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Skirk runs.
She runs from the burning village. From the soldiers that followed the merchants. From her parents, almost certainly corpses already, bodies kept warm by the blazing flames that burned her home.
She runs because her parents told her to survive, to escape into the wider world, to live. She runs because there is nothing else but to run away from the death and destruction that was once the only world she truly knew.
She can’t look back. If she does, she’ll see the people she grew up with be shot to death. She’ll see them burning alive. She’ll see them, and she’s not sure if she can keep running once she looks back.
So Skirk runs.
That is, until she rams into something.
It’s taller than her, not quite as wide but still wider. Covered in cloth, but beneath belying something hard and stead.
No, she’s run into someone .
Skirk gasps, a mix between a breath and a sob. Her steps stutter back, away from this obviously foreign man which means he must be with the soldiers that destroyed her home.
“Woah there, kid,” The voice says, soft and deep. “Let’s take a deep breath. What’s got you crying?”
She looks up. The owner of that voice— a man— looks back down at her. He has chestnut brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, a black and grey coat with a green hood, and… he has kind eyes.
She freezes. Surely someone with kind eyes like his can’t be part of the army that burned her village down, right?
(But the merchant ship was nice and polite to them at first, too.)
“They…” She starts, voice small. “They burned down our village.”
The man shifts, and something in his eye sharpens. Skirk doesn’t flinch, but only just. “What did you say?”
“They burned down our village.” Hot tears gather unbidden in her eyes. “The merchants, they came on a spaceship, and we gave them food, and a place to stay, and then they brought more people, and— and then they started shooting at us.” She hurriedly wipes the tears away.
Blinking through the remaining tears, she sees him stoop down to look her in the eye.
“Do you know if there are any survivors?” He asks, voice suddenly rough with something heavy. Urgency, maybe.
She shakes her head. “I— I don’t know,” She sniffs. She tries not to think of the bodies she saw bleeding sluggishly on the ground.
“Alright,” He says, “Alright. So here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to call some friends and search for any survivors. What I need you to do—” He looks her straight in the eye— “Is to hide somewhere where none of those people on the merchant ship can find you until either I or one of my friends get you out.”
She nods, shakily.
“Okay. Good. If they tell you they’re friends of Tiernan and show them this golden ticket,” He gestures to the front of his hood, where a gold and red ticket is secured, “Then feel free to go with them.” A hand lands on her head for a split second, then it’s gone. He stands up, then offers her one last reassuring smile. “Don’t forget to hide,” He says, then runs off towards the thick column of smoke rising in the distance.
Skirk wedges herself into the crack between two boulders and tries to stay her most absolutely quiet. The sound of gunshots slowly peters out. She doesn’t want to think about what that means. She only hopes that the man— Tiernan? Found survivors. Anyone. Even the mean teacher who always yells at her for skipping class.
The smoke tickles the back of her throat, but she stays silent. She doesn’t want to get discovered by the soldiers.
From the direction of the village, there are faint voices. Skirk stiffens and tries to pull herself deeper between the rocks.
The voices grow closer, louder.
“He said around here, right? The girl with the white hair from that village?” A voice says.
Skirk stifles a gasp, eyes wide. She curls in as much as she can, but her arms and legs are stiff and don’t move properly. They scrabble for purchase on the rough surface to squeeze herself in further. They can’t find her. If they find her, she’ll die just like her parents did. Like everyone else did. She squeezes her eyes shut. If she dies, the song her dad sang— it will be lost forever.
“Yep, she should be around somewhere, if she didn’t go too far…” Another voice says. “Hey!” That voice shouts. Skirk flinches, her shoulder banging into the boulder next to her. She winces in pain but freezes when the two voices start to speak again.
“No response?”
“No… Did you hear anything?”
“I didn’t. Maybe we should start looking around.”
“Alright, you go do that. Hey, little girl! We’re looking for you!”
Skirk stays deathly still, holding her breath.
“We’re friends with Breukelen— I mean, Tiernan!” They continue.
The breath she’s been holding escapes from her lungs. Should she come out now? But what if they were the soldiers and they were lying again?
Footsteps grow closer to her hiding spot. She slaps her hands over her mouth.
“I think I’ve found her.” The voice is right above her.
Skirk’s eyes widen and she looks up. Slowly.
Above her is a man with light blue hair falling in curls around his face. His white and navy suit is stained with ash with a red and gold ticket clipped on his sleeve.
“Hey,” He says, smiling gently down at her. “Were you the one that Breukelen mentioned?”
She stares. “Do you mean Mister Tiernan?”
He nods. “Yes. Mr. Breukelen Tiernan. He’s my friend, and we travel together. See,” He holds out his sleeve. “Did he show you this?”
She reaches out a hand, hesitant, and brushes her hand over the ticket. She’s never seen this kind of paper before. Smooth and shiny and harder than normal paper. There’s something other imbued in the paper, too.
“Oh, Mikhail, did you find her?” The second voice says, and from behind the man—Mikhail— a woman with glasses and dark brown hair approaches. Skirk freezes. “You did!”
The woman, in contrast to the other two, is more bright and cheery, but she and the blue-haired man both have the same kind eyes as Tiernan.
“My name’s Razalina! I’m friends with both Breukelen and Mikhail over here,” She says, gesturing to herself then the man next to her. “What’s your name, kiddo?”
“...Skirk.” She replies, hand still outstretched on Mikhail’s arm.
“Skirk! That’s a pretty name,” Razalina says, kneeling down next to Mikhail, reaching out a hand towards her. He gently lifts Skirk’s hand from his arm and slowly lays it down, but doesn’t let go. “Breukelen’s busy right now trying to rescue people from the fires with our other friends, so what do you say about coming with us?”
“If you’re with us, we can avoid the soldiers and get to a safe place pretty quick,” Mikhail adds. “Of course, it’s your choice whether you want to come with us or not, but I’d say it’s the best way for you to survive right now.”
Skirk looks down at the hand stretched out to her, open, inviting. She looks down at the hand still in hers, loose enough to pull away but warm and present.
She nods, tear tracks cold on her face. “Okay. I’ll go with you.”
(Farther away, in the opposite direction Skirk ran towards, stands a man who is not quite a man. He stands tall, shrouded in dark armor. He watches the smoke rise thick from the remains of the village, uninterested.)
(He knows this is the land of people with frightening adaptability and durability. He knows that Vedrfolnir suggested he come here for a reason. He knows that he will find his disciple written down in fate here.)
(The Trailblaze does not follow such static, predetermined things as fate .)