Green Eyes

“I’m sorry guys, but I have to stop,” Selene heaved as she staggered behind the others.

“Can you still feel the presence?” Micaela asked, herself a little worn out. They had been hiking at a fast pace for nearly ten hours. She was now leading them by memory through the forest in the near pitch black night.

“No,” Selene replied after a pause. “I’m guessing we’ve outpaced him.”

“For now, at least,” Jared dryly commented. “I’m guessing he knows what direction we’re heading and will catch up with us soon.”

“Jared, I can barely move,” Selene told him. “My body is literally shutting down; I can’t keep going, alright?”

“It’s alright,” Micaela decided. “We can’t run ourselves into the ground and get away. Better get some rest and push forward fresh. With luck, our tail might wear himself out by pushing too hard. Besides, trying to track through the Harosheth at night is tricky even for someone who knows it as well as I do.”

“I’m with the Navi,” Mara put in looking like she was about to collapse herself from carrying a passed out Deborah the last couple of hours. “The kid is too,” she added.

“Very well,” Jared relented. “I’m certain the horses would appreciate the rest too. Selene, could you—”

But Selene was already asleep. Once it had been decided they would stop, she simply dropped to the ground and was dead to the world.

“Never mind,” he shook his head. “Mara, could you…”

“On it,” his sister nodded and rearranged Selene into a more comfortable position after gently setting down her own little charge. She was snoring now.

“How’s Deborah doing?” Jared inquired as he started work on the saddles.

“Tired,” Mara yawned, “And confused. She doesn’t really understand what is going on, just that we’re in a lot trouble. She wasn’t too happy to leave the Amazons either.”

“She bonded with them, didn’t she?” Jared commented.

“Yeah, she did,” Mara nodded with another long yawn. “I think the women really appreciated having a child around.”

“Looks like Deborah isn’t the only one exhausted,” Jared observed. “Go ahead and crash. I’ll take care of the horses and stand watch.”

Mara didn’t argue and curled up next to Selene, not bothering to set some bedding down. “Wake me in about four hours,” she said sleepily. “You need rest too.”

“Okay,” Jared replied as he took the two beasts over to a tree and tied up their lead ropes. He started taking off the supplies from the black horse, which still did not have a name, when he noticed Micaela stripping Barak.

“You need rest too,” he chided.

“I’m feeling pretty good still,” the Esthorian replied confidently. “Besides you could use the company.”

For a moment Jared looked like he was going to argue but relented. “Fair enough,” he sighed heavily as he finished unloading the horse who appeared relieved. “Help me start a fire,” he requested. “It’s still a little cold and I don’t want them freezing.”

“Selene will be fine,” Micaela observed.

“Mara and Deborah won’t,” Jared answered. “We’re far enough from anywhere that a fire won’t draw anyone’s attention. Our tail will be drawn to Selene more than a fire anyway so in the end it doesn’t really matter. Getting Mara or Deborah sick on the other hand could be a big problem.”

“Do you always think in such clinical terms? Is everything defined by risk-reward?” Micaela asked. She wasn’t accusing Jared of anything, just curious at his detached demeanor.

“Sorry,” Jared apologized though not really knowing why. “I was born a warrior and raised as a soldier so it’s just how I’m wired and that’s how we soldiers think.”

“It’s nothing to apologize for,” Micaela said. “It’s just seems so cold and detached.”

“I guess it is,” Jared shrugged as he cleared away a small pit. “People under your command in battle will die; that is unavoidable. Sometimes to secure victory, you have to sacrifice some of those people. If you think about them as people instead of simply tools to achieve victory, you end up sacrificing victory to save your troops and that’s not how you win wars. The people you’ve sworn to protect end up suffering for the sake of your soldiers. It’s supposed to go the other way around.”

“Can’t you have both?” Micaela wondered.

Jared shook his head. “In war, no,” he replied. “People are going to get killed; it’s merely a question of who. The difference is that soldiers signed up for the risks and civilians didn’t so that makes them more expendable.”

“That’s a cold way to look at it,” remarked Micaela as she handed him a stack of kindling.

“It has to be,” Jared nodded as he took the sticks. “If you don’t think of soldiers as game pieces, you’re liable to go crazy. Sacrificing game pieces is easy, well not easy but possible. Sacrificing people isn’t. Trust me, I’ve tried.”

Micaela considered what Jared had said while she sparked the kindling. Jared was like most Kalashonians she’d met: cold, calculated, and ruthlessly pragmatic. She knew it was a by- product of being a warrior culture. Kalashonian children were trained from the time they could walk to be warriors and thus understood all that came with that in ways Micaela never really would.

But it was not a love of the sword that made Kalashonians who they were, as many foolishly thought. Micaela knew differently. No, Kalashonians were driven by something else, something far deeper than just martial pride.

The true hallmark of Kalashonian culture was the desire to protect and defend those who couldn’t defend themselves: the too old, the too young, and the too sick. Everything else was subordinate to the defense of the weak. That is what drove them to become the world’s greatest warriors by far. That is why they treated women as true equals, unwilling to let petty gender barriers get in the way of protecting their charges. And that is why a Kalashonian wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice his life or another’s if it would protect his people. It was a reality that all Kalashonians knew and accepted willingly.

