My Wish for You
A/N: This chapter is dedicated to Shiro Amayagi, who not only loves this story but has this chapter as a birthday present. Enjoy!!
Alayea: I'd love to punch his lights out. Maybe someone'll do that soon.
Elena: Well I'm glad you knew where evil C was because I didn't. Mind telling me?
Lyon: A thousand thanks. Your compliments mean a lot to me.
Midnight: Well…you sort of get to see in this one. Sort of.
And to the other seven reviewers, eight if you count Akiko's twice…THANKS FOR REVIEWING!
*Sings Happy Birthday to Shiro and then tells them to get on with the reading*
Chapter Ten: A Road not Mine for Walking
25 September, Year 32, Mercury CenturyIf I've learned anything after so many years, it's never to take anything at face value. A sentence can sound like an insult but in actuality be a compliment buried under layers of jealousy. A gesture of friendship can be misread as an act of aggression. An innocent comment can be read into too far and cause false sadness or joy.
The same is true for happenings. Being on the edge of a hurricane can bring about fear of insanely high winds and torrential downpour, but indeed all that might happen are a few scattered breezes and a steady, almost rhythmic rain.
Personal experience is a remarkable thing.
It was drawing closer to my birthday, but I hardly thought about that anymore. Birthdays almost became unimportant when you were practically ageless. Though apparently after fifty years or so the spring water really kicks in and every twenty years in time is one year of aging…I don't know. I suppose I'll find out when I'm sixty-seven.
I walked out along the beach, just sort of following it nowhere and everywhere and wondering why, at low tide, was the high tide line so close to the water, when it should be six or seven feet farther down the beach?
I stopped at a group of large rocks that extended into the water and watched quietly as on the other side my mother's best friend, Amalia, and her two children played in the sand and in the water. The little girl kept running back and forth and letting out a delighted shriek at the water's cold temperature. The boy, older than his sister but not by much, stood beaming proudly at a sculpture he'd made in the sand.
I sighed almost longingly. I wanted this. Children, laughter, happiness…just a day to spend in the sunlight with people I loved more than anything. Currently that consisted of Leon and his son, and the former was busy teaching the latter how to climb into the big tree and jump into the fallen leaf pile.
And thinking about people I loved more than anything took my mind down a road that I vowed years ago I'd never walk again. I've never been as happy as when I'd walk down the beach with him…meet him secretly on nights when my parents thought I'd already gone to bed…picturing his face in my mind and smiling at the way it made me feel inside…I stopped myself. A promise was a promise—that road was no longer mine to travel.
I turned to walk in the other direction then and bumped smack into Iason. Literally. Both of us blushed embarrassedly and blurted out an apology, and then quickly reassured each other that it was alright, neither of us had to apologize.
I looked up at him—I'd always been a bit short, and Iason was tall, maybe even six feet or so—and saw that his eyes were dark with concern.
"Look, I'm alright, really," I said, half-laughing. He shook his head.
"This isn't about that. There's a storm coming," he said gravely.
"There're always tons of storms this time of year," I said casually. "Another one won't make much different except the mud will get muddier, if that's even possible."
"It isn't just a storm," he said, shaking his head again as though not wanting to believe what he was saying. "It's a hurricane. A big one."
"How do you know?" I asked, curious. I'd been around during a hurricane once before, but there wasn't much I remembered of it. I was only a child at the time.
"Some of the boats have seen it approaching. Hurricanes aren't fun, Marina," Iason said grimly. "The clouds above you get dark and start to circle around, and the winds picks up and creates little leaf cyclones, and then the rain begins to fall, slowly at first, just a drizzle, but then it picks up into a steady downpour and the wind's fast enough to sweep a person off his feet or knock over a tall tree onto someone's house."
"It's going to cross right over us?" I asked, still not at all worried. Nothing could ravage Lemuria, save time itself.
"The leading edge is going to hit and then it will sort of curve around the south side of the island," Iason confirmed. "We've all been watching it for days. Actually, I'd have liked for you to come out on the boat and seen it from the sea—when you're not in the middle of it, it's really quite fascinating…Marina?"
