The Consequence of your Actions wrote:
Sometimes, you hardly feel burdened by your heavy responsibility, after all this is your friend, and you’d be happy to aid him in whatever he wants, and you know he’d do the same for you. This is one of those times, where you can feign everything is alright.
“Chanti.” you say softly but with heartfelt emotion. “I don’t think that’s a dog.” If you look at the drawing from a certain way, you kind of see where Chantrieri might be coming from and what he attempted to do, but from where you’re sitting it just looks like a misshapen lump with sticks. It certainly has charm though.
“See,” Chantrieri says in a haughty tone and a hidden hint of laughter in his voice, laughing at his own joke most probably. “That’s where you’re wrong, you just haven’t seen this breed before,” he smirks. You give a low guffaw as you fold the drawing in one of the harness pockets.
And while the sight of his unseeing eyes still makes your stomach churn, you’re getting better about it. You just… hate seeing your friend this way. Obviously he is in no way incapable, but you’re both still getting used to it. It can certainly be worse, the both of you could be dead instead of blind or have a lame leg with a limp.
Chantrieri is slowly coming out of his shell again, maybe is just only when is just the two of you, but compared to the year of silence and his paranoia of getting out of the house and jumping at the slightest of sounds, he is certainly getting better and nothing could make you happier than seeing your friend thrive and be alive and enjoying life once again. As it should be.
Maybe you should do the same too, you know you have a tendency to get overbearing at times, even if Chantrieri is nice about it you know you’re annoying with your overprotective manner. You should lay those ghosts to rest, nothing is out to get you anymore. The both of you.
And this outing should be proof of that, and while obviously you both had to get out of the house, it was nothing more than short trips for food or other amenities. This trip to an autumn festival might be a little too much, but if you’re both careful you might have the nicest night since the accident, maybe. Besides, you are in a totally secluded spot of the festival, you’ll still have fun and probably won’t have anything bad happen. You hope.
You’re walking Chantrieri through a path surrounded by trees, the harness is tense and tight in your chest but you don’t mind it anymore, carefully, oh so carefully. The sun it’s still setting so the sunlight gives the trees a golden, ethereal feel. You feel as if you’re frozen in time and not for the first time, you think about how your friend is missing this, something that while you don’t take it for granted anymore, you did it for a very long time.
You, in your halting, inadequate words paint him a picture, about how the sun shines orange as it sets, painting the sky in a myriad of colors, from yellow to light purple about the light dusting of stars that are starting to appear in the sky. How the light hits the trees making the brown appear golden, the road you’re walking on, made of stone steps, has some light moss and it's filled with fallen leaves, there are some birds pecking on the ground, easygoing but ready to fly away at a moment’s notice.
Chantrieri is listening intently, a small smile on his face but there’s in his brow the lightest of frowns, you wonder what he might be thinking.
As you’re walking, two kits explode into the path out of nowhere in an shower of fallen leaves laughing and running, you come to a sudden stop grimacing and startled, stopping Chantrieri along with you. As their poor frazzled mother runs and yells after them, she apologizes quickly and sends an apologetic glance your way, before continuing her way.
You take a deep breath to try to reign in your sudden anxiousness, everything is okay. You shake your head, scared by two kits? Oh how low have you fallen, heh.
Snorting, you start walking again, “Kits, aye? What a rambunctious bun- Chanti?” Or more accurately you try to start walking. When you look where Chantrieri is he’s frozen, eyes wide and wild. Scared. He’s starting to breathe faster and there’s a leaf crunched under his paw, and while you know that’s not what triggered him, maybe the mix of the two, the leaf and the kits scrambled his brain.
You approach him slowly, you’re sure he can feel the movement of the harness, so try to telegraph as little as possible to not startle him further. As you call his name softly as possible you can’t help but remember the first time you found him in the same state before.
_______________________________________________________________________
Burning.
The sky is burning. Red, ochre, almost purple and it would be almost beautiful if not for the connotations.
Smoke fills your sensitive nose, choking you. You can barely breathe, can barely see. Heat and fire lick at your heels like snapping, snarling hunting dogs. The wind is vicious and unnatural, it howls like a wounded beast, angry and forlorn. It’s making the fire around you worse, so much worse. Your throat is burning almost as hot as the fire around you and you feel as if your chest is weighed down by an anvil.
One of your legs is broken, you scarcely remember how it happened since many things happened since then and it is all hazy, but you sure as hell feel it. You can do nothing but drag it and yourself as fast as you can. So you run, run, run and run. You can barely feel your other paws, but you must go on, you must find someone, anyone anything.
You hope you’re not the last one, you heard the retreat call, but you know many did not and it’s not in your nature to leave somebody behind if you can help them. You hope there’s someone out there like you, helping other kalons. This war had taken too many of you, and for what? Stupid senseless egoism, humans simply just didn’t want to share, they saw you and others like you like simpleminded animals, stupid, useless.
(Deep down, these words resonate with you. After all, you’re so dimwitted you didn’t see what was right in front of you, you chose to ignore all the warning signs, just because you chose to believe in kindness. Was it really that stupid to trust someone who gave you a chance?)
You shake your head, now it’s not the time and what happened already happened and there’s nothing you can do to change it back. If it was only that easy to convince the others.
You soon literally see the light at the end, an opening in the forest, you try to rush faster to outrun the flames but as soon as you reach the opening you trip, your bad leg twisting awkwardly and it’s inevitable you give a loud yelp, you really hope nobody is near. You land in the ground, a heap of ash and singed fur. At least you’re out, even if you still feel the flames at your back and you know it’s a matter of time before they spread.
