Page 90 of Hollow

“No, I just miss how you two would do most of the walks,” Jack said. “I would get dragged along maybe once a week. Now, it’s like almost every day.”

“Walking is healthy for you.”

“I’m a living, breathing corpse,” Jack scoffed. “I don’t think I have to worry about my health.”

“It is good for the mental health, too,” Dimitri insisted. “Nature offers a lift in the spirits.”

“It could offer some damn shade.” Jack squinted, cupping a hand over his pumpkin shadowy eyes as the sun pierced between branches.

Dimitri politely asked the trees to be considerate. Their snickers could be heard just beneath the rustle of leaves caught in a breeze.

“If you didn’t whine so much, the trees wouldn’t find you to be such an easy target.”

“I knew they were doing it on purpose.” Jack scowled at random trees, and Dimitri laughed.

“Those trees do not move,” he explained. “Well, not without a little assistance.”

“Oh, well, which one of these bastards is out to get me?”

“No one and everyone,” Dimitri chuckled.

As they continued their hike, the crows kept their distance along with the wolves. Even the trees kept their conversations burrowed deep beneath the soil, communicating through their roots. Dimitri rarely asked for privacy on his walks, and while he didn’t explicitly ask this time around, his aura must have radiated the emotion strongly enough for all of nature to understand.

“You’re in a good mood.”

“I am,” Dimitri said, trying to find the right segue into the conversation he wanted, but he was not nearly talkative enough to string together random connected topics until he reached the one he intended to have. “I wanted to share a bit about my family with you.”

“Oh?” Jack asked with wide eyes.

“These hikes we take, the woods… They have sparked memories. Good times. Sentimental times.”

“As you know, I have a few siblings. All very different from me and very different from each other. Well, my brothers were very similar in one respect.”

“What’s that?”

“Let us just say, they got all the violent streaks in the family.”

“Tell me about them.”

“My oldest brother, second oldest in the family, was named Florien,” Dimitri said, trying not to let the lump in his throat swell as he attempted to use past-tense phrasing about his siblings. Because they were in the past, forever, but he could still cherish them as if they were right beside him and Jack. “My other brother, also older, was named Mikhail.”

“You’re the youngest, right?” Jack asked with a musing expression.

“Correct, though my sister, Elena, definitely acted like the baby of the family,” Dimitri said.

It was mostly true, and she couldn’t protest his opinion on the matter.

“If you thought our little sparring match was tough, you should have met my brothers,” Dimitri said with a light laugh, recalling the few times he’d been dragged into a fight against them. “Usually, they reserved their combative nature for one another, but on the rare occasion, they sought to teach me how to defend myself.”

“How’d that go?”

“It went well, more or less. The less being I sometimes got thrown off a mountain top or tossed into a freezing river.”

“Jeez.” Jack let out an awkward laugh. “Fun times, I take it?”

“I miss it. There are very few people you want to strangle and hug in the same day. My brothers and sisters were such people.”

“I get that, I mean, as much as an only child can, I guess.” Jack shrugged. “That’s pretty much how I feel about Astaroth. Heavy on the strangle part.”