Heroes, Legends, and Villains

Taryn trotted down the stairs of Wells, her dorm building, and waited impatiently on the landing.

“Are you coming?” she called up. Her voice echoed slightly off the walls.

“Yes! Hold your horses!” came the response from one flight up.

She sighed and wondered why exactly she didn’t just rush ahead. Smitty would catch up; he knew where she was going. He appeared a moment later, walking down the stairs at a much more leisurely pace. They headed out to the parking lot together, Taryn almost skipping. She forgot all about waiting for Smitty, however, when she saw Ozzie unloading his car and ran to him.

“Oz!” she cried happily.

“Hey! Ryn!” Ozzie called back with a huge grin.

He caught her as she ran to hug him and returned the embrace enthusiastically, squeezing her as hard as he could.

“I’m so excited to see you!” Taryn said.

“Me, too,” Ozzie agreed. He released Taryn and then called, “Hey, Smitty!”

Smitty strolled up to the car and gave Ozzie what Taryn affectionately called a man-hug.

“Hey, man, how you been?” Smitty asked.

“Good, pretty good,” Ozzie replied. “You got my spot on the floor all ready?”

“Nothing but the best economy carpeting for you,” Smitty joked.

They began to walk back to Wells, Ozzie and Smitty catching up as Taryn smiled at having her best friend with her for the weekend.

Things had not panned out the way Ozzie and Taryn had expected them to, not at all. Taryn was in the beginning of her junior year at college, while Ozzie was living back home with his mother, Annie. They had spent freshman and sophomore year together at the university, but circumstances had forced Ozzie to take the semester off. When it rained it poured, as Ozzie’s mother liked to say. Despite his stellar grades, Ozzie had not been granted all of the same scholarships he had received in previous years.

There are students in more need of financial assistance. The selection process is unpredictable. There were more applicants than usual this year. We just don’t have as much funding as we’ve had in the past.

All of these and more were what Ozzie heard when he appealed the decisions. In the end, he had to forfeit what small amount he had received. Back home, he was working as a server in a restaurant—he actually made more in tips than he would in retail or even an office—to try and save up, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to make enough to pay for the other two years anytime soon, not unless he received a lot more in scholarships again. On top of that, he was wary about taking on student loans, as he didn’t know how he would pay them back after graduation and he didn’t want to be saddled with a lot of debt right out of school.

The whole situation clearly caused Ozzie a lot of heartache, despite his optimistic demeanor and words. Whether this optimism was authentic or partially an attempt to remain so, Taryn wasn’t sure. Most people would simply see it as the former, but Taryn knew Ozzie better than anyone. She could tell, almost like a sixth Ozzie-sense, that it was not effortless when he talked about how it was all going to be okay. She had brought this up with him more than once, and he told her the same thing every time.

“I’m just not going to let myself get defeated by it.”

Taryn had pressed the issue a few times, expressing how concerned she was, but Ozzie always told her not to worry. She let it drop then. He wouldn’t lie to her and, even if he did, she’d be able to tell. Still, she worried about his future. Getting a college degree had always been a dream of Ozzie’s, and it was hard to know if, much less how, that was going to happen now. He could go to a cheaper school, but that didn’t help the fact that he had yet to declare a major, and most colleges required you to declare by your junior year. That didn’t give Ozzie much time to make a decision, which he was also anxious about doing. He wasn’t particularly in love with any one subject. They all had their merits, so how was he supposed to pick just one to focus on for the rest of his life?

Thankfully, the separation did nothing to dilute his and Taryn’s bond. They were best friends through and through, and, after surviving an almost deadly quest, a few hundred miles meant nothing… especially when they had the Internet.

That was how Ozzie had stayed close with Smitty, too. Smitty—whose given name was Loren Smith, which he hated—and Ozzie had roomed together their first two years and were good friends. Smitty wasn’t quite as easy-going as Ozzie, but they balanced each other out in that. He was also taller and not quite as much of a beanpole. He had blond hair and blue eyes and was an English major like Taryn. Had Taryn not come as part of the Ozzie-package, she probably would have become friends with Smitty eventually through their shared classes. Despite her wishes, though, Ozzie was still going to stay in Smitty’s room that weekend because the campus had rules about co-ed sleepovers, even platonic ones.

They headed up to Smitty’s room on the third floor, and Ozzie set his backpack and sleeping bag down in a corner.

“Too bad you didn’t get the corner room,” Ozzie said, looking around wistfully. “How’s Alex as a roommate?”

“He’s great, but gets up early,” Smitty replied. His new roomie was currently at the student center having dinner.

“PoliSci majors, such overachievers,” Ozzie replied. “Hey, Ryn, don’t you wish we had had sleeping bags like this when we went camping?”

Taryn’s first instinct was to shoot Ozzie a look, but two years of training made it easy to rein in the urge.

It was actually a little more than two years since she and Ozzie had returned from Leleplar, and most of the time things felt almost one hundred percent normal. Almost only because there was always a knowledge between the two that no one else shared. They had nearly died together more than once in that other world and then saved it. The two had spoken with creatures from myth and legend and experienced things that had permanently changed them. On top of that, they had gained and lost a good friend, Tynx, in the midst of everything. It made everything around them suddenly seem surreal when they thought about him, still out there but somewhere else, living a life of his own without them.

Instead of shooting the look, she simply smiled and said, “It was fine.”

This was how most of their exchanges went when their adventure in Leleplar was referenced. It was always vague and carefully crafted so that the other people around them wouldn’t catch that there was some underlying meaning.

“You probably won’t need it,” Smitty informed Ozzie. “It gets hot up here.”

Ozzie, Taryn, and Smitty then spent a little while just chatting and then debating about where to go for dinner and what to do after. Smitty wanted Mexican and to go play mini-golf, Taryn wanted Chinese take-out and to come back and watch movies, and Ozzie didn’t really care as long as he didn’t have to drive and it was cheap. Taryn won the dinner argument, but completely lost out on her movie choices. Unsurprisingly, Ozzie and Smitty’s votes to watch action comedies outweighed Taryn’s choice for the latest Disney film.

“Watch it with Emily and the girls,” Smitty said.

“Or with Kyla next time you go home,” Ozzie added.

Taryn only grumbled a little, knowing the boys were right. It wasn’t long before they had all piled into Smitty’s beat up little Toyota and were on their way. They headed down a set of little back roads to avoid the rush hour traffic, Ozzie and Smitty doing most of the talking since they were still catching up. Taryn and Ozzie talked on the phone every day, sometimes more than once, and texted, so they were pretty much always up to speed. Even though Taryn kept Smitty updated on Ozzie-related news, there were still numerous subjects that they needed to discuss that Taryn had less than no interest in. She zoned out when they started talking about sports… or cars… or some other thing. Her mind was drifting off now in ways it didn’t used to when something caught her eye. Smitty wasn’t watching the road and was instead looking into his rearview mirror at Ozzie when Taryn broke in.

“Smitty! Look out!” she cried, pointing to the road ahead of them.

Smitty looked back just in time to see several deer leaping out onto the road in front of them. He swerved to avoid them, and the car went headlong into the ditch.

Across the Ice

Raven’s Cry

Falcon’s Favor

Death Cults and Taxes