Post by Orfeo on May 10, 2019 2:10:05 GMT -5
Orfeo leaned back against the porch of his modest home, taking refuge in the shadows from the sun. Tending to his garden now was dizzying work, but the constant breeze that blew in from the west at least made things a little more bearable. He took this time now to look over what he had done, a few weeks’ worth of work, and patted himself in the back. For a man that had never planted a flower in his life, he wasn't doing half bad. Lilies grew haphazardly alongside a couple of lilacs. Berry bushes, of the kind he couldn't right identify from memory, grew in spotty patches here and there to fill in some of the blanks in his garden. A spot of yellow flowers here, some blue ones there, and some white for good measure. Orfeo knew that things could grow here because he'd seen others do it before, their gardens were a sight to behold.
Although there was no order or reason as to how his looked, it was something nonetheless. He smiled a little and pulled off his gloves, the breeze quickly cooling the sweat on his hands. He wiped his brow, unknowingly smudging a smear of brown soil against his forehead and sat back on one of the small steps that lead up to the front door. A couple of birds chirped off in the distance, quickly silenced by the loud and piercing squawk of a hawk flying overhead mixed in with the constant rustling of pines. His thoughts traveled to the tree that fell a few feet behind his home, nearly crushing his house along with it. He was going to have to clear it up sooner or later and knew that the more he waited the worse it would get. He only had a few meager tools available, knew that he needed that head into town for a chainsaw - or at least a better ax - but procrastinated the task either way.
"Tomorrow," he murmured, repeating the lie he'd been telling himself for a week now as his eyes wandered over his little garden. He followed the path of flowers and bushes upward until he arrived at a dirt road that could hardly be told apart from between the massive pines. It would have been impossible to see anything in there, and likewise anyone would have a hard time finding his home through the thick of it. He gave himself some pause and looked over the tree line once more, squinting a little as he strained to see in between the trees. Nothing looked out of place and there were no alarming sounds, but just to make sure he stood and slowly walked along the perimeter of his home. His eyes were glued to those trees surrounding him. Only once he made it back to the steps was he able to sit back down and actually close his eyes for a few minutes. with legs splayed outward and arms thrown back against the wooden floorboards.
"Yeah," whispered Orfeo again, finding odd comfort in the sound of his raspy, rumbling voice. "Tomorrow."
When Orfeo woke up it was near past midnight. The moon was a dull shade of yellow and flew high over the sky, casting its soft light all over his garden, illuminating it in a ghastly, haunting glow. The air had chilled a couple degrees by then, causing his skin to crawl as he struggled to get back up on his feet. And there was that smell, a tell-tale humidity that warned him of an impending storm. Orfeo sighed gathered the couple of tools he had left strewn about in his garden, stopping here and there to check on the health of his plants, and made his way inside.
First things first, he got a small bucket he kept sitting by the side of the front door and placed it a few steps to the left, by the threshold of the entryway with his living room without missing a beat in his step. The living room was meager but suitable for himself, with two chocolate colored loveseats surrounding a small wooden coffee table topped with a thin layer of glass. They all sat near a red-brick layered fire place that hadn't burned in a few months, for those long nights during winter or for when Orfeo simply wanted to set a mood about his home. In there, tucked off into a corner, was a small wooden box he'd made to store all of his tools. The kitchen was a little more modern compared to the rest of his home - the largest room in the house. He always struggled trying to get the gas stove to turn on, even as simple as others made it seem. Within minutes he had a stew cooking. Farther back into the home was his bedroom, the only one there, with a large bed laying the far center of the room. It connected with a bathroom that had the bare essentials, nothing over-the-top or as extravagant as he would have wanted, but he'd grown used to it by now. The water always ran ice cold. Orfeo gritted his teeth and washed himself as quickly as possible, then spent the next half hour or so grooming himself in front of the mirror. The stew was done by then; it bubbled and then threatened to boil over to the counter. Orfeo settled in for the night in his living room, a cup of tea in one hand, a book in the other, and a stew in his stomach, and comfortably drifted into sleep a few hours after.
It wasn't as hot as it had been the day before. The wind blew harder now, forcing the trees to endlessly rustle against one another with only a few minutes of respite in between. Today, Orfeo couldn't hear any of the usual sounds that he would normally make out: no birds sang nor were there any squirrels scuttling about, the occasional distant howling of a wolf was absent. He leaned out the window of his bedroom and looked to the trees with a small frown. A bout of laziness had overcome him this morning. With how long the rains had lasted he wouldn't need to water his garden until well into the afternoon, at best. A soft yawn escaped him as his thoughts started to wander here and there, carefully so as to not stray too far back into his past.
