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Description
Class was just as boring the second day.

The tables had been rearranged into groups of two, with a chair at either end. When I had first walked in, I wondered for a minute if I was in the right class, but- of course- I was.  Aparrently, we were supposed to study the maps, and memorize them using the notes we had taken the day before. I was partnered with a guy two years older than me, who thought he had to walk me through the class that we were taking together. Pointing at the center of the map that was sprawled across our desks, he smiled knowingly at me.  At that moment, I remember only one thought going through my mind.

Asshole.

" Mark this down, right by my finger" He instructed. ( I found out a few hours later that his nickname was 'Aim' . For good reason, too.)
" This is our home, and I'm supposing that we are always going to be starting out from here." He chuckled. " Wonder what we would be doing if we ended up someplace that wasn't on the map?"

Hah. Getting lost? It was my own turn to smile, and laugh.  "Don't tell me you're worried about getting lost, Aim. From what we've been told, if we actually learn this right, we won't ever get lost." I finished the sentence there, not allowing my thoughts to turn into words.Unless we get separated, or badly hurt. What then?

The classes went on through days that eventually went from counted to countless, and from there to a blur that seemed to become a split second- until Sky announced a Test over the geography of the surrounding ten miles around our little safe zone. My reaction? Nail would just start laughing if you asked him, because he was the first one I went to, practically begging him to help me study. Hell, he had the stuff down better than I did. " You've been studying with me every night, Nail! Please help me?" I looked down at the gleeful child again, and tried to force even more urgency into my voice. "Please?"

Seeing the boy that happy about having this kind of power over me was kinda creepy, to be honest. In the end, he smiled and pulled out the little board he used as a desk, and every notebook I had written in since I started class. For some reason he kept them in perfect condition, and allowed absolutely noone near them. Even I had to ask to see them, and I wrote the damn things! " Okay, Adam." He said. " I'll help you." His smile morphed into an impish grin as soon as the words left his mouth, and I braced myself for what I knew was coming. " But!"

Oh god.I thought, just as I felt something small and cold being pushed into my hand by a pair of smaller ones.

" You have to promise to keep this with you all the time!"

I opened my eyes, and looked down to see a small tan stone, smooth, with a jagged edge across one side. The others were part of an egg shape, and were just as smooth as the flat-ish surface. A tiny sparkle in the center told me that inside was a tiny deposit of quartz. Still, as beautiful as the stone was, I had to admit I didn't understand. " Nail, why do you want me to keep this with me?" Another glance at the object in my hands confirmed my first thought. " It's only a rock."

" No it isn't!" Nail's reaction really surprised me, and I jumped a little at the change in his tone. " It was my mom's before she died. That's what Sarah told me. " The kid looked away from me for a minute or two, and in that time there was total silence. I found it odd that I couldn't even hear the sirens, or the constant hum of the generators, even though I knew they were both still making the sounds they always did. But finally Nail spoke again, and the sound came back to the world with his words. " Sarah told me to give it to someone who meant alot to me, and that it would bring em' back home, no matter what." Now he looked at me. " I want you to have it. "

The stone was his mothers... huh. The fact that it was given to me was surprising in itself, but the seriousness of Nail's words impacted me even more. I curled my fingers around it, careful to avoid the jagged side, and looked down. " Thanks, kid. " I whispered to him, kinda quietly. " I'll keep it forever. "

"Great!" Nail's attitude change once again caught me off guard, and I stood there like an idiot for a few seconds while he resumed his business of finding the notebooks we would start with.  "C'mon, let's start!" A quick shake of my head brought me back to the present moment, and I sat on his bed while he rummaged through the notebooks for the one we would start with. If anyone had made fun of me for studying with the kid when I first started, they didn't anymore. I was one of the best students in our class. Amazing that a five year old is the one I had to thank for it.

"Okay." I grinned, and glanced at the map Nail had set out. He was using a pencil to point at a spot, and looking at me expectantly. "This place is about a mile directly north of us, just out the front gate, and down the road." I frowned... I remembered it, from class, but the name of it was beyond my reach. Nail read my expression perfectly, and opted for giving me another hint. "It's one of the main places where we get our food, Adam! Come on, you know this!"  He smiled. "It starts with an N."

