To End a War: II.IV

Written by blueberryripple13

“Please leave! I do not want to get in trouble. I’m in enough hot water as it is for my lack of facial hair!” Johnathan tried his hardest to keep the two strangers form entering his house, but they were clearly stronger than him and possessed weapons that him very nervous.

Charon sighed, “Kid, how old are you?”

“13.”

The man raised an eyebrow, “You’re thirteen and people care about facial hair? When I was your age, I didn’t even have hair on my legs!”

“That’s because you’re special, idiot. You know fully well that sirens develop body hair at a much later age, regardless of where they’re from,” Scylla kicked the bedroom door open with her foot.

Inside the room, Victoria let out a scream, but managed to keep the baby she was holding close to her and shielded it with her own body.

“Stay away or I’ll fight you!” The young girl spat at Scylla, of whom smiled at the child.

“I like your spirit,” she crouched down, “What’s your name kiddo? And don’t mind me asking, but is that child yours? Did you give birth to it?”

Victoria tried stepping away but backed herself into a corner. The woman seemed scary, but didn’t intend to hurt her, Victoria had never seen someone act this way, well, Johnathan and her parents may be an exception. She still didn’t respond, but just held her child tighter to her chest.

“Victoria!” Johnathan ran into the room and dashed passed Scylla and stood in front of Victoria. “Please leave us alone, we don’t want any trouble!”

Scylla sighed. She walked over to Johnathan, put her hands on his arms, and threw him over her shoulders, “Then you are coming with us. You are a child in the middle of a battle much bigger than yourself, so I would suggest doing what we ask of you before you get killed, or worse.”

Victoria’s eyes widened in fear and held her child closer. She took a breath and readjusted her body language to seem for confident and powerful, “We have asked you very nicely to leave us alone, but you wouldn’t listen. Please put Johnathan back on the ground and get out of our house, before I call the guards. Otherwise, you’ll be in huge trouble.”

At that moment, Charon entered the room, “Scy, I’ll grab the baby, and you can grab the girl. There’s no point in trying to reason with them, we’re out of time as it is.” Scylla nodded and waited for Charon to grab the now crying baby from a screaming Victoria’s arms, so she could throw Victoria over her other shoulder, from where she kicked and fought but couldn’t make a difference.

The two sirens waked out of the house and to the back of Alverton, where a black bus was waiting for them. Scylla put Victoria and Johnathan back on the ground and waltzed up to the door and knocked thrice. She stood back and waited for the door to open. Once the door was opened, she motioned for the two to go inside.

“It’s okay,” Johnathan put his arm on Victoria’s, “There’s no point in fighting now and it seems like we could be in actual danger by staying behind.”

Victoria’s eyes filled with tears, “But I don’t want to leave Eshington! My entire life has been here, and I don’t know anything else! What about all my stuff? I will have nothing!”

“What stuff?” Johnathan asked, “We already have nothing. We get issued clothes and we can’t keep any personal belongings! We can start a new life! Sure, it’ll be difficult, but anything is better than here! You can go to school and do all the inventing that you want! Oskar can live his life not knowing what we went through! Don’t you want that for our child!”

Victoria looked to the baby in Charon’s arms and thought for a moment, “Can I have him?” Charon nodded and placed the small child into her arms. She held Oskar in one arm and reached out to hold Johnathan’s hand with her free arm and led him onto the bus.

Victoria felt strange when she entered the bus: She lived in the same town as most people here, yet she knew no one. Johnathan on the other hand waved at a few men that he knew from work. There were two free sets of bus seats up the front of the vehicle, so the pair sat down on the seats directly behind the driver.

Scylla and Charon entered the bus after them and took the seats opposite them. They spoke to each other in a foreign language that neither Victoria or Johnathan picked up. Scylla stood up and walked over to the bus driver and spoke quick and quiet orders to which he nodded in agreement to and Scylla went back to her seat by the window. Charon started to whisper something to her before resting his head on her shoulder and changed his position on the seat in an attempt to sleep.

Victoria watched the scene unfold in horror and refused to believe that a man that is responsible for her safety is acting so feminine and vulnerable! Men are supposed to be the strong ones that are meant to support themselves and not act so feminine as the man across from her acted. Victoria looked away and buried her head in her hands as she took in the situation. She knew that Johnathan had valid points to leaving and leaving Eshington could grant her freedom she never had before, but what would happen to her, Johnathan and Oskar.

