prompt
Remembering the Past
Prompt 3


Can be used toward Solo or RP req


It has been seven long years since the Great Oban Invasion. It almost feels like a dream, considering all of the changes that have occurred in Tendaji since the great war. A new King sits on the Oban throne, and he has opened the boundaries of Oba and Matori. Many already are taking advantage of the open boarders to travel and explore. The world was expanding and changing all things to the massive war of the great nations.

Since the war, Tendaji took a stand against the extremist Alkidikes and won. They came together to show a new alliance that many could never dream of. Everything was settling, and now that there finally was peace everyone has begun to to take a moment and remember all that has come and gone.

How have the major wars and changes impacted your character these past few years? Are they bitter for their failures or happy about their success? Do they see a peaceful future to come or are they concerned about those who may be still holding grudges?

[Characters not part or even alive during the war can still respond to this prompt. Maybe they have a different way of understanding the war compared to those who were part of it, so feel free to explore those feelings and thoughts in your response]

In retrospect, he might not have been quite so upset at his father. The hurt of days past seemed very, very real still. Though, as Akiyal sat alone in his room, staring at his small shelf of stacked books and trinkets, he wondered if the upset might have been better directed to someone who actually deserved it. Xilarn had never said he hated him or regretted him or wished that he was anything or anyone else. He'd mistakenly brought Aki to people who had, but once decidedly away from the situation, that didn't seem as much like Xilarn's fault as it once had.

He probably shouldn't have asked his father not to come back to Suati with him.

Because now he was alone in their home, with the sky growing darker and the wind blustering unhappily outside. The young man did so hate being alone at night, and he strongly the Oban man took well to being ordered around by his son, in the first place. If Aki was hurt at being called ‘worthless trash’ or ‘scum of the earth’ or ‘unworthy,’ he could only imagine that Father probably felt a mirror of that, now worsened after Akiyal snapped at him and told him, in no questionable choice of words, to ‘******** off.’ But he’d been cross at the time, so cross for things that were neither his, nor Xilarn’s fault.

And there was still, as always, so little to do in Sauti, except for recall, in stunning detail how angry his Oban ‘grandfather’ (if Xil’s father, Aamil, could be called as much) had looked upon seeing him. Aki had never done anything to this man in his entire life. Never even met him, before now. But the unbridled passion with which Aamil loathed him suggested that he hadn’t needed to.

Akiyal had very few memories of anything that happened before the Alkidike attempted to take over the lands for their peculiar tree goddess. Even those very early recollections were tainted with a smog of uncertainty. He’d lost his mother during that trial. That much he could remember, but everything else had a way of fading into the background, leaving only unpleasant impressions and distinct dislikes behind.

He did not want to be left behind. He did not want to be forgotten. He did not want to know so little about anyone else that if he should die out in a battlefield, surrounded by bug warriors, no one would be able to bring his name back, because they wouldn’t know it.

He couldn’t remember his mother’s name.

It would come back to him, though, in time. It always did.

A long sigh dragged from his lips, and Aki turned to lay on his back. His lids pinched shut, and he drew up a hand to rub light circles near his temples. It seemed unlikely that he could ever forgive the Alkidike for taking someone from this world who’s never done anything wrong to anyone. He didn’t care that the worst of them had been banished forever and that the others were just as likely to fight alongside his mother as not. Collectively, it was the fault of all of them. Some with a thirst for blood and others to weak to stop it. He hated them all.

It didn’t explain why Aamil hated him. Neither Akiyal nor ‘his people’ or ‘his kind’ or whatever the crotchety old man considered the rest of Tendaji had slain anyone that he cared about. Not his lover, not his children, not his brothers and sisters. And Aki himself was too young to be any part of it at all. He hadn’t been alive while that war raged.

The only reason he’d learned about it at all was because he’d questioned the dirty looks the Sauti natives occasionally shot his father. They were rude, yes, but never so violently condescending and hateful in the same way Aamil had been.

Xilarn had gone out of his way to defend Aki from everything spat at him. If the surprise etched across his face had been any indication, he certainly hadn’t expected the night to proceed as it had. Things had taken a turn for the highly vocal and near-physically painful.

They’d left the house, of course, as immediately as Aki (or anyone) could hope for.

In the moment, it felt right to blame Xilarn. There wasn’t anyone else there to yell at, and his mind had made sense of the notion that his father would think, ‘if the first far-away excursion from home ends abysmally, then further attempts to leave will come with just a hint more hesitance.’

Idiotic. Just, completely-

Akiyal groaned, made another show of scrubbing his palms roughly over his eyes, the shoved himself roughly to his feet. He grabbed his pillow and strode from the room, giving a short whistle to summon Naeght as he departed the house. Janella and Kan would accept him in their home. They always did when he was feeling particularly petulant. And at least with them, he wouldn’t be alone.

WC: 842