We have a phrase that we often lean into in the aftermath of events, “Well, that happened.” Depending on how it is enunciated, the phrase can imply a feeling of being overwhelmed, being resigned, or simple acceptance of the event or events that took place. Sometimes it carries multiple meanings and helps us move forward into the next series of events by allowing us to temporarily resolve things in our own minds for review later.
Sometimes, we forget to say it, and we try to push forward at cost to ourselves.
The sun was setting when I got into the park, and people were walking together, couples passing through the greenspace with fingers entwined. For a moment, I felt as if I was intruding, but one couple greeted me by way of a nod, and then it wasn’t quite so awkward. I followed the path until I crossed over to the far side of the park, and then I stuck my hands in my pants pockets and wandered over to the tree that grew on the node.
The Elemental was waiting for me, leaned up against the tree and playing with the leaves that dipped down to her like a child’s mobile. When I approached, she turned those deep brown eyes to me and tilted her head quizzically before she smiled. “Ah, hello there. I don’t see your son… did you come alone?” I wondered for a moment how she’d known that Tristan was my son, but then I considered that she could probably see more than I could, given her very literal nature.
“Yes, I wanted to thank you, and to return your gift. I’m sorry to say that I wasn’t an adequate caretaker, and it didn’t survive in my care. Whatever consequence this brings, I should bear it alone, for my son wasn’t a part of the events that brought its death.” I took my hands out of my pockets as I spoke, and by the end of my apology, I’d retrieved the twig from my shirt pocket and was offering it in ritualistic style, both hands together with the twig carefully wrapped in my handkerchief.
There was a raspy laugh, and I looked up to see the Elemental moving towards me with a soft smile. “It wasn’t meant to survive, child of Light.” She took the twig from me and held it up for a moment before it shimmered and vanished. “It was but a reliquary, a means by which you might survive your encounter with that which had more power than you. Without a link to Earth, you’d not have returned from the Gate.” So, she knew. I was being an idiot. Of course she knew; the power within the twig had been her own, and as an Elemental, she was connected to that very power.
I pocketed my handkerchief. “You gave me the Gate. The power you gave me linked me to the Gate and kept me alive within the Earth field. But how is it that I retained the Gate after the power was gone?” I still couldn’t feel any Earth based magic, could only sense the presence of the node as a wellspring that was beyond my reach.
“Gates can realign. It has been known to happen, child of Light. When circumstances are right, you are capable of such incredible things, are you not? Every day, you create such wonders of science and magic when necessity deems.” It took me a moment to realize that she was using ‘you’ in plural, and not meaning me, personally. “And when powers align, nothing in this world is impossible, for even opposites can combine to form a sum greater than their parts.”
She was telling me something, but I felt too dense to understand it. I frowned at her, attempting to comprehend, and as she watched me, it hit with a literal jolt. When powers aligned… Fire and Air. The Gate had been electric when I’d been caught by it, and I’d done it myself, had managed to create lightning from the combined essences of my powers. I looked at her in surprise and echoed my thoughts aloud. “Lightning.” She’d just called me a child of Light. Not Fire.
The Elemental’s smile widened, and I felt my stomach lurch. “You are powerful beyond your own belief, child of Light, but bound. It is within your capacity to free yourself, though that will come when it must. Attempting such too soon will end in your destruction.” That made me flinch, and she moved to pat me on the arm, a gentle touch that tingled with a magic I couldn’t identify. “Be at ease, child of Light. It would take much ill to bring you to that point.”
I regarded her with a wary resignation, deciding that secrets had little meaning to one such as herself. The only Elemental that could read me better would be a Fire elemental, and I studiously avoided them. “You clearly see my soul. There is much ill about it as it is. I do not doubt that I could lose myself to my powers and cause great harm. And yet, I would sooner destroy myself before it came to that.” Oh. Her smile told me that such an event was precisely what she was referencing. Bloody hell.
“Then we understand each other,” She moved away, turning towards the tree and reaching up to run her fingers through the leaves. “Time passes, child of Light. The humans do not like my presence after sundown. Visit me again; it has been many rings since I have had what your kind calls a friend.”
