Encountering Destiny

She had lost her family. Her father and mother. Her baby sister. It didn’t happen all at once. Each of them fell away from her, one at a time, flying far beyond her reach. She could not call them back. She had tried.

Her sister was a small baby. She could still remember the feel of the infant in her arms. Seeing that she was there, but if she lost sight of her, the nearly nonexistent weight of the child fooled her mind to the notion that she was merely holding air. Simply a wisp of a being. Hardly there at all.

That same night, the evening of her sweet little angel’s birth, that was the same night she lost her mother. One beautiful life exchanged for another. Just as lovely. Just as important. Yet still, the wonder of Camellia’s birth could not overcome the weighty grief that descended like heavy sand over her and her father.

He had never known his parents. But he had never cared for the elder brother who had been his sole companion throughout his life. A coward, he called the traitor. His brother had long ago confessed that he ran from the fire that consumed their lonely single- roomed home, built by his father. He had left their poor mother and father to perish amidst the orange licks of flame. He’d escaped, and not even glanced back at the fire in his fear of death and destruction. The thought to help, to save their parents, had not even crossed his mind.

He could never forgive his brother.

Even after he ran, clutching his young brother to him, he might have regained the pride of the boy. But as the years passed, and his brother did nothing to care for him other than provide meager food and shelter, as he became increasingly distant and almost never spoke, confining himself to a lonely spot on a cliff overlooking a valley and gazed not at the beauty before him, but into the darkness of his own mind, the boy was left to fend on his own. In truth, his overall feeling of solitude came long before his brother was killed. 

She knew it was bad long before the simple cough turned into something worse. A rasping, shuddering intake of breath, a wheezing cough at the exhale. This became the horror of the illness that overtook Camellia’s body. The small frame was not built to withstand such a shock. 

In the last hours spent with her sister, she stroked her hair, caressed the curve of her plump cheek, that had turned from a soft rosy hue to a pale white. She held in her hand the tiny fingers of the fading child. Though he did not approach too closely, her father was never far from Camellia’s side. He watched as she lay in her sister’s lap, wrapped in a warm blanket, watched as the life gradually ebbed from her small features.

At her last shallow breath, their father came, tears streaming down his cheeks, to sit against the bedpost. He reached up and touched her frail arm, which had fallen to one side. Slowly, she put her hand on her fathers, and they sat, holding their angel, and feeling the loss in full.

There came a point where the food stopped coming. Where he was expected to fend for himself. He battled for each bite, but could never spare enough for the brother he despised. He left the cliff and the valley behind, and migrated up to the top of the green mountain, moving where his prey led him.

His brother never followed.

There were times when he would scale a tree, or peer around at the peak of a rocky hill, and sometimes he would catch a glimpse of the cliff and the valley, and see his brother still sitting there. 

One day by chance, he climbed to the very upmost branches of a tall, leafy tree, to see the distant form of a young man stand weakly, take a few steps forward, and let himself fall over the edge of the cliff. He shook his head, not allowing himself to feel the guilt. He pushed all thoughts from his mind that his brother’s death was his fault.

She only had her father. Yet something had changed in the air between them. Neither of them spoke very much. They did what they needed to, only to survive.

 It was an unspoken, but mutual decision to leave the house. They set off across the valley to the mountain that rose before them in the distance. 

It seemed like cruel fate. The first peak was barely a mile behind them, its greenery still visible as they continued their climb. They two had to cross the sheer cliff face on a small, insubstantial path that decayed beneath them in showers of dirt and small pebbles. 

It was too late to turn back to warn her father as she dangerously jumped past an imperfection in the rock.  A low rumble and crack met her ears, and she turned, face expressionless, to see the limp form of her father falling back and being swallowed by the dense trees beneath her feet.

After all the tragedy that had befallen her, this last strike against her did not register on her face. Her mind was numb. The loss barely passed through her mind, and she continued on to where she hoped to find safety and relief from the numbness that was creeping from her head to her heart.

His eyes stopped their roaming. His body went rigid. His sole attention was focused…on her. He had only realized it in his subconscious, but after his brother died, he lived with the knowledge that he was the only one left. It was him against a world that did not intend him to live.

Yet here she was. A girl.

The first he had seen, nearly all his life.

She saw him as she was crossing a narrow ridge, with trees on either side. A boy, crouched in the leafy branches halfway up a tall tree. He was watching her. 

This was strange. Her family had been all she knew. She was convinced that her father was the last person to leave her. That she, when fate caught up to her, would be the last thing taken from this terrible world. 

She had been wrong. The evidence was before her now.

They looked, one to another, neither of them moving. Their eyes were held, locked in the gaze of each other. Neither of them could pull away. Then, ever so slightly, the boy moved. When he saw that the girl did not react, but continued to watch him cooly, he moved again, creeping carefully down to the ground, and walking boldly up to this new creature. She held her ground. Neither of their faces registered any emotion. No trust was relayed between them, but understanding was evident in their eyes. 

Without saying a word, both of them turned and slowly continued walking along the path. They continued on together.