Having witnessed the beautiful marriage proposal between my two best friends I returned to camp and my sleeping roll bursting with happiness for the two of them. I truly wished them joy and a long happy life together. But to be honest, part of me was a little sad too. The proposal had also served to remind me that we were all moving on with our lives, time seemed to be passing so quickly. It was making me feel whistful and nostalgic.
We'll all be going our own separate ways soon, I thought.
Yukari and Amano would get married and then they'd go to England together so that he could attend Oxford. It left me feeling a little lonely to tell the truth; it seemed like they had everything going for them and I, who had already mapped out my future on Earth before I'd gotten plucked up like a weed from my native soil, wasn't certain where I was going anymore. It just seemed like the world kept getting in my way. All of these different and strange things that I had never planned for kept happening to me.
My father used to quote John Lennon at me; "life is what happens while you're busy making other plans" I thought dryly.
Tomorrow would bring me to the Draconian Enclave. There I would step past the point of no return. As long as I remained untrained and untutored in my strange abilities, there was still the possibility that I could just turn right around and run back to my safe little home on Earth. This wasn't my world and wasn't my problem and I certainly didn't have to get involved... I could still decide that chasing Source Elementals wasn't for me.
I was scared. As scared as ever I had been during the war here on Gaea. I could get hurt, perhaps even killed by one of those rogue elementals. Tonight was the night I would truly decide, once and for all; turn back or go forward.
Turn back and go home to my world, home where it was safe and I had a secure and pleasant future awaiting me... Or go forward, go forward and face the unknown future on a strange world with impossible dangers and unforetold powers lying before me. One path was relatively safe, predictable, and comforting in its familiarity. The other path was fraught with danger and the fear that uncertainty inevitably brings with it.
But it may be worth it. A tiny still, quiet voice from deep within me spoke insistently. A still, subtle voice that speaks from something greater, outside of ourselves. Perhaps the voice of the universe. Could it be?
Listen to your heart.
My grandmother had always said that the only thing to do when faced with a choice like this was to listen to your heart. I had learned however that the heart was a strange thing, easily swayed sometimes, easily fooled. Still... I closed my eyes and sat there silently, bathed in the moonlight, trying to listen.
The ephemeral moon-mist cord that connected my heart to Van's suddenly flared up with startling brilliancy before my inner Sight. I was all but flung out of my body and in the blink of an eye found myself floating next to Van. He was sitting on the rooftop of a building looking up at the two moons glowing brightly in the sky.
What was it with this guy and rooftops?
He was brooding. Not thinking hard about something, but brooding. He was wearing his "sullen king" expression. I could feel that agitated turmoil in his heart without even needing to open my senses. My senses were always open to him.
"What's wrong, Van?" I asked. He made a surprised noise as he started halfway to his feet. He looked around, but apparently couldn't see my form in astral projection.
"Hitomi?" he whispered, sounding half afraid.
"I'm here," I replied. "You're upset about something, what's wrong Van?"
"I go to face my first combat tomorrow," he said. "If I loose I must relinquish my claim on the throne of Fanelia to the victor."
"This is a law in Fanelia?" I questioned.
"Yes," he replied.
"And the fact that you must fight in mortal sword combat still bothers you as much as it did when Balgus was training you?" I hazarded, trying to figure out what precisely had him so out of sorts.
"It's not the fact that I must fight," He said after a small shake of his head. "All kings of Fanelia must. It is the fact that my noblemen have measured me in their eyes and found me wanting. I love Fanelia and the thought that I am considered inadequate to the throne..." he trailed off, not wanting to finish. I could feel the rest anyway. He was hurt by it.
"Van. That's impossible," I said firmly. "You have acted with greater courage, strength, wisdom and heart than any ten of those silly noblemen put together. Time and time again you've been tested and you've risen to meet that test."
"I had help," he replied as if it were a failing. "You had to follow me into death to reawaken me. Surely that is a weakness."
"Since when is it a weakness to let someone who cares about you help you?" I replied. "A rock cannot stand against the wind and rain for long before it is whittled away to nothing. So too with people; we all need each other at one time or another, we are meant to need each other."
"I don't want to rely on you," he said. "It causes you suffering."
"Relying on my powers causes me suffering," I corrected him gently. "Relying on me gives me strength."
"Gives you strength?" he said, sounding confused.
