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Good Morning Moon
When we reached the dining room, I was hungrier than I
had been in a long time. The smells of the hot food had been wafting around the dining room, stirring the hunger within me. I sat down next to my mother, and allowed my wine glass to be filled with a light peach wine. I sipped it gingerly, feeling as if I had earned it, considering the ride I had been through that evening. My family had pairs of discussions occurring around the room the entire length of the meal. Dishes passed around us consisting of everything from hard breads and soft cheeses, to hard cheeses and soft breads.
Infectious laughter spread around the table
during the chocolate poultry course, and absolute silence hit when the rabbit braised in pear wine, and stuffed with cream cheese, lobster and mushroom(my favorite) with a beautiful creamy sauce arrived. I ate everything that was given to me, and by dessert was feeling so much better that I almost forgot I was to wait for my father instead of running off with an excited Aubrey and Trix. They were just asking me if I wanted to go on a night stroll before turning in, when I remembered.
“I’ll meet you guys outside in a little while.”
They both agreed, and as they walked off together, I was again reminded that I needed to talk to Aubrey alone. I sighed, and stood in the hallway outside of the dining room. I heard my father say he would meet my mother upstairs in a few, before walking around to me. He took my arm and led me into the library. At that moment, I knew we were going to the hidden room, though I wasn’t sure why. He pulled the latch down, which was disguised as a book (a book about a hidden door of all things).
When we entered the secret room,
he closed the door behind us. He lit a match, and put it to the few lanterns in the room. He then reached over and pulled the cloth off my globe while I sat on the window seat. The bridge of light connecting the globes had changed from pink to a medium pine green. I had guessed that it would be stronger after tonight, but I had a feeling that wasn’t what he wanted me to know.
“Your mother explained to you that if this bridge turns the color of your energy, you will become human in a sense, but she didn’t, I take it, tell you how that occurs.”
I thought about this hard for a moment, and the more I thought about it the more I realized I did not know how it occurred.
“Noo…” I whispered reluctantly.
“I thought not,” he sighed.
He supposed Grace had thought it wouldn’t come to that, so that there was no need to worry me needlessly, he however disagreed, right or wrong. I could tell it strained him to have to be the one to lay out whatever news he was about to tell me.
“Do I really need to know?”
He looked up at me with the most seriously concerned eyes I had ever seen from him.
“Yes, you need to know,” he pulled the desk chair over to the sill and sat down, taking my hands in his.
“Papa, you are frightening me," I whispered.
I was tired, and overly sensitive, and felt that it was not right to make me afraid for no reason.
“Raea, when a human makes a bond with our kind, what they are really doing, is taking our energy and fueling their emotions. The light changes on the globe because it is slowly draining you of your energy. When the bond is at its strongest, you will be at your weakest. You will be human because you will no longer have your energy to take the bridge home. In the human world, your body will feel the difference, and you will be made weaker until the moment the bond has completed and then you will become healthy again, but you will not be able to return anytime soon unless the energy is supplemented.”
“Supplemented? How is energy supplemented once it’s been drained?”
‘Maybe there was a way to bake my cake and eat it too? One can pray,’ I thought.
“Yes. For instance, if a human sacrifices its life for another human, all of the energy from the one who sacrificed is than given to the living human. It’s the same principle. If you were given someone else’s energy, you would regain the ability to come home, but that human would lose their life in the process.”
I couldn’t bring myself to even swallow.
That’s why I had felt so unwell physically tonight, so drained, because I had been, literally. On the one hand, the idea of never seeing him again came with too much grief to process, but on the other, being human or rather not an Etherian, would mean I would not come home again… for centuries. There appeared to be no option in which I could have both, and this realization caused tears to begin streaming down my face uncontrollably. My father knew I was exhausted, but it appeared I was also keeping something from him; in order for him to justify this reaction, he had to come to the conclusion I was not merely trying to defy my mother, as he had originally thought.
“What happened tonight Raea?” he asked in an ‘I’m your father and therefore you do not lie to me’ tone of voice.
After recalling the events on Earth, I cried again,
letting my father soak in the information. He wasn’t sure how to advise me. The fatherly side selfishly hoarded his daughter and didn’t feel any human was worthy of me sacrificing that much to be with. The man aside from the father could fathom, based on the evidence presented before him, that the human cared for me, and that I in return felt the same. He knew what it felt like to be infatuated, and wasn’t entirely sure it was anything more than that.
He wanted to say to me to end it now, it’s too dangerous,
take a break from painting and you will find love, but he wasn’t entirely sure even he believed that. In his experience, true love wasn’t like a flower that was bound to reappear each year in a different form. It occurred once, and you either hopped on the ride, or settled for a less consuming love. Now his gut, a thing he often relied upon, told him that there was something heavy weighing upon my decisions regarding this human, and yet he didn’t know to which way he should encourage me.
“Honey, there are so many conflicting messages I want you to receive. Right now, what I am going to advise is to give him the ‘ultimate test’. If he passes, then we will know more on what your next move should be, same with if he fails.”
I took a deep breath, to steady my voice, “You mean tell him? Tell him everything?”
It was against every rule he’d ever taught me.
There was so much at stake by doing so, in so many ways. He couldn’t bring himself to say anything and instead nodded. I was terrified of the possible results of such an action, and yet I had no idea that my father was far more terrified than I. He had advised something normally frowned upon by the Keepers of the Brush, but more importantly, either way, I would lose someone I cared about.
My choice was fairly simple: no Jack or two centuries without my family?
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Table of Contents
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