A/N: And...It's here at last. For the fiftieth time, I'm sorry about how slow I was getting this chapter up. I had to multi-task it with writing the next chapter of Visser Humiliation Club (Which is almost done, by the way) and just everyday, general life. Don't hate me please!
It gives me much sadness to say that this is the second-last chapter, and the next chapter is going to be rather short. I've found a way to wrap everything up as effectively as possible. Also, after this, I'm going to start on many new projects writing-wise, as well as complete some I have already started on.
I'll be likely to post an author's after-word after I've submitted the last chapter, thanking everybody who has helped me along to write this story. But in advance, thank you so much everybody!
Credit:
Mimi-dudette and beta-reading awesomeness. Seriously, I would be lost without her and her sentence-correcting ways.
Chapter 36 – The Camel's Back
"Chee-Shanos, it's been a very long time."
Have you ever been left in one of those moments that seem to stretch on for miles on end? Well, this was one of them.
I had seriously not expected Lena to say that. And by the look on Erek's face, neither did he.
What did this all mean? I didn't have a clue. Lena knew Erek...somehow. I mean, besides from being his...date to the dance. But Erek didn't appear to know Lena to any further extent.
And Lena could use magic! Or, what appeared to be magic anyway. She could have been a witch. But no modern day witch could use magic like that. If she was like me, a magic user...no. She couldn't be. I was told I was alone in this world.
"Do I know you?" It was Erek who broke the unnerving long silence.
Lena rose the corners of her lips slightly – in what might have been a smile – and said,"Once."
Erek narrowed his eyes. "Once?"
"Who are you?!" I demanded, though secretly scared beyond wit's end, "How can you use magic?"It wasn't possible...it couldn't be possible...
"You're searching for a lot of answers, Tedahko." She then chuckled quietly, "Tedahko. Have you got any idea what that name means?"
"No," I admitted. I had always thought it was Japanese-Javanese.
And annoyingly enough, even though she appeared to know what my name meant, she didn't drag the topic any further. "We have a lot to talk about," she said.
"Then, start talking."
"Your people before you were less stubborn," she muttered. Her expression gave no clue to what she meant by that. What I had noticed with Lena was that she could somehow keep her face entirely blank. I wouldn't want to verse her in poker.
"Tomorrow is a Saturday," she turned towards Erek. "I'll come by your house at 9:00. Both of you, be ready." And then, she began walking off in to the darkness of the park.
Surprisingly, Erek didn't protest. He just stood there, looking a bit dumbstruck.
"Are you okay, there?" I asked concernedly.
"Yeah..." he murmured, looking lost in thought. I knew how he felt. "You know as much about this as I do, don't you?"
"Afraid so," I sighed. We both turned around and began the long walk home.
"I'm scared," I admitted, as we walked down the dark street in the middle of the night.
Erek smirked. "Because it's dark out?"
"Don't be an idiot, Erek," I shot back. "There's just…something that doesn't seem right about her."
"Humans are always scared of what they don't know," he quoted.
"But you're scared too," I pointed out.
"Am not."
"Are too."
"Okay, so maybe I am a little," he confessed, "But she knows my name. I'm an android. Since she said my Chee name, I've been reviewing all my encounters with humans from the period of time I've been on Earth."
"And you can do that?"
"Yup. So far, I'm only up to two thousand years ago. But so far, it's come up blank. I've never met her before."
I frowned. "What makes you think she was around that long ago?"
"She said 'once', didn't she?"
"Well, yeah," I said, "But Lena is a strange, spooky person. Who knows what she meant by that."
"I guess so," Erek muttered, and he] looked on ahead, lost amidst his own thoughts.
I hated not knowing what was really happening. There was this feeling I got about Lena...I don't know. Even if she was a magic user, there was something about her that just wasn't normal. I mean, especially not normal.
Erek was right. Humans are afraid of what they don't know about. At the end of the day, I was still human – more or less. I could feel the earth shifting beneath my feet, but was left at loss to why it was shifting.
But whatever the reason, my questions would be answered tomorrow.
&&&
Despite having my mind dwell on a lot that night, I surprisingly didn't sleep too bad. But when I stumbled in to the kitchen, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes and stretching, I realized my mood was short-lived.
At the kitchen table, sat Marco and a strangely pretty looking boy, who I could have sworn I had seen before. Oh well, I guess I can't remember everything.
"Nice pajamas," remarked Marco.
I frowned, trying not too feel so subconscious about my blue tank top and mid-length black pajama pants.
"What are you doing here?" I asked.
Marco shrugged. "You know me. Just chillin', being awesome. All that kind of stuff."
The boy next to Marco, whom I still was having an odd feel of deja vu about, continued to stuff his face full of cookies.
"Who's he?"
Marco stared at me, as if he couldn't really believe what I was saying. He gaped at my question.