Oh! I was so stupid. The city wasn't far, and the skeletal remains of a few massive buildings could be seen even from the place where we lived. A big sign just outside the city read:

Welcome To Ne  Yo  !
Population: 19,541,453

but we never found that many. Every once in awhile we would find someone, and if we were lucky, they would come with us, and not end up dying. People like me, and Nail. I grinned, and said it. "Neyo."

"Right!" Nail's smile mirrored my own, and I couldn't help but laugh at the joy he seemed to feel at helping me with something as boring as studying. His finger moved back home, and then it traveled over to the left, about three inches. " What is this, then? " Another of his knowing glances. "It's really big, and it goes underground, but nobody is allowed to go there."

Huh. This one I knew, only because the word 'prohibited' made me more interested than any other. The place was an underground bunker that many of the city's inhabitants had used to stay alive during most of the war. The place is damn near a city within itself, but a group of people decided to stay there, and dubbed themselves 'The Lato'. 'Lato' being the latin word for bandit.  Many of our people were killed when they tried to make peace with The Lato, although the main reason they tried to do that is because they had the largest supply of food in the area. That bunker had been stocked with enough food to feed roughly five hundred people for ten years. Hard to believe, huh? Strikes me as funny. It's been ten years, so they're probably going to begin hunting for food, just like us. I chuckled, and answered the kid's question. "The bunker."

"Yep!" Nail's finger began moving all over the map.

"Nail, wha-?"

"This area is dominated by what natural... stuff?"

I chuckled. "Natural stuff?"

"Yeah, like trees and stuff." Nail's sidelong glance told me I should have already known that.

"Oh. The area is dominated by sand and large red stones. Some of these red stones could be mistaken for mountains, and the only-"

"Oh!" Nail's hand shot skyward, a finger pointed up as if he had just found the secret of life. "I remembered!" Now that finger traveled to a spot that was marked on the map just on the right side of the road that lead to Neyo. "What is this?"

I let out a sigh, trying to hide the slight annoyance I felt at being interrupted. I didn't want to forget what I was going to say, so I answered quickly. "Roadside Mountain."

"Yep! Okay, you can keep going."

Gah.. that kid could be a little off sometimes.  I took a slow breath to give me time to find my train of thought again, hoping it hadn't lost the tracks, or run into a wall or something like that, and found it safely chugging along. "Okay. The only plant life to be seen around here are a few trees in Neyo, and the plants that we are growing just outside our walls. If you move a few miles out from our little underground paradise, you'll find large areas of red clay and dead trees."

"Yep. You're right again." Nail's tone had changed for some reason, and as I looked over at him, I noticed how he was looking at the map. " We all had homes in Neyo before the war, didn't we?"

"What?"  His question wasn't the unexpected part- I had gotten used to questions spilling out of his mouth near constantly, and I wasn't bothered at all by it. What got to me was what his question was about, and how he said it. I nodded at him, softening my voice a little, and putting an arm around him, hugging him tight momentarily. "He looked like he could have cried at any moment. " Of course, Nail. We all did."

The words that came from his mouth at that moment scared me, and changed my thoughts of the boy so much I didn't think it possible. It helped me to respect him, and understand him. Or, at least I think it did.

" I wanna go home, Adam. "

With those words also came tears, and he simply began to cry. Nail was strong though. He was crying silently. My arm slipped around him once again, and I tried to comfort him... "Nail, you are home. You have an older brother and an older sister, and all the people here love you just as much as we do." I still had the stone in my hand, and I lifted it up so he could see it. "You gave me this, right?" I noticed the slightest nod of his head. "I'll always come home, okay?" I hugged him close once again, and set my chin on his head. "I promise."

The kid cuold tell we were done studying, even though the time it had taken to get through those questions didn't amount to more than an hour. He hugged me back, uttered a 'thank you' ,
and promptly fell asleep. I couldn't really move, so I sat there, surrounded by the papers and maps that would be my future, and held him, making sure not to move to much, or breath too harshly.  He needed the sleep, and I was determined not to be the one to deprive him of it.