I felt as if the grass had been pulled out from under me. An Earth Elemental had just called me a friend. Me, the so-named child of Light, capable of bending Lightning to my will in time of need, antithesis to Earth. Potential Arcmage. But I was also a child of Ireland, with green in my soul, and a longing for rolling hills with scattered rocks that was sometimes so strong I could taste it. Perhaps that was what saved me in her eyes. I glanced to my feet, perhaps a reflex of propriety. “I would be honored.” When I looked up again, she was gone.
The walk back to my car wasn’t quite as lonely after that.
When I returned to the townhouse, Tristan was asleep, and I ghosted around the upstairs so as to not wake him. He’d changed the sheets on my bed, and clearly at a loss as to what to do with the ones he’d stripped from the bed before, he’d left them folded on the floor of my bathroom. I opened the bathroom closet, put the sheets in the laundry bag, and then closed it up and carried it downstairs. I’d put it out the back door in the morning for my service to pick it up. They’d have it and the rest of the contents back the day after, freshly laundered or dry cleaned, whichever was appropriate. Granted, I paid handsomely for the service, but it beat trying to make heads or tails of it myself. Housework wasn’t my strong suit.
Ten o’clock found me standing outside in my garden indulging in a cigarette, and I watched as a silver-colored Audi pulled into the parking lot and parked beside the rental. Curious, I moved across to the walkway and saw Xelander exit the car. Well. He’d gotten around to buying a car after all. I shouldn’t have been surprised that it was a solid vehicle that was anything but flashy while still managing to be a respectable expense. “Xelander… come by to check on me and make sure I’m not doing anything terribly self-destructive?” I flicked the cigarette and took a drag to make my point.
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He approached with a chuckle, and those ice blue eyes looked me over before he replied. “You seem to be managing, no matter what you do to yourself. Miss Kelly was quite adamant that you needed to be checked on as well. She said something about you not being a Boy Scout, and that you might have been injured in the explosion?” That would explain a great deal.
“You and I know better than that though, don’t we?” I retorted, finishing the cigarette and reducing the butt to ash in midair. “That whole self-healing aspect, you know?” Not that Rebecca Kelly would know about that. Hell, she had such a reaction to the fire that I wasn’t about to introduce her to any other magic. In fact, the less I interacted with her would probably be for the better.
“Yes, but I told her that I would stop by, so I have stopped by. Teimhean…I,” He paused, and then closed the distance between us, stopping within arm’s reach and sighing. “I owe you an apology. Suzu and I… have spoken at length this evening, and though she was reluctant to discuss it, I understand more now.” I’d never seen him look so defeated, and it hurt my heart, burning in the scar etched across my chest. I looked away, feeling the color drain from my face, as I fought a surge of magic.
Leaves crunched as Xelander moved to grip my arm, and my magic calmed immediately. “Teimhean, talk to me.” He claimed to not have magic, but what I felt was a grounding and centering that could only have come from him.
Before I could respond to Xelander, the side door opened and Tristan came running outside, breathless for the effort of getting down the stairs. “Da… what’s going on… Uncle Xelander?!” Well, hell. As I stood there, catching my breath and trying to figure out what sort of magic my brother was throwing, my son tugged his sweatpants a little higher on his waist and stood shirtless in my garden, staring at us. Welcome to my life.
Xelander insisted on assisting me to a chair in the living room, and Tristan headed for the kitchen for a bottle of water for me. I grumped the entire time because I wasn’t an invalid, and they were treating me as if I’d just been hit upside the head. Technically I’d been kicked in the chest by a rouge surge of magic, but I didn’t feel like telling either of them that. Instead, they made a show of taking care of me, and I made a show of fussing in return. They had a moment of male egotistical pride, and I went through the appropriate sulking motions, though to be honest, I was grateful for them both. I wasn’t about to tell them that, but they knew anyway.
“So, Uncle Xelander, what brings you to Charleston?” Tristan asked, unaware that Xelander had been living in the area. “Are you visiting like I am?” He’d retrieved water for himself and Xelander, and they were now parked in the living room, ostensibly keeping an eye on me in the guise of idle chatter. I watched the pair of them in turn, trying to settle my body and magic, and finding myself failing.
Xelander seemed to notice my discomfort, and reached out to my wrist, taking my pulse as he glanced back to Tristan. “I’ve been in Charleston for what, a month now, Teimhean?” He frowned at me and retrieved a pen flashlight from his pocket, moving to turn it on and shine it in my eyes. “Teimhean, I need you to focus on the light. Look right here…” Truth to tell, it was getting harder to focus and darkness was tingling along the edges of my sight.
