When Kuba first arrived, it felt to the king like he was seeing light for the first time. She had somehow climbed the tower's edge barehanded, and she had watched over the battlefield below. People screamed and hit and argued together, but she had been calm. To those of them who had been lucky enough to see her that day, it was like an angel from above was looking down at their actions. Even without seeing her, the Wolf King had felt shame at the events that had driven his people to battle today. The food was unevenly distributed, or the tasks he gave them were too hard: something like that, something minor that had driven his clan to split in half. The Yellow Eyes, as they called themselves, fought those who were still loyal to him, and their honey-colored uniforms were a last-minute craft they had put together to know who was with who in the battle. Everyone looked the same otherwise. Everyone had shabby hair and weary arms, and their faces were grimacing the same way.
But then Kuba had arrived, and she had raised her arms as though she wanted to split the crowd; and it had split right in half. Everyone's heads had turned to her, and she seemed rather proud and happy with herself. The King was in stuck in an argument with someone who complained about the bad taste of the everyday soup, but even if he wasn't in the courtyard-turned-battlefield, but in one of those stony corridors his forefathers had lived in before him, he had felt himself be dragged away from his opponent. He had exchanged a look with his friend, who was still next to him, then at the man with the spoon, but they hadn't gotten to see what was happening. They couldn't see the tower from there, since it was higher up. It was a shame, he would later tell himself: a shame that he hadn't been the first to see her.
She had beckoned the fighters over like a mother dog with her pups, and sure enough, everyone had started to climb the ladders to see her, confused but hypnotised. Some Yellow Eyes even opened their arms, and she smiled at them, and hugged them back. Everyone was crowding around her, and she was trying to pet or hug everyone all at once. She had been trying to stop the battle, because it was quite rude, after all, and sure enough, the battle stopped. There was something in her that caught the eye. The Wolf King wasn't as immune to it as he looked, but then again, he always looked serious, while she was always smiling and opening her arms to people.
The King, sadly enough, didn't meet her as she was being like a queen bee surrounded by her workers. He told himself that since the battle was over, he had no business being in the corridor anymore, and went back to his quarters with his advisor and friend, Golden Wolf. It was a rather unpreoccupied response to a revolt, of course, which tells you most of what you need to know about the Wolf King. Before entering his quarters, he turned to Golden Wolf, who knew that he was being dismissed. Since he had no idea why he had even followed in the first place, he nodded and went on his way.
Golden Wolf would see Kuba before him. Most of the Wolf King's knowledge of what happened that day came from him. The King himself needed to finish his paperwork. He had been trying to figure out how much money they had spent that month, but a commotion outside his door had made him stand up from his great chair.
The window from his office gave on the cafeteria. It wasn't a window as much as it was a glass wall, but today, the cafeteria was empty. Everyone had rushed outside to fight, so he had opened his door, and bumped into Golden Wolf fighting a Yellow Eyes with a wooden spoon in his hand. This whole battle was basically an overdramatic food fight, which was rather ridiculous. The king had considered going back inside his office and letting them do their silly things without him.
And after however long it had taken Kuba to arrive, the battle had stopped. A few days, perhaps, or a year. Maybe only an hour. The King hadn't kept a tab.
After the battle was over, Kuba had stood there with her great beech staff and her sweet eyes looking over everyone curiously. One of the younglings had taken it upon himself to give her a tour, and show her to her quarters. That youngling was Beeno. Beeno was an aspiring pilot, like his father had been, before he had retired and become a teacher. They looked very similar: they both had square faces, and golden skin, with Beeno's crêped black hair promising to turn white like his father's.
"Of course!" Kuba said, and she took Beeno's arm lightly to follow him down the stairs.
When she saw the glass walls that separated the cafeteria areas from each other, and the messed-up tables where a great array of gunk had been splattered, she frowned, and turned back to Beeno.
"Please, you must let me help you clean this up. This is no place for you to live."
"Well, it's not my job," Beeno answered, scratching his neck. "I have to join my father for the exams."
Kuba nodded.
