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Milo

"Thanks for going to the gym with me, Akesa." Working out with my feline companion takes away most of the stress Dian's visit gave me last night. I don't necessarily like working out, but it definitely raises Akesa's mood. To see the lynx's smile -- his real smile, not the fake one he puts on for lost civilians asking for directions -- is worth all the sweating and aching. God knows how long since he was genuinely happy.

"Yeah, no problem," he responds, shrugging his shoulders and hiding his fatigue behind a toothy smile. He likes to pretend that our work-out sessions are his way of bonding with me again, but we both know I'm doing it for him. It's easier for him to pretend like that.

I find comfort in our familiar silence as we stroll to the cafeteria. After we are given our lunch rations we sit down and converse a little about what happened to each other while I was off at war. He seems to ease up a bit, but I can tell by the flick of his ears and his wandering eyes that there's something else on his mind.

"So, how's your job as a border guard?" I ask, trying to pinpoint whatever it is that's making him anxious.

"Mm, fine." He says, taking a large bite of rice. I wait for him to finish chewing, expecting him to continue, but he doesn't.

"Has anything exciting happened?"

"No, not really," he says without looking at me.

"Alright, talk," I say, dropping my fork and giving him The Look. "What's going on with you?"

Akesa pauses, his tongue millimeters away from his next bite. "Nothing. I'm fine." His long whiskers join his ears in their spastic jittering.

"Akesa," I sigh, "You know I can tell when you're lying."

It looks like he's about to say something, but he stops and stares at his food, one of his ears turning back. I take a quick look around the cafeteria to estimate how many people there are. Twenty-seven perhaps. "Are there too many people here? Is it like that time -- "

"Oh, please don't bring that up," he says, chuckling a bit. At least he can laugh about it now. When we were in school Akesa developed some pretty bad anxiety. I started noticing how he looked around the room -- whether it was a small classroom or this huge cafeteria -- and silently counted the number of people in it. I still don't know where his anxiety came from, and any chance I had of talking with him about it was thrown out the window when I got drafted. I've never been around him long enough to be able to tell whether it went away or not, but his laughing tells me he grew out of it, at least a little.

"So," I lean into the table towards him, pushing my food tray to the side, "is it a good thing?"

"Not....really?" he tilts his head side to side. "I'm not sure."

I nod, "You know you can tell me anything. I want to be here for you."

"I know, I know," he drops his head into his paws and sighs, "Everything's....just been happening so fast." He looks at himself weirdly, like he's trying to catch some invisible bug that's jumping around on his chest. His fingers tap his forehead. "It's just been hard for me to adjust."

"Yeah," I sulk a little, too. "Feels like I was fighting in the war a few days ago. I didn't even get a chance to go home after they released me, not that I wanted to." I take a bite of my peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The cheap, dry bread reminds me of the sandwiches they served us in school. "Now I'm here, hoping to God that there's a better life waiting for me on this new planet none of us know anything about."

"There's more to it than that." Akesa mumbles as he folds his arms, "At least for me."

I pause, searching his eyes for what's really bothering him. "This is about me leaving, isn't it?" I say, hiding the guilt I feel in another bite of my sandwich.

He tries to stay still, not wanting me to see that he's upset, but the unconscious twitch of his tail against my leg under the table betrays him.

"Akesa," I say gently, "you know I didn't have a choice. I didn't want to fight. I didn't want to hurt anyone."

His head snaps forward to look me dead in the eyes. "Stop telling me what I know! I know that you left me alone in Snowden. I know that you said you would write to me. I know that you're just trying to make up for all the time that you weren't here." His muzzle is all scrunched up, his eyebrows are raised, and his grey eyes revert to the same sad ones I remember from our childhood.

I'm smart enough to know that he's mad at the fact that I left and not actually at me. And I think he realizes this too, but he has a lot of steam to burn off. "It's a damn war," I say. "I was drafted. I can't just 'up and leave' whenever I want."

"We could have ran away."

"That would have been suicide."

