Home for Christmas
A/N: Thank you for all the reviews!!! Sorry this is so late, I had absolutely NO time on Christmas day to type anything, but I hope you're all still in the mood to read it!! Let's see…what is there to say to the reviewers?
Well, most of you seem to think you know who this mystery man is, though you haven't really guessed. And, because this is a bit of a cliché story, you're probably right. But that's the fun of it (this time), being able to guess and be right and be all happy.
Besides, you find out in this chapter anyway, unless my mind decides to change itself on me.
Enough of my rambling! Make with the reading!!
Chapter Three: Dawn Breaks
Christmas Eve will find me
Where the love-light gleams.
Dawn broke in Vale the same way it did on most winter mornings—cold, clear, and with the prospect of snow in the future. It was only clear for a little while, however—clouds moved in quickly and began to dump their load of the frosty white stuff onto the few people awake at such an early hour.
Ivan, unfortunately, was one of them. And he didn't much like it, either, but he was using his Jupiter powers to clear the snow away from his house, or at least from the path that led from his house to the rest of Vale, and after he was done he'd go to Felix's house, and then Garet's and then Isaac's, and clear those too. He'd done it every year since they'd come back to Vale, and he'd do it this year too.
He didn't know what they'd do the next year, without him. By this time next year he planned to be in Tolbi, studying from their vast collection of books. Studying what, he didn't much know, but he'd sure study something. He supposed the Mars Adepts could melt the snow away—he thought of that solution every year, but he always dismissed it, because Jenna would fry him and Garet would roast him if he even suggested it.
Hard to believe things haven't changed a bit in four years, Ivan thought half-bitterly. And yet…they've changed so much.
"Are you going to take all day?" Sheba teased out the window, and Ivan scowled. A freezing wind blew in through Sheba's window at Ivan's direction, but Sheba countered with a frigid blast of her own, and Ivan, already cold and wet, decided to let her win, this time.
Mia watched this with only halfhearted amusement. She longed to jump up and run past Ivan, run right through town to Vale's gate and wait for her Isaac there. He'd promised her that he'd be there, and she'd hold him to it. With extra string, if she had to.
But she couldn't. She had to go about this Christmas Eve like any other—help hang the star, finish the final preparations, help Dora with the last of the baking, untangle the odd Valean from last-minute Christmas tinsel or evergreen strings, and put the presents under the tree.
About an hour later, with the path into Vale clear, Mia put on her cloak and did exactly that, though she went the long way to Dora's, way down through the plaza and past the town gate. No one was there, and though she told herself she expected no one, secretly her heart fell at this discovery. Where was Isaac, and what could possibly be keeping him so long?
~*~
"Isaac! Hey, Isaac! Get up! Come on, you're not the heavy sleeper, wake up already!"
"I'm up, I'm up!" Isaac cried, weakly shoving away the hands that were shaking his shoulders. "What's so important?"
"You look beat," Garet said, frowning. "Maybe I should have let you sleep until noon after all."
"I wouldn't have minded," Isaac admitted, sitting up and shaking his head. "But what did you want that merited the end to my sleep for the night?"
"First of all, it's morning, and second, your mystery man is—or maybe was—awake and confused." That got Isaac up in one great leap, and while he busied himself with his mystery man, Garet walked out into the snow and looked around.
It didn't look any better outside the cave—in fact, it looked worse. It was snowing, and in big, clumpy flakes, too. Soon they'd have no hope of reaching Vale at all, or even Vault unless they were lucky. Garet continued to scan the surrounding whiteness, oblivious to what was going on in the cave behind him.
Isaac knelt by the man and looked at him. His eyes were open, and under all the messy dark hair he looked quite lost and confused. Not sure what to say, Isaac figured he might as well say something.
"Hello."
"Hello," said the man in a raspy voice. "How did I get here?"
"Well…I guess you fell asleep in the snow, or something. Where were you going?"
"Home. I have to get home. It's almost Christmas…my family needs to see me."
"So does mine," Isaac said with a touch of bitterness. He still hated himself for leaving like he had.
"Why did you help me?" the man asked, looking at Isaac differently now. This boy, man really, he seemed so familiar…
"Well…because it's the right thing to do, especially around Christmas. Because I'm just sort of like that, I guess. In all honesty, I had this feeling…that I had to come looking for something way out here. But when we brought you back here, the feeling went away."
