In the strangest of ways, the most important things we ever learn are from those we least expect. Engus was much like most of us, in the way that he wasn't really like most of us. He grew up the youngest brother of three older brothers, Aiden, Braendan, and Cabhan, in wealth and royalty, along with his father, Liam, and his mother, Keva, in the Province of Somewhere. He didn't care much for being a prince, or wild quests, or hunting game, or talking politics like his brothers did.
When he did quest, his legs got tired and he had to be carried home by his father. When he did feast, he was content with a few carrots and a bread roll, and gave the rest of his food to the animals. When he did hunt, he befriended the animals, giving them all funny names like "Beatrice" and "Claude", and watched in horror as his siblings gleefully slaughtered their families. When they did talk politics, he sat bewildered that they never bothered to just talk things out with their enemies.
Engus was never as fast, nor as tall, nor as strong, as his brothers. However, he ceased to amaze them with his impeccable ability of speech. Even Adults would stand in awe, as he used words like vigor, or splendor, or circumgyrate. (He found all these words in a cookbook.) Wherever his brothers went, they would never dare to leave little Engus behind, for when they got caught punting sheep, or stealing sweets from the shoppe, or exploring ancient burial grounds, if they got caught Engus would always find an excuse to get them out of trouble.
"They were putting the sheep back in their pens, but they were in such a haste to save them all."
"These poor boys thought that these sweets here were left out for peasants, we promise we were going to share them. Please don't chastise us like mother does."
"Grandfather was sleeping and that abominable priest left him here, so we're trying to wake him up."
To his brothers, Engus was good for little more than spewing out intricate excuses for their wild endeavors. They had no reason to respect, or even acknowledge his existence, so they rarely did. To them, success was being ahead of other people, and making sure that nobody else felt good about themselves, only further validated their existence. In this regard Engus made the three of them very proud. Engus never wanted to be the way he was. In fact at times he wished he could have been just like his brothers. he hated the fact that he stood out from the rest of them. He hated it when his father would announce to his guests, "Here are my three sons, and Engus.". He wished he could see his father as the hero that everybody else saw him as.
Like most mothers of wide eyed, naive, outcasts, Keva was the only nurturing family to Engus, and when Engus would fake an injury to stay home from one of his brother's disputes, he would visit his mother and sew, while she would speak to him about destiny.
"Life is like a gentle tapestry, all strings come together to create something beautiful." she would say to him, "Each string comes together to create something beautiful in the end, and although things look odd and strange at first, and we might not know where things are going, if we are truly patient we see what was destined to be."
Now, it wasn't that Engus didn't like his mothers speeches on destiny, fate, and responsibility, he was just terrified of the concept of fate. If Engus was truly destined for something, what if it wasn't what he wanted? Does that mean that he had no choice in where his life would take him? Was his entire existence just a pawn in someones bigger scheme? If Engus is destined to do something great, does that mean he has no free will or choice in what comes of him? Why should he attempt to put forth an effort in life if he was to fall into some inevitable fate?
Engus liked to think of life as one big field of sheep. Some of them obey, some of them listen, and some of them get punted over fences by his older brothers. But the one thing they all have in common, is that none of them truly go why. You see one can follow "prophecy", "tradition", or "destiny", and achieve what someone else would call "greatness", but other people may disregard these currents, break the rules, defy all odds, and maybe succeed. to engus life was short, but not short enough to take short cuts. His destiny was in his hands, and he not willing to let anything stop him.
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