The Spiritguard

 The inside of the building looks nothing like my village. Bright, sleek paneling everywhere and digital displays - it's what I imagine a spaceship to look like on the inside.

 Arcona Village itself is a pretty lush, green place, and other than the dirt roads there is just a lot of grass. The houses are all built in the old-style, made of wood and some of brick. Log cabins dot the area, and even the Spiritguard Headquarters is made of old wood.

 There's quite a bit of farmland on the outskirts of Arcona Village, because most of the people here are farmers that live in the more rural parts of town. In the central part of town, where I live, most of the houses belong to either Spiritguard personnel or those who work for Vitarine.

 The interior of Vitarine Inc. is almost entirely white, and the marble floor beneath my feet is so shiny and clean that I can see my reflection in it. Now and then, there is a large, centrally located orange tile. Those are Vitarine's colors, orange and white. I always thought they should change the color of the Vitarine Elixir to orange, to match. Maybe they should switch colors with the Spiritguard. They wear blue and white…

 While Vitarine looks very glitzy, this building itself is quite small. There's nobody in this room with us, except for the front desk receptionist. We don't stop to talk to her, because the man with me knows his way around. He leads me over to the right side of the room, where there is a sealed door that leads up to the stairs. He punches in some numbers and the door unbolts itself, allowing him to open it and lead me through.

 We go into the stairwell, and I discover that it is the same blinding white as before. I can't imagine how my mom hasn't gone insane, having to be around all of this blinding architecture every day. We climb three stairwells to the top floor of the building, and when we get there, the man has to punch in another series of numbers to unlock the door leading in. I notice it's a different code than before because the last one took four numbers and this time he entered six.

 He pushes the door open and holds it, turning to me. "I have to get going, take a right down the hall, and your mother should be right over there. Take care, kid."

 "Wait!" I exclaim. "How am I supposed to get out of here? I don't know all the codes."

 "The door doesn't lock from the other side, don't worry," he smirks. "Cya."

 I walk through the door and part ways with the man from Vitarine. As I step through, a man with an orange jacket gives me a suspicious look but keeps going about his business. I guess if I can get this far, security is lax.

 I slowly turn and start to walk down the hall to the right, just like the man said. I've been on the first floor of Vitarine before, but I've never been here. It's a quiet office space, and there aren't many people around, from what I see. I'm assuming most people have already gotten off work for the day, just like the guy who was with me. My mother always works late into the night, because she has to go through and file stacks upon stacks of paperwork, as well as run any errands for the head of operations here. Tonight, I'm guessing the visit from the President of Vitarine is spawning even more paperwork, and that's why she's worried she won't be able to see me later today.

 I reach the end of the hallway and I see my mother sitting there, her head buried in a stack of papers that goes up higher than her head. I always knew she had a lot of work to go through, but this is crazy.

 She sees me and smiles, then starts to fuddle with something that she's wearing on her wrist. It's a clock that's synced up to Vitarine's mainframe, somehow, and she's entering her break right now.

 "Hey," I say, but she holds a finger up to her lips. Apparently we're not supposed to talk here. She enters her break and she's now on a fifteen-minute timer. She rushes up from her desk and leads me to a room that is directly across from her desk. The words 'Break Room' are imprinted right on the door. The only place where one could have a conversation in Vitarine, it would appear. 

 My mom pushes me in, closes the door, and gives me a big hug. "Sigmund, I was so worried I wouldn't be able to see you before you went off to the Spiritguards!" she says, muffled by my neck. I open my mouth to speak, but my mom's hair is sort of frizzy today, and it's all over my face. I quickly pull out of the awkward hug and sit down in one of the chairs provided in the break room. The chair is—you guessed it—orange. And super comfy, wait a sec...

 "It's not a big deal," I say. "I get my first break about two weeks in. And it's much longer than fifteen minutes, for the record."

 "Two weeks!?" she holds her hands to her head. "Two weeks without seeing my baby? I'm so used to seeing you every day…"

 "We don't see each other much," I honestly say. "Because half the time I stay over Kael's house, and the other half you're not home until I'm in bed, or you go to sleep the second you get home."

