I had to put up with more Marilyn nonsense the following day, and the day after, but once the weekend finally rolled around, it was time for me to do whatever I wanted.

And what I wanted had nothing to do with what was going on in town.

I headed out of the house before daybreak, walking along until I reached the outskirts of town and then going another couple of miles before I ducked into a bush where I’d hidden my bicycle.  It was an old, rusty affair with one duct-taped pedal and a makeshift handle on one side, but it worked – for now at least – and helped me travel further into the foothills until I reached my destination.

As I got off the windy low mountain roads onto an unmarked path that was barely visible, the wind around me seemed to shiver slightly, whispering murmurs of something that felt deeply disturbing.  Had I been human – or even another supernatural – I’d probably have felt like it was best to avoid this part of the woods.  It felt like danger was lurking somewhere nearby, making the hairs on my arms stand up and every instinct in me was screaming to run away.

Or, rather, it would be, if I didn’t know why it felt like that.  And if I wasn’t the only person who could kind of feel the aura and then brush it off as easily as one brushes leaves from their coat.

I cycled to a bend in the road and then got off my bike, leaning it against a tree, and went the rest of the way on foot.  It was morning now, the sun shining brightly overhead, untouched by the “stay away” aura.

“Ah, Winter,” a tired, echoing voice reached my ears, but a bit of a smile was there.  “Has another week already passed?”

I stopped against the trees, tilting my head back to look at my mother.

My mother wasn’t a kapra like my dad, but unbeknownst to anyone in town, she hadn’t gone far when she’d decided to leave.  She’d stayed nearby, for my sake, so we could still see each other regularly.

“Hi, Mother.”  I reached up to stroke her scales gently.  “How are you today?”

“I feel thin,” she mused.  “Giant, but…thin.  I had hoped to see you become an adult, but I don’t think I have that much time left.  17 years of enjoyment with you cannot undo the weight of 3000 years.”

I took a step back so I could take a look at the massive dragon that was my mother.  She was large enough to be a mountain, really, which probably wasn’t a surprise due to her age.  She rarely moved much, though, using her magic to basically hide herself while she tried to last as long as possible for my sake.

I rested my forehead against her cheek, closing my eyes.  I hated the fact that my mother was dying.  She’d told me that she’d been surprised when she’d encountered Dad and felt a connection with him, because she hadn’t had that in the thousands of years she’d existed.  And then when I was born, she had new reason to live – but even this new reason couldn’t last forever.  Mother’s strength was fading and we both knew it wasn’t much longer.

“No tears,” Mother’s voice tried to be brisk, “we have no time for that now.  Come, tell me about your week.”

So I sat down and told her.  Not everything, of course.  I didn’t tell her that Dad and the rest of the family constantly lectured me about getting along with Marilyn.  She probably guessed, but I was always afraid that if she realized how little I enjoyed my life with my dad, she’d regret leaving me with him, and I didn’t want her to have regrets.  Not about that.  She’d had to leave me with him because she couldn’t last much longer and didn’t want to fight in the stupid war – which she’d have been forced to do if Dad or anyone else had learned what her species actually was.  She couldn’t raise me herself and it made the most sense for Dad to raise me, by the water and all that.  Just because the family was annoying didn’t mean it was a bad situation.  I had shelter and food and was treated like a member of the family – granted, a disobedient one – so it wasn’t all bad.  On the occasions when we did have good days at the house, I would tell Mother about those, but I tried to keep out the rest.

No regrets.  That was my goal with Mother.  I didn’t want to leave things with her unsaid, not the things that really mattered.  And I didn’t want to do or say something that I’d regret in later years, after she was gone.  Sure, a part of me regretted even now that I didn’t just camp up here in the woods with her, but I knew why that couldn’t work.  Besides, Mother wanted to see me grow up into a proper adult, not a wild child running around in the woods.  One more year, then she could see me graduate, and I was pretty sure that was what she wanted to see.

I didn’t know if that meant that was what she was holding on for.  If she was hanging on to life just so she could see that.  I hoped not, with all my heart, because I wanted her around for longer than that, but…if that was what she wanted…then I would make sure I got to that point.  I would do that for her.

I might be apathetic about many things in my life, but Mother wasn’t one of them.  Mother was the one person I would do absolutely anything for, even including Mark.

Mother huffed out a tired laugh at my description of the most recent Marilyn/Bill confrontation, her cold breath flowing over me.  “They sound like children playing at war.  I’ve seen real wars, ones that changed the course of history.  They are simply playing at the idea of being grand leaders, bringing their people to victory.”

I was sitting on the ground and now crossed my feet and leaned back on my hands.  “It might be a fake war, but it has real consequences.  A couple people die every year.  Kids are traumatized.  People can’t openly be friends with soulmates.”  Mother was the only one who knew about Mark and me.  Period.  “The town isn’t sustainable.  It’s not like so many people are dying that the population is decreasing, but between the deaths and increasing numbers of the younger generation leaving, the population is barely holding even and dropping some, I’m pretty sure.  I don’t think that would be a bad thing, to be honest.  Maybe they’d have to think about their policies and realize that this simply isn’t working and they need to rethink things.  I suspect that part of the reason Marilyn and Bill are so focused on this fight is that they want to raise kapra or hydra spirit, respectively – trying to get people more invested in this fight, especially the younger generation.  Thing is, they’re not doing what we actually need.  We need change.  But all they offer is just more of the same.”

Mother sighed deeply.  “This feud has been going for generations.  It is not an easy thing to recognize the need for change or come up with a way to do it.  And these people, well…they have the weight of all those generations on their shoulders.  Even if they recognize that it is futile, they may not feel that they can admit it, given that weight.”

