The Foolhardies 38 Ain't No Mountain High Enough

With a loud thud, my sneakers banged on the landing. My imagination conjured a round of applause for my perfect jump.

I felt light as a feather. I felt good. My mood better than It's been since the other night. Tell the truth. That was all I needed to lift the weight of melancholy and doubt from my shoulders.

I made my way to the kitchen where I could hear the chatter of my aunt doling out the necessary inquiries adults gave teenagers whenever they visit. Stuff like, "How've you been, Arah," or, "Did you gain a little weight, Ty?"

The smell of sausage wafted out of the kitchen. It sent my stomach grumbling.

"Sausage — tastes — great, Aunt Lena, I heard Ty say between bites.

'Have some more apple juice, Arah," Aunt Lena's voice prompted.

"Thank you, ma'am," Arah responded from inside the kitchen.

Damn—hearing Arah and Ty's voice so close sent my confidence spiraling back down to zero.

It felt like the heat turned up a notch. A trickle of sweat fell down my left cheek.

I placed a hand over my chest so I could feel my rapidly increasing heartbeat. "Calm down, Dean... The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting... just speak the truth."

It was weird how quoting Sun Tzu's Art of War always seemed to center me like the words were some kind of talisman against a teenager's irrationality.

I closed my eyes and breathed in and out. In and out. In and—

"How long are you going to stand there?" Arah's voice asked.

I peeked through my eyelids and saw her head poking out the kitchen door.

"Get in here," she said without so much as a hello or good morning. "We need to talk."

Feeling like a chump, I followed Arah into the kitchen.

Find authorized novels in Webnovel，faster updates, better experience，Please click for visiting.

Sitting on the stool next to the marble tabletop counter in the center of the kitchen was Ty. He was gobbling up a plate of sausages.

Aunt Lena was by the fridge by the back wall. She pulled it open and brought out a loaf of sliced bread which she dropped beside Ty's plate.

"Add some carbs to your meal, Ty," she said. "It's good for you."

Ty looked incredulously at her. "Didn't you just say I was gaining weight?"

"Compared to when you were all sticks and bones..." Aunt Lena gave him the once over. "This look is better for you."

She laughed while Ty grumbled. She ruffled his hair, walked over to Arah and patted her head, then moved to me with a big fat hug.

I pulled away from her smothering arms.

"You're such a hippie." I joked.

"Hha," she responded while she grabbed her purse from the side table next to the door. "Alright, you kids, I'm heading out."

"Going on a date with your girl?" Ty asked.

"Nah... going to spend time with my sister," Aunt Lena answered.

Her words dropped the temperature in the room by a lot.

This cold silence lasted the few seconds it took me to find my voice. "Want me to come along?"

"Nah," she twirled a finger at the three of us. "You guys fix whatever it is that's causing this tension."

Aunt Lena gave me a meaningful look.

"Quid agimus amicis?" she asked in Latin. The rough translation would be, "How do we treat our friends?"

"Nos tractare, quasi cognatione illa," I answered after the second it took for my tongue to adjust to the pronunciation. My answer was basically, "We treat them like family."

She nodded approvingly. "Work it out, guys."

Her final words to us before she walked out the door sent the temperature right back up to uncomfortable heat.

I sighed. It was challenging having such an observant aunt who wasn't afraid to speak up even in the most awkward situations. She was just cool like that.

"Sit down, Dean," Arah instructed.

She'd taken the seat next to Ty which meant I would have to take the seat opposite them. Great, as if we needed any more reminders of the rift between us.

I sat there with my hands on the smooth marble countertop, my fingers tapping the beat for the intro for 'Eye of the Tiger' while I waited for one of them to speak. I was betting on Ty to break the silence—and I was right.

"Aunt Lena speaks Latin, too?" Ty asked as if he'd forgotten we weren't speaking.

"Yeah," I nodded. "She took the same Latin class from dad that Luca and I did..."

"A~~and speaking Latin is necessary in the, um, other place?" Ty consciously avoided saying the F-word.

He was probably keeping the mood light and avoided the subject that would just inflame tensions once more. I was grateful to him for that.

"Latin and Primordial are similar... Primordial's like the formal speech over there..." I gulped as my mouth turned dry. The scent of sizzling fried meat was getting to me.

Ty slid his plate of sausages toward me. I took a sausage and chomped it down—and for a hungry guy who spent the previous night exhausting my brain cells, the taste of a well-cooked sausage was like the ambrosia of the gods.

After my fourth bite, I felt a chunk of meat stuck in my throat, causing me to cough.

Arah slid her glass of apple juice toward me. I took it gratefully and gulped down the glass.

Once I was done acting like a starved maniac, I glanced over to my two friends and wondered if them sharing the food and drink was a peace offering.