"Who do you think it is that reminds me of my own courage?" I said by way of answer. "The bravest person I know is a man who once fell into a haze of fear and anger after a battle and couldn't stop shaking, and yet who forced himself to come to terms with his deeds, forgive himself, forgive his enemies, and find the strength to fight again."
"It was your compassion that helped me find it," he replied.
"And your courage that gave me the strength to help," I replied to that. "I believe in you Van. No matter what, I believe in you."
"Hitomi," he said. "What if your faith is misplaced? What if I'm really not good enough?"
Oddly enough it was a question I wondered about myself often. I felt I was strange, that I wasn't acceptable somehow, that there was something out-of-place about me. I'd read that women in general have feelings of inadequacy frequently throughout their lives (that had probably been written by a man). Maybe people in general questioned themselves.
"Then I know you'll only work harder to make yourself good enough," I replied, finding the answer to both his and my own questions in a piece of wisdom oft repeated to me by my grandmother. "I believe in you even when you can't believe in yourself because I know you won't ever truly give up on yourself. You're at your best when things are at their worst, you are stongest when others around you are weakened, you shine the noblest when all around you is dross. It's because you're the right one for it. No-one could love Fanelia as much as you do, or fight as hard for it. Its already proven and will be again. You face what you most fear and overcome it because... because you love your kingdom."
"There is another thing too that I love," he said wistfully. "But unfortunately it is far away from me and so we will not speak of it at this time."
"I am always with you Van," I replied, not telling him that I was actually closer than he thought. It would only distract him and he needed all of his concentration for the fight ahead.
"I have the strength of your beliefs," he said. "But there is another thing that bothers me, besides what lies ahead tomorrow."
"What is that?" I asked.
"It's hard to explain. Fanelia has always seemed to have a life, a vitality completely separate from its incredible natural beauty. However lately something seems... off. There's something out of kilter and I cannot see what it is. It's like this nagging feeling that I get, I can feel it deep in my bones. There's something wrong."
"In your blood," I whispered in surprised realization.
"Excuse me?" he queried.
"It's in your blood," I replied cryptically. I wasn't sure entirely how I knew but it was one of those marrow-deep knowings, the ones that were never ever wrong.
"I don't understand, how do you--"
"I'm not sure myself," I said. "But its true and will reveal itself in the fullness of time."
"Nice and cryptic," he said.
"I am not here to give answers, but to lead you in finding your own questions and remind you of yourself when the need arrives."
"Well anyway, I have no choice but to fight tomorrow," he said.
"You always have a choice Van," I reproved.
"Well in this case my choice is fight to win and remain king or do nothing and loose all."
"The death and loss of one thing may only herald change in a new direction," I suggested.
"I like the direction I'm on right now thank-you," he said. "If I must choose then I choose to fight to hold what I love. I don't always like being king, I can recall a time when it was the last thing I wanted to do and there are even days now when I dream yearningly of finding a nice quiet goat-hut in the mountains and living the rest of my days without all of these cares and responsibilities. But I made my choice long ago and will hold to it."
A heavy choice to make, I realized, and not one that you make once but over and over. Everyday he probably had to wake choosing to be king. There are many who will say that being king is something you're either born to or you're not, and in a way that's certainly true, but that's also a bit like the line between destiny and free will. You could be born a prince and groomed to take the throne but in the end you had to choose to hold it, to fight for it, to be the right one for it.
I could be born with strange powers and put into place to save Gaea but in the end I had to choose to use that power. No-one could make that choice but me.
"But Choices have consequences Hitomi," Van said aloud, almost as if he could read my mind, feel my struggle. "Not just for yourself, but for others, and you are responsible for those. You can't help what others choose, but you choose your own fate."
"Our lives, great and small are the result of our actions," I said slowly, like a blind man feeling his way through the dark, reaching for an epiphany. "Actions stem from choices. Choices stem from intent. Intent stems from... the heart?"
Click.
"That's what she meant!" I exclaimed. "I wasn't pulling bad futures into place just by being anxious about it."
"Of course not, that's silly," Van said, sounding utterly mystified as to what I was talking about. I'd never told him of my conversation with his mother. "Everyone gets anxious about the future, me especially. And you're just a natural born worrier."
"Purity of intent," I said.