I blinked and found myself in my bedroom, lying in bed with no memory of getting there. Last I remembered, I’d been downstairs in the living room with Xelander shining his penlight in my eyes. I sat up, the sheet falling off me and discovered that I was shirtless, and an immediate check found that my pants were still on. There was that, at least. I found myself unwilling to get up, and I lay back in bed and fell back into unconsciousness.
I slept fitfully, slipping through one dreamscape to another, disjointed fever dreams of intangible horrors searching for me, of things beyond imagination chasing me through the empty hallways of memory. They reached, never quite grasping, and I slid from terror to terror with breathtaking speeds. I couldn’t wake; but I was vaguely aware that I wasn’t alone. I couldn’t see who stood with me, helping me escape that which tried to keep me, but they were there.
Trees rushed in around me, a green leafy bower forming protection over my head from the storm that raged around, and I felt at home, at peace. It was a feeling that I hadn’t had in too long, and the rich, green scent of life filled my nose and lungs. I breathed it in like a drowning man gasping for oxygen, leaning against the rough bark of a tree, reveling in the spirit of the land. This was Ireland, the wooded copse near my old cottage.
The brook rippled nearby, and I felt myself drawn to it, moving amongst the trees by instinct until I found the rock once more, and sat where I had spent my childhood days. Hours upon hours had found me here, lying in the soul of the world, simply existing. I sat again, leaning back against the rock as I had done many times, and closed my eyes in peace.
When I opened my eyes again, there was sunlight filtering through the room, and I threw my arm up over my face to shield my eyes from transmitting the sudden light to my brain. Normally, I didn’t handle the transition well, but for some reason, I didn’t feel the usual onslaught of sensations overwhelming me. Cautiously, I moved my arm and leaned up on my elbows to look around the room.
“Uncle Xelander wasn’t joking; you do wake up poorly.” My son was parked in the chair over by the fireplace, looking up at me from the book that was resting in his lap. “You don’t sleep very well, either. I reckon that’s why you don’t. But there’s times when you have to… and your body, it takes over for you when you try to push it. Least, that’s what Uncle Xelander said. Me? I’d say you’re just too damned stubborn to rest when you think that there are others who need you.”
Loathe as I was to admit it, that sounded about right. On both counts. I sat up and swung my legs over the side of the bed, grateful to be still wearing my pants. I wasn’t a prude, mind, but there were some things you simply didn’t do in front of your own son, and walking around in the buff was one of those things. “That was you, wasn’t it, Tristan? Keeping my dreams? I think… no, I felt you slipping me through them.”
He looked across the room to the curtained window, and then looked back to me, giving me another one of those facial expressions so familiar I knew how it felt on my face. “Yeah, that was me.” He sighed and shook his head. “And I’ve no idea what your dreams are trying to tell you, Da, but your subconscious is seriously twisted.”
I looked to Tristan, who looked back with such a perfectly bland expression that I wondered precisely what he knew. “And how hard did you have to push the test to be classed a D in thoughtmagic, hm?” When he looked away, I knew I’d made the point. “You’re class A; you didn’t want them to know about it. Why not?” I had my suspicions, but I wanted to hear it from him.
“What, so I’d be assigned a minder to keep track of me for when I went stark raving mad? Someone to keep me in line and keep me from simply living in others’ heads? Or they’d get in my head and twist me all round until my mind was a maze and I couldn’t find my way out for trying. I Dreamwalk, Da, and that’s not a safe thing to be bandied about as public knowledge.” He… had a point. Dreamwalkers could exert their will over a sleeping person and in time, drive them to the brink of insanity. Just like hypnosis, however, Dreamwalkers couldn’t force someone to act against their will. But someone on the edge of insanity could be easily manipulated.
“Yeah, I understand. Look, I think there’s someone I need to introduce you to… and while I’m bound to regret it at the start, its better you meet her now than later. Let me get a shower, and…” I looked at the clock on the mantel and sighed. I’d slept the better part of the day. “Right, shower.” Then Suzu.
Tristan shook his head and stood from the chair as I headed into the bathroom. I heard him close the bedroom door behind him as he left, and then I started the water for my shower. After that, I supposed it was time to let the proverbial cat out of the bag and take Tristan to the Bell Tree. My life was about to get significantly more interesting.