No such luck. Arah was still frowning and Ty had his arms crossed over his belly.

"Um, where was I?" I asked to diffuse the tension.

"You were telling us about Latin and... Primordial," Arah said like she was urging me on.

"Yeah, so, Primordial's what they use most of the time for their texts and speeches. At least the formal stuff like rituals and contracts..." I was sounding like a guide at a museum who sucked at his job. This wasn't entertaining at all. "But there are a lot of other languages... like elvish, and dwarven, and gnomish..."

I stopped pattering on at the sight of Arah's raised eyebrow.

"Aura spoke English," she countered.

Ty nodded briskly.

"Actually, she was speaking Common," I corrected. "Which is the universal language over there that's used for day-to-day speech."

"Why does it sound like English then?" Arah asked, curiosity getting the best of her.

"Well... I don't actually know..." I answered truthfully. "I think it's because we speak it and the, um, other place, sort of mirrors our world... at least, that's what I think... I don't think too much about it."

"Why not?" It was Ty's turn to sound intrigued.

"Because I've got other things to worry about than wonder why I can understand my enemies when they're threatening to slice off my limbs so I can't run away while they throw me over a flame pit to cook me before they eat me," I said in one breath.

I know, I was already getting them interested so why did I have to say something so morbid? Why did I sound so snarky?

Honestly, it felt like the perfect opening to explain to them why going to the fayne was not the picnic they envisioned. Obviously, they didn't really think that way and I was just being a jerk.

I sighed, believing that I'd ruined the moment. I glanced over my two friends and saw that they were both downcast.

Guilt racked me. My fingers scraped the marble.

"Guys," I said.

"Dean," Arah said.

"Dude," Ty said.

All three of us spoke up at the same time, and as if a dam had burst, all three of us began talking at the same time to the point where none of what we said made sense to each other.

This prompted me to raise both hands in a gesture of, "time out!"

My eyes darted between the two of them.

"Please... let me say something first," I said to them.

I could see it in the sheepish expressions on their faces. Arah and Ty were about to apologize to me for the other night. I just knew it—as of the metaphorical string that connected us was strumming in a remorseful tune.

Now, a bad guy would have let them do it. A bad guy would have let them take the fall for him. However, I wasn't a bad guy, and I could prove that by being the bigger person. It was time to speak the truth.

"The truth is..." I started.

I spilled my guts out to them. All of it. From not wanting them to get hurt to not wanting to lose my connection to Mudgard, a connection that they represented. I told them how frightened I really was every time I faced off against an enemy, and how excited I felt whenever the Fayne called me away after falling asleep.

These were things not even Luca knew, and probably feelings Aura could only sense but never heard from my mouth.

I told Ty and Aura my secret truths because I wanted them to know that I trusted them more than anything. They were my support. They were the guys in the chairs to my Batman. They were my Alfred and my Wong and my Jarvis.

"Um, I don't mind being the man in the chair," Ty blurted out.

Arah rolled her eyes at him. "The accurate term is 'people in the command chair'."

She sent me a searching gaze as if she would glean the truth of my words in my facial expression.

"Fine... we'll drop wanting to go to the Fayne for now..." Arah relented. "But can we be fair and agree to discuss this option again in the future?"

"Sure," I said quickly. Not that my mind would change on this topic but I would deal with that bridge when I had to cross it. Now, I was just hoping for reconcilliation.

Eventually, both Arah and Ty chuckled. They glanced at each other, and together, they reached their hands out to me.

I took them gratefully—and just like that, the heavy weight that pressed down on my chest lifted. I was able to breathe calmly again. That's just how much my two friends meant to me.

Ty was the first to let go. He picked up the plate of sausages and grabbed a piece. Arah took another. They offered me a third.

We pointed our sausages forward so that our three pointy ends would meet.

"All for one, and one for all," we said in unison.

Then we each took our sausages and chomped it down.

"By the — way," Ty mumbled between bites. "What did you and aunt Lena talk about in latin?"

"She asked me how we treated our friends," I said. "And I said we treat them like family..."

This made both Ty and Arah blush.

I laughed. A tossing of leftover sausage ensued.

Once we were done fooling around, Arah asked, "So this war you're going to..." she pointed at me with a lame sausage. "Let's think up a few strategies to keep you alive."

"Yeah," Ty answered. "You guys saw that old movie, The 300?"

While Arah and Ty discussed the benefits of a coordinated push of a shield unit to defend a narrow path, I beamed contentedly at them.

My friends were my friends again. All was right in the world. Well, mostly. I still had to save Luca and Help Aura with the empty throne for her brother.

I wasn't worried though because there ain't no mountain high enough, ain't no valley low enough, to keep Arah and Ty from helping me. My people in the chair were here to provide backup.

Chapter end