"In The Morning" - Sneak Peak for Bravesoul Project

ID: A white-washed shed, a yellow-flowered bush, a pebbly path, and a vast distance of misty hills.

     Koa Esterius Delridge Dannerly was awakened by the sensation of early morning sunlight filtering through his eyelids. He sighed sleepily, rolled over, and pulled the covers over his head. Koa was not a morning person.

     He almost fell back to sleep before he heard an excited pounding on the door downstairs. Koa knew it was CJ Melbury, his best friend, coming over for breakfast and lessons like he did every weekday morning. He heard his mother’s voice welcoming him inside and picked out pieces of their conversation.

     “Koa…upstairs…Maybe you could encourage him…”

     CJ’s footsteps pummeled up the stairs practically at the speed of light and Koa cringed when he burst into the bedroom.

     “Wake up, Koa!” shouted CJ with a smile. He hopped onto Koa’s bed and began jumping up and down, much to Koa’s annoyance. CJ was definitely a morning person.

     Koa tried to ignore his friend and fall back asleep, but it was impossible once CJ began exclaiming “Wake up, sleepyhead!” in a sing-songy voice.

     “Get off,” Koa grumbled, hiding his half-smile under his blanket. Koa’s mom Lora entered and encouraged him, matter-of-factly but kindly, to get dressed for breakfast. Koa just mumbled and groaned in response. CJ jumped off the bed with a great bang and told Koa about the big breakfast awaiting them as Lora picked out some clothes from Koa’s dresser (which was really just a large treasure chest he once got at a flea market in town) and set them on his bedside drawer.

     “There’s lots of food for breakfast! There’s sausage! And barleyberries! And dewyberries! And hot milk thistle tea! I know that’s your favorite!” Koa was tempted, but he was just so tired. He had spent most of the night going over his favorite maps and matching his favorite trinkets to their original places.

     “Yep,” added Lora. “Everything’s hot and ready! So you have to get up now.”  When Koa showed no sign of moving, Lora knew what to do. She leaned close to Koa’s covered head and said indulgently, “I made hotcakes…”

     Despite himself, Koa pulled down his blanket just enough for his left eye to peak over. He saw Lora’s smile widen as she patted his leg and straightened up. “There you are, handsome boy! Now, time to get dressed, or your food will get cold.”

     She returned downstairs as CJ pulled Koa upright by his hands like a ragdoll. “Okay, okay,” said Koa.

     The sunlight danced across his shaggy, dirty-blond hair and tan face as he dressed himself in a teal cotton shirt, a leather vest, and his favorite linen trousers.

     Both boys descended the stairs, past the front door, to the kitchen, where they picked plates from the cupboard and lined up to Lora at the stove for hotcakes and sausage. They said their pleases and thank-yous, though CJ a little livelier than Koa. They sat down on the long bench facing the stove, their backs to the cozy den where a fire flickered and snapped in the stone fireplace. Koa and CJ took a handful of fruit from their separate bowls, Koa the barleyberries and CJ the dewyberries, and then wordlessly switched them so the other could have some too. They knew the drill. The boys waited until Lora sat down opposite them with her plate and then they ate together.

     Halfway through breakfast, and a cup and a half of milk thistle tea later, Koa felt much better, and his hazel, “smiling” eyes quit stinging from the long night before. He finally noticed the light streaming through the windows to his right, admiring it for a few seconds. Koa liked light of any kind, like any regular person, but especially the kind that looked particularly yellow or orange because it reminded him of the tales he had heard and read about the kingdom of Goldmirage.

     It was a land of pure gold and sunshine, a land of mysticism and wonder, a land of ancient secrets, a land…… thousands of leagues away and on the other side of the Sharp Mountains, the tallest in the world. For his entire life, Koa wished to go and live there. But as much as he didn’t like to think about it, he knew it was nearly impossible.

     He turned from the windows to the people at the table and smiled. CJ and Lora were deep in conversation about a giant frog CJ once found at the pond behind his house, and how his mother screamed when he brought it inside and a little too close to her face. Lora’s light brown hair was pulled back into a loose bun, locks of hair framing her tan face and brown eyes, which wrinkled as she laughed at CJ’s story. Because Lora was tall, she had to lean forward quite a lot in order to rest her elbows on the table.

     CJ, on the other hand, was two to three inches shorter than Koa, despite being two years older. CJ’s hands were as animated as his eyebrows as he reveled in his story. He was fairer than Koa and Lora, almost the shade of winter clouds, but his heart was among the warmest thing in the house. The tip of his dark, short hair swished around as he told another story about falling into the pond when he tried expanding it by digging around it. His pale blue eyes disappeared as he laughed.

     The story reminded Koa of the time he accidently stepped on the wrong end of a rake that was hidden in some hay. He shared it, and everyone burst out again into a fit of laughter. Lora’s shoulders bounced as she hid her nose and mouth in her hands. CJ’s “smiling” eyes closed as he leaned back on the bench, his tummy bouncing with laughter.

     Koa giggled with mirth as he watched his mom and best friend laugh. He loved making the people he cared for happy. He and CJ had an unspoken, running competition over who could make someone laugh the hardest. After almost 16 years of life together though, it was a draw, but that didn’t stop them from continuing anyway.

     They would not be closer even if they were actual siblings, and their parents felt the same way towards each other. Koa had no father to speak of but considered CJ’s dad as his uncle (though they couldn’t see him as often because of his job as a lumberjack in the woods an hour northeast of town). CJ saw Lora as his aunt, and Koa saw CJ’s mom Betsy as his.

