literature

Seeing All Sides

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The Blizzard Peaks.

Whoever decided to call this area by that name was not fooling around. This mountain range sees more snowfall than anywhere else on the continent. It also has the lowest average temperatures for this part of the year. For me, it was perfect; a paradise.

I have made this place my home for years, and thus far it has proven to be my impenetrable fortress. While it may not look like much, I am one who does not need much in order to survive. No ordinary soul could survive in this harsh environment. The only reason a person would ever come here would be to use the Jagged Pass. It is a roundabout route, but it is, by far, the safest walking route connecting the two neighboring towns of the area. Those who dare who choose to make their way to the summit, or simply choose the alternate route, are risking their very lives.

Thus was what I first thought when I happened across this man. He was dressed for a day's worth of travel, a period impossible when traveling through the Jagged Pass. My only assumption was that he had chosen to take the alternate route, the highest point reaching halfway up the mountain. It was faster, but far more perilous.

On top of that, I doubt he had expected the biggest blizzard of the year to occur on this day.

He was well away from the path, hopelessly lost. I could not imagine how difficult it was for him to see, let alone keep warm. He had his arms wrapped around his body as he desperately struggled through snow drifts that reached halfway up his legs. He was crying out, perhaps calling for help or praying to whatever god he believed in to spare his life. He must have thought these cries would fall on deaf ears.

But I could hear them loud and clear.

This man could not see me - then again, I doubt he could have seen anything in this weather – but I could most certainly see him from my hiding place. My first impulse was he had heard the rumors of my taking refuge here, and he was the first to actually come after me. Impulse would have told me to either scare him away or attack him outright, but after closer examination, I could see this was not necessary. He had a bag of supplies and what appeared to be a box of some kind of product, but nothing that would indicate that capturing me was the reason he was here.

Wanting to know more, I called upon my abilities. He did not know what was happening, as he fell to his knees while holding his head, crying out in pain. He soon dropped his hands, his head tilting unconsciously as he succumbed to my powers, and I could see his mind clearly. The first thing that struck me was how this man was a failure in almost every sense of the word. He could not hold an ordinary job if his life depended on it, and eventually his poor reputation followed him everywhere he went to try and apply. Soon, no one even wanted to see an application from him. It was kind of pathetic when I thought about it. I could tell he needed money desperately, but not for what.

I decided to dig deeper, and soon found that this man was not as innocent as he appeared. He was a con man, someone who believed that the fastest way to make a quick buck was to rob people monetarily without them ever suspecting. He marketed products that, according to his advertising, were just as good, if not better, than the name brands. He made sure to include a 'no returns clause' in the fine-print, because after a while his products would fail to deliver. To avoid the angry mobs, he made his business a traveling one. He rarely spent more than a week in one given area, and if he did have to come back, it would be in disguise and under an alias. I could easily see he had been able to make plenty of money doing this.

I remembered the bag he had with him, how it was larger than what people would normally be carrying on a trek between the towns. That's when it dawned on me: they had to be his supply of knockoff goods, and he was planning on selling them as quickly as he could. Perhaps he thought the easiest way would be to take the quickest route over the mountain. It would be his last and most damning of mistakes.

It is people like him that make this world a terrible place to live in. His type believes that anyone can be fooled into believing and doing anything they want, and that the fools deserve to have their savings taken away. He is also the type who is more than willing to take big risks if it means achieving greatness, be it of monetary value or recognition of some kind.

Not wanting to see anymore, I canceled my link to the man's mind. He collapsed face-down in the snow, his energy almost completely drained from the excursions of his foolish choice. But now a choice had fallen onto my shoulders. I could easily save this unfortunate soul if I so desired. However, I did not know if that was such a good idea. He was a piece of garbage based on what I could see. There was no doubt in my mind anyone would miss him, since more of his kind would crawl out of the woodworks to fill in the gaps he would undoubtedly leave behind.

Why should I feel the obligation to spare this wretched man's life? After all, it is his kind that makes life miserable, especially for those like me. As a result, I find myself moving from place to place almost constantly in order to avoid detection and capture. On top of that, my kind has a poor reputation when it comes to lost travelers in the mountains. The common folk believe that when I am seen, it is an omen of death. Since rumors of me living in the area have spread around, if word got out that one of their own died here, they would come in droves to hunt me down, capture me, and quite possibly kill me once judgment has been passed. I would be forced to move again, just when I was becoming comfortable with this peak.

A worst-case scenario, but something I could bear with. I have dealt with it countless times in the past.

I was about to leave the man to his fate when I heard him mumbling something as his life slowly began to slip away. It sounded like someone's name. For some reason this caught my interest. Listening closer, I could hear clearly:

"Dana…please, wait for me a little longer…I'll be there soon…"

I do not know why I became captivated, but hearing this made me want to know more. Once again, I dug into the man's mind to find what I needed. Since he was so close to death, there was no resistance.

Dana, as this man called her, was his daughter. A sickly girl, she required dozens upon dozens of operations in order to correct many problems that came up as a result of her illness. This cut deeply into the wallets and accounts of both of her parents. It got to the point where they could no longer afford any long-term surgery solutions, and even then their life savings were running dry.

It finally became clear why this man desperately needed to make as much money as he could, and as quickly as possible. It was to keep his ailing daughter alive. He apparently had been away for many months, and was on his way home in order to see his family.

Because of my poor reputation among the common folk, I guess it was only natural to judge him the way I had. I barely scratched the surface without reaching the root of the situation, and as a result I would have abandoned him. He may have been con, but deep down he was using the money for a reason even greater than his supposed greed. With this kind of determination, perhaps there is hope that he will be able to make something positive out of his life.

But for that to happen, I had to intervene against the frigid fate that awaited him.

I took him away from the peaks, eventually depositing him at the entrance of the next town. The townsfolk outside did not notice me, but they sure noticed the man when he landed. I was confident they would see to it he would reach home safely. He had important people waiting for him, after all.

I never saw the man again after this experience. Maybe he decided that his ways were not the right ones to help his loved ones. I doubt he or anyone else would have expected that he received help from the most unlikely of sources. I came to the conclusion that if a man like him was able to see the light – to see that he had to pay in kind to rectify the sins he had made - perhaps the same could be said for anyone of his kind. While darkness may cloud their hearts, there is still a shred of light shining through.

There may yet be some hope for him and his kind. Only time will tell...
A little something I wrote as part of a Christmas gift on another forum. Figured I can still share it with other people.

See if you can guess who the speaker is...
© 2010 - 2024 mario72486
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DarkMuffin17's avatar
I have no idea who the narrator is but i wanna know! X3