The Remembering
I looked up to the sky. An easy thing for a hawk to do. The human in me didn't want to.
Tobias, you have to deal with it sooner or later, I told myself. The sun setting had been beautiful. Now the sky was a twilight blue, full of stars. A saw a shooting star go by. I remembered a book I had read when I was little- "When ever a shooting star goes by, someone has just died."
Yeah. Great, Tobias. Think depressing thoughts, I scolded myself. But my life was depressing. I was basically an orphan, my real father was an alien. I was thrown from aunt to uncle until I got trapped as a hawk. I know nothing about my mother. My friends and I were fighting an interstellar battle. My best friend was an alien, and my uncle, in a sense. The girl I liked- she was a completely different species. I was on the Yeerk's most wanted list. And I was living in a meadow, looking up at the sky, thinking about my dead father.
I imagined my father. He had been sick- dying- the first time I had ever seen him. It was also the last time I had seen him. He was Prince Elfangor, an Andalite. Everybody else had been there- Rachel, Jake, Cassie, and Marco. We had not known about Ax yet. He had given us the power to morph then.
Then Visser Three had landed. Everybody else ran, but I stayed. I felt a bond with Elfangor- and maybe he had about me. He had sent pictures to my mind- I still sort them out, late at night, when my human mind fights the hawk. I hope that he known about me. But I shall never know, until we meet again.
Yes, I do believe in heaven. I'm still not so sure about God, though. I will fight, help my friends, until I am brought there. To meet my father.
I looked up into the sky with the Hawk's mind. It saw a time when it was supposed to be in its' equivalent to sleep. A sky full of danger, full of predators. A sky covering the ground, filled with prey- but it was not time to hunt.
I looked through the hawk mind, up to the sky. I saw the entire galaxy. I saw the star that Ax had told me one night was close to his home planet. That was were my father had lived.
Sometimes I think about going back, if I would change things. To never meet my father, or even just to try to bail sooner on our first mission. I would never give up meeting him. But would I give up being in this form?
I'm not sure.
Or even going back to being pure hawk, forgetting about everything- my friends, my family. Those were desperate nights. But I always shook those thoughts out of my head- What would Elfangor say?
If I was in my human morph, I would have grinned. I could ask Rachel to make one of those string bracelets, and instead of "What Would Jesus Do?" it'd be "What Would Elfangor Do?"
"Would you know my name, if I saw you in Heaven? Would it be the same, if I saw you in haven? I must be strong- and carry on, because I know, I don't belong here in heaven... Time can break you down, break your knees, break your heart, have you begging please, begging please..."
My aunt had liked that song. I did, too. Now. I guess I never really understand it until now. A guy had wrote it when his son had died.
Would Elfangor know my name? I hoped so. But until I did meet him, I wanted to fight- so he would be proud, when I meet him.
I saw an owl fly unto my clearing.
{Hey, Tobias.}
{Hey, Rachel.} I replied.
{Wanna fly?}
{Sure.} I took off, following her.
"And there'll be no more tears in heaven."