Like every morning, he started off by silently wishing that things would stay the way they were now. Well, in reality it was less of a wish and more of a thoughtless prayer to whomever it was that may be listening. He washed his face, brushed his teeth, and did a runabout the bedroom even when it remained undisturbed from the night before. The few dirty things left in the living room were taken back to the kitchen and the book he'd been reading the night before was placed back on the top shelf of the book case. He heaved the bucket with an outward sigh and emptied it past the porch. Soon enough the all recognizable smell of fried bacon and eggs filled his small home.
Breakfast was always a silent affair. In his thoughts he mulled over the coming day’s events and, with a small shrug, figured that he wouldn’t be doing much to start with. That tree out back wasn’t going anywhere. The garden was watered well enough, it seemed reasonable that he didn’t need to do much to it at least until well into the afternoon.
That dreaded boredom was already starting to creep in. He grabbed at his latest book and mulled over it as best he could, taking the last few bites of breakfast and finishing the little spot of tea that he had left. Try as he might, though, the stories were not doing anything much to entertain him, so he resorted to leaning out the window and gaze about his garden.
“Mister Orfeo!” called a vaguely familiar from just beyond his garden’s end. “Sir!” Orfeo looked up and, with a squint, stared at a man waving at him close to the trees. He’d just stepped out of his truck, it seemed, as he still hadn’t closed the driver’s door. Orfeo glanced about quickly, to his left and to his right, and then reluctantly raised a hand in return.
Truth was, Orfeo couldn’t recognize him.
“I’m Kris,” he began once Orfeo met him out on the front porch. “It’s so good to see you, sir.” Kris was carefully stepping over his plants, glancing this way and that to take a look at all of, what he presumed was, Orfeo’s work. Then he finally met eyes with the man he’d been looking for, who sat on the steps to his porch with a small cock to his head. “You… ah, you probably don’t remember me. Do you?”
“Not rightly, no,” replied Orfeo as honestly as he could as he turned his head again, as if getting a slightly different angle on him would remind Orfeo of a long-lost name.
Kris, though he had visibly deflated at the remark, still kept his chin up and started again after catching his breath. “It’s been a long time, sir. I don’t blame-”
“Now, kid.” Orfeo raised a hand, his head lolling back a little, so his eyes now stared lazily to the ceiling. “Let’s cut all the sugar and spice, yeah?”
The man stared at Orfeo strangely, then stammered a confused: “Sugar?”
“Yeah. You know?” He did a little motion with his hands; a small roll of his wrists and wriggling of his fingertips. “Don’t sugarcoat yours story. Stop beating around the bush.” He sighed and once more leaned forward. Orfeo anchored his elbows up beside his knees and cupped his chin into the palms of his hands, taking on a somewhat contemplative look as he looked at Kris over once more. “Now spit it out, who did I wrong, or what do you want from me?”
“I-…” Kris took a step back, almost trampling over a couple of lavender sprigs that had yet to sprout. “I need your help?”
“You sound, awfully, unsure,” murmured Orfeo under his breath.
“I am. A little…” Kris itched himself at the back of his neck, just under his long strands of raven hair, as he fidgeted left and right a couple of steps.
Orfeo’s eyes were immediately drawn to the kid’s boots. Immaculate and expensive, those were his first two thoughts. Yet unsullied from the dirt under him. Either Kris bought them recently or he was in a position that didn’t need him out in the field. Yet he stank like the rest of them; that familiar and overpowering stench of a pack nearly threatened to burn his sinuses. Orfeo squinted at his piercing eyes and found himself slightly distrustful of his sharp features. If anything, he just wanted to be careful. That, and Kris reminded him an awful lot of a cat, what with the way his lips curved upward whenever he smiled.
“Wait. Before you go on.” Orfeo had cut him off just as Kris was about to speak up, raising his hand up as a second assurance to silence the kid. “Two things. One: this better not be any silly pack business. Two: it’s starting to get a bit chilly out here. Come inside.”
“Inside?” questioned Kris, somewhat unsure as Orfeo stood and started back into his home. Sure enough, the wind had started to pick back up since he arrived and the chill had begun to bite at him under his jacket. “I mean, if you’d-”
“Ah, shut up and lock the door behind you.” Orfeo quickly disappeared into the kitchen, moments later calling out to Kris from there. “Take a seat. I’ll be there shortly.”
