The night’s racing on and I don’t want to sit here till morning. It’s making me tired and giving me a headache to remember and to tell. I think I’ll skip through a bit of this.

  It was the last year I spent with my family. It was a good year. We were happy.

  I remember days with my brothers, running and laughing. Screaming and singing. I was young enough to still be amazed by everything they did. I wanted to be part of all of it. When they helped HoPa or LoPa, I wanted to help too. I wanted to learn everything they did. I wanted HoPa and LoPa to be proud of me the way they were proud of my brothers.

  And sometimes I did.

  I remember walking through the forest with my LoPa and brothers. Medis and Akmuo holding hands behind me, while I held onto LoPa’s. He pointed to the many plants of the forest but I could barely listen.

  “These leaves are good for healing cuts. They’re full of a white liquid that can be used to clean cuts and sores. That blossom up there will become a pear. A sweet fruit, like an apple.”

  LoPa spoke on and on, excitedly. Most of his instruction was for healing properties. My brothers drank in the information. They had to. They would grow to be husbands, healing their wives and children. But me, I was there only for the experience. To be with all of them. To be close to them.

  Those were gentle, happy days. Easy days.

  But mostly I wanted to be near my mother.

  That’s what I remember most. Her breath. Her touch. Her heartbeat. Walking through the forest with her. Learning how to breathe with her. Riding on her shoulders as she danced along the path to the river to bathe.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  There’s so much to say. So much happened, but most of them little things. Difficult to put into words.

  How do you capture the love of a mother with only words? How do you express that warmth that runs through you? That sensation of knowing you’re loved. That your mother’s proud of you. That everything you do, every word you speak astonishes her, fills her with even more love that spills into you, overwhelming every other thought you might have? How do you capture a life in words? How do you tell all those words in just one night?

  I’ve heard it done in song but my hands have been shaped by killing. I wonder sometimes, had they all lived, if I’d have picked up LoPa’s lute. If maybe I’d have soft intelligent fingers made for plucking at strings.

  But all I have are weapons and poorly formed words. How to capture them all?

  And my fathers. HoPa, sweet HoPa. So gentle and so large. So wise and so kind. He spoke briefly but his words carried power. When I made him laugh, I knew I did something funny. It was a game my brothers and I played. We devised ways to make him laugh. Not just a simple laugh, but the bellowing kind that came from his belly. Medis made him laugh least frequently but got that deep belly laugh nearly every time. He picked his words well. Akmuo was the funniest though. He was always making faces that surprised you and had laughter rolling up from your stomach.

  LoPa was the one we went to when mother was angry with us. He was most like one of us, I think. His foreignness and artistic side gave him a childlike innocence and sense of mischief. He understood us, not so much like a father, but like another brother. He rarely had sharp words for us but would instead pull us away when mother’s temper flared. Usually when First Mother got brought up or when we returned home all bruised and scratched from another encounter with the Meadow children.

  Ours was a simple life. A happy one. Isolated as we were, we were tied close together. We shared our hearts freely with one another. To harm one of us was to attack all of us, and mother carried the heart of a wolf in her chest. She was fierce when challenged, but quick to let insults roll off her shoulders.

  That was how the year progressed. A normal life.

  Except for the creature in the forest, who I’ll try to explain.