Someone's Destiny

It was hard to believe that our little rundown shack could have gotten much messier, but some how, the Searchers had managed to push the place into a new level of chaos. The chairs had been thrown across the main room, our scarce amount of food littered the floor, and one leg of our table was split in two. One splintery half was still attached to the table, and the other was sticking out of our last good pillow.

The door to the bedroom was standing open. Denver and Dakota quickly set themselves to the task of cleaning up the main room while I examined the bedroom. Our bed was stripped down to the mattress - the sheets were in a crumpled heap in the corner - and the trunk on the opposite wall was laying on its side, open, with the contents scattered about the room. I sighed and picked up a shredded blanket off the floor. There was a song, my grandpa once told me, that little kids used to sing to make clean up more fun. I looked out the small window at the horizon where a small cloud of dust was following the Destruction and the Searchers that looked through the debris the Destruction left behind for "fallacies".

Clean up, clean up,
Everybody, everywhere,
Clean up, clean up,
Everybody do your share.
*

The scratch of my makeshift broom on our front step echoed through our little clearing. Dakota was whistling softly as he tried to scrounge up whatever edible food that was left into a meal, and Denver was drawing words in the dirt in front of me.

"Fox," I said to him. His stick traced the letters through the soft dirt and he spelled out the word.

"F-O-X," he said as he wrote.

"Careful to close those 'O's," I reminded him, "Otherwise it'll look like you are trying to spell 'fux'." Denver giggled. After a moment, he turned and looked at me.

"Dad, what's a 'fox'?" I opened my mouth to tell him that I wasn't sure what a fox was, when the clip of horses mingled with my steady sweeping. Dakota peered out through the open door, and Denver rushed away from the dirt path to the step. The sound got closer and closer until a rust colored stallion broke through the fence of trees that surrounded our home. Denver pressed closer to me when the horse and its cloaked rider lurched to a halt in front of us.

The rider jumped down from the horse's back and flicked his oversized hood off his head. The green-filtered light illuminated the man's rugged features and cast a friendly glow about him. He gave us a toothy grin and stuck out a hand.

"Hullo," he said. I took his hand cautiously, keeping the other firmly on Denver's shoulder. Dakota reached around me and shook the man's hand as well.

He was a big man, at least six feet tall, with big hands, a big smile, and a really big voice. He practically shouted his greeting to us, and I had to take a step back to focus on the question he was trying to ask us.

"Could you say that again?" I asked, my head spinning.

"Well, you see, I've been riding hard for a few days now, and I've sort of been looking more at where I'm going rather than where I've been, if you know what I mean." I just stared in dumb confusion. "So...where exactally am I?" the man finally asked.

"Oh," I began, "you, sir, are in Mesa."

"Mesa?" he asked. I nodded solemnly.

"Not many people have heard of it. You headed to Riverton, or Givens?" The man laughed, loudly of course.

"No, no, I'm going much further than that, my good sir, but all in good time. Is this Mesa?" He looked around at our little clearing and furrowed his brow. "Not much of a town, is it? Just you?" It was my turn to laugh.

"Not hardly, sir. We are on the outskirts here, the city center is another quarter of a mile in."

"We were just about to head that way," Dakota added, stepping around from behind me and looking up at the man. I glanced over at him and he just prodded me in the arm. "We could take you to find a room!"

"Yes," I finished, "In fact, we have a room above our shop if you'd like."
*

"Wow," Denver breathed, looking up at the man as we walked down the dirt path.

"Yup," he laughed, ruffling the boy's hair, "all 50 of them. Took 'em down one by one with a swing of my ax and a throw of my fist." I laughed at my son's reaction.

"No one else was there to help you?" Dakota asked. The man shook his head.

"Naw. The rest of my team was busy with the Langwai and Tihona."

"Those don't even exist," I said, finally finding a hole in the man's fantastic story. He looked at me with a snarl.

"They do," he breathed. My sons looked at me, wide-eyed for doubting the man. "I lost one of my best soliders to a Tinhon, and the Langwai have caused nothing but trouble for us." We walked along in silence.

"Well," I tried, interrupting the silence, "the town is just this next clearing." Our path broke through the trees as we came upon the very clearing I was talking about. The streets were bustling with life as citizens scurried up and down the road, returning run away furniture, clothing, and other items to neighbors and searching for a lost dress or pair of gloves.

"Good luck finding that," a man said. In front of him, a little girl was sobbing, saying something about her little cloth doll that got left on the patio when the Searchers came. She ran across the road, startling our man's horse, and asked the neighbor on that side. I lead us onward, trying desperatly to ignore the laments over broken heirlooms and destroyed possessions. It happened everytime they Destruction came through. The only things that stayed untouched were those things that we managed to get tied down when we smelled the lavendar.

"The Searchers have already been through here?" the man asked suddenly.

"Yes," Dakota answered, "they just left about an hour ago." The man stopped in his tracks.

"This is excellent," he exclaimed, "finally we are catching them."

"What do you mean?" I asked. The man looked a me seriously, though he was smiling widely.

"You see," he explained, "my team and I have been tracking the Searchers and the Destruction for weeks. We never seem to be able to catch them, but now... Oh, the General will be please."

"What are you talking about?" I questioned. "The only people that would even think about trying to find the Destruction are..."

"The Akila." I gaped at the man. Dakota's mouth dropped. The man smiled.