99 Aquarina’s Resolve
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(Aquarina’s POV)
Since that day, I’ve been always thinking about how to grow stronger…
That day when… Sylphy almost died for me. I could still remember it vividly, even when it’ll soon be a year since then. It has… been engraved on my soul.
Mommy and daddy always told me that when we go through hardships, our minds grow more mature… I suppose that’s what happened to me. Every day since then, I’m always worried. I always think about ways I can grow stronger…
Sylphy… I don’t want her to do this anymore… I don’t want her to risk her life for me. I want to… protect her instead. I want her to be happy… I don’t want her to suffer for me…
I’m so weak… it makes me so frustrated.
Mommy and daddy said that it’s fine to be weak when I was so young. After all, I’m just four years of age, soon to be 5 in a few more weeks… at four years of age, I shouldn’t have gone through all the things I did… or well, that’s what they always told me.
But if I was blessed by Oceanus… then I’m also a Hero. Like Sylphy… I cannot simply stand still and do nothing other than practice magic around a little bit.
…..
I’ve never really liked fighting… it makes me scared… when I kill a living being, it makes me sad. On the other hand, Sylphy is different. She’s always so bright and strong, no matter the situation… n-no matter what it is, even when we fought against that monster, she was looking at it with her beautiful emerald eyes…
I want to be a bit more like Sylphy… I want to be strong as well so I can stay by her side and not be a burden to her… mommy and daddy said that I shouldn’t worry about this…. that what happened was something I couldn’t predict, and that it wasn’t supposed to be a challenge that kids my age would normally go through.
But I cannot help but think that if Sylphy wouldn’t have sacrificed her own body and did everything for me… I would have died before my parents could even arrive.
This truth eats at my mind every day since then… but every time Sylphy comes back home, I grow happy and forget these dark thoughts, only for them to emerge once more when she goes away.
Sylphy… I… I can’t just be a crybaby all the time, right? I have to grow stronger myself…
If I always depend on her for everything, then I’ll never truly grow strong myself… if I’m the Heroine of Oceanus, then I have to show that I’m qualified for such a title…
Mommy and daddy told me to not push myself so hard… but I have to do it.
Sylphy is always strong and brave… she’s really like a Heroine. She never fears fighting at all. She never… fears killing. Even before the face of that black panther long ago… she was strong and protected me. And when I killed that creature with her, I ended up crying because I felt so sad… it hurt me so much to kill another living being… it made me feel horrible… but Sylphy… she seemed to be fine even after all that…
Of course, I asked my parents about that, and they said that there’s no sane person that wouldn’t feel bad after killing another living being. Even if it was a small rabbit, or a big panther trying to eat you, you’d still feel the weight of taking another life.
But they also told me that the strong people, like them, simply carry on with it. Becoming a good warrior doesn’t mean learning to kill without remorse, it means learning to kill and accept and live with this sorrow one would feel after killing. After all, it’s done for a reason, and that reason must become the driving force to… take another life.
She took that life to save me… so I know… and then, we took the life of more animals to eat them, to nourish ourselves…
In my tribe, my people are always grateful to Mother Nature and the beasts after we hunt them. We always offer a prayer to their corpses after they take their last breath. We also thank them for giving their lives so we can keep on living.
I… I cannot really be like Sylphy. She seems unfazed by this but… it made me sad. However, I’ve decided to think the same as the hunters of my tribe from now and be thankful for every life I take in the name of survival and my own self-sustenance… or for those I love.
For those reasons and many more… I decided to ask papa to teach me, so I can grow stronger!
Mama told me that my body was too small and weak for the fighting techniques she knows, so she wants me to strengthen my body before learning from her… because she said it would be painful.
So, for now, I have to strengthen my body through exercises that papa had given to me. They’re similar to Sylphy’s exercises, but flashier.
“Papa, I want you to teach me how to fight!”
“Aquarina…”
My papa looked at me with his pretty blue eyes, and then nodded while giving me a warm smile.
“Very well… my daughter, I shall teach you the techniques that my teacher once taught to me. Your body might not be as strong as other Amazons your age, but you’re agile and nimble… you’re good enough,” he told me.
Since then, without Sylphy knowing about it, I began secretly training with papa! But it was hard… papa made me exercise until I almost dropped dead every day…
It hurt and made me feel sad.
But I had to do it to grow stronger…
And for Sylphy…
And also for Leviathan… the creature that Sylphy told me that sacrificed himself to rescue me.
I don’t know how he was right now or why he did that but… I have to live on for him as well.
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