Johnathan has been very good to her, so she would not like to cut him out of her life, and she gave birth to Oskar herself and Victoria already formed such an emotional attachment to him, so she would never give him away. The teen also feared that she would never see her parents again. When she turned 11, Victoria was taken away from her parents and was taken somewhere that she cannot remember and every inch of her was prodded by strangers before being evaluated and being taken to another facility to be held until a husband for her turned up. After that day, Victoria never even heard about her parents again. To be fair, however, she is forbidden from leaving her house unless there is an emergency, so even if her parents lived in the same village, she wouldn’t know and two years in pretty much solitude can do a lot to your memory, but Victoria is certain that if she saw her parents, she would know them in an instant.

“Johnathan,” She leaned against his shoulder, “Do you know where we’re going?”

“No, I don’t know. You look tired. Would you like to swap seats with me?” He asked, “That way you can rest easier, without the fear of falling into the aisle.”

Victoria raised an eyebrow, “What’s an aisle?”

Johnathan seemed surprised but quickly remembered that she never had an education at all, “It’s like a path between things in a bus like this, or in shops, in between the shelves!”

“You realize that I have never been outside of our house before, right? I have never been inside of a shop, let alone seen paths between shelves”

“Right,” Johnathan scratched the back of his neck, “So, want to switch seats? You can hold Oscar.”

Victoria nodded and stood up, so Johnathan could slide over. She sat down, and he handed her Oskar, of whom was starting to put up a fuss. The girl tried to shush him, but his crying started to get louder, causing the bus to become quickly annoyed. A group within sight of the pair started to glare at the teens and the bus driver’s eyes looked full of hatred in their reflection in the mirror. Victoria started to tear up from all the unwanted attention and started to panic.

“Is he hungry?” Johnathan asked, trying to be helpful.

“We only have one source of food on this bus and I’m not comfortable with feeding him in public.”

“What?” Johnathan was confused but as he realised what Victoria meant, his eyes started to widen in shock and panic, “Perhaps he needs a change in diapers?”

“Again,” Victoria pointed out, “Not exactly something we can do right now!”

Johnathan leaned over to Charon and Scylla’s seat to ask if they could help. Somehow, Charon still managed to be asleep, but Scylla turned to face the young man.

“My brother is a heavy sleeper,” She explained, “Well, just as long as there is someone for him to hold onto. Just give me a moment and I’ll get you some food.” She tried shrugging Charon’s head of her shoulders, but his arms still clung onto her arm like a koala to a tree. Funnily enough, he slept like one too.

“Charon get off of me, you git.” Scylla teased, finally managing to get her brother away from her arm. She jumped over him and reached into the overhead compartment and grabbed a large blue eski. She opened the lid and Johnathan saw a king’s ransom of various foods and bottled water thrown into blocks of ice. Apart from the water, Johnathan couldn’t even identify half of the items in there, partly because the label wasn’t facing him or because the food wasn’t available to him.

Scylla rummaged through the eski to find a small, light green box. She opened it and pulled out a transparent container filled with a golden mush and a small plastic spoon.

“It’s baby food,” she said handing it over to Johnathan, “To help keep the little one quiet.”

From his seat, Charon started to wake up and groggily turned to his sister sitting on the aisle floor, “What are you doing, and why is the child crying?”

“I’m thinking that he’s hungry,” She answered, before standing up to announce to the bus, “We are coming around with food and water, please remain seated as there is enough for everyone!”

Everybody’s mood started to lift at the mention of food and because the baby has stopped screaming to enjoy his snack. Scylla grabbed out two blue boxes and water bottles and handed them to Johnathan. She got Charon to hold the box as she handed out similar combinations to the other people on the bus.

Johnathan grabbed Oskar back from Victoria, so she could eat her food. He put his food to the side and focused on scooping the mush and feeding an over-excited Oskar. Johnathan smelled the food and presumed that it was apple flavoured and looked much, much more edible then what he was able to afford back home. Oskar also seemed to be enjoying it more too, but the kid enjoys pretty much everything. Johnathan thinks that he gets it from him.

Next to him, Victoria was trying to read what was on her box, “Mus-sels and croos-ta-she-ons. Johnathan? Did I say that right?”

Johnathan peered over and read the title in his head, “You were very close. You got the first word, mussels, right, but you mispronounced crustaceans.” He saw how Victoria deflated at being wrong, so he tried to comfort her, “Don’t worry! It’s a hard word to say!”

“Yeah, but you could say it,” she argued.

Johnathan sighed, “That’s because I had an education.”

Victoria nodded and ripped into package. She pulled out a plastic container and a white bag of cutlery. Victoria looked at the food in the container and recalled a time when her father saved up enough money so him and Victoria’s mother could make a similar meal for Victoria’s 10th birthday, three years ago. She peeled the plastic lid off the container and started to open one of the black mussels, reminiscing in memories that were.