"The road to hell is paved with good intentions, or so they say," Van said. "Just look at the recent mess we had with Dornkirk, Folken and that stupid fate machine. That's a case in point. They had good intentions but wound up mucking everything up."
"Doing the right thing for the wrong reasons is inherently worse than doing the wrong thing for the right reasons. With one, you're just looking for personal gain but with the other... with the other at least you're trying to improve yourself or trying to make things better. So I can either make the selfish choice and go home or I step off the cliff and hope the air holds me up."
"You've lost me," Van said.
"That's okay I know where I am," I said. I couldn't help but feel a little giddy with relief at having at last found my answer. I leaned over and gave him a light ephemeral kiss on the cheek before I faded back into my body, secure in the knowledge that tomorrow I would go on to face the challenges of the unknown.
"Hold there!" a guard said leveling a spear at our vehicle. He was an ordinary looking young man, but for the two spots above his eyes where his eyebrows started. The spear-tip he held in front of him shone with pinkish glow that seemed somehow menacing. Our conveyance was swiftly surrounded by more guards, all of them with spots above their eyes and glowing spear-tips.
"It looks like we've arrived," Allen said dryly.
"You there, outsiders!" one of the guards said. "Why do you trespass here? Outsiders have no business meddling in among our kind."
"Ah, and reverse racism makes it way to Gaea too I see," Yukari muttered. "C'mon Hitomi let's go, it's obvious we're not welcome here."
:They have good reason to be wary of outsiders: Folken said from where he hovered nearby. "Ubdo is the seat of power for the Draconian Enclaves, as well as holding the purest of the holy springs; if outsiders were to become aware of its potential for use the Draconian people would suffer greatly for it.:
:If you say so: I replied.
The guards demanded that those who sought entry into the Holy Spring Ubdo to meet with High Priest Lagusu exit from their armored vehicle and come with them in person, with no weapons.
As the unfortunate nominal leader in this expedition, I stepped out first. There seemed to be some kind of thickness in the air for a moment as I stepped forward to face them but I shrugged it off easily in order to introduce myself properly.
"I am Hitomi," I said. "I apologize for the intrusion but my friend is... sick, and I need to get training in order to help her. I've heard that you of the Holy Spring of Ubdo can teach me how to wield my abilities."
Suddenly there was a spectral shape of an old man with long grey hair in a pony-tail and a drooping grey mustache hovering in the air directly before us.
"At last you are come!" The old man said. "Bring them to me in the capital directly."
The guards hastened to obey. The rest of my companions climbed out behind me. Allen was told to discard his weapon or stay in the carriage. Unhappy about leaving his sword behind, but resigned to necessity of their rules, he reluctantly stowed it in the backseat and handed his sister out. We were shown through a city of all white marble with patterned cobblestones and elegant pillars. It was almost an exact replica of the ruins in the Mystic Valley!
We were met at the front steps of an enormous white building with stained glass windows depicting scenes of some kind of ritual or something; I could only guess at what the stylized shapes in the glass might represent. The man who had shown up in specter was there in person.
:That's high preist Lagusu: Folken said, fading in beside me. I nearly gasped in surprise.
:Don't Do that: I thought hard at him, nearly clutching my chest from startlement. :You'll give a poor girl a heart-attack:
:My apologies: Folken said then silenced himself as we approached the High Preist and he began to speak.
"I am High Preist Lagusu," the old man said. "This Enclave at the Holy Spring of Ubdo welcomes you, Seer from the Mystic Moon. The training in your powers that you seek will be provided to you here. Your friends I am afraid must guest in one of our guest-houses while you are trained, they do not have our permission to wander freely about the city, but all services they might want will be provided for them in that place. We are wary of outsiders I am afraid."
I exchanged a glance with my friends, asking if it was alright with them. Yukari nodded looking over at Amano; if she could be where he was then she had no real objections to a sort of confinement. Allen looked like he didn't like it, but signaled that he was willing to jump through a few hoops in order to save his sister.
"I thank-you for your understanding and hospitality then High Preist Lagusu," I replied. "I can begin training immediately if you wish."
As far as I was concerned the sooner I got started, the sooner I could finish.
"Good then," he replied. "You may be assured that your friends will be well cared for."
