gss 002 • one-shots

15. We Used To Be Friends

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A petulant, unerringly arrogant young keaton not far into his trip though the world. A small, occasionally roaming, quite peaceful family that never asked for what they first got.

It was a time, were he ever to possibly admit it, that Revyn -- though he went by a different name back then, one of several he'd used through his long life -- didn't much like to think back to. One of at least a few, to be certain... yet in a sense, one of his earliest, most deciding moments out in the world at large.

He'd grown to know that keatons were clever, were tricksters. They were a great many things over the ages, and his parents, living in a quiet place they'd found for themselves, had never appeared to make much of it... so he was going to. He'd wandered where his feet might take him, he'd managed to slip quietly onto a ship -- though the task hadn't been easy, nor terribly fun. It would be the first of several lands he'd go on to visit, and one he wasn't expecting much from, were the quiet little village near his parents' little home anything to go by. He'd not much expected monsters, or several other such dangers... but that, then, was simply the cost of thoughtless arrogance, one that got him into no shortage of trouble.

And, likewise, occasionally brought trouble to others.

Thus, the small house was ruined, several possessions gone... but by one grace or another, the family that dwelt there was safe. None too pleased about the circumstances, but safe all the same. And the prideful young keaton? The hero that ultimately saved everything, the one that had drawn the monsters off by distraction and other means... or so it was supposed to have been. But instead? They got mad at him. They didn't directly blame him for their troubles -- not as such -- but his role in everything, as a guardsman had informed the family, was not to simply be forgiven or forgotten. And yet, as quickly as the prideful creature fled, it wasn't 'til a year later that the father of the family would come across him, or word of him, again, and enact his own sort of retribution. It only took a hired huntsman to help with the tracking to find a little stash the keaton kept, to take all but one small piece of it... with a message to be left behind.

You cost us nearly everything with your mischief. This is simply a bit of payback.

Thus, it hadn't taken the keaton long to find them in turn, even if they were once more living out somewhere quiet. But even for as short a time as it took him, it seemed he'd been expected. To be warned away, to trade blows, so to speak... one thing or another taken from the other side, over the course of a good decade or so. Neither side seemingly eager to give in... at least, 'til the keaton himself got himself injured, to be found by his latest little stash.

But by then, there was no ill will to it, and he was, even to his surprise, promptly carried back to that small home the family held for tending. They were strict to decide how much he could move around and how soon, strict about keeping an eye on him... on occasion, the keaton wondered if his own parents might have been like that if he'd stayed home, if he'd ever given them the chance to be. But that was then... and now he'd found a young boy and his older sister that seemed to enjoy any number of his tales, real or fabricated though each one may be.

The first to ever call him 'friend', while it had lasted.

So there he would often return after some travels, eager for a meal, a gentle touch, a place to rest. No less prideful than the day he'd ventured out into the world at large, yet tempered somewhat by steadily figuring out what he could and couldn't pull off. And as the years passed, as the family steadily got older and he himself didn't seem to, as the children started to drift off their own ways... so too, did it seem, was his own place there starting to depart. Lifespans that couldn't be compared, relationships that may as well have been fleeting... the keaton's first taste of that yet to come, only to cautiously step away before such a thing could come to pass.

'We used to be friends. So what might have happened if I had...?'

A thought from an age long past, a land long left behind. Sometimes he rather wished his memory wasn't as good as it was, that thoughts and dreams wouldn't drift back to times way back when. Still, with a slow, leisurely stretch, and a calm shake of his fur to loose some of the grass and other things that might have settled in it, the keaton awoke lightly grumbling from his nap off in the middle of nowhere. Had he just stayed, or were he only better at simply being a spectator, like he'd sworn multiple times to try and be... but those were simply things he'd have to deal with. In the meanwhile, he'd become really quite good at putting on a careless, carefree face, and facing the world at large that way.