More of the past

<Continues>

...Then it licks him. He can feel the tongues go all over his face in a surprisingly familiar manner.

"What?? This can't be..."

Lenny opens his eyes and push its heads out. The hell spawn stops licking his face and looks at him excitingly with all of its tongues out.

*woof*, it ...barks. Its giant tail is waving extremely fast behind, causing wind gusts strong enough to make trees to be pushed over.

"Are...are you Old Fart? oh dear...", Lenny's words stumbled from his mouth. The scary hell spawn in front of him is now acting exactly like a overly excited dog, running around him, barking and randomly taking his behind leg up on some random trees, except that this "doggy" is two hundreds times bigger than Old Fart and when it runs around, the earth is shaken.

"Wait wait wait, Old Fart, come here." Lenny shouts at the top of his lung, afraid that his tiny voice could never reach to such a giant dog. But it did, and the giant hell spawn runs toward him playfully, before about to lick his face with its blood red tongues again.

"No no, don't lick, bad boy. Lie down and let me look at you, lie down." Lenny pushes its heads out and orders it to lie down. The dog shakes its heads reluctantly lies down, putting all the heads on its front legs and stares at Lenny.

He slowly pat its middle head, and it seems to really like that. The other heads move closer, pushing the middle one aside to reach Lenny's hand. "Now this is not fair, I only have two hands, you know?", he says to the heads, and pats them. "I was wondering why Grandma Mely could survive in this place, and now I know why. You must be a very special dog she has." He smiles while the dog is enjoying its treat with its eyes half closed.

Now, when it is calmed down, Lenny takes his time to look at the dog again. It has red fur covered some parts on his badly scarred body. The claws are sharp, and seem like they are really hot, even though Lenny can not feel any heat at all. "You can melt rock with your claws, but why didn't they hurt me, doggy?" Lenny touch his hand on a really large scar on its right chest. He feels that this dog has been through a lot, and some what resemble himself, a soldier. Although the scar is old, but it still hurts Old Fart when Lenny touched it, as it shivered uncomfortably. Lenny can feel that, so he stroke the scar gently to make his dog feels safe. It still have mud and blood on some part of its body, but due to the enlarged size, they do not look as significant as before. Still, it is Lenny job to clean the dog.

A glimpse to the past

"Lets see how can I wash this huge doggy so he can be clean and clear for dinner!" He says to the dog, and whistle at it, signals it to jump into the stream. He also takes off his smelly, tattered uniform to throw himself into the water. Old Fart jumps after him excitingly, making the water splashes all over the place.

"Oh dear, you made me almost drowned here, bad doggy."

*woof woof woof*, the dog barks playfully while running around. It is too big to really swim in the stream, instead, it walks and runs. Lenny laughs out loud because of the dog. He feels like he has not have so much fun for a very long time. He dives down to see the tiny rocks beneath, and some algae swinging with the flow. The water is so fresh and worm, as if he is a baby inside its mother's womb. He never knows that he can hold his breath for such a long dive. There are many things he can not remember, even about himself, but this stream of freshwater took all of the anxiety away.

Suddenly, he sees something under the water when he investigates the source of the stream. The water goes out from under a big rock, but there is something shiny under that big rock too. Lenny swims over to take a closer look. Usually, the water flow pushes him back, but this time, even if he is diving toward its source, he can not feel any force to stop him. The whole flow is avoiding him, thus giving him a strange feeling that it wants him to get closer to its source. When reaching the bottom, he wipes away the leafs that got stuck under the rock and blocking the shimmering light he wants to see. As the leafs got wiped away, a glowing blossom appeared before his eyes. The purple light emits from it pure and tiny petals. Lenny immediately realize that this is one of the glowing blossoms Grandma Mely was talking about. It is the essence of a god, that is why it is so pretty and special.

"So you are the beauty that makes this whole spring different from the rest of this realm." Lenny thinks to himself. The blossom is there, fragile but beautiful at the same time. Just the same as Lenny, it somehow stays still under the extremely strong flow of water under the rock.  Lenny reaches his hands to the blossom, put it at the middle of his palm gently without breaking it off the fragile stem. A warm feeling runs over his heart.

He closes his eyes, starts to recall some blurry memories, where he was inside a huge building. The building is made of stone blocks, with knights in heavy metal armors guarding every doors, even if it has a hundred of doors. On the wall, there are hundreds of strange but beautiful painted pictures of people who he haven't met before, many of them were wearing golden crowns with countless of precious gems attached on. He then remember the soft, lovely voice of his mother who was holding his hand, the knights all were bowing before her. She walked him to a room where he met a girl. The girl is just about his age at that time, about eight, always smile and joyful. She was wearing a princess dress but running around just like a wild kid. His mother smiled to him and tell him that this was now his new home, and she was now his new mom. He asked her who is the little girl, and she told him that was his new sister. She then told them to love each other and be good with each other. He can not remember clearly his adopted mother's face, but he can remember every single detail of his newly adopted sister, who has a dark silky brown hair that blows up with the wind every time she runs and her wide, pure and innocent blue eyes that were always on pair with her big, obstreperous smile. "Hi big brother, you are so thin, haha", she said. He then recalls himself looking at himself in a giant mirror at the middle of that room. What he saw was a thin ginger boy with a deep, blue pair of eyes in a tattered, dirty clothing. His face was covered in dirt but his eyes shine lightly, like the ocean under the warm light of the sun above. The last thing he can remember was his adopted mother's voice, and she said: "Leonard, you will make a great king one day, my son."

Lenny open his eyes, while still holding the blossom. He realized that one of its petals has fell out and landed on his palm without him know that. The tiny petal still emit its shimmering purple light on his hand, then a second later, it dissolves into the water. However, it did not just dissolve away, but also left on his right palm a purple mark of its shape. The mark does not hurt him, but it gives Lenny an indescribable feel of someone is watching over him, makes him feel safe. "The grandma might know something about this, I will ask her when I get back to the house.", Lenny thinks to himself and release the blossom, leaves it there where it belongs to and start to emerge to the surface, looking for his dog.

<To be continued>