The guards feel into a two columns surrounding our small party, whether that was to lead us to the city of Ubdo or to protect the citizens from us dangerous outsiders was unclear. The bare, beaten animal track we had been traveling along gradually began to widen out into a true road as we pushed through the thick greenery. The bare road led to what looked to be nothing more than an innocuous grey canyon wall, the kind that led to dead ends.
I was shocked when the canyon wall faded right before my eyes, revealing a secret pocket-valley with a beautiful and majestic old city spread out before us. The place was reminiscent of what I had seen of the city of Atlantis; beautiful sculpted white marble on the buildings, streets paved with mosaic tile, lovely gardens to enjoy a beautiful view in. The buildings weren't tall (well, not by my standards anyway) the highest one didn't reach more than three stories. I suppose there was no point in having a secret valley but then giving away the secret by housing enormous architecture. The buildings weren't tall but that didn't mean that they weren't majestic, they were exceedingly beautiful. The Holy Springs had its own character however; there were fountains everywhere! They came in all shapes, sizes and styles; from grand sculptures such as I had seen pictures of decorating the Vatican at Rome, to many tiered waterfalls made to look like natural formations, to faint, dribbling trickles, to calm reflecting pools.
I gave my friends a last reassuring look and followed the old man into the temple.
The floors were of light blue and green-banded marble polished to a glassy finish and arranged in a radial pattern from the center of the temple. The glass-dome ceiling was supported by majestic white marble pillars carved in the shape of angels... or perhaps on this world they were Draconians, with thier wings supporting the ribs of the arches. There fountains at the base of each of the pillars, water running from some sourceless direction and going who only knew where.
In the center of the temple was an enormous circular pool that cast white water-shadows up at the ceiling. In the middle of this circular pool hovered an immense light red crystal; it had an axis of two massive spars pointing straight up and down and out of the middle jutted a ring of smaller spars glittering in the light.
The power radiating out from it was almost enough to knock me flat on my ass. I instictively knew not to turn on my othersight, for it would be like staring full at the sun just as I'm walking out of a dark place. It would surely blind me and hurt while it was doing it.
"This, my dear, is Ougura, our sacred seal. It is one of the seven Source Energists protected and used by our kind since the dawn of Gaea."
"You mean this is the energist you use to commune with the power of Gaea and communicate your will to the Elementals?" I asked, still looking at the pretty crystal with awe. Here it was, pure crystalized power.
Lagusu's bushy eyebrows raised at my knowledge of things but he merely nodded.
"This Seal, along with the six others were made by the original Atlanteans directly after the destructing of thier homeland and the creation of Gaea. They wanted to never again repeat thier terrible mistakes and had decided to withdraw from the world they'd set in motion to live out thier lives in pennence and atonement, helping that world to grow. They used thier pendants, that they had once used as a focus to access the Atlantis Machine to make thier wishes come true, and melded them together. The pendant stones melded together and crystalized into the great crystal you see before you."
"The pendant stones?" I asked. "Like the pendant I used to wear?"
"Yes, did you think yours was the only one?" Lagusu replied.
I didn't. I'd seen the winged Atlanteans holding many of them before the fall in a vision I'd had once.
"Ougura is in bad shape. When I and my brethren tried to use the power of the sacred seal to re-establish the pathways of energy that feed the Elementals we discovered that the war and Dornkirks blasted mucking about with that Zone of Absolute Fortune had vastly complicated things. The Zone of Absolute Fortune was supposed to give everyone their own wishes, which is an inherently greedy thing, so instead of bringing ou the best of mankind it instead amplified the greed, avarice, and occasionally vicious darker side we all have. All of this negative energy was spread out into the meridians, and then into the foci and we could not purify them in time before the crystals, warped by the negative energy, cracked. The pendant stones reverted to their original state, the Seal splintered apart and some of the pendant crystals caught in the blast flew to far-flung corners of the world. The Elementals, which had been starving for energy for months, quickly sought out and merged with these pieces of energist. I and the others, through a great effort of will, managed to call back and seal away many of the Source Elementals but to our saddness there were many that were strong enough to resist us or were too far away for us to reach."
"Yes, I was told that since I have enough power within me, that I must kill the physical bodies they have made for themselves and seal away their astral forms for good. The problem is that I have no idea how I'm supposed to do it. I barely even know how to use my powers let alone use them proactively," I admitted, figuring that honesty would be best.
"I have been expecting you Seer from the Mystic Moon," Lagusu said.
