(I guess I'll just get this part)
Orion opened the folders cautiously. A small, black box lay on the next page. His face fell. "It's blank--" He began, but the next second the box began to light up and grow colorful until it morphed into a small movie screen on the paper. Orion, full of wonderment, reached out to poke it. The second he did, he was whisked away
into the scene, and suddenly he stood in his first home: amid a field of sugarcane on a Louisianna plantation.
"Guys?" He shouted, but no one answered. He shifted a few canes of sugar, his hands familiar with the rough texture and sticky-sweet smell. He could remember his childhood, harvesting sugarcane and melons on their farm, laughing as a younger Zen made a floppy leaf into a hat for three-year-old Ori.
Coming up the lane was his mother. Beautiful, dark skin, curly cinnamon hair, flashing dark eyes. Short, but confident. "Mom..." He whispered. She was striding hurriedly, pulling a younger Orion and Zen along behind her. He shut his eyes. He remembered this. He could hear what she said in his mind:
"Come on, children, we have to go. I'm sorry, Zen, I can't tell you why. Yes, of course, I'll see you again, Ori! Please, don't ask questions. It's for your own good." The figure on the road suddenly stopped and knelt, sucking the children into a tight embrace. "Remember that I love you. I love you so..." Orion winced as get recalled how her warm tears had slid down his neck. "...So much."
Suddenly he was transported to a different place-- a dark place. A stinking place. His senses automatically recoiled, and Orion gasped. Why was he here?
It was a basement with a basket of dirty laundry in one corner. Little Ori was being cuddled by a worried-looking Zen, who seemed to be around ten or eleven. Suddenly, there was pounding on the stairs. Instinctively Orion buried his head in his hands, blocking out the shouts and punches of the Bald Man as he came into the room.
Do it!
No, I won't! You can't!
It was Zen.
You know the consequences.
NO!
Orion gasped as he heard a sharp slap. "Please, get me out of here... please!"
The scene changed again. Zen and Ori, looking to be about a year older, were running with Peya at their side, the baying of boarhounds close behind them. Cursing, Zen scooped up her brother to increase their speed and didn't glance back when their pursuer shouted at them. "You'll pay for this! I'll find you! You'll pay!"
Scene after scene. Playing back Orion and Zephyr's entire time on the run. Their mom, hiding them from Bald Man. Bald Man's basement. Zen as a skeleton, pushing Ori into an alley even as a crowd with torches threw stones at her, slurring her as a witch. Bounty hunting with Peya. The encounter with The Traveler. Scene after scene after scene.
And then he was back in the echoey place. Through one eye he could see the real Zen crying next to his ghostly form, and through the other Hallow and Eve looking at him expectantly. He realized he was weeping. "I see," he said in a shaking voice, very quietly. "Can you take me back?" Orion gripped his arm with one hand. How could he ever have forgotten?
Zen sacrificed everything for him. Everything. She loved him, protected him, respected him. And he had run from her, every time.
He was so stupid.
@
Noface @
Ikoria the Wolf Pup (Sorry if it's not edited very well meh I'm lazy
)