Disclaimer: I do not own W.I.T.C.H. or any of its characters in any way, shape or form.
Note: Based on the cartoon, not the comics.
This is set several days after the previous chapter.
The laughing and cheering that accompanied the performers tumbling about in their antics had created an atmosphere that would have had even Phobos half convinced that it was a lie the citadel had been twice the prime sight of a tyrant's rule. As it was, Caleb was more than a little shocked at the contrast between the Meridian he had grown up in and the one he was now experiencing.
Light, laughter, smiles, joy – life itself thrived through what had once been near lifeless streets. No spider dared to spin their web in the shadows of this convivial place. No snakes were present save those grotesquely, hilariously fashioned from cloth being beaten about the head by their unforgiving wives. No solemnity was allowed here, no despair or sorrow. The citadel had transformed into a place bereft of the even the grief that steeped from the scars of tyranny.
Caleb scratched at the bandages that wrapped his hands. They were not thick, but the material was rough enough to irritate his skin just enough to irritate him. From the corner of his eye he noticed the swish of a captain's red cape moving along the street.
His father, Drake and Tynar seemed to appear from thin air whenever there was even a ghost of work, of the Rebellion, of the tyrants and beasts that marred Meridian's history, of her. They were like shadows Caleb could not shake, constantly there on the edge ready to step in, yet seeming all the while as if they were merely passing by.
Vathek had no such qualms about subtly. He had blatantly stated that if he so much as caught whispers of the young commander engaging in anything other than small talk with the Guardians, the Queen or his – to quote the large jailer – 'stinking passling friend' he would sit on the youth and make small talk himself. Disturbingly, irritatingly banal small talk.
Caleb had made no argument against such conditions. He was still struggling to completely regain his equilibrium after what had happened with Eric.
He had, however, voiced his surprise at the blue Meridian surviving for so long as an undetected spy where discretion was paramount. Then he had been promptly taken by the arm and dragged to his father whilst being berated by the previously threatened banal small talk. While he had not laughed, the young human had noticed a lessening in the tightness of the worry lines which slashed the two adults' faces at his unremorseful grin.
Still, they had remained his self-attaching shadows and Caleb knew exactly why they were acting like so. The past few days even he would admit that he had been somewhat subdued, less himself or the self that he generally seemed in any case. His Queen – whilst he was unsure of the extent to which she had been told of the incident, although he was certain she had been told – had also insisted that he take the break he owed her. No expectations. Like the forced day of sleep nearly a week before, the others had only been too happy to enforce her orders.
Yet, despite their efforts to avoid such a thing, thoughts of Eric and how he had been unable to stop the shaking of his hands still haunted the edges of Caleb's mind. They sapped his drive, his surety, his faith in himself and the paradise he had miraculously found himself in once again. It was the festival that now dragged him out of his quiet somber mood.
The young commander returned his attention back to the vibrant street performance – the start of a week long festival to celebrate dancing and signing and acting and tomfoolery. It had been a tradition in the time before Phobos, or so the older rebels had said. Every year around this time performers supposedly had put on a show for all those who wished to attend, their sole aim to entertain and provoke both smiles and tears from their audience.
Caleb had listened to old women gush over reenactments of ill fated lovers and old men laugh heartily over memories of comedic portrayals of past heroes, a sound that had always seemed so foreign in the solemn halls of the Infinite City. They had spoken of faces encased by beautifully crafted masks and the intricate artwork that would be placed on a wall one day only to be faded the next. The younger adults too had regaled stories of the dancing that each night had ended with, of partners both stranger and friend, lost to tyranny and saved despite it, breaths mingling in their intimate closeness, chaste kisses stolen as the passion of the music thrummed through them.
To the ears of the boy it had seemed like a magnificent dream each speaker had somehow shared in.