I blinked as it clicked. Surely he couldn't mean...
"It was you?" I demanded, shocked. "You brought me here Lagusu?"
"With the right application of power I, High Preist Lagusu of the Holy Springs Dragon Clan, can summon a pillar of light to and from the Mystic Moon," he acknowledged. "Unfortunately, I cannot control precisely where it lands. I need one with the Sight in order to hunt down the Source Elementals and restore balance to Gaea again. You will receive training in your Gifts Hitomi."
I think I've been had, I thought, expecting to feel a little spark of anger at having been so used. Oddly enough there wasn't one, oh well, perhaps it would come later when i had had time to dwell on it a bit.
"I don't have much time to learn how to use my powers," I said. "Celena is getting worse and I still must search out the Source Elementals as soon as possible. Is there any way we could speed up the process, or maybe just have me take a crash course?"
"Ah the young are so very impatient. Learning and knowledge are two slightly different things, knowledge will not aid you where a lesson must be learned," Lagusu said. "However you are right when you say that time is of the essence. Fear not, step into the sacred spring Ubdo child and all will become apparent."
With no small amount of trepidation at getting so near a rogue energist of such power, I gingerly lowed myself into the water below the energist floating in mid-air above the spring. I held my breath and submerged my head and suddenly there was a flash of white light tinged faintly with red. The next thing I knew I found myself in another place entirely; almost like one of my Visions, but not quite. This felt different somehow.
I looked around me, the place I was in couldn't exactly be called a room, it was... words escaped me. It was warm in that strange place that wasn't a place, warm and peaceful. The closest I could come to as far as a description would be to say that it was like what floating in the womb must be like. I didn't know up from down and for a moment I panicked despit the all-pervading peace I was surronded with.
"Fear not child," a sourceless voice said to me, it was like the whisper of a thousand voices in chorus or the sound of the wind sighing through the trees or the waves shushing into the land.
"Who are you?" I asked feeling frightened and out of my depth as I hadn't since the time I'd foreseen the Doppleganger's death in Freid. "Where am I?"
"We are Gaea, a part of Gaea and the distant echoes of the ones who created it," the voices answered. "And you are inside the energist and inside your mind. It takes years to master a truly strong gift for mastery of gift and self are one. The outside world does not have years and neither do you. In here you will learn everything you need to in order to acheive your mastery while no time shall pass in the outside world."
"That's a relief," I said. Before I could go on to thank the whispering voices I was knocked broadside by my first lesson.
"First lesson," the whispers said. "Nothing comes without cost." And then the real teachings began.
It was a bit like an avalanche inside my mind but somehow, instead of being a flood of meaningless pictures and notions my mind somehow expanded beyond anything I had ever dreamed possible to encompass and understand each and every idea that was shown to me. I knew this knowledge... it had always been here!
I didn't know how or why but it all made perfect sense. It was like... it was like I had been born knowing all of this and had somehow forgotten it. That thought caused the voices to whisper to me that everyone was born knowing these things and they that all forgot it. All save the ancient denizens of Atlantis; they had found a way to tap into the collective unconscious of all mankind but they had used the knowledge to further thier own ends, treating it as a possession instead of a gift.
If only there was a way to learn my school textbooks this easily, I thought vaguely. For no sooner did I come across a new idea that in my old life would have left me shaking my head in denial at its possibility, then I fully understood it.
I learned about the energy of the body. It was more than just the mist of aura that people exuded that was colored by their emotions. There was much more to it than that. Far from having a single aura, I learned that the aura I Saw when I activated my second sight nowdays was merely the by-product of the paths of energy called "meridians" that spiraled throughout the body. Not only were these meridians constantly flowing inward and out with the body's vital energy for the body's physical well being but they also carried the essence of the bodies spiriutal and emotional wellbeing too! There were also "pools" that the Draconians called Foci where the energy collected, was recycled, purified, and made new again to travel along the meridians of the body once more. The meridians were tied together and flowed in unison but each kind of meridian eventually separated into a different pathway to flow through thier own different kinds of Foci in order to be purified; all of them however eventually flowed through one point, one Foci which they called a Source Foci. This Source Foci was inherited from our parents and was the seed from which we grew.
