By Morgan Greene
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Dedicated to my sister, whose creativity contest submission won 2nd place!
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Chapter 1: The Mohawk and the Road (Lemmy)
We’d been walking for three hours straight, ever since our motorbikes dropped dead that time ago. The pixels in the road we’d been traveling always seemed to take the shape of our tough, scaly feet when they were pressed down onto them. The setting sun made the clouds that were seemingly right beside us look hazy. Yet, even with the clouds acting as some shelter from it, the sun managed just fine to set off a gleaming glow by bouncing its majestic rays off of this multicolored highway. I was exhausted. And my 11-year-old brother and I never seem to tire out back at home. But now… all I could think about were my little feet, feeling so heavy and worn… trekking along all the while leaving prints in the trail.
“Are we there yet?” my baby brother complained. I rolled my eyes. Junior, my seven-year-old sibling, was a brat through-and-through. He never knew when to shut his mouth.
“Be quiet, Junior!” eleven-year-old Larry, my favorite brother, shot back. I weakly patted him on the back as I passed. Junior stuck his lip out in defiance and huffed.
I had six brothers, actually. I was ten, so five of them were older than me. Morton, the eldest son and child, was nineteen. He led the pack. Right about then, having been ignoring the squabble between Junior and Larry, Morton squinted from the sun’s rays as he continued to stay ahead of us younger ones.
Another brother, Ludwig, who was as moody and grumpy as a teenager could be, wailed out just then. “Morty, bro, the kid’s got a point! When are we gonna break for rest, for crying out loud? My legs are like jelly!”
“Chill out, dude,” the second eldest rasped through his husky, radical-sounding voice. “But, seriously, Mort… is there, like, a cheeseburger place around here or something? I’m starved!”
“Roy, you’re always starved. It’s no wonder you’re so big and bulky,” Ludwig stated as well as he could manage without snickering, in pure, evil delight.
Roy turned to face him, towering over him in intimidation. “You calling me fat?”
Ludwig gulped, chuckled nervously, and backed away, bumping into Iggy, my next favorite brother. “Hey!” Ludwig scolded an innocent Iggy. “Watch where you’re going!”
I must say that fifteen-year-old Iggy is easy to feel bad for. He gets beat up on a lot. I do too, but that’s because I barely hit the fifth percentile in height. Iggy’s just smart. Okay, kinda geeky sometimes… well, a lot of the time… but still. You shouldn’t be teased purely because of your brains.
“Sorry,” Iggy muttered, kicking up the glitter of the trail half-heartedly.
“Guys, guys! Please! You know how stressed out I get when people shoot me down with unimportant questions!” Morton declared, exhaling heavily. Ludwig and Roy obeyed, though they still pestered each other, only in silence now, by gently shoving each other. Iggy remained just as quiet as he’d been the entire trip. Still, Morton seemed to subconsciously agree with both of his younger brothers, for he eyed the sides of the road and further out into the distance, where the sun nearly blinded us all. He then murmured, “there’s gotta be a pit stop around here somewhere…”
I hoped there was. My wimpy, stubby legs couldn’t take it anymore! However, it was further made known that I wasn’t alone…
“Ugh… I’m tired and sweaty and achy and so can we please just, like, take five on the side of the road? Maybe have a picnic?” My only sister, thirteen-year-old Wendy, whined in agony. She conveniently suggested this right at the moment of her stomach grumbling. She whimpered and added, “See? I’m hungry, too!”
“So am I,” Roy piped in.
“We all know!” Ludwig snapped grumpily.
I chuckled. Ludwig was always cranky when he needed food. I knew that he was just as famished as the rest of us. Or did I? Ludwig, being sixteen, was cranky often, actually.
Morton sighed. “Look, guys, I just want to keep going until we reach a fork. The next kingdom ahead is supposed to be Shy Guy Mines. They’ve got very nice luxury hotels and buffets. We should be there soon.”
“Oh, come on!” Ludwig replied in his usual hasty tone of voice. “All that traveling, and we’re still within the boundaries of the land our father rules? This is such a waste of time!”
“Dude…” Roy shook his head in distress.
“You’re always in such a hurry, Ludwig! It’s not like we’re competing in the Olympics.” Larry backed up his eighteen-year-old, cheeseburger-loving brother.
“Oh, please!” Ludwig quickly became offended. “Go play a quote-unquote ‘friendly game of kickball’ during recess at school and let me see you not try to murder your opponents in order to win!”
Larry scoffed and stuttered, but nothing more came out of his fanged mouth. I groaned at the existence of this unnecessary argument. Little did I know - though I probably should have known - that I was about to be scolded for it.
“Lemmy, don’t start,” Morton, who was likely already on a short fuse due to Ludwig’s and Roy’s usual shenanigans, warned me. Realizing just how much my siblings had a point about how long we’d been walking, it was my turn to huff. In fact, I even looked back behind me at Junior, who was lazily dragging himself along, only to get a stuck-out tongue in response. I wrinkled my nose at him and turned back to face the direction that we were headed… the direction that we’d been headed for what seemed to be infinity.
“How much longer…?”
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