They simply didn’t care how one protected the innocent; all that matter was that one did. And while that gave Kalashonians a clinical, end-justifies-the-means attitude that most found cold and harsh, it had also made them the perfect rulers of the world. The people always and truly came first to them. Even Manasseh, in his own twisted way, was driven by this most central of cultural tenets.

It stood in stark contrast to her own artistic and colorful culture, Micaela thought. Although the world’s foremost scientist and philosophers, it was their interest in the human condition that drove Esthorians to explore and create. They couldn’t compartmentalize the human and the objective the way Kalashonians could. And while their culture was outwardly far spicier than Kalashon’s, it could never provide the strong leadership the Kalashonians did.

The world needed both, Micaela decided upon a moment’s more reflection. If everyone were like the Kalashonians, the world would be a rather drab place. Their artwork was pathetic on a good day. But if everyone were like the Esthorians, nothing would really get done. That was how it was supposed to work: together as one.

Micaela looked over to Jared as he rearranged Selene, who was like a stone, and Mara, who grumbled at the intrusion, around the small fire better. The world was desperate for reunification. Could the time be coming? She didn’t know; she hoped so.

“She’s out cold,” Jared remarked, bringing Micaela out of her reverie. “I’ve never seen someone sleep so hard as that girl. I swear two hydras could be mating over her head and Selene wouldn’t know it.”

Micaela tried not to laugh and failed. “It’s her Navi powers,” she explained. “Using them wears her out faster than most people.”

“That’s what she’s said but I don’t understand how that works,” Jared scrunched his face.

“Imagine it like this,” Micaela instructed. “Imagine that your body is driven by a water wheel in front of a dam and your energy is the water. When you need to do something, your dam releases some water that then turns the wheel. The more you work, the more water or energy needs to be released which ultimately depletes the water supply. Go long enough and you run out and have to rest to resupply the water. Good so far?”

“Yeah, that makes sense,” the Kalashonian nodded.

“Okay,” Micaela continued. “Now think of an adrenaline rush. When we’re really stressed, it is like we get a sudden surge of extra water that overflows the dam and drives the wheel. But what happens when the adrenaline wears off?”

“We crash,” Jared succinctly replied having felt the effect more times than he could count.

“Precisely,” Micaela confirmed. “When the dam overflows, it isn’t just the extra water that goes over the edge. The force of the influx pushes the original water over the edge too, in the case of an adrenaline rush a lot of the regular water, which ultimately leaves a shortage.

“In the case of a Navi, they have a second reservoir of water behind the normal one and it’s huge,” Micaela went on. “So when a Navi taps into her power, it creates an overflow. For little things, like lifting a pebble for instance, it’s no big deal. But for something really big, like healing a badly injured woman, it’s like opening the floodgates which completely overwhelms the first dam and thus heavily drains the reservoir. They need time to recover their strength, something Selene hasn’t really gotten and she’s done a lot the last few days.”

“Oh,” Jared said as he chewed on that. “Could a Navi kill herself by overextending?”

“It’s theoretically possible, I suppose,” Micaela acknowledged with a shrug. “Although it has never happened, at least not to my rather extensive knowledge.”

“There’s a first time for everything and knowing Selene, she’d do it,” Jared commented so flatly that Micaela couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. She decided to let it lie and poked the fire awkwardly.

“What are you going to do after you get her to the Navi?” she broke the silence.

“I don’t know,” Jared sighed leaning back. “When I came back to Kalashon after the Ammonite War, I was planning on settling down peacefully and being left alone. Maybe I’d do a job every now and then. You know, baby-sit a caravan or track down someone’s lost dog; that kind of stuff. I certainly wasn’t planning on any of this. So now I just don’t know. I can’t go back to Kalashon, that much is certain, and I won’t be very popular in Malchi either. Probably I’ll just settle down somewhere in Ammon. I have a couple of friends around.”

“You could come back here,” Micaela offered quietly.

“I appreciate the offer,” Jared shook his head with a laugh. “But I doubt I’d be wanted.”

“I’d want you here,” Micaela pointed out. “The truth is that having you around has made me rethink a lot of our policies. You and Mara were right; we’ve been far too narrow-minded. There are a lot of people we could help, men and women, and I want us to be a safe haven for them. It’s going to be a hard transition for a lot of my girls and I want, I need your help to do it. The girls know and respect you. Besides, we could use a lot more training.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you?” Jared studied her with his arctic eyes.

“I am,” Micaela confirmed returning his intense gaze. “You could have a real home with us.”

“I don’t know,” Jared finally looked away and stared into the fire. “I haven’t had a home in twenty years. To be honest, I’m used to moving around.”

“Just think about it, okay?” Micaela requested placing a hand on his knee.

Jared glanced curiously at the hand but didn’t comment on it. “Okay,” he said after a moment’s consideration. “I’ll think about it. Now get some sleep, alright?”

Micaela wanted to protest but couldn’t. Her eyelids were getting heavy as the days fatigue was starting to wear on her. In a few minutes, she was stretched out on the hard ground, knowing her body was going to give her grief in the morning, and was falling asleep.

*******