Gnarl Solo - The Truth we Left BehindThis story follows the events of "The Gnarled Roots of Osiris" But! Can be read as its own story.
Gnarl stared at his own reflection; his eye’s filled with a rage that he hadn’t felt since he arrived here. Where were all these feelings coming from again? Had they been there all the time? Or were they resurfacing after a long absence of nothing but peace; a false relaxed persona that was nothing more than an emotionless abyss. An Abyss of lies and redirection to avoid the truth, a truth that told him he was hiding from who he really was.
He liked it here, he liked the Fenrith family. They had taken him in when he needed it most, they had sheltered and fed him in exchange for a helping hand and a friendly face. They were like a new family to him, one that would never replace his past, but one that he had hoped could shape his future. This future could no longer happen, and he couldn't walk away and let the Fenriths suffer, he had experienced this scenario in the past and it would not let it be their present.
His reflection blurred as a few watery shimmers waved to the shoreline. The Bradbury Lake was so beautifully clean and fresh, but as the clear evening sky dimmed for night to fall in, it allowed for a vivid reflection as he knelt beside the water's edge. His blue eyes looked both angry and sad at the same time, the expression of an emotionally torn man. Then familiar memories flooded his mind as he finished painting his face, carefully avoiding his freshly trimmed beard as he ran his two fingers smoothly along his cheeks and eyes with the black mud liquid.
He rubbed his fingers in the wet of the lake and watched as the muddy paint washed off. The black circling his eyes was full of memories, and the dark falling lines of his war paint was something he had not seen on himself in some time. In this moment, he had the chance to change his mind, he had the opportunity to wash his face and return to normality; but he wouldn't.
Letti arrived hastily, scrambling up the small grassy slope in an attempt to find Gnarl as he prepared to go to war. He was beginning to sit up, staring across the lake's surface with the orange glow of the setting sun drifted off behind the dull grey of the distant mountains edge. This pronounced Gnarl's black silhouette against the suns fiery light as a prominent feature to which Letti could not miss.
She adjusted her torn dress, no longer the clean white it used to be, dragging and holding the ripped strap up and over her shoulder. She stroked her long brown hair back over her head, leaving a small drape to cover her left eye; the bruised cheek bone and black eye a reminder to why he was about to go. She knew exactly what he was planning, but he was about to do it for them and she knew that to, she accepted it.
Fighting was something her family couldn't do, they dare not even think it. For it was scary, filling her with indecision and uncertainty, but even then, there was something beautiful about it. Something only this man, Gnarl, could do.
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