Orfeo’s home was comfortable, but it was a far cry of where he used to live. Kris figured that, for one man, it was more than enough. And it’s not like he was completely cut off – he caught sight of some solar panels just before he came inside. Knowing he wasn’t entirely a hermit gave Kris a little bit of hope for his endeavor. He hadn’t sat for more than a few minutes before Orfeo came back from the kitchen. He placed a cup of steaming tea at one end of the table, by where Kris had sat, and set himself down on the other end.
Now sitting eye-to-eye of one another, at equal footing, Kris couldn’t help but smile a little. He enjoyed the way the cup warmed up his hands. The tea was nothing to scoff at either. “Thank you, sir.”
“There you go again,” huffed Orfeo with a roll of his eyes.
“I…” Orfeo was starting at Kris intensely. It left him a little stunned, unsure if he was going to finish his thought or would just leave it hanging in the air. “I don’t understand.”
“What with the ‘sir’ stuff. I mean,” Orfeo leaned in, sipping gently on his tea, “How do you know me, kid?”
“Ah! Well, you trained me.” Kris smiled a little, thinking back to those times. “At the New Dawn.”
“Oh,” sighed Orfeo, and grumbled something incoherent from under the lip of his cup while briefly averting his eyes.
“Well, not me specifically. Not all of the time.
“Right, right, right.” Orfeo set the cup down and once more placed his chin on the cusp of his hands. “Kid, you know I haven’t been involved with a pack in years. Right?”
Kris nodded, a little slower but still with a slight glint of hope in his eyes. “I know, sir. But at this point, I’ve no other choice.” He paused, noticing the uncertainty in Orfeo’s eyes. It brought him a small frown, but still he wavered on. “My pack isn’t safe.”
“Your pack?” scoffed Orfeo, brow raised in surprised. “Am I in the presence of an Alpha?”
“Not… not quite.” Kris looked down at his hands, a small respite from Orfeo’s constant scrutinizing gaze. “Let’s go back a few years. I left the New Dawn long before then, but I couldn’t really get used to life out there.” He waved his hand back over his shoulder and inadvertently pointed out the window. “Well, I had become friends with a guy that had wanted to start his own pack. Back then it was all talk. Theories and plans but little action. I’m sure you know well, sir, packs are a lot of work. You don’t just… you know, snap your fingers and make it happen. People need land; land needs money.” Kris shrugged, a more distant look in his eyes. “We were short on money back then, but I really wanted to make this happen. I started taking odd jobs here and there. Just trying to land anything that would help me – help us – out. Training under you as a Warrior in the New Dawn helped me, sir.”
“Helped you kill people,” cut in Orfeo, his voice a little gravid.
“Helped me survive,” cut in Kris with a shallow sigh. “Sorry. Hear me out for a little longer?”
Orfeo waved his fingers and settled into his solitary sofa.
Kris nodded and murmured some small thanks to his former instructor. “Well, one day my friend arrives at my apartment. I hadn’t seen nor heard from him in days, and quite frankly, I was worried beyond my wits. It gave me sleepless nights, thinking about what may have happened. He’d been telling me that there was a group of people he had fallen in with when he was younger, but they parted on bad terms. A-Anyway, he arrives at my apartment and of course I start to ask him questions. ‘Where did you disappear to? It’s been days. And you weren’t answering your phone.’
“He seemed worse for wear since the last time I had seen him. His hair was a mess, and his clothes were all stained with mud and dirt and just… grime. But there was this look in his eyes that I hadn’t seen in a long time. A glint, you could call it. And he looked happy. Genuinely happy. ‘We’re gold!’ he had said to me and had pulled me into a great hug. It was so unlike him. Of course, I questioned him on the matter, terrified by the prospect that my friend had finally gone mad. But, no! He shushed me and disappeared back outside without another word. I tried to look for him out there, but he disappeared into the night. I stumbled back in, and shortly after he arrived.
“A bag, full of money. That’s what he brought with him. Thousands. Tens of thousands. I never got a full count of it, but it was enough to finally do what we wanted. So we got everyone together, we bought the land we needed, we built ourselves a home, and we started the pack.”
“Hm.” Orfeo had reclined back and was cradling the cup of tea in his hands. It was near empty by now, but what little was left still blew some small amount of steam over his half-lidded eyes. He wasn’t directly staring at Kris – more out over his shoulder and past the window. “This money is the problem, isn’t it?”