It was possible to manipulate these meridians within a persons body. The Draconians could manipulate the pathways of Gaea through communing with Ougura and the other sacred seals and commanding the Elementals, they could also do the same thing on a much smaller scale, using their own will and the bodies energy pathways to command a body to heal from physical, spiritual and emotional energy. So too could I use my own energies to both heal myself and others, not just of physical wounds but of wounds on the heart and soul.
I was surprised to note that I had already been doing some rudimentary form of this healing for sometime now, but that it had placed me in danger. An empath was one who sensed the heart and emotions of others around them as though they were thier own emotions and this very sense created a danger of forgetting which feelings belnged to whom and of losing ones sense of self to another forever. It had been a near thing; perhaps if i had not fallen in love with Van and had such a strong reason to remain myself it would have happened that I would have become lost.
There had been times, times after a trying day when i was feeling down and exhausted, times when nothing seemed to go my way and I felt drained and depressed; it had come upon me in those times. I hadn't even had to touch another person to get visions; all I had to do was hold something of someone elses and I would know them know what they were feeling and everything about them. It would make me question whether those emotions and memories inside my mind were actually someone elses or my own and I just didn't know it.
I had sometimes woken in the night after a trying day and I hadn't known where I was at first; I could have sworn for a moment that I was someone else, that I belonged somewhere else until a few moments later when the world righted itself again. But sometimes, if only for a few moments, there were times when I wasn't certain who I was. Usually after such an unsettling experience I'd withdraw back into my room and wouldn't ome out for a while just so that I could make certain that I really was who I knew myself to be.
Reaching out for Van often helped me remind me of myself.
The lessons continued one after another. I was taught to sheild myself in order to block others out and center my own heart so that I would always know my own Self from anyone else's. After those lessons I was taught many different kinds of sheilds because there were predators among the Source Elementals who could prey upon the unsuspecting mind. From there I was taught how to cast a sheild around other people and then how to erect a spirit-barrier that would transcend even to the physical world.
Now that I knew how to protect myself by keeping others out and myself in, I was in no danger of losing myself and the real lessons could begin. I was taught how to manipulate the energy patterns within ones own body to heal them of their wounds; first the physical (which was surprisingly the easiest of the lot, one only had to remind the body of what it needed to do in order to be healthy and send it the commands to do it) then of the mind (which was a delicate process but the mind can be as tough as it can be fragile) and then the heart which came most naturally to me. The lesson then turned to a more sinister side; how to bind a persons Foci. This meant that no energy would flow into or out of the Meridians of the body and they would stay in a state of stasis (on Earth we call it a coma). From there the lessons proceeded on how to commune with Gaea and manipulate the planets energy patterns... except that now there were none to manipulate so I couldn't imagine that the knowledge would be useful to me. I learned how the people of Atlantis had created their own energists and pendants from the energy of hteir own bodies and wills and used them to commune with the machine directly. From there we reached the knowledge of how to bind and seal an elemental once it had left its physical body but before it could enter the astral plane and escape. It was this knowledge that I was to use when tracking the Source Elementals later on. I was taught to search out with my heart and mind in order to sense any usual patterns in the energy around me. And I was taught so many things...
It felt like I was there for a year absorbing one lesson after another, understanding all knowledge and making it part of myself. Then suddenly the flood stopped, just cut off, and I was cast out of the heart of the sacred seal and back into my body. I blinked my eyes. It was night time for the cathedral was lit only by the light coming up from the glowing sacred spring and the light dancing off the energist hovering above me.
What day was it? What YEAR was it? My head hurt a little, like I'd spent to long studying over my books and I needed to rest. Automatically I sunk within myself, traveled through the nearest Foci to the meridian that led to my temples and soothed away the pressure there. My headache faded and I felt surprisingly alert. Alert enough to notice what I had just done without even really thinking about it.
I blinked a little in surprise but then shrugged. Why should I not use my knowledge and powers so, they were undeniably a part of me were they not? it was only natural that I should use them without thinking. It had felt as easy as breathing, as automatic as my heartbeat.
Okay so now I was a fully trained... well, I'm not sure what to call myself but whatever it was I knew everything I needed to know about how to use my powers. For the first time since I'd been knocked blindside by my very first Vision, I felt absolutely, one-hundred-percent comfortable within my own skin. I didn't see myself or my powers as weird. I wasn't abnormal or a freak; I was what I was. I could accept myself as that and not feel the need to hide. If anyone had a problem with it... tough nueggies.