     Whenever Koa asked Lora about his own father however, she would always pause whatever she was doing and stare into space. When she finally replied, it would be short and vague, as if she were wording it as carefully as possible, though Koa didn’t understand why. It was a mystery, and Koa liked mysteries. To Koa, mysteries were never supposed to be left unexplained. But after 16 years of hearing the same answers over and over and over, he stopped asking. But, in his heart, Koa would sometimes wonder: Who was his father, and why had he never met him?

     After breakfast was finished, Koa and CJ helped Lora clear the table and then retrieved their notebooks from a shelf under the stairwell. Lora took a pillow from an armchair in the den and placed it on the bench for herself. They settled back at the long, wooden table and began the day’s lessons.

     Betsy and Lora had taken turns over the years schooling the boys in their homes before afternoon chores. School had its tedious moments, but Lora always found ways to make it interesting. For instance, Lora continued yesterday’s lessons on the various laws that governed their country, the weather’s relationship with nature, and geography. Since Lora knew that geography was Koa’s favorite subject, and nature CJ’s, she saved them for last so they could pay attention to the first lesson.

     Lora flipped to an outline on her sketchpad of the types of laws in their country: State, County, and Local. Today was the day to learn more about state laws; the laws that governed Westimere, their country. Lora made two columns on the sketchpad for things that were “Legal” and “Illegal,” which Koa and CJ repeated in their notebooks.

     “What are some things that are allowed in our country?” Lora asked. “Farming,” CJ answered. “Trading!” Koa added with a smile. Days when traveling merchants passed through to sell and barter their exotic treasures were Koa’s favorite days to go to town. Lora replied, “Yes, absolutely” as they all wrote down their answers. “What else?”

     “Selling,” said Koa. Lora wrote it. “Mining,” said CJ. Lora wrote it. “Using Power,” said Koa. Lora hesitated for a moment but wrote it anyway. Koa noticed immediately.

     “On the other hand, what are some things that are not allowed to be done?” The boys listed the basic things like stealing, murder, and carrying vast quantities of forks downstairs without a proper permit. After both columns were filled with laws, some of which the boys had never heard of before, Lora sadly added one more thing to the “Illegal” column of which they all hated to be reminded. Koa and CJ gave bummed nods when Lora wrote “Using Power.” None of them liked remembering that it was illegal for differently-abled folks to use their Spirit the same way able-bodied people could.

     When Koa thought of differently-abled people, he always thought of a young man he once met that seemed to walk differently from everyone else. He had belonged to a traveling band of artisans. Koa recalled his mother telling him not to stare and to treat him like she taught him to treat everyone – with kindness.

     Koa knew he and CJ were considered different, but it never bothered him. Well, only when people made it bothersome for him. CJ remembered the time in town when a group of men looked at him and called him words that he didn’t recognize from the vernacular of his household. Upon telling his mom, she hurried him home and explained that those men simply didn’t like him because they didn’t know him personally. She never explained the meaning of their language though.

     “Can you tell me why it’s against the law again?” Koa asked his mother, perplexed. “Because,” suggested CJ, remembering his mother’s words, “They don’t know different people themselves.”

     “That is exactly right, CJ,” said Lora. “And it’s the greatest shame of our land. Not everybody is allowed the same freedom and education in Spirit-use as everyone else.”

     “But why?” Koa restated.

     “Because…” Lora hesitated, trying to find the right words. She sighed, and said, “Because their lack of understanding gives them fear. Fear keeps many a person from ever taking a step in the right direction. It keeps them stone still.” Koa and CJ nodded thoughtfully and then Lora smiled softly. “Though I know that whoever makes friends with you two would be making the best decision of their life.” They smiled in response, but they could sense that Lora was still bothered.

     This accurate sensitivity to other’s emotions was something that came rather easily to Koa and CJ thanks to their Spirits. It allowed them to address people’s hidden hurts and intentions. But the two never used this remarkable intuition to embarrass people; they only offered hugs and words of encouragement just like their parents had taught them to. And sometimes, to their parent’s pride and astonishment, words they hadn’t taught them at all.

     Koa could never wrap his mind around a law that banned different people from using their Spirit. His head swam with thoughts. But before they could form into questions, Lora switched to the next subject. For the rest of their lessons, the teens forgot their concerns and did not think of them again for a long while, for Lora gave them assignments which they both had to complete before chores. For geography homework, the two went outside to gather what they deemed examples of different terrains from around the world.

     The sunshine had since been smothered by a ceiling of clouds, but that was usual in the western part of the world. A cold breeze rushed over the slopes of tall, wet grass and up through the boy’s sleeves. If it wasn’t for the occasional cluster of trees breaking up the horizon, the world would look like an endless ocean of pale green.

     CJ found a leaf to represent forests, a few blades of grass for the plains, and some smooth pebbles from the nearby creek that ran behind Koa’s house in the woods. They were the closest thing he could find to symbolize the ocean, since they lived hundreds of miles inland. Koa collected a rock with lots of different colored minerals to represent mountains, and a handful of sand from the creek.

     Back inside, the two snuggled in armchairs by the fire and illustrated and wrote about their findings in their notebooks. Koa paid extra careful attention to his rendition of the vast sea of sand surrounding the kingdom of Goldmirage. Koa’s Spirit warmed as he dreamed and imagined the place of his heart’s desire. Koa didn’t notice, but his Spirit caused the illustration to be nigh-realistic.