Eventually he woke up, and crawled out of my lap, curling up on his bed and falling aslep again. No words were spoked, and my only actions were to stand, and cover him up. Winter was coming, and it had gotten cold at night. After he was settled, I cleaned up the notebooks, folded the map, and set them neatly back into the cabinet he had pulled them from. ( Though I knew that when he woke up he would rearrange them to his own liking.) I stumbled back to my bed, and flopped down onto it, covering myself, and trying to sleep. The big test was tomorrow, after all. Those four words, though, stayed alight in my mind, and burned brightly enough to keep away the comforting darkness at came along with the sleep I so desperately needed.

' I wanna go home. '

When you're lying in bed, you have quite alot of time to simply think about things. So that's what I did. I thought. I thought about Nail, and about what home really was, and about Sarah, and Griff, and the people that would soon be in a team I would call my own. I thought about the concept of death that would soon be very real to me, and about how far I would be willing to go before I became too afraid to move, to think-

To breathe.

I lay there for what seemed like hours, wondering about all of those things at once- or maybe none of them, I can't remember exactly.

Morning came right along with Sarah's voice, and Nail's weight on my chest. Both of them were in moods that far surpassed my own in the way of gaiety. Sarah's mood brought a light to my mind, that at least allowed me to muster up a hopeful smile. " Alright, guys. let's get this over with, shall we? "

I moved to the edge of the bed with Nail still on top of me, then I dumped him atop it. He looked up with a bashful look on his face, and muttered a playful " Hey..."

With a good night's sleep, the kid looked like any normal child should after just waking up. His hair was touseled to the point of cartoonism, and his eyes spoke of the countless times they had been rubbed by his hands. Sarah was beautiful, as always, and her face showed no signs of having just woken up. Made me smile.

I dressed quickly, ready to get to my test, and confident in my ability to pass. When I left ( With sarah's blessing and a big hug from Nail.) and entered the classroom, Sky was there, with a notebook and pencil on my desk.

" Here you go, Adam. Time for your test."

I was ready, Thanks to Nail. I thought of the night before, and smiled. I was home.

Description
Class was just as boring the second day.

The tables had been rearranged into groups of two, with a chair at either end. When I had first walked in, I wondered for a minute if I was in the right class, but- of course- I was.  Aparrently, we were supposed to study the maps, and memorize them using the notes we had taken the day before. I was partnered with a guy two years older than me, who thought he had to walk me through the class that we were taking together. Pointing at the center of the map that was sprawled across our desks, he smiled knowingly at me.  At that moment, I remember only one thought going through my mind.

Asshole.

" Mark this down, right by my finger" He instructed. ( I found out a few hours later that his nickname was 'Aim' . For good reason, too.)
" This is our home, and I'm supposing that we are always going to be starting out from here." He chuckled. " Wonder what we would be doing if we ended up someplace that wasn't on the map?"

Hah. Getting lost? It was my own turn to smile, and laugh.  "Don't tell me you're worried about getting lost, Aim. From what we've been told, if we actually learn this right, we won't ever get lost." I finished the sentence there, not allowing my thoughts to turn into words.Unless we get separated, or badly hurt. What then?

The classes went on through days that eventually went from counted to countless, and from there to a blur that seemed to become a split second- until Sky announced a Test over the geography of the surrounding ten miles around our little safe zone. My reaction? Nail would just start laughing if you asked him, because he was the first one I went to, practically begging him to help me study. Hell, he had the stuff down better than I did. " You've been studying with me every night, Nail! Please help me?" I looked down at the gleeful child again, and tried to force even more urgency into my voice. "Please?"

Seeing the boy that happy about having this kind of power over me was kinda creepy, to be honest. In the end, he smiled and pulled out the little board he used as a desk, and every notebook I had written in since I started class. For some reason he kept them in perfect condition, and allowed absolutely noone near them. Even I had to ask to see them, and I wrote the damn things! " Okay, Adam." He said. " I'll help you." His smile morphed into an impish grin as soon as the words left his mouth, and I braced myself for what I knew was coming. " But!"

Oh god.I thought, just as I felt something small and cold being pushed into my hand by a pair of smaller ones.

