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Tasva

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The worst day of my life was undoubtedly when I was fourteen years old. Prior to that day, and the few preceding it, my life could not have been better. My father and mother were loving, caring people, and home was a place I wanted to be. I couldn't have asked for a better family or friends. Of course, this was all destined to change. When the plague hit our small town, everyone that got it was doomed. First was Talon, one of my best friends, a man I'd known my entire life. Then it was Greta, the elderly widow down the street, then Halyc, the daughter of our only doctor, then Cill, the young boy that lived next door to us. And then… then it was my mother. She had the swiftest death, at least, three hours after her first cough. But her lessened suffering didn't do much to lessen our suffering.

My father was never the same after she died. He barely looked at me, and when he did… there was a bonechilling pain in his eyes. The similarity to her that I had, something that he had always loved, was now too much for him to handle. I had nowhere to go, nowhere to escape from the pain of loss. My friends, after all, were just as affected, having Talon torn away from us. Two years passed in this manner, unspoken agony in every day we lived. Until finally… Fareus snapped.

"Pirates?"

"That's what I just said, Tas."

"Pirates."

"Yes, Tas. Pirates.

"…Really, Fareus? Really?"

"Yes."

"Aren't you a little young for your mid-life crisis?"

Fareus sighed, cradling his head in his hands, "I have to get out of here. I can't stay in Itanor, not like this. Raden and Erius have already agreed to join me, and I will go with or without you."

Fareus had taken Talon's death the hardest, for obvious reasons. They'd been together for two years prior to the plague, best friends for essentially their entire lives, and Fareus, having no real family of his own, considered us to be so. To lose his lover, thereby losing part of his family at the same time, was a heavy blow for him. But even that couldn't explain this. Fareus wanted to start a pirate crew. With the four of us, aging from sixteen, seventeen to eighteen years old.

"Honestly I don't understand you half the time…" I mumbled under my breath, "Pirates. Fareus, pirates ki-"

"Yes, yes, pirates kill people. So everyone's told me." Fareus muttered, a familiar sarcastic tone underlying his voice, "So do you want to join us or not?"

"You'd get lost in one day without me." I answered, not needing to give him any more of a response than that, "I'll have to ask my father, but he'll likely leap at the opportunity."

He beamed at me, the typical Fareus grin that had all but died alongside Talon. "I knew I could count of you, Tas."

"Yeah, yeah. And how do you propose we get a ship? I might not know exactly how much one costs, but I doubt the four of us have anything close to the price." Having known Fareus for as long as I have - that is, my entire life - I know quite well that once he latched onto an idea, he stuck to it. I also knew that he generally never thought said ideas through.

"I still have most of the money I inherited from my parents." He answered, the tiniest hint of a sad smile on his face, "It probably won't be enough, but I figure it'll last us until we can find jobs."

"I gotta admit I'm pleasantly surprised." I replied with a smile of my own, "Normally you wouldn't have thought that far."

And just like that our lives were, once again, completely overturned. As I had thought, my father had no objections to my departure, and as soon as we could, Fareus had us out of Itanor, gone from everything we'd known in favor of a mysterious future.

The worst day of my life was the day my mother died. The best day had yet to come.

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Four chapters in one go, but now I have to write all of Vanya's. YAY. Thanks for putting up with me.