"At least we would have each other!" His voice cracks. My ears tilt back. This isn't the first time we've had this conversation, but it's been years since it was first addressed. He was the first person I told about the letter. That whole day was grim because no one actually thought they would be drafted. I overheard the other teenagers talk about the odds of being picked, how it was obvious that children of war veterans were going to be drafted, and how other teenagers' parents were able to buy their way out. Some even ran away. Akesa and I had a plan at one point to run away to the north. No one would catch us, we thought, in the thick forest that grew below the cliffs that loomed over Snowden. But I turned tail, afraid of running from what I thought was my inevitable fate, and afraid that the blizzard that sprung up on the day we were supposed to escape would kill us faster than the war would.

My old friend relaxes a bit, like I knew he would. His ears look droopy now. We both go back to eating.

"Did you kill anyone?"

I almost spit out my food. "Akesa!" I scold him.

And then everything turned loud and dark.

A blaring siren brings me back to consciousness. When I'm finally able to focus, I can see red lights flashing through the dust-filled air of the cafeteria. I am sprawled out on the floor, inches away from a table that must have broken when it toppled over. The east side of the cafeteria is engulfed in flames. The huge window that makes up the south side is perfectly fine, save for a few minor scratches. I try to stand up, but pain shoots through my right leg like a bullet through a gun. I graze over it with my paws, feeling a multitude of cuts scattered across it, but the pain is coming from inside. Miraculously, it isn't fractured or broken, just badly bruised. I quickly look around for something to try to stabilize it, or at least stop the bleeding. That's when I see Akesa about ten feet behind me unconscious, lying on his stomach. The tip of his tail twitches wildly, reassuring me that he's alive. Before I do anything else, I scan the room, estimating how much danger we're in. The fire doesn't look like it's spreading, thanks to the ceiling sprinklers. A lot of people are running around; most of them, away from the cafeteria. We aren't too bad, though I'm sure Akesa would disagree.

I limp over to my friend lying there like a child's lost, forgotten doll. I can see a huge gash across his back through a matching cut down his gym shirt. I gently turn him over, making sure his sensitive back doesn't touch the floor, and shake him awake. He coughs brutally as he regains consciousness. Not a good sign, probably a broken rib or two. His dusty grey eyes have a hard time focusing on me. I give him a couple snaps in each ear to help him out of his dizziness.

"Where.... What...?" he squeezes my paw, looking around frantically. I can see the pain flooding his mind as he groans and digs his claws into my arm.

"Akesa, listen -- "

"Ahhh!" He cuts me off with a yell after he tries to sit up.

"Akesa, stop! You're hurt!" That gets the message across. He looks toward the ceiling and closes his eyes as he tears up, clenching his jaw shut and trying to stay still. "It's your back. Bear with me alright?"

He does his best at taking some deep breaths, then opens his eyes and nods at me. I lean him on my lap and take off my shirt. He groans as I press it against his back. Gotta stop the bleeding.

"I....I suppose this is normal for you," he winces. God, it's hard for me to see him like this.

"It wasn't uncommon," I say, feeling over his chest for any other injuries. "But I never once thought of it as 'normal.'"

He tilts his head up to watch me. If something like this happened during the war, we'd have to urge our fellow soldier to fight through the pain. But Akesa is no soldier; he's fragile and innocent. "Am I gonna be okay?"

He's the last person I would want to hear that question from. I smile and nod, which seems to be enough for him. But now I'm scared because even if the medics on board patch him up, I'm not sure he will be okay emotionally. Akesa was never the type of person to show his real emotions; he had a knack for putting on a mask. These next few days -- maybe weeks -- are going to be tough on us.

I hear loud, rapid padding coming from the main hallway. Finally, the medics and security arrive. I wave a few people down. A deer and a pine marten tend to Akesa, pulling bandages out of their medical bags and checking his pulse and doing whatever else medics do. Meanwhile, an otter kneels beside me and asks me what happened as he bandages my leg.

"I'm not sure exactly," I say, keeping watch on Akesa. "I remember hearing a loud boom, and a wave of heat coming from that direction." I turn my head toward the east side, where civilian workers are usually handing out food. As I watch the limp figures covered in white sheets float down the hallway like ghosts, I find myself being haunted by my past. The war suddenly doesn't seem as far away as I had hoped.