A Story of Forever

Part 16

And so life continued. Karkion’s youngest child Amnee got raised by Mamon and Naia just as Thrash was. And this child was a sweet young thing, just as Thrash used to be. And she was even friends with Navee, who was about the same age as her. Naia and Mamon had great hopes for this child. Though they knew that they shouldn’t get their hopes up. They saw what had happened to Thrash.

One day Mamon was running away from Thrash, who had gotten it in his mind to beat them. Mamon was running as fast as they could, as fast as the wind itself, away from Thrash’s chariot pulled by powerful horses. The chariot rattled and rumbled as the wheels lumbered over rocks. And it grew so loud that Thrash and his chariot turned into the thunder itself. And Mamon, with their bright, lithe speediness turned into the lightning.

And as we all know, thunder is sound and lightning is fire. Thunder can never catch up to the lightning. It is always running after the lightning, running after the lightning, but it can never capture it. And so, Thrash could never capture Mamon, and they got away, and they were not beaten by Thrash after all. Not this time.

But another time, they could not escape.

Mamon, Naia, and Sakava and Aldo and Navee hatched an escape plan one day. They would seek the help of a free Yemar named Yarrothi to help them escape. Yarrothi told them that she had a way to stop the Uzras from finding them once they did escape. And, if they could hold on through their hunger, the Uzras would give up on finding them.

So Mamon and Naia turned the three children into birds and the two adults themselves turned into birds and they flew away through the night, deftly and cunningly weaving their way through all the Uzra wards and spells, carefully avoiding the guards.

They at last reached the mountains where Yarrothi swore to meet them. And Yarrothi produced a box for them to hide in. She said that if they hid in the box, the Uzras would not be able to find them no matter how much they looked. And once the Uzras were done looking for the family, once they had given up, then Yarrothi would open the box and the three could live their lives.

Yarrothi warned them that there was not enough room in the box for much food. And she asked if they were truly ready to do this. And the children assured her that they were. And so the family, still in the form of birds, entered the box.

The food lasted them a few months. But then it ran out. The children grew hungry. And the parents tried, they tried to ignore their children’s hunger. For they knew that this was the only way that the children could become free. And the children had to become free.

But the children were hungry and the parents could not ignore it. They could not keep the children hungry. So they opened the box from within and took all the children out, sending them out into the world to gather food.

Thrash and the other Uzras found them. And they captured them. They would have killed them all right there if Mamon had not offered a bargain.

They said that they would help Thrash find and kill Yarrothi, the Yemar wo had helped them, so that she could not help any other Yemars escape ever again. Thrash looked at this bargain and thought that it would be overall beneficial for him, so he accepted. He did not want any more Yemars to slip away with the help of this Yarrothi.

Mamon did not want to betray the woman who had helped them, and did not want to kill a good Yemar, so they secretly hid all of Thrash’s weapons before the two set out on their journey. Without his weapons, Thrash would not be able to kill Yarrothi.

But Thrash went to the hut of another Yemar woman, before finding the one who had helped Mamon’s family escape. And he coerced this woman into creating for him new weapons that he could use.

And with these weapons he killed Yarrothi. Mamon felt very devastated and very guilty. They felt as if the blood was on their hands. But they knew that it was the only way to save their children. They knew that they did not have a choice.