The World Walkers: Kankirin: Yuki: Trapped on Kankirin

[k_a_webb]

Yuki stared at the communication crystal. He was tempted to throw it at the wall in front of him, because he knew no one on Kankirin would be able to fix it, but instead he put it down carefully on his desk. Doors had failed before. It just hadn’t mattered as much as it did right then, because it was the only route they had back to Athare. His only other option was asking Broc to contact his family in a dream, which they all knew that was more luck than judgement. They were all having trouble getting used to the different time cycle on Kankirin, so Yuki couldn’t rely on it as a way to get in contact with the council.

Kankirin wasn’t a bad world to be trapped on. Yuki knew some of the worlds that were being created and there were some he wouldn’t want to even visit. There was every possibility that he might end up on one of them, as he had been chosen as a group leader and due to the unpopularity of what they were doing there were only twelve leaders. Everyone else in his group had volunteered to help on one world, so he knew it was unlikely that he’d see any of them again once they left Kankirin.

Sighing, Yuki stood. He needed to tell the group what had happened and get their input into what they wanted to do next, because that was his job. Occasionally he thought he’d made a mistake becoming a leader, but he knew why the world council had asked him, he could do the job, and he had to remember that. After a final glance at the crystal, wishing it had worked, he left the room. The other four members of his group were sat waiting for him, each with the same worried look on their faces.

“I’m sorry to say I haven’t been able to contact Athare, because the communication crystal has failed. This means that we are currently trapped on Kankirin. Broc, I’d appreciate it if you could attempt to contact your family and let them know what’s happened, but we all know it’s not a method of communication we can be sure of. It’s possible that no one will find out what’s happened until the day we’re meant to return.”

Sadie, his fellow family member, looked at him, their eyes meeting. “What are we going to do?”

“We continue with the job we were sent here to do. Nothing has really changed, apart from us having no way back, and that is something that should be easily remedied as soon as the council works out what’s happened.”

“What if it can’t be fixed?” Landen asked, the only Black family member of their group.

Yuki raised an eyebrow. “We cross that bridge if we come to it. Right now we have no reason to believe we won’t be able to return to Athare.”

Sadie and Landen looked at each other. The group had been on Kankirin for just over six moons of the full year they were meant to be spending there, so some people had grown closer than they would have done under normal circumstances. Yuki enjoyed watching the way everyone was changing during their time away from home, away from their family, and didn’t let himself worry about what would happen when they got back to Athare.

“I know it’s a little scary to not have a way back to Athare. None of us have ever been trapped somewhere without a way back. However right now we have a job to do that needs our full attention, so worrying about things that may or may not happen is a waste of time.” Yuki looked at each of the four members of his group. “You know your assignments. Kankirin is a very new world, with very new people on, and we need to make sure that they’re going to be able to live their lives here comfortably when we leave. They are what we need to focus on.”

“Was it the right thing to do?” Broc asked, sounding confused. “Creating a new world with new people, because we aren’t able to give the magic we use back to the world. It seems unfair.”

Yuki had spent hours thinking about the exact same thing, so he understood why Broc had asked the question. “I don’t know.” Yuki smiled at Broc. “If we can make the lives of the people we created happy then maybe it’s not such a bad thing that we did. It does seem like what we’ve done is very selfish, and none of these people would have existed if we hadn’t of made the choices we did, but without them we might become extinct.”

“Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.” Landen shrugged. “We’re parasites, Yuki, who can’t accept that fact, and that’s why we destroyed the planet we left behind.”

“Everything we’ve done since we arrived on Athare has been in an attempt to make sure that we don’t do the same thing we did with our old home. It might have been the wrong thing to do. It might be our time to fade away, but we can’t change the choices we made now.” Yuki looked out the window at Kankirin before returning his attention to his group. “They exist now and in the six moons they’ve been alive they’ve made lives. Creating them was selfish, and probably the most selfish thing we’ve ever done, but walking away from them now they do exist would be worse.”

Landen shook his head. “Walking away from them might be the best thing we could do for them. They never asked to exist, and they’ve been created so we can use as much magic as we want without feeling guilty, so we should just let them live their lives the way they want.”

“I’m not planning on stopping them from living their lives. That’s not why we’re here.”

“What happens if we are stuck here permanently, Yuki?”

Yuki ran a hand through his hair, sighing. “I don’t know.”

Mirrored from K. A. Jones Writing.