Gremyne Sunsets

Zonder sat down next to his mothers bed and waited for her to finish her soup. He had tried spending as much time with her as he could, but he had to work for both of them to have a chance for survival. 
Zonder worked as a miner on the layers of ores on the surface of one of the mountains. The mountains were riddled with these layers on the surface so there was no need to go underground... yet. One day that might just happen. It was heavy work, but he still had fresh air to breath. Unlike his mother who had been working in a cleaning house with soap fumes and too much water in the air. Every day she had to go from blistering heat to the cold outside. Her lungs were ill according to the nurse that had examined her. Nothing they could do but let her rest and hope she would get better.
"You wanted to see me, mother?" Zonder asked.
"Yes. My son, I want to tell you something that has been a weight on my heart for years." Meegan said, followed by a loud and painful coughing that made both of them cringe. 
"You know I told you I didn't know where your father was? That's not true. I know where he lives and I can't say I was happy to constantly having to fear him."
Zonder didn't get much out. His mother had lied to him? She had never done that for as long as he could remember... not about anything this big. 
"Who?" he asked.
The question was twofold: Who was is father? but also Who had dared abandoning her, knowing she wouldn't be able to marry anyone else but the father of her child? Whoever had done it had cast her out of the community.
"I feared for our lives too much to tell you the truth, but you need to know who you are."
Zonder waited, painfully tense.
"Your father is Lord Dreen."
"Huh?" Zonder didn't get it.
Lord Dreen wasn't known for passion. He was icy, calculated and cruel with a love for money and nothing else. Zonders mother would never willingly have given herself to such a man. 
"That's all you need to know. I can't leave without you knowing your father."
"Don't say that!" Zonder said, "You aren't gone yet!"
"I will be soon. I can feel it."
Zonder stood up and ran out. He ran through the streets, barely noticing others. Finally, after about an hour of running he ended up where he had always ended up. Winny's Tavern. Inside the windows were too dirty to look through. Zonder wondered why Winny had stopped cleaning them. He still could remember times when he was smaller where he had been able to look through them.
"Hello Zonder!" Winny said and poured him a drink.
"Hi Winny."
"What's wrong?"
"My mother...."
"Is she still ill?" Zonder could hear the tall man was worried.
"Yeah, but it's not that... she told me something."
"Your father?"
Winny suddenly dragged Zonder from a chair into the back room. Back their he told Zonder to be quiet and grabbed paper and a pen. Everyone learned to write on Gremyne when they were children. It had to do with some treaty forged long ago.
Winny wrote: "It isn't safe to talk."
"You know who my father is?"
"Most of us do."
"And you didn't help my mother?"
"You have to understand... Your father isn't someone you knock over in a fistfight. They fear him."
"And you don't?" Zonder looked up from the paper, one eyebrow raised.
"Ok, I fear him too. That's why your mother never married."
"But it isn't allowed... the priests wouldn't let her."
"True, but she could live together with a man, with everyone knowing they were married. That's how it is done. But not with your father being who he is."
Zonder suddenly noticed Winny hadn't used the name of his father anywhere. Not because he didn't know who his father was, but because he did fear him. This was just a paper, they would burn it later on and no-one would ever read it again. And still Winny didn't dare use the name.
"I'm going." 
Zonder stood up and left the tavern. He walked outside the city to a small clearing in the forest where he liked to sit and think. Zonder placed himself on top of the fallen trunk of a big tree and started thinking.
The area around him was very beautiful, the trees were still green, though they would turn gold and red when the sun was setting. Zonder looked up at the sky and saw a hawk flying by. He put his hand above his eyes to follow the movements of the bird as far as he could.
"What are you going to do?" he asked himself.
Zonder was torn by emotions. First there was love for his mother. Then there was hatred for the man that had left her. Third there was the hatred he already bore for the lord of the province. There was contempt for the other men in the village, for the priests who did as they were told by the leaders in stead of the other way around. There was sadness for his own life and regret for the chances missed. He would have loved having a father. Any father. Just a person he could look up to.
In the hours that followed, as the day ended and the night began, Zonder made a deal with himself. He would kill Lord Dreen and immediately drown out at least a few of his emotions. Lord Dreen wouldn't need to be hated after he was dead, the people wouldn't fear him anymore so Zonder wouldn't feel contempt anymore. The sadness about being left fatherless would pass and he'd be free to start anew with his mother.
His mother... would she still be alive when he got back? Would she know what he was doing? No, she was too far of to know. But he couldn't leave her alone for the night. Zonder got up and returned home.

Continue to Part 3 of Zonder
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All images copyrighted to me except for the dividers. I got those from Dreslough.com