AN: There really is a part of Afghanistan called Mordar Koh and there really is a volcano by this name! Again, we write this for our personal enjoyment, but we also really enjoy reviews. Setting now is present day. Pheas & Theo
CHAPTER TWO: The Inheritance
Sophia and Brandon sat on the floor of their mother's silent apartment. There was, after all, nothing else to sit on. The place was completely empty, except for their own suitcases.
"I never loved her," Sophia announced.
"Soph!" her brother scolded.
"It's true," she shot back calmly. "You know it is. And neither did you."
He shrugged. "But what good is it to talk about it? She's gone."
"Aren't you still angry at her? Because I am."
He shrugged again. "She had a hard life and she died hard. I just feel sorry for her." His bright blue eyes were kind, as always. "It will only make you feel bad to stay angry, Soph."
Sophia closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She hated it when Brandon sounded more grown up than she did.
"We should probably go see the lawyer now, though I doubt she left us anything."
Brandon nodded. "She had very little to give."
Sophia sighed and rose gracefully to her feet, offering her brother a hand up.
She was right, of course. Her mother had left them nothing; the apartment was a rental and even her furniture and jewelry had been sold to pay off her credit card debt.
"I'm very sorry for your loss," the lawyer said with efficient kindness. "There's just one more thing." He held an envelope out to Sophia.
"What's this?" she asked.
"I don't know," the lawyer smiled. "But your mother left instructions that you were to have it in the event of her death."
She opened the envelope and pulled out a notecard with a set of keys taped to it. There was an address of a bank printed at the top, and a handwritten note scrawled beneath.
"I am sorry I wasn't a better mother, but I always loved you and just wanted to keep you safe. Take care of your brother."
"Looks like keys to a safety deposit box," the lawyer observed, and she looked at him sharply. He held up both hands. "The estate has been settled. No one else has a claim if it's something of value."
"Not likely," Sophia scoffed.
"Maybe it will have some sentimental value," the lawyer said, not very discreetly looking at his watch. He was now fifteen minutes into no longer making money on this client and needed to move on.
"Thank you for your help," Brandon said, standing up and holding out his hand. The lawyer shook it heartily.
"My pleasure, young man. And you let me know when you're done with college if you decide to go to law school. I'd be glad to have you work here in the summers."
"Thank you, sir," Brandon said with a smile, hurrying after his sister, who had already stomped out the door.
"I'm the one that's in law school," she fumed. "The only way you'd ever be a lawyer is if you could represent robots. Or Dr. Spock."
"That's Mr. Spock, Soph. Dr. Spock is someone else. And you know any firm would be lucky to have you. As far as I know you've never lost an argument."
"Very funny," she grumped. "Suck up."
He held his hand out and took the card from her, his face carefully blank.
"Sorry, Bran," Sophia whispered, knowing that he would be hurt that his mother had no last words for her son. But he just shrugged.
"Let's go see if our mother left us any legacies other than disappointment, shall we?"
Sophia gave him a fierce hug. They left the building arm in arm.
A couple of hours later, they were back in the empty apartment they had shared with their mother, a small box on the floor between them.
"Well," said Sophia, reaching for it, "bombs away." She slipped the knife she always kept strapped to her forearm into her hand and slit the package open carefully. Reaching inside, she pulled out a bundle of letters, frowning as she examined the one on the top of the stack. They were all to her and Brandon, though she didn't recognize the address - a post office box in Culver City. Her eyes widened as she recognized the return address.
"Oh my God," she breathed, flipping quickly through the stack. "Brandon." she said helplessly, looking at him in shock.
"What?" he answered, alarmed, reaching for the letters in her nerveless fingers.
"He did write to us. She just didn't let us have them."
He knew right away who she meant, and eagerly slipped the first letter out of the stack.
They were up half the night reading the letters from their grandfather. He had raised them for most of their childhood, after their father died and until their mother had taken them away and swallowed them into her rootless life.
"What else is in there?" Sophia said tiredly, nudging her chin at the box.
Brandon held up the box and reached in. "It's another box," he said, holding it up.
"It's probably like those nesting dolls," Sophia commented, setting aside her grandfather's last letter. "Just a bunch of boxes, each one smaller than the last."
"No, there's definitely something inside," he said, lifting the cover off the box. A folded piece of paper fell out, along with something shiny.
"See?" Sophia laughed. "It's another box!"
"Yeah, but look at it," Brandon said, picking it up. "It's obsidian. It's warm, Sophia, and it's sort of vibrating. It almost feels as though there's a motor or something inside." He held it out to her, but she had already reached for the paper.