You stand up slowly, wary of moving your bad leg too much and what greets you is a terrible scene. You get the sense you wouldn’t be forgetting this any time soon…
Taking a deep breath,(which is a terribly bad idea, your lungs are still full of smoke and there’s a fire at your back, so you end up almost coughing a lung. So much for fortifying yourself.) you launch into the fray, figuratively speaking. You hope to not get sent into the front lines for a long, long time. You hope there’s a survivor in here, but you know the possibility is extremely low. But as always, you’re filled with hope.
(You wonder if it will run out. You feel like a candle about to burn out.)
You walk gingerly, trying not to disturb anything, other than the sound of the crackling roaring flames everything is silent. Eerily so. Another smell hits your nose after hours of smoke. Gunpowder.
Looking around you see the source, bombs, no wonder everything is the way it is, there’s shrapnel everywhere, you hope not to cut your paw open with those. Though with your luck lately being as it is…
A gasp.
You stand upright as if electrified, where did that come from? Could there be anybody out here? You curse the fact that you can’t use your nose, your best asset in trying to find anything. You strain your ears trying to hear something. Maybe it was a figment of your imagination? After all, you've been here for a long, long time…
¡No! There! you rush towards the source of the noise quickly without regard for your own safety, and there you find… Another kalon. You squint, at least you think so, their fur is so badly matted and you can barely see their shine so you don’t recognize them as they look to you, as black formless mass. You’re sure they’re not one of your squad.
(Where are they, where are they, they left you alone, all alone, alone, alo-)
The kalon is moving their head back and forth with an increasingly rapid breathing, you try to approach them but at the slightest of movement the kalon head snaps to you, their eyes are closed but you feel your fur rising up in agitation, that’s a dangerous looking fella. You get closer warily, you hope you won’t get attacked.
“Uh, hello?” One of the kalon ear twitches but he doesn’t relax, or even gives a sign that they heard you, you're finally at touching range but you don’t dare do anything yet, “I’m Jasper, uh, the scouting squad. I mean, from the scouting squad, not that I’m ALL the scouting squad-” You ramble away, as you wont do when you’re nervous. At least it seems to be helping the other kalon, his breathing is slowing down but he still won’t look at you. “Listen, uh…”
“Chantrieri.”
“What? Oh, your name! Right, stupid…” You recognize him now, kind of. You’ve seen him around, but you’re not sure what he does, you haven’t interacted at all before. Jeez, what a first impression. “We need to get out of here, the others sounded the retreat. And uh, there’s this big fire so…” You try to say all of this calmly but your anxiety is ramping up again, you’ve been in a single place for too long and that’s bad. Who knows who might be listening or watching you, or what might be coming. This is not a safe place.
Chantrieri is quiet for a while before he nods. He stands up shakily and you go to help him, but when your shoulder touches his, he jumps away from you like a spring. You stare after him. He’s hyperventilating again, so you approach him warily.
“Can I touch you?” you ask him, he seems confused but nods after a while, so you grab his paw and put it in your chest, you try to regulate your breathing despite your hurting chest. “Copy me, c’mon. One, two, three… That’s it.”
He gradually relaxes again. So you nod him to keep moving. Slowly but surely you both start walking again, you go where you remember the campment being.
___________________________________________________________________________________
You didn’t find any more kalons.
When you both returned to the camp there were barely people there but they were relieved to see you both. Even yourself. They splinted your leg until you could go back to the city, it’s unlikely you go back into the frontlines again, or even near the warzone. You’re relieved, you weren’t cut for this, but you were good at it. You’re not sure what you would do now. You didn’t have many hobbies before.
You find Chantrieri sitting outside with his eyes bandaged. The doctors said he probably won’t see again. The shrapnel did too much damage to his eyes. That’s why he didn’t see you when you found him. You feel bad for him. You slide beside him, but he barely jumps, as if he didn’t even notice. Didn’t he hear you?
“Chantrieri?” His ear twitches, but doesn’t move his head towards you. He nods as if to say he’s listening. You open and close your maw, as if you were a fish, looking for something to say. “Want to move in with me?” As soon as that leaves your mouth you slap your paw in your face, good going genius. “W-wait! not like that, is- well, the doctors said you would probably need someone to help with stuff, a-and I don’t really have anything to do now and… I’ll shut up now.”
Chantrieri looks dumbfounded for a moment, before a snort escapes him and then he’s laughing boisterously, so hard that other kalons have stopped what they’re doing and are watching him as if he’s going crazy. Maybe he is. He rarely laughed before.
That’s when you see the tears down his face, wetting his fur. Oh.
“S-sure, why not? You can become my servant and change your name to Sebastian.” You look at him offended. That’s so cliché at least if he gave you another name. When you don’t respond, Chantrieri grows nervous. “I-It was a joke I’m sorry, I won’t really think of you as a servant, but I’m grateful for your offer, thanks.” he smiles, and you smile back at him, even if he can’t see it, you get the feeling he knows.
And so, you became friends.
__________________________________________________________________
In the present, Chantrieri is finally calming down with your help, when out of nowhere he says, “We should have a farm.”
You cannot even fathom what he must have been thinking to reach that conclusion. “Okay genius, and how do we care for the farm when we’re both disabled?”
“Easy, we hire people, and we become like those rich people from the telenovellas.”
“Chanti, those people are drug traffickers, the farm is just front. We aren’t drug traffickers, or farmers really. What brought this on?”
“Farms are isolated.” Ah, so is it that, you lower your ears in sympathy, you know how hard it is for him. “Also, I really want a chicken.”
“A chi- Chanti, you let a cactus die, how would you care for a chicken?”
“Ok so, it includes you, and this thing I saw on television the other day-”
As you both bicker you cannot help feeling happy. And while you encountered a road bump today, the festival ended being as great as you hoped. The road to recovery isn’t as smooth as you hoped, but you’re both getting there.
Together.