“It is,” he admitted sadly. “I wish I had known it back then. Maybe all these troubles wouldn’t be here. I should have questioned where he got the money but I was… I was too excited. My own pack. A new home.” He sighed, the long pause hanging thick in the air between the two of them. “He stole that money from those people I mentioned before. I’m not rightly sure as to why it took them so long to figure it out, and I don’t know if that was a blessing or a curse. But we spent four years without any problems. Our anniversary is coming up, in fact. Almost five years since we started everything. They were another pack, from pretty far out, and now they’re coming for us.”
“You mean him?”
“Us,” repeated Kris, his voice now wavering a little. “Him, me, everyone else that lives with us. Wives and kids.” Orfeo visibly cringed and fought hard from commenting by gritting his teeth. “They want their money back. Money that we no longer have.”
“So?”
“So… I need your help, sir.”
“Hold on, kid.” Orfeo laughed lowly to himself, though it sounded more like one of his wayward coughs. “If you’re asking me to come fight a war for you, then kindly stand up and get out of my home.” When he saw Kris didn’t make a move to leave, he continued. “So, you’re not asking me to go fight for you. What the hell do you need me for? Fight them off.”
“That’s the problem!” exclaimed Kris, now sounding a little exasperated at this back and forth. “They don’t know how to fight. And God, it’s been so many years since your lessons I can’t remember even half of what you taught me. Not the way you did, at least.” Kris stood, suddenly, a wide and almost desperate look in his eyes. He had clearly worked himself up while retelling the story and it was showing. “Please, sir. They need training, or they’ll die.”
“Training!”
“We’ll pay!”
“With what, I ask? The money you owe that other band of savages? Bah!” Orfeo waved off a hand dismissively.
“Sir,” pleaded Kris, words threatening to get caught up in his throat. “Please.”
Orfeo shook his head, his low laughter finally turning into the cough that it had resembled. “No, kid. You’re asking me to do the impossible.” Now Orfeo was standing, and he was pacing around his side of the living room. Back and forth. His steps were small but calculated. Finally, he stopped in front of a book shelf propped up against the farthest wall from the two of them.
“It’s real simple. Honest.” Orfeo bothered a small glance toward Kris, whose clenched fists were held close to his chest. “I go and help you guys equals me picking sides.”
“But you won’t be fighting,” protested Kris.
“But I’m still picking sides! These guys your friend stole the money from couldn’t care less if I was or wasn’t part of it. You said so yourself, they’re out for blood. You’re asking me to put my life at risk for a pack I don’t even know the name of? It’s ridiculous, Kris. Even for you. Now I’ve worked too hard for,” he waved his hands around himself, “all of this, and-”
“All of this?” exclaimed Kris. “This little place? This is nothing!”
Orfeo raised a hand and closed his eyes, took in a deep breath, counted out five seconds in his mind, and then breathed out. “Now, I’m gonna let that one slide, Kris.” Still, he turned to the boy and glared down at him. “Watch that tone, boy!”
“I – Sorry, sir.”
“Better.” Orfeo turned back to the bookcase he’d been sorting through for the last few minutes. “I get you, kid. You don’t want to lose what you’ve worked hard on. Sure, it’s built on lies, but there’s some foundation in there, shaky as it is. I’m not going to get personally involved in this matter. No way in hell. Still…” he pulled from the shelf a tome that had started to gather some dusted. It looked hastily put together, as if done by an amateur. Sure enough some of the pages inside must have been missing. “Doesn’t mean I don’t sympathize. Here, take this one with you.”
“This?” questioned Kris.
“Some stupid thing I made a while back.” Orfeo sat back down on his lonely sofa and brought a knee up to his chest. “Techniques, theories, drawings. It’s got all you might need.”
“You… you made this?” Kris gave him an incredulous look.
Orfeo just waved off a hand. “I was bored. Kept me busy for a week. Take it.” His voice grew sterner, even before Kris had managed to utter his thanks. “Kid, I do not want to be implicit in this matter. It’s none of my business. If things go south, you burn this book before anyone else can see it. You got that?”
“I… yeah. I understand. Just…” He reached into his pocket and pulled a scrunched-up scrap of paper, upon which there was a hastily scrawled set of directions. Doubtlessly prepared long before Kris arrived. He set it down on the coffee table while holding the tome close to himself. “Please, sir. Reconsider.”