"I don't mind cleaning alone," she agreed, and so he left, and climbed the other flight of stairs that laid close to the king's window.
Of course, school was still in session. Beeno's father called it a formative experience. If they could focus on their work despite the cacophony, they could do anything. Ironically, his father himself had been throwing rubber balls at everyone as he said it. When Beeno came back, he had absolutely no clue what the exam was even about, because he had missed the whole thing. He had excused himself to go get a snack, and as he went to get it, he had noticed that every adult he knew, including his father, was hitting something with anything wooden they could find. He didn't care for school at all, so he had walked around, and gotten in trouble, but now, it was time to come back, so here he was.
He couldn't read very well, so he mostly guessed what the assignment was. He had to separate the different syllables from a series of words. The assignment was gigantic. He struggled over it, and beat himself up in his head. He wasn't sure if he ended up zoning out most of the class, but since he had missed a good chunk of it in the first place, he could only finish a few words of the first page -- and to give you a sense, the words were written in very little letters.
Poor Beeno desperately tried to hide his unfinished paper from the teacher's eyes as he walked through the class and announced the end of the exam. It was time to correct the papers, apparently, and Beeno was crying frightened, nervous tears as his father's replacement opened the projector screen to begin the correction process. When the red marker showed on the grimy white screen, Beeno looked away from it and tried to be subtle as he scrambled to finish his exam, but the teacher caught him and shook her head at him. Beeno shrunk down in his chair. He always failed those things.
It's not that Beeno was bad at school, which he was. We'll say then that it wasn't his only impediment. The biggest problem was that he became so nervous during exams that he either found excuses to leave, or forgot everything and panicked about that, too. It was a hard life for him. He was twenty-one, and still in school. Everyone else was sixteen or seventeen and seemingly had no problems at all with anything they were told to do, which was why Beeno would have gladly joined the Yellow Eyes if he could. Sadly, all the younglings had stayed in school during the battle. Except Beeno, of course, who had thrown fruits at everyone's feet for a while.
And so Beeno was stuck reviewing the answers for a five-pages test he hadn't even completed. Everywhere else, though, people were trying to figure out what in the blue blazes had just happened. Some of the most clear-headed people went downstairs to the cafeteria to clean it up, and once Kuba realised that they had it all under control, she left.
She walked back up the stairs that led to the tower. It was raining now. The whole region was beautiful, she told herself as she approached the stone railing to see better. The tower was made of great dark bricks, with places for archers to shoot and guards to walk. The stairs had been made of the same rustic material, much like all of the exterior walls, and most of the inside walls, too, except the new ones. The Wolf King had decided to make some of them glassy so he could see what was going on more easily from his quarters. On Kuba's left, there was a great row of trees -- small emerald ones that she didn't know the name of, but looked like tiny pyramids, and little brownish bushes that were like round babies. Before her was a great plain. Perhaps there had been strawberry bushes here before, or playgrounds, but right now, there was only yellowed grass and the occasional wildflower. She loved wildflowers, and even considered calling herself that if the occasion ever arose. On her right was the other side of the tower. She patted it, because it seemed to her like the belly of a great black dragon that could purr if she did that.
There were people on the battlefield again, but they weren't arguing. They seemed rather sad to her.
"Where's Ice Golem?" Golden Wolf asked. "I thought he was with you."
"No, he was with you. I saw him by the cafeteria. He wore no uniform," answered one of the Yellow Eyes. "I suppose we shouldn't call ourselves Yellow Eyes anymore. Listen, I'm sorry, but the school is way too harsh -- the younglings keep talking about it. And you lot that Wolf King likes more get a lot more food than we do. It's unfair."
Golden Wolf would have argued that the second part was absolutely false if he had the energy to. Instead, he shrugged.
"Maybe I can ask him to figure something out," he answered sadly. "Let's just go back inside and clean this mess up. The kids don't need to see this."
"I suppose that's fair," the Yellow Eyes nodded, and he added internally that this was probably the first fair thing he had heard Golden Wolf say all day.
Everyone headed back with heavy legs, and heavier hearts.
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