" You have to promise to keep this with you all the time!"

I opened my eyes, and looked down to see a small tan stone, smooth, with a jagged edge across one side. The others were part of an egg shape, and were just as smooth as the flat-ish surface. A tiny sparkle in the center told me that inside was a tiny deposit of quartz. Still, as beautiful as the stone was, I had to admit I didn't understand. " Nail, why do you want me to keep this with me?" Another glance at the object in my hands confirmed my first thought. " It's only a rock."

" No it isn't!" Nail's reaction really surprised me, and I jumped a little at the change in his tone. " It was my mom's before she died. That's what Sarah told me. " The kid looked away from me for a minute or two, and in that time there was total silence. I found it odd that I couldn't even hear the sirens, or the constant hum of the generators, even though I knew they were both still making the sounds they always did. But finally Nail spoke again, and the sound came back to the world with his words. " Sarah told me to give it to someone who meant alot to me, and that it would bring em' back home, no matter what." Now he looked at me. " I want you to have it. "

The stone was his mothers... huh. The fact that it was given to me was surprising in itself, but the seriousness of Nail's words impacted me even more. I curled my fingers around it, careful to avoid the jagged side, and looked down. " Thanks, kid. " I whispered to him, kinda quietly. " I'll keep it forever. "

"Great!" Nail's attitude change once again caught me off guard, and I stood there like an idiot for a few seconds while he resumed his business of finding the notebooks we would start with.  "C'mon, let's start!" A quick shake of my head brought me back to the present moment, and I sat on his bed while he rummaged through the notebooks for the one we would start with. If anyone had made fun of me for studying with the kid when I first started, they didn't anymore. I was one of the best students in our class. Amazing that a five year old is the one I had to thank for it.

"Okay." I grinned, and glanced at the map Nail had set out. He was using a pencil to point at a spot, and looking at me expectantly. "This place is about a mile directly north of us, just out the front gate, and down the road." I frowned... I remembered it, from class, but the name of it was beyond my reach. Nail read my expression perfectly, and opted for giving me another hint. "It's one of the main places where we get our food, Adam! Come on, you know this!"  He smiled. "It starts with an N."

Oh! I was so stupid. The city wasn't far, and the skeletal remains of a few massive buildings could be seen even from the place where we lived. A big sign just outside the city read:

Welcome To Ne  Yo  !
Population: 19,541,453

but we never found that many. Every once in awhile we would find someone, and if we were lucky, they would come with us, and not end up dying. People like me, and Nail. I grinned, and said it. "Neyo."

"Right!" Nail's smile mirrored my own, and I couldn't help but laugh at the joy he seemed to feel at helping me with something as boring as studying. His finger moved back home, and then it traveled over to the left, about three inches. " What is this, then? " Another of his knowing glances. "It's really big, and it goes underground, but nobody is allowed to go there."

Huh. This one I knew, only because the word 'prohibited' made me more interested than any other. The place was an underground bunker that many of the city's inhabitants had used to stay alive during most of the war. The place is damn near a city within itself, but a group of people decided to stay there, and dubbed themselves 'The Lato'. 'Lato' being the latin word for bandit.  Many of our people were killed when they tried to make peace with The Lato, although the main reason they tried to do that is because they had the largest supply of food in the area. That bunker had been stocked with enough food to feed roughly five hundred people for ten years. Hard to believe, huh? Strikes me as funny. It's been ten years, so they're probably going to begin hunting for food, just like us. I chuckled, and answered the kid's question. "The bunker."

"Yep!" Nail's finger began moving all over the map.

"Nail, wha-?"

"This area is dominated by what natural... stuff?"

I chuckled. "Natural stuff?"

"Yeah, like trees and stuff." Nail's sidelong glance told me I should have already known that.

"Oh. The area is dominated by sand and large red stones. Some of these red stones could be mistaken for mountains, and the only-"

"Oh!" Nail's hand shot skyward, a finger pointed up as if he had just found the secret of life. "I remembered!" Now that finger traveled to a spot that was marked on the map just on the right side of the road that lead to Neyo. "What is this?"

