An abandoned child owns a forest

There is a tale known everywhere in this land, and it begins like this:

“There was a child that was afraid of everything…”

Rue was afraid of everything he couldn’t control, so he had to learn how to control himself first. But there was a time when he was just a child nobody wanted.

An abandoned child doesn’t know where to belong, because nothing belongs to him. The only path he can take is one where he can get lost.

Once he learned to walk, he looked up to the sun, then the moon, and recognized their circular pattern.

“Like the sun! Perhaps, if I start to walk like that, everything will make sense!”

So he started running in circles. Then an abnormal step outside that circle, a bit to the left, a bit to the right, until it no longer felt right. 

A few days later, a stream of water nearby caught his attention.

“If I start running straight ahead, just like the water, maybe I’ll make sense too!”

Walking ahead, never going past, always thinking about the latter, a simple day became many.

Everything changed, at some point. His feet ached, so he stopped walking. Rain started to pour heavily. A thunderstorm made the sky as green as the grass where he was standing, and that’s when something came to his mind. The rain was falling violently on his figure, but it never went through him. His hair was wet, the wind changed the direction of the rain drops every now and then, but there was not a time he was not touched by the water. Almost as if it recognized his existence in the world, the rain was telling him -

“As long as I fall on you and give you shape, you’ll exist somewhere in this land. I recognize your being. If you love me, I’ll set the whole world to a perpetuous thunderstorm, only to find you.”

An abandoned child thinks anything that doesn’t harm him most surely is love.

He waited for the rain in that place for a very long time, but waiting only resulted in growing up. The rain never came. 

Beneath the scorching sun, he’d already learned the season before, how to wait for the snow to become water, so that he could collect it. In the winter, he took advantage of the animals he hunted; a half-empty belly and reminiscence of the warmth from the fur. 

Everything he found, from dirt to debris, became a source of sustenance.

An abandoned child makes use of things other people don’t need, whether it’s a sea of mud or a broken leaf; the tree branches on the ground, or himself. 

Eight years passed ever since he saw his parents. That day, they were smiling, but it didn’t take long for the little boy to realize their eyes never met his.

A small fragment of his broken heart started to scrape against his chest like sandpaper, until once again he realized she should’ve never hoped for anything. His thoughts suddenly started to dissolve, when he saw something he’d never seen before.

They were smiling while looking at a small living being all wrapped around in his mother’s arm. It was a baby. In the blink of eyes, he found himself holding that very baby inside his arms.

Rue’s heart felt warm. He never saw something so little and fragile. All he’d ever held with those hands were all things he’d use to survive the seasons, so he didn’t really know what to do with something that had the same flesh as his. Even though he wasn’t taught, he knew he couldn’t make any tangible use of that little thing. Looking up to his parents, confused, he wanted to give that wobbly and easily irritable thing in his arms back.

“His name is Licht.”

He touched the baby’s nose and cheeks with a finger.

“You can’t keep on crying like that, if you want to survive. If you cry, animals will come to hurt you.” He paused for a second.

“You’ve been abandoned too.”

That toothless mouth of his curved into meaningless laughter, his fingers on Rue’s face now. The latter’s heart started to beat faster and faster, until he immediately felt the need to embrace him. He held him tight, closing his eyes; that baby’s heart was beating even faster than his own. At the time, Rue didn’t know that a toddler's heart beats faster for physiological reasons. The only reasoning that came to that lonely little boy was a simple one, ‘Maybe, he cares for me too.’.

The two brothers grew up together. The small little things Rue had already learned on his own, he taught his little brother too, but differently. Rue knew that if it was cold, he should’ve gone hunting to collect more animals and fur, yet he taught his brother that if he was ever cold, he should’ve told him first. When Rue first spent a few days starving inside that forest at the beginning, he realized that he should’ve stored food. Licht, on the other hand, was taught that it was alright to feel hunger even after a rationed meal and that he should’ve never gone wandering around to look for food, since it was dangerous. All he had to do was to tell his brother and he would’ve taken care of everything.

There were evenings, some nights and mornings too, where Rue deeply missed his brother. Their parents often came to take him to spend the day with them, only to bring him back to him a few hours later.

“We’re his parents!” His mother or father would often scream, pointing a finger to Rue.

“He’s always so silent! He’s always complaining about everything and doesn’t respect us!”

“There’s nothing wrong with him.” Rue would tell them, innocently stating what came the most naturally to him.

