Here is chapter two, please enjoy :D
The Ghost in the Forest
Samantha smiled wistfully, she was back in Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters, her little home away from home. Everyone was there, old faces, new ones, her teachers, her friends. She was always so happy to be where she felt she belonged, even though she was away from her family for the most part, that was ok. Mom and Dad were mostly fighting and Grandma wasn't very nice to her, she liked Professor Xavier better, he was really nice and took care of all of them.
She smirked thinking about how the school was a family. The big ones looked after the little ones, Colossus was the one most of the little kids liked, he could lift up almost ten of them without his powers. He was like an older brother. And Wolverine, Logan, was more like the mean uncle who was kind of scary but actually meant well, in his own way.
Storm was the aunt in a sense, she kept everything in order and everyone working.
Samantha liked Storm, then again she liked everyone.
But most of all, she liked him. When she was twelve and had begun to attend the School, she had been scared of her surroundings and all the new people, some of them, like Logan were scary so she went into the deep woods behind the mansion, to be alone. And on the first day she had run into him by accident. Samantha's power was invisibility, and with this little boon, she penetrated deep into the forest and eventually followed the smell of food.
She followed the scent to a small house made of clay and sun dried brick in a small, secluded clearing amidst the valley with its back to the mountains. There was a small camp fire there, there was a black, heavy metal pot and there was something nice cooking. There were olive and fig trees, there was a small herd of goats that flocked about on their own accord. Everything in the area seemed out of place, not at all like something of the U.S but something like out Greece. She had always wanted to go to Greece and had seen plenty of pictures about the country. She recognized that the small stone furnace was for bread mostly, the assumption was confirmed in the way that there was a small wheat field on the side of the house. And planted there were also tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers.
There was also a well used anvil for blacksmithing which also had a rack of spears and shields next to it.
It looked like something out of the books she had read about ancient Greece, the home of one of the citizen soldiers of Sparta or Athens. All the kids had called her weird for knowing stuff like this.
She loved ancient history.
She had met him after she had a peek in his house. He snuck up behind her almost casually and stared at her eyes, which surprised Samantha, it was as if he could see her. And he followed her movements, never once breaking eye contact. And after a while he sat down on a small mat in front of the pot and served himself a bowl of vegetable stew, with bread and Greek tzaziki. He also served a bowl and set it next to another mat he laid out next to him and patted it as if inviting her to sit down with him.
That first day, she didn't drop the invisibility and stayed away from him. After he was finished eating, he took her bowl and poured it back into the pot and went back to work on a sword on his anvil.
Truth be told, she was scared of him at first. He wore armor from head to toe, it was black as coal with an ivory trim, whatever cloth peaked out at his joints was grey. His helmet was like that of a Hoplite commander, its sail was metallic and crested sideways along the head. His face however was shrouded in an unnatural shadow and where his eyes were, hung two intense white puffs of energy.
He, nor she said a word to each other that first day.
Samantha was lonely for the most part in those first few days at school, and after a week or so, she returned to his house, save this time, there was a temple made of marble. It was bare and humble and had a few statues, among them; Athena, Hades, Charon and Ares.
Where it had come from or how, she didn't know.
She came to him but maintained her distance, this time, without her invisibility. He seemed to be praying, he was on his knees wearing his armor gazing at Hades, God of the Underworld, and at Charon, the Ferryman of the River Styx.
He lazily acknowledged her presence and went back to looking at the statues. After a while she came up and stood relatively close to him and tried to speak.
"That's Charon"
He said nothing, but his glowing eyes shifted to her slightly.
"The Greeks believed that when you died Charon let you come to his boat so he could take you across the River Styx"
He nodded then pointed at the armored and chain bearing visage of Hades.
"He's Hades, he is Zeus' brother and King of the Underworld, he looks after the spirits. Thanatos is the god of death, he comes to get people when Hades says"
His eyes seemed to bore through her and look into her mind, then they shifted to her rag doll.
A little ghost by the name of Zorro.
It was a rundown and filthy little thing; one of its button eyes was falling out.
Samantha noticed he was studying the doll and she introduced herself with a handshake which he, after an instant of realization that he was speaking with someone, returned.
"This is Zorro, Mom made him when I was a baby. He's really dirty and his eyes are kind of falling out. I wish he could be new again" she blurted our excitedly, while scrutinizing the doll.
The stranger poked Zorro casually and all the grime faded off his cloth body and his button eyes took a new shine and reattached themselves.
The doll looked like new, to Samantha's astonishment. She gasped with a smile and gave the stranger a hug in gratitude which the stranger looked somewhat at a loss as to how to respond to.
That is how she met him, she decided to call him Weaver, as calling him Maker would sound a little weird, even given his title, the title she decided for him.
She called him "The Wishmaker" but not to anyone however, only to her diary. She was excited to meet such a new and strange mutant, or so she guessed as it seemed logical.
Wow….
A mutant could grant wishes to people, but this, she kept secret. She didn't want anyone coming to bug Weaver.
He was in a way, her clandestine friend. Every few days she would come out to the forest and spend time with him. He never spoke, but granted her wishes. And he was always doing something, if it was building something at the Temple or making armor, she always was content to sit around and see him work or just talk to him, even if he never spoke back.
Given to this strange detachment he had about interacting, she basically had came up with his name and title. And more so what to talk to him about, to a degree, he was like one of her imaginary friends, but one she could see. But just like the denizens of her mind, Weaver, never spoke back, by his own accord.
It was like he was there but wasn't there at the same time. She noticed he had a dazed way of being at times. For a twelve year old, she understood that she perceived a lot of things from him that others might have missed.
For one she could tell he was old, very, very old. There was simply something about his way of being that struck her. It was an aura of unassuming, but imperious authority, of restraint, of sadness, and most of all…
Anger
It was in those times in which he was not there entirely, that he acted out and behaved differently because he forgot her presence that she could detect these things. And over time, she began to see other things. Things that perhaps, he began to allow her to see, things she could not have imagined even in her wildest dreams.
The air whispered about him when he got like that, she never understood why that was. She never felt she was in any form of danger, so she quietly enjoyed the beings that lived amongst them, but something about Weaver, made her hesitant to speak in his presence when he was entranced or detached.
She felt, deep inside her that she was in the presence of power, unimaginable power.
She could see the faint and quick movement of shadows and things about the forest, things that disappeared the instant she looked. Movement at the corner of her eyes that did the same.
She heard things too…
It was only when Weaver had stopped that she noticed something that didn't disappear when he calmed down.
A little creature she named Pan, whom was……well……a faun, a teeny, tiny, little faun with yellow eyes.
The little goat creature was very friendly and over the course of only a few minutes became very attached to her, it broke her heart when she decided she had to leave, she had stayed until dark after all.
Sure, she would be having a long lecture and scolding from Storm, and she would have to figure out an alibi, but it would be worth it.
Much to her dismay, one day she had been followed and so it came that her secret was out.