Chapter 10: Seven

They had been driving in the dark since noon. Without stopping or resting, and Heidle had already dozed on and off. The trip was quiet. Both said little. The fatigue was heavy in Keplan’s eyes.

‘I’m going to name it The Keplan.’; he said to interrupt this long and dull silence.

‘What?’

‘My machine is going to be known as The Keplan.’

‘Why?’ asked Heidle, still half asleep.

‘Because I want to leave a momentum, my mark. I want people to remember me. Not only a vague memory of a dwarf. I want to leave something behind. Something meaningful, you know.’

Heidle straightens his back against the seat, now awake: ‘What are you talking about? Dwarfs leave up to 500 summers. You are not even 50! Keplan, you have a whole life in front of you. You’re going to build and invent many Keplan’s things!’

Keplan gained this knot stuck in his trough that didn’t let him reply. He preferred to keep silent for the rest of the road, slowly darkening for a while.

Heidle feels the weight of this awkward ambient and a touch of guilt surrounding his latest words. So, he broke the silence by retaking the earlier conversation: ‘I think it is very honourable of you to leave a legacy, and everyone wants to do so. But not only are you at the start of your life. As I am sure they will know you for many things! Besides having invented The Keplan. You have a great destiny ahead if you are anything like your father. Just be patient.’

‘Not all of us have long lives, Dark Mage. Not all of us. And not everyone can be like my pop, let alone me.’

Heidle looked at Keplan facing the night road, uncertain how and why he hurt his new friend’s ego. He found himself lacking from comprehension. His logic didn’t seem wrong, but made Keplan upset. Heidle couldn’t understand the whys and the hows. So, he said the only thing it came to his mind: ‘The Keplan is definitely catchy.’

‘Aye, it is! That’s what I have been telling you!’

‘The Keplan, it is!’

‘My name is going to drive all around The Great Continent!’; for a while, Keplan proudly smiled.

The Keplan stopped in front of the entrance of a dense forest. ‘Well, we are here. Finally, here. This is Faeriewood of Quaris’Aus.’

‘Let’s rest for a couple of hours and get warm.’; suggested Heidle.

‘What? But we are half a day away!’

‘Keplan, you have been driving all day. Let us rest and eat. I might even hunt some game.’

‘You want to stop and hunt game, Heidle? What is wrong with you?’

‘Nothing, I’m just sick of eating jerky meat. Don’t you want a fresh supper for a change?’

Heidle was about to get out of the Keplan when he felt the dwarf holding his arm.

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‘Mate, wait! First, there is nothing wrong with jerky meat, and second, tell me what’s really going on in your mind.’

‘She never saw me after, and my face has changed. What if there is a reason I stopped feeling her? What if she doesn’t recognise me as her heartmate anymore, and my face…. They are not scars of battle, but slavery! What if she’ll be ashamed to be with me?’

‘Is that why you wear a mask?’

Heidle didn’t answer, but his silence would speak more than words.

‘A secret for a secret. Deal?’

‘Why?’

‘Because sometimes friends need to load some weight. Otherwise, we become mountains. Unable to move with all this burden on our shoulders.’ Keplan grabbed his knife from his pocket and made a minor cut on the palm of his hand. Under a dime, light showed to Heidle. ‘My mother used to be a healer back home. My pop told me she was a water mage and would help anyone who would knock at our door. When she was pregnant with me, someone stitched my mum’s eyes and mouth and dared to rape a pregnant woman. My mum, tortured and raped in her home while I was still inside. She died before I was born. And I stayed in that dead womb for weeks. I was born of a dead woman with this: Red Blood.’

Keplan pushes out his beard, showing a clean face of blue eyes, a sharp nose and a round facial structure with dimpling around the corner of his thin lips. ‘I don’t even have a beard! I can’t grow one, so I am wearing this ridiculous fake one! And you know dwarfs for their strength, right? I have none. I barely can lift my own weight as much as a gallon of anything. How pathetic is it?’

Heidle just replied: ‘A secret for a secret.’ And removed his mask. Heidle looked much younger than Keplan suspected. Wide eyes changing colour between sand, blue and green, straight nose line and angular jaw, long hair made of pure gold framing the shape of his face; however, around his eyes and mouth, small scars of slight puncture as if caused by a stitching needle. ‘Does it look that bad?’

‘Who did this to you?’

‘Calpheon, The First, himself.’

But all Keplan wanted to really ask was : ‘Is that real gold?’

‘My hair?’

‘Aye.’

‘Are you going to cut it if I say yes?’

‘Maybe.’

 

 

 

 

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