But I was running, fast and hard, off down the beach. So many years…nearly ten…and still I could not go near the harbor, could barely even think about boats after what had happened so long ago.
How can it hurt so much, still? I was younger then, less in control; I am older now. I should be able to handle this, to push aside the sadness and the pain and even the anger of my loss. It shouldn't matter so much anymore.
But it does. It's a rare day indeed when I don't think about him…about Julian…all he meant to me, how kind he was, how wonderful, how he didn't see me as…as defective…or weak, or freakish. He thought I was perfect, and I thought the same of him.
What's worse is Iason. I can't even look at him now without blushing and looking away. I think I might have feelings for him, but in my heart…I believe my heart still loves Julian. There is still the chance of his return…I know he'd not like my being attached to anyone else. I was and still am his, and his alone.
And a part of me is afraid to fall in love again. So much of my life—from my birth defect to my recent losses—seems to have been cursed, I'm afraid it can only end in tragedy.
I was at Leon's house with him and Maya when the hurricane hit. Robin was outside playing, and I ran out to get him. I looked around, but he wasn't there, so I ran out onto the road, calling for him as the rain began. It was as Iason said—the wind and rain escalated quickly, and the heavy drops lashed against me as I ran.
"Robin!" I yelled, wiping rain from my eyes as best I could and looking around. "Robin! If you're playing a game it isn't funny!" Of course I knew he wasn't playing. He was mischievous, but smarter than that—he wouldn't stay out in this kind of weather. Maybe he's gone inside someone's house, I thought wildly, my mind grabbing onto any possibility that didn't involve my nephew in a hurricane.
I had nearly come full-circle—the palace was just up on the hill to my left—and there was still no sign of him. I caught sight of the palace again and froze. My face must have been as pale as winter snow—if Robin had gone in there…it wouldn't be promising.
I ran up the hill as fast as I could, ignoring the little voice that told me it was a really bad idea to be me and running up a muddy hill in a hurricane. But I had to find out. I had to know.
And, irony once again prevailing, there he was. The back of his shirt was held by the armored hand of a palace guardsman, and poor Robin's feet were held nearly a foot off the ground. He was kicking back, his heels colliding with and ringing against armor, and the guards in the doorway just laughed. The guard holding him threw him forward, so he landed face down in the mud.
I screeched, driven by pure fury. It was the sound a bird of prey makes when they've sighted an enemy and proceed to dive on them. And I did just that, only in a bit more inventive of a way—a blast of Psynergy, Freeze Prism, my favorite, soon had the guards' feet frozen to the ground and several helmeted heads stuck in ice that attached them to the doorframe.
Robin was small for a six-year-old, and I easily picked him up and set him on my back, blasted the guards with a Froth Sphere for good measure, and began my frantic run back toward Leon's house.
But as I ran, things began to change. The rain slowed, as did the wind, and the sky grew lighter and not as ominous. I was tired from running, and from even that small use of Psynergy, but I kept going anyway. There was no way I was going to lose anyone else because of some stupid rain. Just no way.
I got us back to Leon's house alright, except for a while I couldn't get up from the chair I sat in and had to just sort of be wet, but Maya promised me she didn't mind and built up the fire to dry me off. Eventually Robin came out of his room and sat with me.
I was reminded again of how much I wanted a family like my brother's. But I remember the feeling in my heart, when I couldn't find Robin…as though I would die myself if anything had happened to him…and that feeling scares me. I don't quite know why, but it does.
What do you know, it's my birthday in five days. I'll be…I don't know. Some age. I might've lost count, actually. Years aren't really marked for me anymore, so I tend to almost disregard them. I hope that's not an all-too-bad thing.
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Well? Like it? I know it was a bit short but I'm not only on a double deadline but wasn't going to make a depressing chapter on Shiro's birthday. So I wrote this instead! HAPPY BIRTHDAY SHIRO!!!!
Push. The. Button. NOW.