit his bottom lip and slowly began to pace around.
Eventually after what felt like forever, at least it did in Leo's eyes they finally got up to the worker who was smiling warmly. He was putting powder on the brown cakes.
"Just two please." Leo said and took out his money. He stared at the money for a long time and then turned to look at Silence "can you count this for me?"
Silence looked down at the money and took it.
"I can count," Leo told him "I'd just… rather not."
Silence counted the money and looked up at the worker. He handed him the money and the worker happily gave him the two plates that had funnel cake on them. Leo took his plate, then quickly walked over to a bench and sat down. Silence sat down next to him.
Leo quickly dug into his food and put it in his mouth. He chewed on it and some of the power spread on his hands and face. Silence did the same, almost imitating him.
The powder got all over Silence's hands but he ignored it and moved the cake up to his mouth. The flavor explored his tastebuds and made his heart beat pick up. Leo smiled at him as he ate his.
"You like it?" He asked.
"Yeah. I've never had anything like this on the mountains."
"When I was younger my mom would make these all the time! She'd…"
And just like that Silence knew he was going to start rambling again. Silence adjusted to things quickly, and he caught on to patterns quickly as well, but he was very, VERY quickly catching on to Leo's patterns because they were so simple.