The Butterfly Effect

To call it a garden would be an overstatement. While it did hold some seasonal blooms and a single weeping willow, most of it was herbs with a practical use. He avoided all of those spots, following what seemed to be the designated path to the willow tree. He sat down near the trunk, welcoming the leaves and branches’ ways of concealing him from view.

For a while, no one else came here. It seemed that Mathieu wasn’t too worried about his whereabouts, or at least knew where he was. Samone mustn’t have been too concerned, since she had yet to come. He’d seen Kiah on his way out, which means she undoubtedly saw him too; she was probably by the entrance now, close enough in case he needed her yet far enough away to give him space. He could only guess that Lydia had found a group of nobles to share her family’s accomplishments and wasn’t aware of what was going on. Dimas had either found refuge with Kiah or actually had the privilege of fleeing to his room.

At least, that’s what he believed until he saw the familiar head poke through the leaves. “How’d I know you’d be hiding in here?” Dimas smirked, gesturing beside Imre. “Mind if I join you?”

“Of course.” Imre waited until he sat down before scooting closer to him. The Seothian prince might’ve been a year older, but that didn’t make him stronger—in any definition of the word. Dimas was like his pillar, and in some bad situations, the chains that kept him from falling too far into darkness.

“My original plan was to drag you back with me,” Dimas remarked casually. “But now that we’re both here, I can understand why you left. It’s suffocating in there, isn’t it? And that’s coming from a moderately social person.”

“Too many people,” Imre agreed. “There’s no familiar faces, aside from the five of you.” He said that even though he could no longer see the fifth. The person he trusted with his secrets just as much as Dimas, now rewritten so that she was never there at all, leaving only a void in her place.

It didn’t take long for Dimas to get straight to the point. “I know there’s another reason why you left. You don’t leave by the amount of people there alone. You also have that self-deprecating pensive look. I might not be a little ball of fury like Kiah is, but I’ll definitely beat someone up for you.”

“Also unlike Kiah, you’ll lose,” was the immediate, matter-of-fact retort. He rested his head on Dimas’s shoulder. “I already had to watch you leave and come back worse than before… A part of your nature by now is defending, but I don’t want to be the reason you get hurt.”

“Don’t think I’m going to let you get away with not telling.” Dimas didn’t seem to mind how he got closer, appearing more concerned about the lack of straight-forward answers.

Imre sighed, wondering why he ever tried keeping it a secret to begin with. “I thought I saw something—a kid. No one else saw it, though. Mathieu… wondered if I had a spirit, to try to explain it.” His voice might suggest that he didn’t care, but that couldn’t be further than the truth. He did care. He cared more than anyone else did about such matters.

“You’re letting that get to you.” Hearing someone say it stung, though he knew it as the truth.

“All descendants of the Saint-King are supposed to have something. It’s how we know that he’s there, helping us remember what he did and to make just as lasting of an impression. It doesn’t matter if someone else has already caught his attention or if they’re not meant for the throne.”

“The same ‘all descendants’ also include the Tyrant-King Selik. Need I remind you how definitely not spirit guided that guy was? Let’s see, genocide, murder, more genocide—”

“Is this supposed to be making me feel better?”

“What I was going to say was that you’re better than that,” Dimas mumbled. “Forget about what legends say you should and shouldn’t have, they’re all the most screwed up amount of wrong I’ve ever seen. According to your stories, dragons eat babies and manticores are harbingers of the devil.”

This brought Imre to the most irrelevant conclusion of them all. “Seothia is terrible to everything the children of Fleyw Bresh stand for. How could you love someone coming from that kind of background..?”

“You’re forgetting I have just as much reason to hope our ancestors don’t determine our futures as you do. I know there can be change, but someone needs to make it happen—and no one can if we’re stuck in the past. I’m not going to focus on it any more than anyone else will.”

Imre stayed quiet, allowing Dimas to continue.

“Zofie thinks I’m stupid for loving you. All she sees is someone with less life than a rock… someone that doesn’t show emotion, thinking that because of that love can’t be returned. Do you know why, out of all the people I’ve met, you’re the only one I’m ever going to truly love?”

“You want to be what makes me happy.” Now Imre was beginning to smile; a small, fragile thing that might shatter at even the slightest of disruptions. He lifted his head up to actually look at his partner.

“From the first time I heard your laugh,” Dimas confirmed. “And I’ll be damned if it’s not the last thing I do.” His eyes asked something, answered only by being pulled in for a kiss.

It was soon followed by a flurry of them. Each one seemed to bring about a new feeling; love, courage, stability, respect, confidence—

“No wonder I felt a breeze! Talmi’s flapping around all over the place in here.”

Startled by the new voice, Imre immediately pulled back and turned a bright shade of red. Dimas, on the other hand, appeared to have no such embarrassment.

Mathieu looked like he didn’t know if he wanted to be jealous of such a close relationship, awkward because of what he just interrupted, or pretend like he saw none of it. “I came to check on you. I would also like to apologize for whatever I did wrong. I do hope you’d excuse my ignorance—I was rather sheltered in my youth.”

Imre mumbled something that even he himself didn’t completely understand; it could’ve been anything from accepting it to a grumble about the insensitivity.

“Well, I’m going to assume that’s all cleared up,” Mathieu decided. “You know, of all the things I’d expected to see this afternoon, that was not one of them.”

Imre couldn’t muster the words to say anything, but Dimas was proud enough to speak on both of their behalf, “What you just witnessed was true love in one of its rawest forms.”

“You’re awfully lucky, I’d say,” Mathieu remarked. “True love yet eludes me, a distant thing I’d catch if it ever bothered to slow down. Perhaps one day.” He laughed, almost involuntarily. “Well, regardless, I presume I’ll need to take up someone before I’m gone.”

After a moment, Mathieu gestured towards the entrance. “Samone had been the one to ask me to come here, so I think she’d like to see for herself that you’re fine and well.”

Dimas glanced at Imre, something that showed he wouldn’t have minded if the answer was no. Imre still nodded, though, and followed Mathieu back inside. With Dimas now beside him, Imre went to where Samone was and the three spent a bit of time together.

He’d wandered into his room after a while, eventually planning on getting some rest. A headache soon prevented it, however, causing him to dig through his bag while there was still candlelight; he’d never find anything in the dark and the sounds of the party were slowly fading.

What he didn’t notice until the next morning was the letter he had pulled out in the process. It was the same one Minne had given him before they left. Remembering her words, he began to get curious, now having nothing to stop him. He carefully opened it up and began to read what was inside.

‘Onala 6, the Night of a Child’s Founding

With the event of her fifth birthday, I have no doubt in my mind who she is. It seems my quest to keep them all safe under my care is completed… but I fear my time here is running out. I can feel every part of me slow down, hear the cracking as my body falls apart.

Everything that they will need is readily available to them. I wish I could have lived longer to see them all off, guide them down the path they need to take for this world to survive. All I can hope for now is that they’re able to pull through without me, and that wherever Vriuh resides, I can watch them do it from there.’

The original name of the author had been torn out, from the looks of it unintentionally. A new, attached piece replaced the space. It was a simple note—and clearly Minne’s handwriting—that read, ‘Close to where you are is the little village of Idale. There are more answers there.’

He realized Idale had to have been in Quennell territory, if men from around there came to that party. And if Mathieu was in any degree ready to take on his father’s work one day, then he would know where it was.