It disturbed Orfeo to see the kid leave so disappointed. It disturbed him that he was even disturbed to begin with. He fell silent for the rest of the day and mulled over the events in his head. For some time he recalled the story, then willingly thought back to those days when he trained people like Kris.
Night arrived silently as the day had come. He sat, still, in his living room, and sighed in frustration. In his hands he swirled a glass of whiskey, though that he didn’t bother to take more than a sip or two of before he tucked his chin into his chest and fell into a deep sleep.
Although there was no order or reason as to how his looked, it was something nonetheless. He smiled a little and pulled off his gloves, the breeze quickly cooling the sweat on his hands. He wiped his brow, unknowingly smudging a smear of brown soil against his forehead and sat back on one of the small steps that lead up to the front door. A couple of birds chirped off in the distance, quickly silenced by the loud and piercing squawk of a hawk flying overhead mixed in with the constant rustling of pines. His thoughts traveled to the tree that fell a few feet behind his home, nearly crushing his house along with it. He was going to have to clear it up sooner or later and knew that the more he waited the worse it would get. He only had a few meager tools available, knew that he needed that head into town for a chainsaw - or at least a better ax - but procrastinated the task either way.
"Tomorrow," he murmured, repeating the lie he'd been telling himself for a week now as his eyes wandered over his little garden. He followed the path of flowers and bushes upward until he arrived at a dirt road that could hardly be told apart from between the massive pines. It would have been impossible to see anything in there, and likewise anyone would have a hard time finding his home through the thick of it. He gave himself some pause and looked over the tree line once more, squinting a little as he strained to see in between the trees. Nothing looked out of place and there were no alarming sounds, but just to make sure he stood and slowly walked along the perimeter of his home. His eyes were glued to those trees surrounding him. Only once he made it back to the steps was he able to sit back down and actually close his eyes for a few minutes. with legs splayed outward and arms thrown back against the wooden floorboards.
"Yeah," whispered Orfeo again, finding odd comfort in the sound of his raspy, rumbling voice. "Tomorrow."
When Orfeo woke up it was near past midnight. The moon was a dull shade of yellow and flew high over the sky, casting its soft light all over his garden, illuminating it in a ghastly, haunting glow. The air had chilled a couple degrees by then, causing his skin to crawl as he struggled to get back up on his feet. And there was that smell, a tell-tale humidity that warned him of an impending storm. Orfeo sighed gathered the couple of tools he had left strewn about in his garden, stopping here and there to check on the health of his plants, and made his way inside.
First things first, he got a small bucket he kept sitting by the side of the front door and placed it a few steps to the left, by the threshold of the entryway with his living room without missing a beat in his step. The living room was meager but suitable for himself, with two chocolate colored loveseats surrounding a small wooden coffee table topped with a thin layer of glass. They all sat near a red-brick layered fire place that hadn't burned in a few months, for those long nights during winter or for when Orfeo simply wanted to set a mood about his home. In there, tucked off into a corner, was a small wooden box he'd made to store all of his tools. The kitchen was a little more modern compared to the rest of his home - the largest room in the house. He always struggled trying to get the gas stove to turn on, even as simple as others made it seem. Within minutes he had a stew cooking. Farther back into the home was his bedroom, the only one there, with a large bed laying the far center of the room. It connected with a bathroom that had the bare essentials, nothing over-the-top or as extravagant as he would have wanted, but he'd grown used to it by now. The water always ran ice cold. Orfeo gritted his teeth and washed himself as quickly as possible, then spent the next half hour or so grooming himself in front of the mirror. The stew was done by then; it bubbled and then threatened to boil over to the counter. Orfeo settled in for the night in his living room, a cup of tea in one hand, a book in the other, and a stew in his stomach, and comfortably drifted into sleep a few hours after.
It wasn't as hot as it had been the day before. The wind blew harder now, forcing the trees to endlessly rustle against one another with only a few minutes of respite in between. Today, Orfeo couldn't hear any of the usual sounds that he would normally make out: no birds sang nor were there any squirrels scuttling about, the occasional distant howling of a wolf was absent. He leaned out the window of his bedroom and looked to the trees with a small frown. A bout of laziness had overcome him this morning. With how long the rains had lasted he wouldn't need to water his garden until well into the afternoon, at best. A soft yawn escaped him as his thoughts started to wander here and there, carefully so as to not stray too far back into his past.