I let out a sigh, trying to hide the slight annoyance I felt at being interrupted. I didn't want to forget what I was going to say, so I answered quickly. "Roadside Mountain."

"Yep! Okay, you can keep going."

Gah.. that kid could be a little off sometimes.  I took a slow breath to give me time to find my train of thought again, hoping it hadn't lost the tracks, or run into a wall or something like that, and found it safely chugging along. "Okay. The only plant life to be seen around here are a few trees in Neyo, and the plants that we are growing just outside our walls. If you move a few miles out from our little underground paradise, you'll find large areas of red clay and dead trees."

"Yep. You're right again." Nail's tone had changed for some reason, and as I looked over at him, I noticed how he was looking at the map. " We all had homes in Neyo before the war, didn't we?"

"What?"  His question wasn't the unexpected part- I had gotten used to questions spilling out of his mouth near constantly, and I wasn't bothered at all by it. What got to me was what his question was about, and how he said it. I nodded at him, softening my voice a little, and putting an arm around him, hugging him tight momentarily. "He looked like he could have cried at any moment. " Of course, Nail. We all did."

The words that came from his mouth at that moment scared me, and changed my thoughts of the boy so much I didn't think it possible. It helped me to respect him, and understand him. Or, at least I think it did.

" I wanna go home, Adam. "

With those words also came tears, and he simply began to cry. Nail was strong though. He was crying silently. My arm slipped around him once again, and I tried to comfort him... "Nail, you are home. You have an older brother and an older sister, and all the people here love you just as much as we do." I still had the stone in my hand, and I lifted it up so he could see it. "You gave me this, right?" I noticed the slightest nod of his head. "I'll always come home, okay?" I hugged him close once again, and set my chin on his head. "I promise."

The kid cuold tell we were done studying, even though the time it had taken to get through those questions didn't amount to more than an hour. He hugged me back, uttered a 'thank you' ,
and promptly fell asleep. I couldn't really move, so I sat there, surrounded by the papers and maps that would be my future, and held him, making sure not to move to much, or breath too harshly.  He needed the sleep, and I was determined not to be the one to deprive him of it.

Eventually he woke up, and crawled out of my lap, curling up on his bed and falling aslep again. No words were spoked, and my only actions were to stand, and cover him up. Winter was coming, and it had gotten cold at night. After he was settled, I cleaned up the notebooks, folded the map, and set them neatly back into the cabinet he had pulled them from. ( Though I knew that when he woke up he would rearrange them to his own liking.) I stumbled back to my bed, and flopped down onto it, covering myself, and trying to sleep. The big test was tomorrow, after all. Those four words, though, stayed alight in my mind, and burned brightly enough to keep away the comforting darkness at came along with the sleep I so desperately needed.

' I wanna go home. '

When you're lying in bed, you have quite alot of time to simply think about things. So that's what I did. I thought. I thought about Nail, and about what home really was, and about Sarah, and Griff, and the people that would soon be in a team I would call my own. I thought about the concept of death that would soon be very real to me, and about how far I would be willing to go before I became too afraid to move, to think-

To breathe.

I lay there for what seemed like hours, wondering about all of those things at once- or maybe none of them, I can't remember exactly.

Morning came right along with Sarah's voice, and Nail's weight on my chest. Both of them were in moods that far surpassed my own in the way of gaiety. Sarah's mood brought a light to my mind, that at least allowed me to muster up a hopeful smile. " Alright, guys. let's get this over with, shall we? "

I moved to the edge of the bed with Nail still on top of me, then I dumped him atop it. He looked up with a bashful look on his face, and muttered a playful " Hey..."

With a good night's sleep, the kid looked like any normal child should after just waking up. His hair was touseled to the point of cartoonism, and his eyes spoke of the countless times they had been rubbed by his hands. Sarah was beautiful, as always, and her face showed no signs of having just woken up. Made me smile.

I dressed quickly, ready to get to my test, and confident in my ability to pass. When I left ( With sarah's blessing and a big hug from Nail.) and entered the classroom, Sky was there, with a notebook and pencil on my desk.

" Here you go, Adam. Time for your test."

I was ready, Thanks to Nail. I thought of the night before, and smiled. I was home.