"I had a feeling like that once," said the man, struggling to sit up. Isaac helped him, offering him some water, which the man drank thankfully. "I had that feeling many years ago. I lost my son one day while he was out playing, and I followed a feeling like that to find him. And then just recently…when I set out to come back home. I had the feeling that they needed me, that my wife needed me."
"So…you left wherever you were, and you headed for home. But you must have been somewhere far to the north of here…"
"I was in Prox. No…I was north of Prox."
"You survived the journey all the way through all these mountains?"
"I began my journey in the summer, but I stayed too long in Imil, and by the time I left the winter snows had begun to fall."
"Imil. I've been there. Such a beautiful…sorry. Everyone always tells me I tend to babble on sometimes. What took you so far north as Prox? You're obviously not a native of that area."
"I was…taken there, by a group of…mercenaries, perhaps. Warriors, or maybe thieves. They took three other people from my village, and they kept us hostage there, only we weren't treated as hostages. We were treated as…well, as people. But…there was a battle, atop the Mars Lighthouse. I was watching from afar, but something shook the ground where I was standing, and one of the Proxans and myself…we fell into the darkness that surrounds the northern edge of Weyard."
"Picard did that," Isaac recalled. "He said…he said he was numb, worse than cold, for hours afterward. But he barely even touched the darkness…how did you survive?"
"I did not. To every purpose, I was dead. But those who fought atop the lighthouse must have won. Weyard began to mend itself, and in time, I was taken from the state of…suspension I was in, and my feet were set on the ground right where I had fallen into the nothingness. And I began my journey home."
"I fought on the lighthouse," Isaac said, looking at the man with a bit more consideration now. "Where do you come from, sir?"
"Vale. I lived in Vale."
"Really? That's interesting. I live in Vale too."
The man looked at Isaac, and Isaac looked right back at him. Recognition lit in both sets of azure eyes at the same time, and Isaac felt tears threatening to fall, tears that he had been holding back, accompanying the hope he'd been holding back, since he was fourteen years old.
"Dad?" Isaac asked the man, his voice and hands shaking uncontrollably.
"Isaac?" asked the man, in a similar state of excited shock.
"Dad!"
"Isaac!" The two men, father and son, embraced, each holding the other as tightly as they could, trying in that one moment to bring back all the years they had lost, all the time they would never have together.
"Mom will be so thrilled! She won't even hurt me much for not being home on time!" Isaac said, tears streaming down his face even as he laughed.
"When is Christmas, Isaac?" Kyle asked, letting Isaac go and looking over his shoulder as Garet came back in, making his usual amount of noise.
"Tomorrow," Isaac said desolately. "Mia will take my head off. With her words, staff and bare hands. All at once."
"Mia is that girl? The one the Spirits released you for?" Kyle asked, and Isaac nodded. Garet looked at them both like they were insane.
"Garet, it's Kyle. It's my dad," Isaac said, wiping his tears away with the edge of his scarf. "Pack up, we have to start heading home. We have the best Christmas present ever to bring with us, after all."
They began to walk. The high snow and frigid wind, combined with Kyle's lack of energy and his weakness from nearly freezing to death, made for slow going—the clouds were tinted faintly orange by the time they reached Vault.
"We can't stay the night here!" Garet argued before Isaac could say a word. "It's Christmas Eve! We need to be home by tomorrow!! Jenna will kill me and serve me for Christmas dinner if we don't!"
"I believe you," Isaac said. "We do have to be home by tomorrow, even if it's not until midnight tomorrow. So…I guess we'll keep going. Er…if that's okay with you…Dad…" Isaac said, the word still unfamiliar after so long.
"It would be a wonderful surprise for Dora if I came home to her on Christmas day," Kyle said, smiling. "Let's go."
~*~
The sun had gone down long ago. The snow had also stopped falling, and the sky was clear and full of stars. In their various houses, most Adepts (because of course Vale was entirely populated by Adepts) were blowing out their lanterns and going to sleep. Well, some of the younger ones would be begging to stay up later, but of course their parents would send them to bed anyway.
Picard, however, wasn't asleep. For the past few days he'd hardly slept at all—the static lifestyle he was now leading, stuck in Vale with little to do, was getting to him more so now than ever. He felt the pull of the sea, calling to him. He wanted to go home, to Lemuria. He wanted…to leave.
That thought stung, more than anything else. He didn't like knowing that he wanted to leave his friends to just go off sailing somewhere. So he was climbing to the top of one of Vale's highest cliffs, certain that the conditions were right and the timing was perfect.
