“You’re going to that battlefield they call a city?!” Lukas’s mother exclaimed, trying to subdue her son’s juvenile fantasies. “Why do you never think of me?! Do you want to get rid of me and kill me of worry? Is that it?”

  Lukas grew absolutely infuriated. His mother was by no means a bad one. He was showered with care and affection his entire life so his feelings towards her felt wrong. But it was always when Lukas thought to pursue his own intuition and take a risk that his mother lost her temper.

  “It’a fine!” Lukas replied extremely frustrated, “the Rose Duke long took care of the situation. The Naked War was decades ago! The city is not the wild jungle you hear through your friend’s gossip. They’re building it to be the most esteemed city for arts. It’s where I belong.”

  “Oh God!” his mother suspired in pain, “nothing good can come out as a product of such violence. You’re going to harvest on a land you know is full of plague and pests. Why? You have so much here! Why leave it? Why leave me?” she wailed. Those words spun Lukas with genuine guilt and rage. His mother meant what she said, but a part of him felt that it was nothing more than a dirty tactic to guilt him into submission.

  “Don’t you see this?” Lukas held up the brownish letter with elegant handwriting he was holding in his hand, “how can you be anything but proud and happy for me? The Countess Claudia Braventa wrote directly to me! Your son was recognized by a woman of her stature and nobility!”

  “Are you sure it’s real?”

  “Yes! Look at the signature and the insignia on it. Who could possible forge that?” he showed off the famous Braventa sigil of a serpent wrapped around a woman molded on the letter’s wax.

  His mother turned around and opened a closet door to bring out a broom and began to sweep the wooden floors while murmuring: “God! Holy God!” She always cleaned or organized something whenever she wanted to disassociate from any hard argument. Even when they were outside, she’d take off her coat and start folding it and slapping it for dust over and over. “How unnecessary,” she said with disgust in her voice, “you can become a fine translator here. And why make such a commitment when you always quit yourself? How many times did you change your trade? After all the sacrifices your father and I made… This cannot be how you intend to repay us!”

  “Is me being a baby forever how you want me to repay you? This is my path! I will work and study until I become the man I know I’m supposed to be. I already gave you the grace of becoming a translator. So at least let me decide what to do with it. Am I than much of a fool in your eyes?”

  “No, but you’re not listening. There are things you just don’t understand yet.”

  The firmness of his mother’s position truly pushed Lukas to the edge. If he had let go of the little control he had left, he was sure he’d do something unforgivable. For that reason, he decided to leave then and there for good. He had little money saved up and the expiration date for his arrival to Sottofiamma was a month away. Just like his idol, the Rose Duke, who had left his home and climbed from peasantry into the highest of nobility, Lukas would set off to become a recognized man of intellect and the arts through translation. It was a job that had recently raised in demand with eastern philosophy finding its way into their part of the world. Still, much of what his mother said was true; having been able to receive the education of learning a foreign language to the point of translating it was not common for most. It was such a privilege that Lukas even gave up on what his mother called a ‘childish dream’ of becoming a poet. Still, with a pen in his hand, he was sure he’d earn recognition no matter the field.

  “You’re right, sorry,” Lukas told his mother in order to drop the argument, “I’m going for a walk.”

  He quietly left through the front door, and stood outside surrounded by yellow tall dried grass. As a kid, he liked to step on it barefoot for the jitters of the spiky feeling on his soles. From the doorstep, he could still hear his mother sweeping and calling out to the name of God. Lukas made sure to count all the money on him. Only enough coins for the trip and a few days of food if he was conservative. But he had a letter from the highest nobility. That alone could grant him some privilege. His home was not far off from the river barges. Right before his first step away, he remembered he’d forgotten his pouch where he had more coin and his writing supplies, so he went back inside his home. His mother looked up and paused as to say ‘what happened?’ with her eyes.

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  “I forgot my pouch. Maybe I’ll stop by the market.”