The boy finished swallowing a mouthful of cookies and acknowledged me disdainfully in one particular word which I hadn't heard for a while.
"Nishkak."
Oh yeah. The blue-alien-centaur thing. I had forgot he could turn in to a human. My bad.
"Good morning, everyone," Erek greeted us, as he entered the kitchen.
"Yo Erek," Marco said, "What's up, man?"
"Nothing much. You two ready?"
"Are they ready for what?" I butted in. I didn't mean to sound rude or anything. But honestly, I had no idea what was going on.
"We're going to be the magical roaches that will be sitting in the corner of the room just in case your friend Lena turns out to be a controller," Marco explained. His eyes darkened. "Or worse."
For a moment, I felt angry. I hadn't really wanted anybody else to become know about this. My people, my past...they were mine. By Erek telling them...I don't know. I suppose I felt a bit betrayed.
But it wasn't his fault. He was only doing what he thought was right. If things did turn sour with Lena today (which there was quite a good possibility that it would) then I wasn't sure if I'd be able to take her.
I hadn't said anything to Erek earlier, but when we were at the park the night before...I could feel this sort of energy illuminating off Lena. That might sound a bit strange, but I can't describe it in any other way. Even if she was what I was, she was different.
Somehow.
"Couldn't get anybody else to tag along?" I asked innocently, trying to hide my bemusement. It didn't work.
"It's 8:30 on a Saturday morning," Marco pointed out. "Everyone else is asleep thanks to our big mission last night, and Tobias couldn't come because he's catching breakfast."
"Then why aren't you still asleep?"
Marco looked rather miserable. "Jake and I did rock-paper-scissors. I bet you can guess what the outcome was."
"Guys, can we focus a bit here?" Erek asked, "Somebody we don't know, and certainly don't trust, is going to here in half an hour."
"Ggrgrgfgfgfg," commented Ax. We all stared at him.
"Cookies," Ax said simply. "Cooo-kies. Co-kiiiiie-zah."
"Uh huh," Marco said. It looked as if this was an everyday occurrence for him. "Tedahko, unless you want Lena the Witch Girl see you in your pajamas, you should probably get changed."
I frowned, "Fine, I'm going. Sheesh."
I walked out of the room, and to the bathroom. Strangely enough, my toothpaste was missing. In some ways, I wasn't overly surprised. When you live in a household with two androids, then things tend to go missing or get misplaced a lot. I decided to go back to the kitchen and ask Erek. Surely, with a memory like his, he should be able to recall whatever happened to my toothpaste.
Just as I was about to re-enter the kitchen, I stopped to the sound of talking. Normally, I would try to stay right clear of eavesdropping. But there was something about the tone of their voices, how they had waited until I was gone to speak, that really pulled me in. Something wasn't right here.
"Tell Cassie I don't want it," Erek said "Chuck it back in to the ocean... How...how did she even get it in the first place?"
"Your guess is as good as mine, man," Marco replied. "Rachel seems to have recalled Tedahko saying she found it on the beach. But the odds for her to actually come across it..."
Come across what? I wondered to myself, feeling a bit confused. The only thing I had found on the beach was seashells and my awesome crystal which I made unto a necklace. No idea where the crystal went, though. I think I've lost it.
"You have no idea what it felt like," Erek muttered, "The whole time, I was conscious. I could have reached it...I could have..."
"It is not about what could have been, Erek," Ax spoke up for the first time. "There is no way to repair what has been done now."
It was needless to say I had no idea what they were talking about. But at that moment, I did what my gut instinct told me to do – I turned and walked away, pretending I had heard nothing. There must have been a reason why I wasn't included in that conversation.
But what was that reason?
&&&
Once I had gotten changed (and finally found my toothpaste. It was in my sock draw [of] all places...), it wasn't long before the doorbell rang.
Erek and I stood there, staring intensely at the door.
"Here," I muttered under my breath. The answers my past might be behind that door...
"Are you going to open it?" Erek asked me.
I shrugged. "Nope, you?"
Erek sighed and opened the door.
Sure enough, there stood Lena. One of the first things you notice about Lena is her ability to make everyday clothes (a black and white striped T-shirt and a pair of jeans, in this case) look like it was being placed on a catwalk. She looked exactly like one of those models you see on TV or in magazines.
"I see you're ready," she said simply, and walked on in.
I was too nervous to say anything, so I stood there trying not to faint, or do anything else that would have the potential to embarrass the heck out of me.
She held up a plate full of cupcakes, before walking in to the kitchen and placing the plate on the table. Erek and I followed, not really sure of what else to do.
"I wouldn't be much of a guest if I didn't bring any food," she remarked with a dim smile.
Believe me Lena, I think the only person that would go near those cupcakes were Ax. They were probably poisoned.
"Can we get to the point?" I spoke up quietly. Both Erek and Lena looked at me.