In his eyes, his brother was a healthy boy. He ate well, slept well, laughed and was curious about everything. He talked way too much, even about things that didn’t make sense. But there was absolutely nothing wrong with him.

Licht would sometimes even ask him difficult questions, to which he realized he should’ve come up with answers anyways, even if he had to make them up, even though didn’t know much about it.

“Rue, why am I the only one that always leaves? You always stay in this garden. Do you go to mom when I’m sleeping?”

Rue, now eighteen, wondered what to tell him. 

Should I tell him the truth, that I’ve been abandoned in this forest? But then he would realize that he’d been abandoned too.

‘Would it be enough to tell him that mom loves him more? What if he asks me the reason why?

I knew all the reasons why it’s so easy to love him. Then again, what if he asks me why does not mom love me?

But wait, what was the reason again? The reason why I was forgotten, the reason why I was never loved.

I turned this forest into a garden, with seeds from all the different flowers I found, so that in each season there would be a sea of flowers for you to pick. Knowing you’re meant to reach and live outside, one day, I foolishly created a place for you to belong in a place you’ll never come back to. I guess I’ve grown fearful of your absence.

If you leave, I’ll be lonely; if you leave, I’ll be alone.

Yet Rue knew that if his brother was ever to leave, it wouldn’t be abandonment, only the curse of life. He didn’t want to admit that the only person who’d ever cared for him would’ve had to abandon him as well one day.

The void inside him suddenly felt heavier that evening.

Before Rue could answer, the little boy spoke again.

“I don’t like to go to mom alone. They always want something from me. They tell me to smile more, but what can I do? I’m not happy with them. Can you come with me next time?”

A deep breath before kneeling down to his eye level, Rue put his forehead on the softer one in front of him.

“I can’t leave this place. If I leave, who will be waiting here for you?”

“You’re always waiting for me?!”

Rue smiled and held him tight, while the little boy inhaled the scent of everything he loved the most in the whole world. His senses overwhelmed him so much, he didn’t even understand what that tall young man had answered him.

A few years more, the little boy had now become a quiet, smart but very opinionated young man. He was adamant to never go outside without his brother, no matter how many times his parents had told him, until an unpredicted event unraveled in front of him. The parents suddenly asked the both of them to leave the forest and reach them.

Licht was so joyous he couldn’t behave himself properly, not even when the both of them finally left and entered the palace. He glanced at his brother’s face to see his surprised face, but something was definitely wrong with him. He was clenching his fist so tightly that his hand started to bleed.

“Rue, your hand is bleeding!”

“Ah, yes..” He said at first, before a melancholic smile curled his lips. He stared at his own hand for a few seconds, while Licht started to wonder why he was behaving that way.

“But..What’s a bit of blood on my hands?”

This is where the tale ends. With such an ominous sentence as its last, people started to thread their own ending to make the story more fascinating. In the vast majority of them, the older brother killed the crown prince and became the Emperor. The truth, on the other hand, was much more different.

A maid is considered reliable when her presence becomes invisible to her masters. In the same way, a knight is regarded as valuable only when he becomes a sword himself.

Rue was afraid of everything; some things more than others. But nobody could’ve known, since he was the only one who could see them. His fears ensnared him, often taking the shape of everything he loved. It wasn’t an epiphany, the complete understanding of affection dynamics; it wasn’t anything new to him, finding out that love is fragile to those who long for it, daily automatism to the ones who still hold it, a lethality to the ones who lose it.

He noticed things quickly, using every single thing to his advantage. A born strategist, he was often called among the other knights, because unlike most people around him, even while growing up, Rue had always known himself the best.

The facade he so attentively weaved with his wounded fingers was immaculate, perfect to a fault. External, plastic, so that nobody could’ve ever guessed the extent of his emotions.

Hiding everything behind a smile was his forte; controlling responsibilities and consequences was his duty. He was the older brother, the eldest child, so putting the family in front of himself was the most natural thing expected from him.

Keeping captive all the parts of himself that didn’t serve him, he memorized the characteristics of each one of them, in order to never let them slip away or escape from within him. For instance, melancholy was one of the heaviest parts. Whether it took all or everything, he would’ve never let that specific emotion show on his face.

In a corner of his mind he collected everything he wanted to hide, he apathetically put one brick on another in the perfect order. He’d selected what he wanted to show to the rest of the world, sealing off all the rest in the corner.

But he soon found himself realizing it too - that hiding only means gradually losing sight of light, until you get completely devoured by the darkness, until you become the darkness itself.

