30

I took a few minutes to feel bad. I felt better remembering that stuff about Mom. This was a good memory and the closeness to Mom always made me feel better. I decided I was ready to pull myself together. I never intended to give up, I just needed to be vulnerable. I had taken a few minutes and now I stood up. I had to find Mom because she was the most important person in my life. The fact that I still wanted to find her would inspire me. I had Christian’s help. I could do a lot to save Mom. I decided to just take a break. I still felt bad, but I focused on spending time with Christian. I wasn’t overwhelmed by the bad feelings and the bad events anymore.

    For the rest of the day, we stayed where we were and didn’t make plans, since we had enough to deal with.

    The next day, while we were talking during breakfast, Christian asked,

    “Do you play sports other than martial arts?”

    “No, but when I tried martial arts, I loved it. And I wanted to do it for fun when I was ten. When I got older and better, I realized that being able to fight would make me formidable. I wanted to think that I could handle battles. That’s what made me want to earn my black belt even more.”

    “Did you want to be like your mother?”

    “Well, that by itself would not have been enough for me to want to learn martial arts.”

    “Why not?”

    “Because I don’t think I should learn something just to be like someone else. I have to want it for myself.”

    “I agree.”

    “But, yeah, when I knew I could be good at martial arts, I wanted to live up to what Mom could do. And then with the ghouls too, but that came after I decided I wanted to fight them.”

    “Why did you want to fight them?” Christian asked.

    “Because what they are doing is wrong and I want to save innocent people,” I explained. “Why did you want to learn magic?"“Like you, I wanted to be formidable.”

    “Really?”

    I felt my eyes lighting up.

    “Yeah,” Christian said. “Why?”

    “Because I never met anyone who pursued something specific for that reason.”

    “Your Mom is into martial arts.”

    “Yeah, because she’s athletic, but it’s the only sport she’s into.”

    “Seriously?”

    “Yeah, she’s okay with a few others, but not good. And she doesn’t like martial arts for the same reason I do. She likes the sport and she wanted to teach it for a long time because she loves the idea of helping someone learn something. I wanted to be tough.”

    “Me too.”

    Christian smiled.

    I smiled too and I thought he was smiling for the same reason I was. He understood how I felt and I was so glad to find someone who felt the same way I did.

    “I like magic because there is so much I could do with it,” Christian shared. “I was fascinated by it; the spells, the potions, scrying. There was a lot to learn and I wanted to learn. I thought it would make me have more substance.”

    “You know, people think that ghouls are smarter than we are because they have more knowledge than we do.”

    “What do you think?”“I don’t know. The ghouls seem to think it’s what’s best for the kingdom if they fought humans, but that’s doing the exact opposite. Humans want what’s best through peace and helping people and the kingdom flourish.”

    There were many instances on TV where all four species in the kingdom discussed something for the good of the kingdom and it turned out that the suggestion of the humans was the best one and the one they went with, not what the ghouls said. Humans had figured out a lot of things the ghouls didn’t.

    Shouldn’t it have been the other way around?