 "Oh, I know…" she breathes deeply. "But you're here now, that's good. How do you like this place? I don't think I've ever brought you up here."

 I look around casually. "Nope, you haven't," I confirm. "And what do I think of it? It's…white. And orange."

 "I know, isn't it so fancy!? I wish we could live in a place like this, but all of the homes that are this nice are either in Pearl City, or the Capital, or—"

 "I'm really, really glad we don't live somewhere like this," I interrupt. I spin around on the chair, because it has wheels. "Is that all you wanted?"

 "All I wanted! Oh, Sigmund, you're so cold sometimes. I just wanted to see you."

 I raise an eyebrow. "Just wanted to see me? It's a shame I'm not in the mood to do tricks today. When you say it like that, I feel like something at the zoo."

 "I had one thing I wanted to do, too," she says, ignoring my zoo comment. She opens up her purse and begins to rifle through it.

 I glance over at her as she does this, and I wonder how the man I saw earlier had any doubts I was her son. While my mom's hair is bigger and frizzier, it's the same color black as mine. Not only that, but she has the same dark blue eyes as me, and the same complexion. My mother and I are a bit darker skinned than most of the other townspeople, but honestly, that's because everyone else is pale and rosy around here. Both she and I have a rich, natural color to us. We still stick out a bit, I'd say.

 From what I remember of my father, he had light blue eyes and dark brown hair. He was tall and burly, not like me. I think I take more after my mother because we're about the same height, and of course, I look like a male version of her.

 She pulls something out of the bottom of her purse, and I see it's an old leather wallet. "I want you to have this, now that you're going off on your own for awhile," she says. "This was your father's wallet. Oh, I left some money in it too. I figured if you're going to be on your own, you're going to need some money because I won't be there to buy you things or give you money when you need to go out and get food."

 "Thanks," I say, "I'm pretty positive that they cover the cost of food and everything there, though."

 "I know, but just in case." I take the weathered brown wallet from her and put it into the pocket of my shorts. Yay, I guess? In total silence, she smiles and stares at me for a bit. I look over to the door uncomfortably. I don't get this whole 'I need to see you' thing that my mother always has. I don't need to see someone to know they're alive and doing well. Maybe I'm sort of a cold person for thinking like this, but I could go months without seeing someone and be just fine with it. That doesn't mean I don't love her, I just…don't need to look at her.

 We exchange a few random thoughts as we sit there, and before I know it the fifteen minutes is drawing to a close. She stands up and hugs me again.

 "I'm so proud of you," she affirms. "So proud."

 Interestingly enough, my mother met my father while he was a Spiritguard trainee in this village. He was a year older than her, but he started his training when he was fourteen. At fifteen, he was wandering around the village with some friends, locals he'd met during training. One of his friends knew my mother, and they hit it off pretty quickly. She never went off to school, and when he finished his second year of training, he met back up with her and started dating. They'd been together ever since then…well, until he died.

 It's probably for that reason that she's okay with me going off and joining the Spiritguard. Most parents are skeptical, because they figure if their child is doing something dangerous, they should join the military and get a fat paycheck. There's the other side to it as well. Most parents don't want their children to do something dangerous, and they encourage them to work for Vitarine, go to school, or do a mixture of both.

 Her life was a big adventure with my father when she was younger, though, and she came to love the lifestyle that came with being a Spiritguard. His work fascinated her, and she wished that she could do the same thing. In a way, I'm not just carrying out my father's legacy, but I'm also living her dream.

 I part ways with her and she scurries back to her desk to pick back up with her work. I feel a little bad - that mountain of paper isn't going to do itself. I think about how stressed my mom must be at work, going on for ten, sometimes twelve hours a day. Today she'll probably be working even more than that. At least she gets paid well. Since she doesn't have any schooling or professional training, she can't expect to make much, but my mom is one of the higher-earners in the office, because of her sheer dedication and, well…because she works twice as long as all of them.

