Rewrite History [REWRITTEN]

Day 13: October 25 - Weapon

Saturday

Sat on the same bench under the open space's veranda is Conah Haylon. Though I'm quite a distance away, I see a leather-covered book resting beside him. He remains a statue, still and silent.

The clouds tease me, manipulating the skies to make it look as if it's supposed to rain. Etheris is cold, but chills that I've never felt before ricochet down my spine. The air lacks the warmth of the metropolis life that usually spirals around these central regions.

My trust is still elsewhere, lingering off to forget about the familiar word in Perrin's Phendonian dictionary.

The man invites me to sit down in the same place as last time.

"A book," I say as if I hadn't seen too many of those already.

An inchoate expression of discontentment bores onto his face.

But when he shakes out of his concealed frustration, it's as if he skips stages, beginning the lesson that I didn't expect to commence so soon. "Every tribe in Phendonia has four key roles used in their everyday lives." After daintily fingering the front cover of his leather book, he flips it open to the first page, a compass-like shape usually found on a map blaring into my eyes.

A square and four triangles pointing north, south, east, and west assemble the compass. Annotated on each of the triangles are elegant titles. 'Warrior' is written in the north. Opposite that is the title 'Author' down south. In the west on the left is 'Guardian' leaving 'Architect' to take up the east.

"There must be at least one of each in every tribe, a similar number of every role for balance," Conah says, feathering the four triangles.

"So how would a person know which role they are?"

"Their Conahs tell them," the man replies. I stir as he doesn't feel the need to explain this to me. He's already figured out that I know what it means. "You, my dear Elet, are a Guardian."

The Phendonian word creeps into my mind as it did on that night I devoured the information on the pages of Perrin's dictionary. Elet. Synonymous with the word 'student'.

Unease accompanied by the coolness of a swift, light breeze crawls up my face. "How do you know?"

The question is supposed to cover everything he has ever said to me. He only addresses the foregoing matter that he stated. "True intelligence includes two principal components: asking the right questions at the right time and efficiently obtaining knowledge in your own way. Independently. Currently, you are doing neither."

I am an endangered victim of the feeling of offense. "You sound more like a heartless bully than a teacher." It almost sounds as if he's deliberately fending off my desiring trust for him.

"I can be both," he responds coolly. "Your calling lies in perfection. Perfection is produced from the personality combination."

Conah flips the book to another page. It is simply a colorless, photocopied sketch of a massive brawl along a beach.

I've heard a lot about the Phendonian war. Although it sounds as if the entire nation had taken part, it was only two tribes. Chances are, I've also missed many of the details Perrin mentioned that Conah might retell. My friend's eloquent lessons are nothing compared to the man's stern demands. He is the type that breaks others down in order to build them up. I may not have had a life outside the city, but I've surrounded myself with enough people to identify their kind and they are the most memorable.

Each tiny letter in the picture's caption blurs into the next, yet they are still big enough to read without having to adjust my line of sight.

"Those are the Orephius and Cystinites?" I ask.