  “Oh dear!” his mother said as she went to hug her son, dropping the broom on the floor, ”I just want you to be safe. You’re my boy. Not some Rosy Duke.”

  The hug made Lukas very uncomfortable and he did not reciprocate the squeeze. On top of that, he felt as if something was deeply wrong with him for not appreciating the love his mother was trying so hard to send his way.

  “Mother, do you not believe in me?” he whimped, barely able to get his breath out.

  “Of course I do!” she separated the hug, keeping Luka’s shoulders within her palms, “you’re the most brilliant child there is. But why go to such extremes? It’s a dangerous place. Just a few years ago people were getting hanged for walking in the wrong direction! And all of these artists commissioned by nobles…they’re a prick in the hay. One in thousands. The best in the world! And they have connections too…I just don’t think it’s worth it.” She caressed his neck where he had a burn scar he got when he ran into a hot rod his father was using to mend a fire when he was a little kid. The thin scar traveled horizontally from the middle of his throat to just below his left jawbone. “You were always pretty clumsy, dear.”

  The loving words of his mother devastated him. She did not intend for it, but her love made him feel like a chick that couldn’t be grabbed or it would die. So frail and delicate. His mother was small in stature, just like him, who was only a handful of inches taller. And in their cruel world, she could have never hoped to protect her son through sheer force, so she protected him through prevention. But preventing a boy from getting hurt is the same as preventing him from becoming a man, and that’s exactly what Lukas felt like: an impotent and useless boy never meant for anything special.

  “You will never understand,” Lukas thought, “if another man can, so can I!”

  He gave her a faint smile anyone would give while greeting a passerby during a bad day. His mother picked up the old broom oblivious to her son’s tame smile and turned around. Lukas went over to the small shelf library in the common area. It was their family’s pride to have books and encyclopedias. His father’s friends who were mainly tradespeople found him especially annoying whenever he tried to show off the knowledge from them. The walnut shelf had six compartments and a large platform with feather and quill that the family would use as a sort of standing desk whenever they wanted to quickly write letters. Lukas pulled the blank book they normally used for notes and work. In it, he loosely wrote: I’m sorry, but I have to go.

  He left the book with the page open on the desk for someone to find to save himself from the painful conversation if he were to formally leave. The part of his conscious that helps man get through life justified the action under the premise that his parents could never understand. But the voice from the navel that no man can control called him a coward. ‘Shouldn’t you have the conviction to leave on your own terms? Are you so ungrateful that you’ll leave your parents in the dark?’ The voice spoke, but Lukas was too underwater to hear anything clearly.

  He grabbed the pouch that was resting against the desk’s base. Right besides it was his grandmother’s puppet that they refused to ever throw away. Since his grandmother lived far away, she knitted him this puppet so he wouldn’t be lonely as a kid. There was a time his most cherished memory was the plays his mother would set for him using it. Now, he squirmed at it. This grandmother had recently passed only a few months ago.

  Lukas remembered his last moments with her and his inappropriate thoughts about how their relationship felt superficial to him: “This woman loved me and spoiled me. But we did not know each other. Not our worries, or our desires. I cannot recall a single genuine conversation I had with her outside of baby-talk formality.” Then, he remembered standing over her deathbed. There was a unique sensation he felt at that time, and he was beginning to feel it again. As his grandmother died in front of him, he developed a stung-swollen throat. He could only slightly whisper his goodbyes to her. His throat was not physically affected, but he felt as if there was boar blocking the air’s way. His last words to her were in a slight whisper: “You can go now. Thank you for everything.” He was sure there was no way his grandmother who was half-asleep and ready to die could have understood. He had always hoped that at least his eyes got the message across. Now, with much to say to his mother, his throat felt the same way and shut. Without any more words, he left again and stood outside the door that had been his home for twenty years with the sensation of death in his throat. This was the last time mother and son would ever see each other again.