Lonely Hearth

Chapter 1 : The Tower

The moon was bright again tonight.

From beyond my window the stars twinkled up in the clear night sky above. Some were mere pinpricks of light in the distance, flickering and winking like dancing candle flames caught in a breeze. Others were large and shining brightly as they cast their light down to earth. The few clouds that did hang in the sky were thin and barely visible. They were no match for the moon's brightness and the clearness of the air so high above.

My fingers trailed across the window sill as I stared out into the night sky, trying to remember all the constellations I had read about in the various books behind me. Ursa Major burned brightly above and Orion's Belt shone down. Andromeda and Ophiuchus were up there dancing, Hercules and Gemini scattered up in the heavens. Hercules, Cancer, Draco, Lyra, Pegasus. The list just went on and on. From my tower, it felt like I could just reach out and tip Libra's scales.

But of course I couldn't.

I sighed, reluctantly lowering my eyes back down to earth below. There wasn't much to see down there from my window at night. Aside from the circular clearing I was in, trees stretched out on all sides across the wide expanse of land like a sea of nature, plant life and the green of earth dominating my field of vision. As far as I could tell, that's all there was. Trees, trees, and more trees. There was a small creek that ran across the clearing of my tower, the distant sounds of moving water too far below to hear. It reminded me of a silly saying that I had read about in my books. If a tree fell with no one around to hear it fall, did it make a sound?

Of course, I thought. But I wouldn't know; I was too far away to hear.

I felt my gaze inevitably drawn upwards once more. A faint smile brought the corners of my lips up.

"You're a new face, aren't you?" I murmured to the stars up in the heavens. "Mind telling me how you got up there?"

The girl running across the stars didn't reply.

I had been most bemused when I first noticed her up there a few years ago. One night when I had just finished sewing together a quilt I had made out of boredom, I chanced a glance out the large window out of hope that Mother would come visit me soon. It was always fun when Mother came to visit. She would hug me and tell me stories of how the world was like outside, how beautiful the world was.

That's when I saw her up in the sky. A bow in hand, legs in motion, a glowing circlet of shooting stars ringing her head, the majestic constellation shone brightly like she had always been there for the whole world to see. I liked to call her the Hunter, it just felt right to me. Call me crazy, but I sometimes liked talking to her, too. She wasn't like Ophiuchus or Altair and Vega where they were so distant and far. The Hunter just felt closer, warmer. Human.

"The stars are truly beautiful tonight," a voice said behind me.

I jolted out of my thoughts. "They are."

A woman was kneeling by the fireplace to my left. Previously unlit, the fireplace was now blazing and radiating cozy warmth to every corner of my tower room. I waited as she held her hands out to the flames, the flames dancing and calming at her presence, settling down to a mellow and warm hearth. When she was apparently satisfied with the hearth, she turned to face me.

"Have you been well?" Mother asked with a warm smile.

"Of course, Mom," I returned the smile. It wasn't rare for Mother to drop by, but they weren't often enough for me not to feel happy when she visited. "Aside from burning my hands one time last week while I was baking, everything's been fine."

"That is good to hear," she said quietly. Her warm brown eyes regarded me in the way they always did whenever she visited. It was hard for me to pin down what it was I saw there. It was a definite look of nurture and caring, I could practically feel the affection radiating from her gaze alone. The protective watch of a mother over her child, I supposed. But as much as she tried to hide it, I could feel something akin to sadness there, too. Almost as though as much as she loved me, she felt equally sorry for me. I wondered why that was.

I hurried across the circular room, my footsteps tapping and echoing in the high-domed ceiling. "Cookie?" I offered from the kitchen as I held up a plate of the treats.

My mother followed me and accepted one of the pastries. She ate one and smiled. "Not bad. I distinctly recall the first time you tried baking these you set the oven on fire."

"Chef Ramsay was on yesterday. Thought I'd try making something special for once, regardless of how risky my blazing cookies would be."

"You mean that angry man that always yells from the television?"

"That's the one."

Mother chuckled, brushing a crumb from my cheek. "I was not confident that bringing that mortal device was a good idea, but it appears that my confidence was true. Though, I am uncertain what kind of influence a furious cook will have on you."

"Nothing worse than me screaming at a teapot, I assure you," I smiled.

Mother watched me as I picked up a couple of books lying around the floor and sorted them neatly back into the wall across from the fireplace (the entire thing was practically a ginormous bookshelf). It might sound awkward for someone to watch you do every little thing, but I didn't particularly mind it. I was alone most of the time, after all. Some company every once in a while was nice.

"Did anything special happen outside? Anything cool you did?" I asked her.

She smiled and nodded, her pretty black curls swishing over her shoulders. I listened to her stories as I tidied up my room. I loved it when my Mother told me things about what was happening outside, what she did out in this place called Camp Half-Blood and this place she referred to as Olympus. The animals that soared through the air like pegasi or harpies, or creatures that lived in the water like hippocampi or naiads, and even beings one with the trees like nymphs and dryads. It was never boring to hear her talk about the people she met. I knew I wanted to meet them, too.

I heard Mother cough after I put my quilt back over my bed in the corner. I looked back over at her who was still standing by the kitchen table.

