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He shook the thoughts from his head. He did not need to dwell on that right now. Not on his outing, and hopefully date, with Persephone.
“I would have thought there would be more people visiting a place like this. I know there is no financial need for tourism, but this seems like a place that would call to people with money to burn,” he stated as he turned his focus back to where she sat across from him at their little café table.
Persephone took a sip of the wine she ordered and nodded to the server as he poured more into her glass.
“We have tourists,” she explained once the server was no longer in range to hear their discussion. “It is usually just a steady flow, not a large influx, since our weather stays mostly the same year-round.”
Devon nodded as his eyes took in their immediate surroundings subconsciously. As if he might have to worry about a threat or need an exit strategy last minute.
Old habits die hard, he thought.
He caught sight of an older man walking with what he assumed was his son as they looked into shop windows. He could almost hear the boy, who couldn’t have been more than six, begging for a treat he had seen in one of the windows. The father laughed, grabbed the boy’s hand, and shook his head. The boy’s little shoulders slumped.
The man stopped and crouched to whisper something in the boy’s ear, the child perking up at the words his father spoke to him. The child danced in excitement before he took off running down to another shop that had a picture of an ice cream cone on the front.
One blink later and Devon was in a whole different place. He was no longer sitting across from Persephone at a little café in Halcyon, he was standing among miles of trees. Not his forest. Not the one he called home. A forest from a different time and a different memory. A memory kept in the darkest corner of his mind.
His father had been called out to an area where the trees were in various states of illness, all from different diseases, and no one in the area could figure out why.
Devon was only six or seven himself, but he watched as his father walked to tree after tree, touching the bark.
Looked.
Examined.
His father would close his eyes as if the tree could somehow tell him the why of its ailing health.
Feeling bored with standing beside his father for hours of the day, Devon wandered off, but not too far. He knew better, he always knew he had to stay in his father’s sight, and he never went against his father’s wishes.
At least not as a youth. His rebellion would come much later and at a greater cost.
He was able to make out some water, a brook, through the trees and found a spot where he could look without being outside of where his father could reach him.
He pulled his small body up onto a stone that jutted out over the brook a bit, keeping him dry, but still among the flow. He watched as all the creatures of the brook moved about in front of him, not concerned at all that a human boy with the power to hurt them could be nearby. It always seemed animals knew his intentions were never mean. Most of the time the animals went about their business, not perceiving a threat.
The children at school thought it was weird and teased him for it. The boy without a human soul. He thought that the animals allowing him among them meant he had more soul than anybody. He received a black eye from Ruben, the local bully, when he made that argument.
The water was clear as it moved smoothly over the pebbles and rocks in the bottom. He could see little fish of some kind moving through, a frog not too far down the bank of the brook.
As he looked down at his reflection, he put his small hand into the water and let the cool flow relax him as it changed path and course to move through his fingers. It never deterred from its destination. No matter the obstacle in front of it, it found a way to where it needed to be. He could understand and appreciate that even as a small child, though in a more elementary way than an adult would.
“You should be weary of water, child,” a voice whispered. Devon looked up as he pulled his hand out of the water. He tried to find the owner of the voice, but no one was around. A chill ran up his spine. His instinct to call for his father was muted somehow, as if the words couldn’t find the strength to pull themselves from his tiny body.
He continued to not say a word, knowing deep down if there was a stranger here, he should not engage the person.
Instead, he stood up and began walking back to his father at a clipped pace. His father moved out from behind a tree, startling Devon, and pushed him behind his legs.
“Leave him alone, Cybil,” his father said. Devon tried to look around his father and through his
legs to this Cybil person but saw no one. Just the disembodied voice that had warned him of the water only moments ago.
“Demetri, he needs to know what could happen if he follows the wrong path. There are consequences,” the disembodied voice hissed at his father.
“That’s enough, Cybil. You want him to believe all that nonsense, you should have stuck around to teach it to him.” His father had never spoken like that to anyone. His entire life he wondered if his father even knew how to get angry.
Even when Devon made mistakes that were more costly than not, his father simply took him by the shoulder and said the cost was the lesson. He had learned from the error. Repayment was not making the error again. Life would find balance and so would he.
Devon heard a laugh, but it did not sound happy. Instead, it sounded incredulous.