“So?”  I knew I sounded a little sour and a little moody, but my times with Mother were the only times I could truly let myself feel anything.  “First, I don’t think they see the problem with the war, but second, what’s the point?  So what if generations of kapras and hydras have been at war?  So what if hundreds of generations had been at war?  What is the point of the war?  What are they gaining here?  Nothing.  The answer is nothing.  There’s no point.  It’s all just – nothing.  It’s all for nothing.”

Mother surveyed me, her crystal blue eyes blinking slowly in the sunlight.  “The war had seemed to be a backdrop in your life before, but it is getting to you more now,” she observed.

“Before, it was,” I agreed.  “Then I found out I was soulmates with Mark, but we can never let anyone know or we might be killed, or at least run out of town.  And then Marilyn decided to pick me to be one of her people, for reasons I can’t fathom since I never use my magic against people and she knows that.  Every day I get to see this stupid war up close and personal and every day I get to feel the effects as I’m not allowed to hang out with my best friend publically or even dare look at him, most of the time.”

Mother moved her head a bit to rest it close to me, and I took the suggestion to lean against her massive leg, resting my face against her cool scales.

“To grow up with your father and with the other kapras is the best thing for you,” Mother said slowly, a rumbling and comforting purr softly coming from her chest, “despite the war.  I know it is frustrating, and I felt that too, when I was there.  Had your father known what I was, he would have made me kill all the hydras.  Or tried, at least.  And I would have refused, because I am no murderer, but he would have withheld the one thing left to me – you.  Leaving was the best way I could give you the life you needed and not make the situation worse.  But there are times I wish things could be different.”

“I know.”  I laid my hand on her leg, slowly tracing the patterns in her scales.  “I do, too.  And I know it’s necessary.  It just sucks that the town is blind and stupid and the only people who seem to be able to see that are those too young and voiceless to do anything, so their only option is to survive until they can flee, then run and never look back.  The town ends up being left with a bunch of people who are even more dedicated to the fight and no one who’s able and willing to say anything.”

Mother’s wing ever-so-gracefully moved to form a slight dome above me, letting the sunrays filter through her blue scales and casting blue light all around me.  It almost looked magical, seeing the forest around me in blue sunlight.

“Do you want to be the one to stay and say something?”  Mother asked.  “Do you wish for that strength?”

I considered that.  “I don’t feel deeply motivated to save the town,” I stated slowly.  “I don’t feel deeply about much of anything.”  It was intentional, that.  I tried not to care, tried not to let myself get involved.  It was hard to ignore this one topic, though, between the way it seeped into every aspect of town life, Marilyn’s decision to drag me into her fights, and Mark’s midnight rants to me.

“I hate the war.  I hate the futility of it all.  But…I don’t know that I want it to be me.”  I was seventeen, almost eighteen.  Was I supposed to change an entire town on my own?  Especially one I didn’t even like?  “I don’t care much for most of the town,” I admitted out loud.  “Even the family, they…they would be fine, in another context, I suppose.  But apart from Mark, I have no real friends.  Everyone in town is either scared, hates the other side, or is full of hypocrisy.  There’s a part of me that wouldn’t care if the town ran itself into the ground.  Honestly, it kind of deserves it.  They’ve let people die for generations over this dumb war and they have no one to blame but themselves.”

I sighed a bit.  “But Mark said it would take something like a mediator – but someone stronger than either kapras or hydras – to force everyone to make peace, and I think he’s right.  They won’t stop, and I don’t know that it’s fair to the younger generation that has no choice in the matter.  Kids, younger ones than me, who get terrified about going to school because they might be bullied and be afraid for their lives.  Students who barely get to learn anything their entire school career because the school system is so ridiculous.  Adults – they can pick for themselves whether to stay or go.  Most of them, anyway.  But the kids, they’re trapped.  They’re the ones I feel bad for.  But as far as whether I want to be the one to fix it?”

I had to pause to think about that some more.  “I don’t know,” I finally answered.  “I mean, I don’t care about the town enough to fight for it.  I just wish the stupid war would end.  I wish kids would have a chance to just be kids.  I wish we could get to learn more at school and have it matter.”

We were both quiet for a bit, thinking over my words and the whole situation.

“It’s not fair that children have to consider these things,” Mother’s tired voice broke the silence at last.  “You are still a child, to my eyes and years, and that the children your age have to be the ones to think about standing up and changing things…that is to the shame of all the adults in the town.  They should be the ones to protect their young.  The young shouldn’t have to protect themselves.”

At the end of the day, when I reluctantly had to bid goodbye to my mother and begin my ride back to town, I had no answers about what to do or what I even wanted to do.  Did I want to stand up to Marilyn, really stand up to her and try to force the town to change?  Not really.  It wasn’t even about the risk of danger to myself, though of course that was there, but it was about the rest of it.  I didn’t think it was worth it, in a way.  I didn’t think the town was worth it.  The only people really worth saving were those trapped there with no way of escape.

And even if I wanted to stand up to help those people, so what?  I was one person.  Even with Mark helping me, I had no chance to really do anything.  I knew that.  We could try together, but we’d be silenced, possibly even killed for “treason” by the current leaders, or badly injured by Marilyn and Bill if nothing else.  Actually, no, Marilyn would probably want to kill Mark to make an example of him and Bill would want to do the same to me.

I sighed as I reached my bike’s hiding place and resumed the rest of the trip on foot.

So, at the end of the day, it didn’t matter.  Even if I wanted to say something, I couldn’t.  It’d just result in my death, and probably Mark’s as well.  I couldn’t risk that.

As the house came into view, I felt the weight of apathy settle back over me.  Right.  Nothing I did mattered.  Nothing ever changed.

It was pointless to think otherwise.