 I find my way down the stairs and out of the building, and then I start my journey back home. I have a lot of the day to burn through before I finally go to bed. I will try to go to sleep early, though, considering that I need to report for training at a miserable eight in the morning. That means I'll have to wake up at around seven, which will be just awful. If I go to sleep at ten or eleven tonight, I should be fine. Yeah? Yeah.

 I wonder what Kael is up to, and I want to swing by his house, but I remember he's probably still busy with whatever he was up to earlier. It's strange because normally Kael will tell me everything.

 I walk past Lance's house. He's been a bully to Kael and me ever since I was little, and one time when I was walking past his house I threw a rock in through the front window and ran. Nobody ever found out it was me, but I bet Lance has his suspicions, because he beat the crap out of me the next week.

 Now, every time I see his house, I want to throw a rock in through the window. Of course, today I restrain myself. I haven't had much interaction with Lance for the past three months, and I'd like to keep it that way.

 Every now and then, something really weird happens in my life. You see, I either have the best timing or the worst timing of any person on the planet, depending on how you look at it. Because as I walk past the front door of my worst enemies' house, I see the front door to Lance's house suddenly open, and I see my best friend Kael stepping out of the door, and he starts nonchalantly walking down the sidewalk away from the house. He's looking down, but his eyes drift up toward me and suddenly he looks fearful.

 "Uh, hi, Sigmund," he scratches his head and smiles as he reaches me. I stand there and look in through the window of Lance's house, but I don't see anyone in there.

 "What…" I say.

 "He asked me if I could come over and talk when he saw me at the barracks," Kael explains. "He told me not to say anything to you…"

 "And you trusted him?" I grunt. "He could've been inviting you over to kill you!"

 "No, that's not it at all!" Kael insists. "I can tell if someone's lying about something like that…he saw me at the barracks and he…he wanted to give me some encouragement because he…knows…"

 "Knows what?" I keep looking back at the house, half expecting him to storm out and rampage us.

 "Knows…um…that I'm not that strong, and all…and he told me that if I ever needed help, he'd…help me with training." Kael darts his eyes away from me. "He knows that I don't like girls either, and he said if anyone ever bothered me about that, he'd handle it and I shouldn't worry."

 "He told you that?" I say, bewildered. 

 "Yeah. And he said he was sorry for being so mean to us. We haven't seen him in about three months, but I guess he's changed quite a bit. He's a lot nicer than I remember."

 "He's probably trying to soften you up so you'll help him cheat on his tests," I can't think of any other reason why he'd want to talk to Kael. "Why did he tell you not to say anything to me?"

 "Well…this is the reason, probably," Kael sighs. "You get kind of angry and scary when it comes to him, and he knew that if he invited you too, you'd have flipped out like you always do…"

 "I do NOT flip out," I growl, as I am clearly at least flipping a little.

 "Do you remember the last time we saw him, three months ago? He was walking toward us like he wanted to say something, but you started screaming and attacking him…and he beat you up again," Kael struggles to find the correct words that won't infuriate me.

 "Whatever," I say, resorting to that overused word that has so much malice and uncaring in it. "I don't care who you're friends with. What are you doing now?"

 "Err…"

 "Got it. See you, Kael." I decide to leave him alone and not pry, because I see he is still holding his uniform and the papers he received at the barracks. He'll be on his way home, now, and he probably has a lot of hell to go through with his parents before tomorrow morning hits. Of course, there's nothing they can do now. He has that ID card, and if he doesn't show up tomorrow he'll be technically in violation of the law. You're not allowed to leave the services of the military or the Spiritguard unless you're discharged or kicked out.

 "Good luck!" I call as I start running down the road, eager to get home. I think I'll practice with my dad's sword, Crossed Heart, while it's still nice and bright out. That way when we start our swordsman training at the barracks, I'll be sure to impress everyone. After all, I've been training with that sword for years. I bet all those people can barely lift a sword at this point, let alone use it effectively.

 Full of the lasting energy from the Vitarine elixir, I make my way home.