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Sleep barely came, and when it did, something crept at the corners of his mind. Sometimes it was his brothers, sometimes it was his child, but he always managed to ignore it, managed to push the orange haze out of his eyes and return to his misery.
But now… now his misery might be able to come to an end, for he had a new pupil, a new child who would come and visit. They did not bring gifts, they did not stay for long, they were merely an echo of what his child was. It made him mad when he told them to leave and they did. It made him mad when he told them to take their junk and leave and they followed his orders. He didn’t want someone who followed orders, he wanted his child back.
Tonight, he slept, and with sleep came a dream, one rotten and orange. He was someone unfamiliar, somewhere he had never seen before. Orbs of infection grew on the wall, grew on the ceiling, skittered across the floor. In the center of the room stood his child, his first student, his only student. It felt like someone else was in his head, pressure on his brain, and his thoughts not his own. He had two students, the child in front of him was only one of them. Yet something clawed at his mind, tried to steal away the thoughts he knew were his.
Near silent footfalls approached, the kind that could not be mistaken for any other bug. They belonged to his second student, their nail drawn and ready to fight. Oro felt a knot in his stomach tighten. His student, his child, looked so weak. They barely held onto their nail, their fingers wrapped in a death grip around the hilt. Their cloak was torn and darkened with the black fluid that once leaked from the crack in their skull. His new pupil, the little one, dashed forward, slicing at his child. They tried to jump back but they weren’t fast enough. Their swings were sloppy like they had never used a blade before, and yet still they tried to use the Nailart he had taught them. It physically hurt his heart to see them dash with their blade, only to miss their attacker and crash into the opposite wall.
Their attacker? Was this truly what the little one was? A brutish bug hellbent on murdering any innocent bug they came across? He tried to move but his feet were locked in place, his arms trapped at his side. His new student dealt the killing blow, using his brother Sheo’s Nailart to cleave them nearly in two. His child collapsed to the ground, and with the last of their strength, they reached out to him, their small, skinny fingers grasping at him. He reached out to grab their hand, to pull them into an embrace, to tell them it would be okay, but his child’s hand simply fell through his.
He awoke with tears on his face. The sorrow he had from his dream was quickly replaced by a blinding rage. His own student had murdered his child when they could barely lift their nail. So lost in his fury, he didn’t even notice the orange globs that ran down his face. He grabbed a vase and threw it, he crashed into his shelves, destroying anything and everything he could see. Shards of wood stabbed into his thick shell but he ignored them. He grabbed his nail and slashed a hole in his wall. The trinkets his child had given him were lost in the wreckage of his anger.
Suddenly, he felt a stab in his gut. He doubled over in pain, choking on whatever had filled his throat. He slammed his fist against his chest in hopes of saving himself from a pathetic death, eventually dislodging the chunk of orange, rotten flesh. He felt sick to his stomach, not just because of the piece of him that he had just coughed up, but also at the realization that he was likely to blame for the death of his child. Not only had he given a child murderer the skill to murder his child, but maybe, if he had only taught them better, kept them in his hut a bit longer, if he had killed his second student when he had the chance. Now he didn’t have a chance, now he had nothing. He dug through the rubble of his belongings while digging through his mind. Where was his child in his dream? The surrounding cavern was not dissimilar to that of the Ancient Basin.
At last, he found it. The small cloak he had made and the bright crystal. He was going to find his child, and if he saw his second student, he would strike them down. Either that or they would kill him too, cut him down as they had done to his child. He could barely see anything anymore through the orange fog in his eyes. Where was the Ancient Basin? Where was he? With his nail in one hand and the cloak and crystal in the other, he started walking. He would find his child, even if it killed him.
Ghost approached Oro’s hut as silently as they always did, the petals of a delicate flower barely peeking out of their cloak. They stopped at the door, looking inwards at the destruction before them. Everything was destroyed, splatters of orange blood and guts scattered around the room. Had something broken in? They investigated, looking beneath the boards and rocks and pieces of clay and metal that lay all through Oro’s home. No corpse, no flesh, nor any hemolymph. An aspid or a hopper must have gotten inside and Oro had left to go clean up after the fight. Carefully, Ghost sifted through the rubble until they found a mostly intact vase. They gently put the flower inside it and cleared the center of the room. There they put the vase. They sat down next to it as they would at Mato’s home, staring forward where one of their teachers should have been. Slowly they drifted to sleep. Oro would wake them when he got home. Oro would surely appreciate their gift when he returned.
He did not return.