Longing

Chapter Twelve

In the coming weeks, it was hard for Kendo to remember a time when his father was sober. John either had a new woman on his arm or was passed out in bed with all the lights turned off and the curtains drawn, on any given day. In between his father's alcoholic sessions, Kendo had overheard his dad speaking on the phone a few times. More like yelling, since Kendo could hear it all the way in his room with the door shut. Though Kendo had never heard both sides of the conversations, it was clear John had been fired again and no one was going to give him a loan. Kendo guessed his father's unemployment had been revoked too. With things looking this way, they might not have a place to live, come the end of the month.

Kendo didn't get his weekly allowance anymore because of his father's financial problems, so an inch of brown roots were poking out of Kendo's multicolored hair. It irritated Kendo a bit that he couldn't keep up his image, but at least with all these money problems John hadn't cared when Kendo dropped out of school. Kendo remembered, right up until his last day on campus, that whenever he tried to bring up the faefolk attack, everyone's eyes would glaze over. They would tilt their heads and ask why he cared about such a thing. It wasn't that they didn't remember; it was that they didn't care. Kendo was always wondering who could have cast that sort of spell. He wondered if he were under its influence too. Maybe that's why he had stopped caring about everything lately. Blame it on magic; that always works, he thought scornfully.

Kendo decided a walk might clear his head, or get him out of the house, or something. He stomped into his boots and tugged them into place, grabbed his key, and tiptoed out the front door before slamming it shut. He listened to his father's drunken grumble and jogged away, heading to that old familiar path, to the path where everything had begun, the path to Grivgas' old home.

Both Animal Control and Waste Management were working tirelessly to clear the roads, and for a while Kendo's little town got on front page news, but after a few days their "Road Kill Crisis" was replaced by the latest political scandal, and they fell off the radar, back to where they belonged. Although there was more road kill each day; each day it was cleared away, and though everyone walked around wearing surgical masks to damper the smell; they still went on with their lives. Nothing really changed, and that was what disgusted Kendo the most. The people in his town could just put on their masks and accept that there would always be death stinking up their streets. It was sickening.

Kicking a pebble into the pond with a plip, Kendo began to wonder what they would do if something legitimately threatening climbed out of Olden and went for a stroll through the town. He wondered if a few human carcasses amidst the animals' would make anyone care enough to do something besides aimlessly go on with their lives. Gazing at the cloudless sky, he felt the early spring breeze on his neck. Nothing was blooming yet, but winter was over, and it would've smelled like revived plant life if not for the decaying animals cluttering the nearest street. Kendo sighed and walked on, the ripple in the pond growing outward in circles that grew ever wider.

There had been a few creatures that crawled out from the portals of Olden, but Kendo managed to get rid of most of them before they did any real harm. A few Gatherers had snuck into Reality, trying to lure children into Olden with promises of candy and playtime, but Kendo had taken care of them. He wondered how long the Gatherers had really been doing things like that, given that there was so much lore on child-stealing monsters. (Kendo would never admit this to anyone, but he had taken to reading up on mythology whenever his feet dragged him to the library, which in truth happened more than he was comfortable with.) There was also a Griffon that flew out of the sky and landed on someone's house once, but the guy wasn't home and Kendo informed the Griffon that people didn't exactly appreciate coming home to a pile of debris. After a short squabble, Kendo was left gasping in exhaustion, his magic depleted, and the Griffon flew off clutching its now-sizzling front foot as it squawked and roared into the distance. Kendo never saw it again.