Like every morning, he started off by silently wishing that things would stay the way they were now. Well, in reality it was less of a wish and more of a thoughtless prayer to whomever it was that may be listening. He washed his face, brushed his teeth, and did a runabout the bedroom even when it remained undisturbed from the night before. The few dirty things left in the living room were taken back to the kitchen and the book he'd been reading the night before was placed back on the top shelf of the book case. He heaved the bucket with an outward sigh and emptied it past the porch. Soon enough the all recognizable smell of fried bacon and eggs filled his small home.
Breakfast was always a silent affair. In his thoughts he mulled over the coming day’s events and, with a small shrug, figured that he wouldn’t be doing much to start with. That tree out back wasn’t going anywhere. The garden was watered well enough, it seemed reasonable that he didn’t need to do much to it at least until well into the afternoon.
That dreaded boredom was already starting to creep in. He grabbed at his latest book and mulled over it as best he could, taking the last few bites of breakfast and finishing the little spot of tea that he had left. Try as he might, though, the stories were not doing anything much to entertain him, so he resorted to leaning out the window and gaze about his garden.
“Mister Orfeo!” called a vaguely familiar from just beyond his garden’s end. “Sir!” Orfeo looked up and, with a squint, stared at a man waving at him close to the trees. He’d just stepped out of his truck, it seemed, as he still hadn’t closed the driver’s door. Orfeo glanced about quickly, to his left and to his right, and then reluctantly raised a hand in return.
Truth was, Orfeo couldn’t recognize him.
“I’m Kris,” he began once Orfeo met him out on the front porch. “It’s so good to see you, sir.” Kris was carefully stepping over his plants, glancing this way and that to take a look at all of, what he presumed was, Orfeo’s work. Then he finally met eyes with the man he’d been looking for, who sat on the steps to his porch with a small cock to his head. “You… ah, you probably don’t remember me. Do you?”
“Not rightly, no,” replied Orfeo as honestly as he could as he turned his head again, as if getting a slightly different angle on him would remind Orfeo of a long-lost name.
Kris, though he had visibly deflated at the remark, still kept his chin up and started again after catching his breath. “It’s been a long time, sir. I don’t blame-”
“Now, kid.” Orfeo raised a hand, his head lolling back a little, so his eyes now stared lazily to the ceiling. “Let’s cut all the sugar and spice, yeah?”
The man stared at Orfeo strangely, then stammered a confused: “Sugar?”
“Yeah. You know?” He did a little motion with his hands; a small roll of his wrists and wriggling of his fingertips. “Don’t sugarcoat yours story. Stop beating around the bush.” He sighed and once more leaned forward. Orfeo anchored his elbows up beside his knees and cupped his chin into the palms of his hands, taking on a somewhat contemplative look as he looked at Kris over once more. “Now spit it out, who did I wrong, or what do you want from me?”
“I-…” Kris took a step back, almost trampling over a couple of lavender sprigs that had yet to sprout. “I need your help?”
“You sound, awfully, unsure,” murmured Orfeo under his breath.
“I am. A little…” Kris itched himself at the back of his neck, just under his long strands of raven hair, as he fidgeted left and right a couple of steps.
Orfeo’s eyes were immediately drawn to the kid’s boots. Immaculate and expensive, those were his first two thoughts. Yet unsullied from the dirt under him. Either Kris bought them recently or he was in a position that didn’t need him out in the field. Yet he stank like the rest of them; that familiar and overpowering stench of a pack nearly threatened to burn his sinuses. Orfeo squinted at his piercing eyes and found himself slightly distrustful of his sharp features. If anything, he just wanted to be careful. That, and Kris reminded him an awful lot of a cat, what with the way his lips curved upward whenever he smiled.
“Wait. Before you go on.” Orfeo had cut him off just as Kris was about to speak up, raising his hand up as a second assurance to silence the kid. “Two things. One: this better not be any silly pack business. Two: it’s starting to get a bit chilly out here. Come inside.”
“Inside?” questioned Kris, somewhat unsure as Orfeo stood and started back into his home. Sure enough, the wind had started to pick back up since he arrived and the chill had begun to bite at him under his jacket. “I mean, if you’d-”
“Ah, shut up and lock the door behind you.” Orfeo quickly disappeared into the kitchen, moments later calling out to Kris from there. “Take a seat. I’ll be there shortly.”
Orfeo’s home was comfortable, but it was a far cry of where he used to live. Kris figured that, for one man, it was more than enough. And it’s not like he was completely cut off – he caught sight of some solar panels just before he came inside. Knowing he wasn’t entirely a hermit gave Kris a little bit of hope for his endeavor. He hadn’t sat for more than a few minutes before Orfeo came back from the kitchen. He placed a cup of steaming tea at one end of the table, by where Kris had sat, and set himself down on the other end.