She shifted on her feet and my suspicions were confirmed that something was on her mind. ". . . Erm, my son," she started a little uncertainly. I glanced at her expectantly. "Artemis has told me that she has heard your prayers."

I raised an eyebrow quizzically. "Artemis. . . that friend of yours who hates guys?"

"Well, she doesn't necessarily hate males, she just doesn't find much comfort in their presence. . . or maybe no comfort at all. . . okay fine, maybe she does have a slight dislike of males. I mean, she hasn not turned any man into a jackalope yet this whole year," my mother said almost to herself. "And yes, she is my friend."

I tilted my head in slight confusion. "I don't think I've ever prayed to her before. Should I have?"

Her brown eyes crinkled in a smile. "She heard you speaking to her lieutenant up in the sky. Artemis thought that perhaps it would be in order for me to pay a visit to my son who went as far as to start a conversation with her most loyal Hunter."

I stood in silence for a moment, wondering what the heck my mom was talking about. Lieutenant in the sky? Last I checked, the only thing in the sky were the - My eyes were instantly drawn to the window and upwards once more, and they widened. "Oh!" I exclaimed in excited realization, "the pretty girl up there is Artemis's lieutenant? The one with the bow and glowing circlet? Yeah, I was bored so I thought I'd try talking to her. She never responded."

"Ah, but that doesn't mean she didn't listen," my mother chuckled. "It may seem as though we never listen to our children's calls, but we do. We listen and we do care." She shifted on her feet again. It was rare for her to seem so uneasy about something. "It. . . It has come to my attention that perhaps you are unhappy up here in this tower. That I have been too protective of you for too long. You're fourteen years of age now, my son, and you have not even set foot out of this clearing."

I waited for her to go on in silence. I did feel bored sometimes up here in the tower alone, and I most certainly longed to see what it was like beyond that sea of trees down in the earth below. But why was Mother bringing this up now? And why was she bringing it up? It was always me who had tried to convince her to take me to see her friends (or family, she called them. Everyone she went to see was family). She always gently told me that it was best that I didn't, as her friends were all extremely temperamental. The aforementioned Artemis had a fierce dislike of males, a guy named Apollo liked poetry a lot and smote anyone who said he was bad, and an assortment of other people she mingled with.

"Are you implying. . . ?" I let the thought hang in the air.

Mother looked at me with those warm brown eyes again, the same look in her eyes again. "I love you so much more than you can understand, my son," she said, her voice soft. I could tell she meant every word of it. But I could also tell what was coming next. Mother's eyes lowered to the floor. "But. . . I am afraid that it cannot be so."

A breath I didn't know I was holding slowly left through my nose.

"I am sorry, please understand," Mother continued. "Please forgive me." Her voice was fragile, almost as though she were about to cry. I didn't understand why she took everything so hard, when I should have been the one angry and crying. But something in her voice told me that she did feel sorry, and that if there was something she could do about it, then she would want nothing more than for me to leave the tower, too. I just didn't understand what held her back.

I carefully made my way back over to the kitchen, putting a hand on her shoulder. "It's okay, I get it." I don't. "I'll stay here."

Her eyes were bright and reflected the firelight, tearful when she looked back up to me. There was a blaze of warmth and love there, a fierce determination that burned in her from her very soul. "I promise," she said firmly. Her voice no longer shook. "I promise, Aubrey. One day, you will leave this tower if it is the one thing I will accomplish in this century. I swear it on the River Styx."

Somewhere far above, thunder boomed across the sky as the words left my mother's lips. I wondered if that was Zeus's occasional check in or what.

A ghost of a smile found its way onto my face. "Don't mind if I hold you to it, Mom. I'd love to meet those people you've told me about, the family you've told me about, go to the places you've told me about."

"You will," she smiled gently, taking my hands in hers. "One day, you will get to do everything I've told you about and so much more."

I couldn't help believing her just a little when she sounded so convinced herself. "Yeah."

Gently, I pulled my hand away. "It's getting late, Mom. You should head back to Olympus. I think you said that Demeter and Hera were waiting for you tonight?"

She glanced out the window as if just realizing how late it was, the brilliant moon already halfway through its journey across the sky. "Yes, of course. It was inconsiderate of me to visit you so late. You should rest."

I nodded, trying to conceal my disappointment. I could only guess the next time I would see my Mother again.

I watched her in respectful anticipation, expecting her to disappear in a poof of pleasant smelling smoke as she always did when she took her leave, kissing me softly on the forehead. But this time, she surprised me when she took my hand and led me to my bed in the corner of the room. I couldn't remember the last time she had tucked me in for the night. But the familiar warmth, the careful and full hearted affection I felt when she wrapped the blankets up to my chin were familiar to me. It felt. . . right. It was a foreign sensation.

My Mother gently brushed my bangs back from my eyes, black just like her pretty black curls that hung past her shoulders.

I fell into the comforts of sleep listening to her quiet lullaby, a song in a language I didn't know but somewhere deep inside me, understood. The song of Home.

My final thoughts as I drifted off to sleep were of the day that my Mother promised I would leave the tower. The day I would finally be free from my own isolation.

Little did I know just how soon that day would come.