VI

One morning I woke up, displeased with the world in general, to find a contraption of bolts and screws and metal pieces right in front of my face. I screamed and pushed it away from me, before ducking under the covers.
"Dad gave me the best robot set you can get in Gold City!" Ark yelled at me happily.

"Happy Hatchday, Ark," I muttered from beneath my blankets.

It was Ark's third hatchday, which would make him about eight or nine on Yamauchi. And, for quite some time, he was showing intelligence beyond his age - in Yoshi terms anyway. "In about three years," Syo. Yarapren told my parents once at an interview, "he would be able to go to high school in Pandora. His intelligence is quite superb. I've got him studying the same work as Dyluck at the moment, and he's speeding through it. As for his Mana Abilities - well, he's going quite quickly through the exercises, especially the Salamando ones, but I believe that's due to his intellect, not his strength. However, his skill in it is impressive. Dyluck is the stronger of the two, naturally as he's older, but also as there's more of a gap than exists normally between two years."

Ark had followed his big brother and undertook the Right Path as well. We could all see that Ark's strength in that area lay with the Fire Elemental, but they didn't teach the majority of Lumina spells, and none of the Shade spells, until high school, mainly due to their strength. Undine, the Water, was mine. And also, as I was to discover later, I had the greater strength for a reason.

"Where's your present, Dy?" he asked me, excitedly.

Ark had been boasting about his birthday for a week or so before hand, but I wasn't able to get him a present, for a reason: He always tagged around me, even into the fray. Once we were walking home from school, and Dogo and his gang ambushed us, and started teasing me about my name, calling me "Lich" and whatever. I was used to it by then.

"Leave him alone, Dogo," my brother piped up, standing in front of me with his arms spread.

"Hey, look, the little squirt pipes in," he said.

<i>Oh, Undine, he's going to get hit,</i> I remember myself thinking.

Before I knew it, Dogo's hair was on fire. Ark received a whopping from my mother later that night, but it was worth it, he said, for my sake.

I always admired his bravery, but it was this that would change my life.

"Well?"

I uncovered myself and lied, "It's a surprise. You'll get it later on."

I then got out of bed, and was going over to my wardrobe to dress myself (as I've always slept without clothes) and tripped on some more of Ark's robotics. I fell to the ground and landed on a remote, which sent a heavy, tracked robot near Ark to cross his left foot, the wounds scarring him. The crying and screaming brought Kara to us, and after giving Ark a curative round drop, I was punished for my clumsiness. I was angry enough that I was ready to tell Ark that the accident was my present.

Ark had always been into robotics from a very early age. When we were put to bed, Kara would read a story. Ark always, and I stress always, wanted the one about Kilroy, the Water Seed-driven robot of the Scorpion Army at the time of the Resurrection. The story made Kilroy live happily ever after, but as Ark was saddened to hear in class one day - I saw the tears form - that Kilroy ended up a bunch of parts on the floor after the Mana Knight got to it.

"I hate Randi! I hate him! I hate him!" Ark yelled after class to me.

I left the house, leaving Ark to his robotics (he never played with the one that hurt him after that) and went down to Yoshi Bend to think. It was a late spring's day, and I went for a swim. I remember seeing a Rabite drinking the water from the opposite bank, before it bounced along the bank upstream. That awakened my curiosity: we never really explored further up the creek as a log provided much of a barrier to us, namely my smaller-sized brother. However, as I was alone, I wouldn't have that problem. So, I swam up to the shallows where the pool ended, and waded up to the log. I found a place where it was lower than the rest of it, and hauled myself up as I was tall enough to, then. I then swung my legs over and saw that the creek itself was a narrow trickle across a smooth, wide basin. I jumped down onto one side, and found myself thigh deep in mud, and sinking slowly.

I decided not to yell for help as if I was found I would be in big trouble - one for being outside the pool area, and second because I'd be absolutely filthy - though, my clothes would be spared as we swum without them. However, as I kept getting deeper and deeper, the thought crossed my mind that I was going to die.

Luckily, the mud stopped at my armpits, and it was there that I realised what I had wanted most of all for the past three years - loneliness, and to be myself. So, I played around in that mud for some time until I was completely coated, head to toe, in khaki goo. And I'm thankful that I did for what happened next.

I waded, albeit slowly, upstream, some parts shallower but no deeper than my armpits, until I reached a small waterfall where the creek fell onto the mud flat, only a foot high. I clambered up the bank and walked beside the creek until I nearly bumped into a Mushboom. Had it seen me, I would have been knocked unconscious by its spray and then trampled on to death.

Then another thought occurred to me - it can't see me. And suddenly, my courage perked up, and I picked up a stone. I threw it at the Mushboom, and giggled as it struck the walking fungus in its face, embedding itself in its body and causing white gloop to spill onto the ground. And then I realised that I killed it - the first thing I had ever killed. My first reaction was joy that I was so strong, but then the second was that I had killed something. I became melancholy, and decided to do the right thing and bury the creature. Where I buried it became a sobering place.

I continued my expedition upstream until I reached a cliff with a reasonably tall waterfall, with nothing around the small pool but undergrowth and the forest. I saw that it was impossible for me to continue upstream. I looked into the water and a twinkle caught my eye. I walked out into the pool (the water washing the mud off me) and then dived for it. I grasped it and surfaced, holding the object up to the sun. I had discovered a cut emerald, its green light dappling my face. I looked at it in awe for some time, before I decided that I'd give it to Ark.

So I did, and he received it with much adoration. At least it was something to get his mind off the robots.