Now sitting eye-to-eye of one another, at equal footing, Kris couldn’t help but smile a little. He enjoyed the way the cup warmed up his hands. The tea was nothing to scoff at either. “Thank you, sir.”
“There you go again,” huffed Orfeo with a roll of his eyes.
“I…” Orfeo was starting at Kris intensely. It left him a little stunned, unsure if he was going to finish his thought or would just leave it hanging in the air. “I don’t understand.”
“What with the ‘sir’ stuff. I mean,” Orfeo leaned in, sipping gently on his tea, “How do you know me, kid?”
“Ah! Well, you trained me.” Kris smiled a little, thinking back to those times. “At the New Dawn.”
“Oh,” sighed Orfeo, and grumbled something incoherent from under the lip of his cup while briefly averting his eyes.
“Well, not me specifically. Not all of the time.
“Right, right, right.” Orfeo set the cup down and once more placed his chin on the cusp of his hands. “Kid, you know I haven’t been involved with a pack in years. Right?”
Kris nodded, a little slower but still with a slight glint of hope in his eyes. “I know, sir. But at this point, I’ve no other choice.” He paused, noticing the uncertainty in Orfeo’s eyes. It brought him a small frown, but still he wavered on. “My pack isn’t safe.”
“Your pack?” scoffed Orfeo, brow raised in surprised. “Am I in the presence of an Alpha?”
“Not… not quite.” Kris looked down at his hands, a small respite from Orfeo’s constant scrutinizing gaze. “Let’s go back a few years. I left the New Dawn long before then, but I couldn’t really get used to life out there.” He waved his hand back over his shoulder and inadvertently pointed out the window. “Well, I had become friends with a guy that had wanted to start his own pack. Back then it was all talk. Theories and plans but little action. I’m sure you know well, sir, packs are a lot of work. You don’t just… you know, snap your fingers and make it happen. People need land; land needs money.” Kris shrugged, a more distant look in his eyes. “We were short on money back then, but I really wanted to make this happen. I started taking odd jobs here and there. Just trying to land anything that would help me – help us – out. Training under you as a Warrior in the New Dawn helped me, sir.”
“Helped you kill people,” cut in Orfeo, his voice a little gravid.
“Helped me survive,” cut in Kris with a shallow sigh. “Sorry. Hear me out for a little longer?”
Orfeo waved his fingers and settled into his solitary sofa.
Kris nodded and murmured some small thanks to his former instructor. “Well, one day my friend arrives at my apartment. I hadn’t seen nor heard from him in days, and quite frankly, I was worried beyond my wits. It gave me sleepless nights, thinking about what may have happened. He’d been telling me that there was a group of people he had fallen in with when he was younger, but they parted on bad terms. A-Anyway, he arrives at my apartment and of course I start to ask him questions. ‘Where did you disappear to? It’s been days. And you weren’t answering your phone.’
“He seemed worse for wear since the last time I had seen him. His hair was a mess, and his clothes were all stained with mud and dirt and just… grime. But there was this look in his eyes that I hadn’t seen in a long time. A glint, you could call it. And he looked happy. Genuinely happy. ‘We’re gold!’ he had said to me and had pulled me into a great hug. It was so unlike him. Of course, I questioned him on the matter, terrified by the prospect that my friend had finally gone mad. But, no! He shushed me and disappeared back outside without another word. I tried to look for him out there, but he disappeared into the night. I stumbled back in, and shortly after he arrived.
“A bag, full of money. That’s what he brought with him. Thousands. Tens of thousands. I never got a full count of it, but it was enough to finally do what we wanted. So we got everyone together, we bought the land we needed, we built ourselves a home, and we started the pack.”
“Hm.” Orfeo had reclined back and was cradling the cup of tea in his hands. It was near empty by now, but what little was left still blew some small amount of steam over his half-lidded eyes. He wasn’t directly staring at Kris – more out over his shoulder and past the window. “This money is the problem, isn’t it?”
“It is,” he admitted sadly. “I wish I had known it back then. Maybe all these troubles wouldn’t be here. I should have questioned where he got the money but I was… I was too excited. My own pack. A new home.” He sighed, the long pause hanging thick in the air between the two of them. “He stole that money from those people I mentioned before. I’m not rightly sure as to why it took them so long to figure it out, and I don’t know if that was a blessing or a curse. But we spent four years without any problems. Our anniversary is coming up, in fact. Almost five years since we started everything. They were another pack, from pretty far out, and now they’re coming for us.”