"Very well," Lena said.
She turned towards Erek. "Remember who I am yet, Chee-Shanos?"
"No," Erek admitted.
And then, Lena walked over, so she stood face to face with Erek. "I still owe you that game," she whispered.
Erek's eyes widened with realization. Something had hit close to home.
Chee-Shanos looked on at the creature curiously. The one that was so different, in looks and behavior – an alien.
Not that Chee-Shanos had anything against aliens. If the creature was good at playing games, then that was really all that mattered.
The two stood in a large meadow in the Pemalite home planet. They stood at a stalemate, each waiting for the other to break the silence.
There had been a lot of visitors lately. Trading of information and technology had begun to become popular among the Pemalites, so there wasn't really a time when their planet wasn't temporarily occupied by visitors.
Chee-Shanos wasn't so much interested in the purpose of the latest creature's visit. He just wanted to know if they liked to play.
"You are an android," remarked the creature.
"My name is Chee-Shanos," said Chee-Shanos happily, "What's yours?"
The creature was silent for a moment, as if considering what the android had just said.
"Lenacszh."
"Want to play a game?"
Lenacszh hesitated. But their mind was soon set, after their own people waved to them in the distance. Casting one last look at the Chee, the stranger, she walked off to join her own people.
Later, Chee-Shanos had asked his Pemalite master what creature he met on that day. Since then, he had never really thought much more about their meeting, and what it had meant.
"Sayanik Mekur," Erek muttered. It was near impossible to tell what he was thinking. His face had become blank all of a sudden, like the surface of an etch-o-sketch wiped clean.
Lena grinned and pulled back. "It was simplified two-thousand years ago to just "Mekur"," she added.
"Erek...?" I asked slowly.
"Tedahko, remember how I told you that when the Chee first came to Earth, they grafted the essence of Pemalites in to wolfs to form dogs?"
"Yeah. What about it?"
"The Pemalites, my people, often traded technology and information with other races. The technology we used to graph the essence of the Pemalites in to wolves was...well," he gestured to Lena, "You work it out."
Lena. Sayanik Mekur. Technology.
Lena was...an alien!? But, did that mean I was the same as her?
"You and I, we are not the same," she said, as if she heard my question. I jerked back from surprise, hoping that she didn't just read my mind. It could have been a coincidence, but I wasn't sure.
Lena pulled up a kitchen chair and sat down. "May as well sit down. We have a lot to talk about."
We both did as we were told.
"Five-thousand years ago, the planet of my people was attacked by a race."
There was something in Erek's eyes that darkened when she said that.
Lena looked at Erek. "The same that attacked your people, I believe. News travels fast across the universe."
Erek remained silent. Lena took it as a sign to continue.
"Like your people, we also stumbled upon planet Earth. We were afraid that our]true forms would look out of place on the Earth, thus causing disruption. To be quite blunt, we abducted humans. We abducted them, cloned them, and inserted our own full essences, our very mind, conscious, and soul, in to the body of those creatures."
I felt a cold chill go up my spine.
"But with inserting our full essences, there also became complications." She smiled dully. "You may have noticed I can't show much emotion. There is a reason behind this. Our essence was too strong, too different, to be merged perfectly with a human's body. Still possible, mind you. But when we merged the essences, there were side effects. The use of our natural abilities, powers you may call them, was cut. Along with this, my race also discovered that we were unable to use the human bodies to show any major emotion. I feel all the same things normal humans do: happiness, sadness. Yet I can't express it."
Well, that would explain why she was so spooky.
"How old are you?" I asked.
Lena grinned. "14," she answered. "But with my species, essence is our center. Our essences are passed down by blood. I have lived on this Earth before, in the form of my great grandmother. And...continuing the trend as far back as I can remember."
...and everything had just gotten a whole lot more spookier.
"How long ago was that?""Roughly 14, 000 years ago, I believe."
Erek snapped out of his quiet state. "But what does this have to do with us?"
"Good question," she answered, before turning towards me. "Tedahko, I wish I had some answers on who and what you are for you, but I don't. Whoever your people were, they were on this planet long before us."
It was then that any hope I had of finding out the past of my people shattered. And only now did I realize there was no way of knowing. Everything had been lost in time.
"What about unicorns, trolls and fairies? Do you know anything about them?"Lena then began laughing – surprisingly hard for an alien who could supposedly not express emotion.
"Those creatures were from stories my people told to humans to distract them from what was really hiding on their planet – us."
And any other leads I had to my people had just been smashed. This wasn't turning out to be a good day...
"Can I have a word alone to Tedahko for a moment?" Lena asked Erek. Erek looked unsure.
"I'll be fine," I reassured him.
Erek nodded. He then clicked once with his left hand. Lena didn't seem to notice, but I did. As he walked out of the kitchen, he was followed by two cockroaches. Must have been a signal.