In a land where the Emperor preaches the absence of clouds as night, his subjects too will not be able to distinguish the truth from falsehood. And if that very Emperor becomes a father, and sees his own flesh and blood as something unworthy, of course he will soon become anything but valuable. He looked both tremendously like the Emperor’s mother, whom he felt the most regretful towards, and one of his older brothers, who was nothing more than his greatest fear.

While he’d been dead for a long time now, Octo stained the palace red when he was alive.

Their mother, Empress Mylorna, was not brutal, nor a tyrant, but the sense of antagonism Octo felt towards his mother led the firstborn to become her most menacing enemy, as she opposed almost everything he suggested. 

What could she have done? She knew it better than anyone else, that the son she birthed had something terrifyingly wrong in his head. He was evil beyond comprehension and harming others was his first nature. The proof of it became evidence the day the current Emperor, Luibarn, was appointed as crown prince. Octo massacred the whole family that night, later being taken down by the crown prince’s guards.

As soon as he was born, Emperor Luibarn recognized those eyes immediately. His hands started to tremble as he looked at those eyes, one golden, one black. Both his mother and his oldest brother were born again to haunt him.

In order to keep him alive, the current Empress sent the boy to the furthest room in the whole mansion, never to let go out again.

One might think it was because of the love she held for the child, but unfortunately, she saw him as nothing more than a pawn to use in order to keep control of her husband’s behaviour, as his health resented every time his achievements were mentioned.

Rue was his mother’s most magnificent and immaculate weapon.

When their second son was born, he immediately became the crown prince, so it wasn’t long until he became the victim of an assassination attempt by enemies inside the palace. They could no longer trust anyone, reason why they decided to hide him somewhere nobody ever went to.

At only eight years old, the prodigal son showed attributes worthy of a leader. An excellent swordsmanship, an ability to learn and elaborate worth of an erudite. He’d never even asked for anybody’s help or complained. Abandoned, banished because he couldn’t be killed, and sent with a negligent maid to keep him proper at the very least for the first years of his life, he was sealed off in the most remote part of the palace, the ‘Forest’.

“He’s very mature, but he genuinely scares me when he talks like that. It’s like talking to..”

“Yes…I noticed it too.”

“Prince Octo…” 

He didn’t know who Octo was. All he knew was that his name was Rue, and that he was unable to be loved.

Never once in the empire’s history had something like this ever recorded. The firstborn of his majesty and her majesty was not to be considered a prince, so nobody even dared to celebrate his first day of life.

He was discarded, only to be ordered to come back and get recognized as the actual crown prince. Being the representative of the household, he was then sent to war, where he lost his life in the stead of the actual crown prince, his younger brother.

As his blood started to nourish the ground of that battlefield as well, something cold touched his face.

“Ah, it’s raining…”

A painful laugh before his eyes closed, his heart was light. The child he raised and cherished made him exist in a world he was not meant to.

“I think..I no longer need the rain now.”

Hearing that his brother died could only come in second place to finding out his parents had planned it all out.

Licht felt ashamed of himself for being so naïve. How could he ever come back and be loved, when he’d been abandoned before even making a reasonable mistake?

He cried his heart out. Loneliness wasn’t the thing that made him so dear. It was the fact that he would have hated him, but chose to love him instead. Even though his brother wasn’t the type to say how much he cared for him, his actions were never something he would have doubted. Dying for him was the very example of that. He gave him everything he had, when all he’d ever owned as an abandoned child was a forest.

The subjects of the last Emperor would later remember that day as the most shocking thing to ever happen in the Empire. Light, the second born of the Emperor, killed his own father with the crown prince’s sword, before putting both the sword and the crown on the throne, bowing deeply in front of it. 

The words Licht spoke to Emperor Rue’s subjects, not only did they become the most remarkable ever said by a royal, but also the most humane. 

“This is my last greeting and wish to each one of you. This war should’ve never started in the first place, so I apologize for my father’s incompetence.”

He bowed to all the people in front of him.

“But..Whatever you do, I beg you to live in the present. The things that you’ve lost in the war, they will not come back. All you can do now is take the things you have and give them meaning.” 

Rue, brother; in another life, I hope your name bears no regret.

Holding tight the sword his brother freed the Empire with, Licht felt rain pouring from the sky.

“Let go of everyone you’ve lost. For there is no one waiting for you..In the past, no matter how many times you go back.”

‘An abandoned child owns a forest' by Nasrin A. H.