“You mean him?”
“Us,” repeated Kris, his voice now wavering a little. “Him, me, everyone else that lives with us. Wives and kids.” Orfeo visibly cringed and fought hard from commenting by gritting his teeth. “They want their money back. Money that we no longer have.”
“So?”
“So… I need your help, sir.”
“Hold on, kid.” Orfeo laughed lowly to himself, though it sounded more like one of his wayward coughs. “If you’re asking me to come fight a war for you, then kindly stand up and get out of my home.” When he saw Kris didn’t make a move to leave, he continued. “So, you’re not asking me to go fight for you. What the hell do you need me for? Fight them off.”
“That’s the problem!” exclaimed Kris, now sounding a little exasperated at this back and forth. “They don’t know how to fight. And God, it’s been so many years since your lessons I can’t remember even half of what you taught me. Not the way you did, at least.” Kris stood, suddenly, a wide and almost desperate look in his eyes. He had clearly worked himself up while retelling the story and it was showing. “Please, sir. They need training, or they’ll die.”
“Training!”
“We’ll pay!”
“With what, I ask? The money you owe that other band of savages? Bah!” Orfeo waved off a hand dismissively.
“Sir,” pleaded Kris, words threatening to get caught up in his throat. “Please.”
Orfeo shook his head, his low laughter finally turning into the cough that it had resembled. “No, kid. You’re asking me to do the impossible.” Now Orfeo was standing, and he was pacing around his side of the living room. Back and forth. His steps were small but calculated. Finally, he stopped in front of a book shelf propped up against the farthest wall from the two of them.
“It’s real simple. Honest.” Orfeo bothered a small glance toward Kris, whose clenched fists were held close to his chest. “I go and help you guys equals me picking sides.”
“But you won’t be fighting,” protested Kris.
“But I’m still picking sides! These guys your friend stole the money from couldn’t care less if I was or wasn’t part of it. You said so yourself, they’re out for blood. You’re asking me to put my life at risk for a pack I don’t even know the name of? It’s ridiculous, Kris. Even for you. Now I’ve worked too hard for,” he waved his hands around himself, “all of this, and-”
“All of this?” exclaimed Kris. “This little place? This is nothing!”
Orfeo raised a hand and closed his eyes, took in a deep breath, counted out five seconds in his mind, and then breathed out. “Now, I’m gonna let that one slide, Kris.” Still, he turned to the boy and glared down at him. “Watch that tone, boy!”
“I – Sorry, sir.”
“Better.” Orfeo turned back to the bookcase he’d been sorting through for the last few minutes. “I get you, kid. You don’t want to lose what you’ve worked hard on. Sure, it’s built on lies, but there’s some foundation in there, shaky as it is. I’m not going to get personally involved in this matter. No way in hell. Still…” he pulled from the shelf a tome that had started to gather some dusted. It looked hastily put together, as if done by an amateur. Sure enough some of the pages inside must have been missing. “Doesn’t mean I don’t sympathize. Here, take this one with you.”
“This?” questioned Kris.
“Some stupid thing I made a while back.” Orfeo sat back down on his lonely sofa and brought a knee up to his chest. “Techniques, theories, drawings. It’s got all you might need.”
“You… you made this?” Kris gave him an incredulous look.
Orfeo just waved off a hand. “I was bored. Kept me busy for a week. Take it.” His voice grew sterner, even before Kris had managed to utter his thanks. “Kid, I do not want to be implicit in this matter. It’s none of my business. If things go south, you burn this book before anyone else can see it. You got that?”
“I… yeah. I understand. Just…” He reached into his pocket and pulled a scrunched-up scrap of paper, upon which there was a hastily scrawled set of directions. Doubtlessly prepared long before Kris arrived. He set it down on the coffee table while holding the tome close to himself. “Please, sir. Reconsider.”
It disturbed Orfeo to see the kid leave so disappointed. It disturbed him that he was even disturbed to begin with. He fell silent for the rest of the day and mulled over the events in his head. For some time he recalled the story, then willingly thought back to those days when he trained people like Kris.
Night arrived silently as the day had come. He sat, still, in his living room, and sighed in frustration. In his hands he swirled a glass of whiskey, though that he didn’t bother to take more than a sip or two of before he tucked his chin into his chest and fell into a deep sleep.