"First of all," said Lena, "there is no such thing as prophecy. Behind everything, there is a divine being at work. Second of all," she smirked lightly, "Like any other human, you'll only live once."
Cheery Lena, real cheery. Was that meant to make me feel better?
"There's really not much more I can say than that. However, I feel as if I should advise you to be careful."
I frowned. "Is there a particular reason why?" I asked.
This time, she didn't smile me dimly or doing anything similar. The look on her face was as confusing as her very so-called "personality."
"The straw broke the camel's back," she murmured to me, "though the load may have been lifted to give the camel a rest, the load had still damaged the back. Be prepared for the camel's back to break.
I pondered this for a moment, but found myself unable to lock on to whatever the heck she meant by it. While most likely unknown to Lena, metaphorical quotes, or whatever on Earth that was, aren't the best thing to use on me. I just end up getting confused.
"I should be on my way."I still had a billion more questions I wanted to ask her, but I knew the answer would have been the same. Lost in time. There was no way of telling who I was, who my people were, why everything that happened had happened. If I couldn't have changed anything anyway, then what was the point in finding out the unknown?
As she got up and left, I said nothing. There was nothing more I could say.
&&&
As I sat at my desk, finishing off the homework I was interrupted from the previous night, my mind was wandering. I had been trying to get used to the fact that I might ever know why everything had happened, but it wasn't so easy. Amidst some of my memories, there was one that stood out particularly at that moment. I'm not sure what about it that made me recall it. I just...did.
It must had been from years and years ago. My mother and I was watching TV, and a news report had just been on, about the lady who was murdered by her boyfriend.
Mom then looked at me seriously and said, "Promise me you'll never marry an Axe-murderer, okay Tedahko?"
I laughed and dismissed it, saying that I would never do something so stupid.
It was nothing more than a hallucination, a naïve daydream that I wanted so desperately to be real. And when I woke up, it had all gone.
I slammed my fist on my desk. My heart was pounding, and my face was covered in sweat.
It was done. I can't do anything about it. Then why was I still so frustrated?
How was I meant to do my homework, when my head was a jumbled mess?
T
he daydream. My parents. My people. Lena. That strange quote about the camel...
What could she have meant by that, anyway? There was no camel, and there never was.
Or not from where I was sitting, anyway.
"Tedahko, are you okay in there?" asked a worried voice from corridor.
I wiped the sweat off my face using the edge of my T-Shirt, and then slumped further in the chair.
"Fine," I lied. But he mustn't have bought it. Erek opened the door to my room, walking in. He closed the door quietly then stared hard at me.
"You've been quiet ever since Lena left," he remarked, and came to stand near me by my desk.
I shrugged, "In case you haven't noticed, the whole thing didn't go over too well. And then she started jabbering about camels..."
"I noticed," He muttered, before looking confused. "...Camels?"
I waved my had dismissively. "Never mind."
He stared on at me with concern. And as much as I appreciate his concern, I just wanted to be alone. Maybe in a few days time,
after I had finished soaking in my own melancholy, I would just stop caring and start anew – like I had many times before.
He stood by my side, and ever though I couldn't see where he was looking, I knew it was at me.
"Are you going to be okay?" he asked quietly.
"Yeah," I sighed. "I guess I've just once again realized how screwed everything is."
I felt a hand gently being laid on my shoulder. I didn't shrug it off, or reject the comfort that was being offered. I remained passive, and just sat there. Thinking.
"But no matter how screwed, I'll still be here," he said.
I stood up off my chair and turned to face him. Even now, he still looked as human as ever to me. Gone were the days where I felt embarrassed, maybe even intimidated by the fact I may like a android.
"Would you hate me if I lived for once?"
Erek looked confused, as if he didn't understand quiet what I was getting at. He answered anyway. "No! Of course not."
"Good..." I murmured
And Anne, wherever you are, I swear on my life this is what really happened.
Because at that moment, I stopped wondering about what could have been and what is, the past, present and future, and all those stupid concepts I could have never grasped.
I leaned forward and kissed him.
And unexpectedly, as he slung his arms around my back and pulled me in, he kissed me back.
"And please, please, remember that it's never about what is wrong or right ."
In a way, it was because of them that I didn't care anymore. Both Anne, and even Lena in the short time I had known her, had opened my eyes.
After all, I'm only going to live once.
...and I was making the most of it.
When we pulled back, Erek's face had turned a bright shade of red. I didn't laugh, because my face probably looked the exact same. I waited a few excruciating seconds, for him to say something. Anything.
He smiled at me. But then, once more, his eyes darkened.
"I don't regret it," he said. He continued to stand there. The more he stood, the more nervous I grew. "Tedahko," he sighed, "there's something I need to tell you."
And only once he had told me, did I finally understand what Lena had meant by the camel's back.