"What's it say?" he asked absently, continuing to stare at the smooth object, turning it over and over in his fingers. He was so entranced he didn't notice that Sophia was as still and pale as a marble statue.
"You need to hear this, Bran," she said in a husky, low voice. "It's from our father."
He looked up so sharply, he almost dropped the box.
"What?"
"Dear Sophia and Brandon," she started slowly, "we're in the city for a couple of days, so this is a good time to write. I've been wanting to, anyway - I don't want you guys to forget me. But also, something happened that I have to tell you about."
"We've been running missions out into different parts of Afghanistan, and last week, we were in a place called Ghazni. It actually reminds me of home. There's a dry, flat valley, though it's more like a fine mud here than it is like the Mojave sand. It's surrounded by high mountains, just like home."
"We were up in the mountains, near an old volcano when something strange happened. I was just saying to my guys that we were lucky the volcano was extinct when we heard this heavily accented voice say that Dacht-i-Navar was not extinct, just dormant. I swear, I nearly jumped right out of my skin."
"The voice belonged to this tiny, ancient man, as gnarled as an old tree stump, with a huge, tangled beard. I swear there were birds nesting in that thing. But there was something about his eyes - they twinkled and flashed with life, as though he were laughing at everything."
"But that's not the strange part. This little old man knew my name. He called me by my name and asked to speak to me alone."
"Now ordinarily, I would never let any of my guys go off alone with a tribesman, let alone one that knew their names. But there was something about this man. I knew he had something to tell me, and that he wouldn't tell me in front of anyone else, so I went with him back into the hills."
"He took me to a cave, and that worried me for a minute, because we knew the men we were looking for were hiding in some caves, and they were very bad men."
"But this little guy just made this sort of clucking sound in his throat and told me the men I was looking for were not there. They were in mountains north and east of where we were. Then he said he had something for me, only it wasn't really for me."
"He said it was for my children, Sophia and Brandon. I am serious. The guy could barely even speak English and had probably never been off that mountain, and he called you by your names and said you were "the children of prophecy." That reminded me of stories my mother used to tell me, and I promise I'll tell them to you when I get home."
"He gave me a rough, burlap sack, and showed me that inside was a container, made out of a shiny, black rock. When I touched it, it gave me a mild shock, like when you run your socks across the carpet and touch someone."
"He told me I could sense the gem inside the box, and that it was very, very important that no one but you two touch the stone. He said it would drive most people mad or burn them, but would be especially dangerous in this evil place. I think he called it Mordar Koh, and I thought that was funny. It reminded me of those old stories again."
"Then the old guy told me to send the box to you right away because I was running out of time."
"At that point, I'd had enough. I backed out of the cave, but I did keep the little sack. I didn't tell anyone else about it, just what he said about the men we were looking for."
"So that's when we came back to the city, and here we are. I decided I needed to open this box before I sent it to you - I mean, who knew what was in there. It really is a gemstone, though, and the most beautiful one I've ever seen in my life, but I took the guy's advice and didn't touch it."
"I can't explain why, but I believe that little old man, that this is something the two you need to have. One of the soldiers I work with is about to fly home, and I've asked him to carry a package for you with him and mail it once he gets to the States. I know that's probably not the safest way to send a jewell to you, but it's all I can do right now."
"I'm getting a bad feeling I will never see the two of you again, and I can't tell you how sad that makes me. I would have liked nothing better than to watch you grow up. Take good care of each other and of your mother, and know that I always loved you and loved being your father."
Sophia was silent for a moment. "There's a P.S.," she noted softly. "It says, Jeannie, if you're reading this letter, do not open this box, whatever you do. You don't have to give it to the kids until they are older, but do not open the box."
They looked at each other.
"Right," Sophia finally said. "What do you want to bet she immediately opened the box?"
"Well, that explains a lot," Brandon said softly. "The man said it would make her crazy, and she was already broken up about dad."
"Wait, you believe all this?" she exclaimed. "That there's some mystical rock in there?" Brandon didn't say anything. He just held out the container again, and Sophia took it from him this time, her eyes widening as she felt a tingling spiral up her arm and across her shoulders, and a presence brush her mind, almost like a warm caress.
"Ohhh," she breathed. "Right," she sighed, clutching the box to her chest.
"What do we do now?" Brandon whispered, gesturing around the empty room.
"Let's get some sleep," she said, rolling out a sleeping bag. "And in the morning, we go back to the desert."