Sitting in the snow—it hardly bothered him—Picard raised his Lemurian flute to his lips and played one long, clear note, listening to its echo. Yes, this was how it should sound. He took a moment to recall the tune, then began to play, softly at first, but louder as the song went on.
Mia heard the music from where she was sitting, at the small desk in her room, reading. She looked up and out the window, and though she couldn't see Picard from where she was, she knew it was him playing. And she also recognized the tune. Softly, she began to sing the words to herself.
"At Christmas Eve, tomorrow's near,
I hope that love will bring you here,
Home for a while."
Getting up, she walked over to the window and looked out at the black sky and its sprinkling of stars…so many bright, shining stars. Mia wondered if Isaac, wherever he was, was looking up at the sky, too. She wondered if at that exact moment, he was thinking about her just like she was thinking about him.
"I'll make the best of what's for me,
But I would love you here to be
Holding me now."
Mia closed her eyes and imagined Isaac's arms around her, as they had been when he'd told her that he would have to leave. And she knew that it wouldn't happen, that he wouldn't make it back. And she let herself cry.
Jenna, way across Vale, was still awake as well, though now the hour approached dawn. Her thoughts—most of them angry ones directed Garet's way—had kept her from a restful sleep, and now she was sitting out on her roof, having melted away a patch of snow and then dried it so she could sit there without being annoyed by wet.
That song… Jenna's mind strayed to the words of the song she heard on the wind. It seemed almost like Christmas magic, that a song like that would just simply appear as Christmas grew close to dawning…barely even noticing at first, Jenna began to sing.
"How I wish that you and I,
And love could be close,
'Cause the holidays,
Are when I need you most, so…"
I'll kill him, Jenna thought angrily, her hands balling into fists. If he doesn't make it home, I'll…serve him for Christmas dinner! Anger boiled up within her, but Jenna's sensible (and seldom seen) side told her that she wasn't really angry. She was sad. She missed Garet, and she wanted him there for Christmas. So maybe she wouldn't cook him for dinner. But only maybe.
"Another year, another chance,
A different song, a different dance,
For us to try…"
Two voices joined in song then, though neither knew that the other was singing. Both were lost in the almost-magic of music that could echo throughout the whole of Vale.
"Please come home for Christmas…
I don't want it this way.
Please come home for Christmas
And stay."
Picard kept playing, lost in the music now, his fingers placing themselves for each note all on their own. His mind was somewhere much farther away, wandering through wishes and dreams, hopes and delights of his own.
The music went on as the sun began to rise. Dora, awake since the night had begun and standing silently next to the large Psynergy Stone, watching Vale's dark and silent gates for her son's return, heard the soft notes in the stillness of the dawn.
There was something in that music that compelled her, almost, to sing. Granted, she knew she hadn't sung anything in years and she was probably worse now than she'd been then…but Christmas invariably reminded her of both Kyle and Isaac, and she felt, at that moment, like singing.
"Good morning love, it's me again
As Christmas day begins again
I think of you.
I know that time has passed us by
I tell myself to stop, but I
Still dream it's true."
She didn't think anyone was awake to hear her. And she knew that even if her voice was horrible, the song came from her heart, and that made it the best she'd ever sung. It was through tears that she went on singing—unaware that on either side of Vale, two other women were singing the same song.
"I dream…
That you and I and love could be one
'Cause Christmastime
Should never be lonesome."
Picard could hear them. Sheba and Ivan, awake now and sitting down in the kitchen, could hear them. Felix, his room across the hall from his sister's, could hear them. And perhaps for a moment, three sets of ears that weren't so far away from Vale could hear them, too.
"Remember when our love began
You held my heart, I held your hand
Ready to fly.
Please come home for Christmas…
I don't want it this way."
There is nothing quite like the song of someone's heart. It threatens to envelop them in nothing but the music, the wholeness, the purity of each note and the way those notes bring out emotion so strong it threatens to burst right out into the song itself. The Adepts' hearts all sang the final words, even though only three voices and one lonely flute carried the tune.
"Please come home for Christmas
And stay."
The sun had risen entirely now, reflecting off the soft white snow and making the town of Vale shine. Dora looked at the gates one last time and sighed heavily. They really wouldn't make it. Isaac and Garet wouldn't be home for Christmas this year.
With one final glance, Dora turned and began to walk away.
~*~
I'm…sad! That was sad! And I wrote the thing!! Sorry it's so late—expect the ending chapter by…tomorrow, or sometime next weekend. Hope you're all still in the mood…gah, this is sad…
