It's been a while since I have used this blog and I am doing my best to make time to write more. I spent a day writing this. I normally write in third person so I decided to try out first person to see how it would feel. Any comments/critique is greatly appreciated.
Unfinished Business
Dio wasn’t giving me anything. No surprise there, hermits and recluses aren’t primarily known for their charity. You’d think something as immaterial as a few answered questions would be pretty easy to fulfill. But he just sat there, leaning back in his finely finished wooden rocking chair on his equally finely finished wooden deck with his legs kicked up on the railing and his hands interlaced behind his head. I sat there in a regular chair, not a rocking one, on the other side of his deck squirming to find a comfortable position. This must have been his way of dealing with unwanted guests. That would have explained the worn out knots protruding from the middle of the seat.
I eventually gave in and stood up to gaze into the open mountain meadow to take a break from the situation. The rustling of the long rooted trees and tall grass distracted me from my lethargic host, providing me with a show of luscious branches dancing in the crisp summer wind, swaying left and right with the finesse of a well choreographed piece.
“Nice isn’t it,” he interrupted.
I looked back to see him in peering at me through creased eyelids. “Don’t tell me this is why you left,” I said with as much sarcasm I could muster.
“Nah,” he shrugged with a smile, “But it sure is a nice perk.”
“Then why?”
Dio let out a sigh. “This again,” he said as he leaned back even further. I wanted to grab his legs and push his chair down to the floor. I knew that he knew why I was here, hell my very existence was one of the reasons why he left in the first place. “Let me save us the time and trouble with a simple answer; I’m not going back.”
After all the bush beating and trivial “How do you do’s”, a part of me wanted to just pick up my travel pack and leave while convincing myself that I tried, that we didn’t need someone that so easily turned his back on the Collective so many years ago. But unfortunately for both of us, I was too stubborn with an answer like that. “That’s that?! You haven’t even bothered asking how everyone is doing and you already made your decision? You don’t even know what is going on out there, why I’m here, or why they thought it would be a brilliant idea to send me, a nineteen year old, of all people to ask you to stop hiding?!”
“Hiding?!” he shot to his feet as soon as they left the railing. “Who said anything about hiding?!”
Pride is a funny thing to mess with. “Your actions speak for themselves.”
“Watch it boy,” he loomed over me. “My actions are of what Czarnian mothers warned their children about to keep them from misbehaving.”
No matter how much I backed away, he kept getting closer.
“Justifiable causes and the greater good doesn’t really do much good for your conscience when it’s your hands that have to get bloodied.”
Maybe that was the wrong button to push. I was getting pushed backed even farther.
“Hiding?!” He chuckled. “No matter where I go, how far I try to get away from this war, their screaming innocent faces will always find me whenever I close my eyes.”
I toppled over the railing behind me rolled into the grass. When I finally recovered, I looked up to see Dio standing over me with such agony that bled from his own words.
“Why am I here?” he asked. “Because out there I’m a weapon, a sword meant to cleave and spill blood for reasons muddled in shades of grey. I don’t care what righteous cause or good fight you want me to be a part of.” He looked down at his opened hands then said, “Blood stains all the same,” before walking back into his cabin.
I laid there in the grass for who knows how long, contemplating what Dio said just a moment ago. This was going to be a lot harder than I thought. Not only did I have to convince him to rejoin the collective, now I had to also convince myself as well.
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