His father had told Caleb that the year before Phobos forcibly took power he had taken his son to see the festival. He had been particularly taken by the masked tumblers he had been told, but it was no memory that the ex-rebel leader held. The only performances he could recall were those given in the depths of the rebel hideouts in an attempt to make solemn children smile and lift depressed morale. At their most simple, they had been to try and create an illusion of the normality that had been so brutally shattered. The several dances and parties – and one medieval festival that had involved the exhilarating experience of jousting the ever feisty Irma – he had attended on that wonderful place called Earth were all Caleb had to compare. Those and the boisterous celebrations following Elyon's coronation and return to power, following the uplifting sense of freedom.
Still, they had been nothing compared to the magnificent sight now before him. Caleb's breath had been all but stolen away, his eyes left wide in wonderment and mouth involuntarily curled upwards despite his withdrawn mood over the past few days. He absently wondered if Aldarn felt the same thrill he did as he watched the performers in front of him tumble once more round the space that acted as their stage.
Beside him Will and Elyon clapped as one of the figures garbed in a cherry red robe jumped to their feet and subsequently flipped backwards three times. Even Tom and Eleanor who guarded over their adoptive daughter looked impressed. The performer stood to face her partner who was also rising to his feet, each whipping out a nobly stick.
The two were play-acting a tale about a long past hero who had fought a renown and malicious thief. They moved back and forth, the swirling green robes of the villain contrasting the vibrant red of the one who would become the ultimate victor.
The dull thwack of the two sticks meeting brought a cheer from the crowd, morphing into laughter as the villain was sent sprawling onto the ground by his wisp of a challenger. He gave a mockery of a jumbled verbal abuse and wheezed heavily. The performer slithered forward on his hands chasing the story's heroine around the stage. The heroine comically beat him back with her stick and woven basket of flowers until she took a tumbling trip and the story's green clad villain slithered in to take the advantage.
And suddenly the crowds pressing in on Caleb from all sides seemed less jovial and more intimidating as the loud noises continued to rise to a volume that would almost rival those of a battlefield.
Danger!
Caleb itched the bandages around his hands, then stopped and forced himself to breath. From the corner of his eye he spied the shadow of a red cape drifting closer. The former rebel closed his eyes and breathed again. He did not need to be confronted now, no matter how well intentioned it was. There was nothing wrong.
There is nothing wrong.
Another clatter of stick meeting stick in mock battle. Theatrical cackling that seemed more like hissing with the melodramatic wheezing that accompanied it broke the air for a few moments. Then the sticks clattered together once more. Danger! Caleb's hands fisted then loosened. No. There is no danger here…
He stepped back, planning to make a quick and unseen bid for isolation or at least a place away from the off-putting scene. Turning – a smile making its way back onto his face briefly as a figure leaped from one rooftop to the next across the somewhat narrow street, wrapped in a banner that blazed blue against the darkening sky and warm glow of torches – the ex-rebel leader knocked into another being. He blinked, looking down and found himself fixed fast by the ecstatic beam of one Air Guardian.
"Isn't this amazing?" Hay Lin said. "Have you seen the paintings on display nearer to the palace? Do you know when the dancing starts? Where's Taranee and Irma and Cornelia? What I wouldn't give for the chance to design costumes like the ones they are wearing… Where are you going?"
Caleb almost found himself smiling again at the girl's bubbly chatter. As it was a small grin snuck onto his face unseen. "I take it you are enjoying yourself."
"Ooo, yes! I was even thinking that maybe I would see if the painters would let me give some of their street art a try. Maybe I could paint your portrait on a wall. A good wall with good sunlight, maybe near a tree or two staring up at the sky…" The girl's speech devolved into near incoherent mumbling. There was a dogged shine to her eye that did not bode well for any unfortunate friends that were the objective of it.
"Why don't you see if Blunk want's his portrait painted? He would be more than willing," Caleb interrupted, less than willing to be the subject of Hay Lin's gaze.
As much as the young commander appreciated her skills in creating beautiful things from different materials, he was less appreciative of being the focus of said beautiful things. Especially when they put his face in public. The ex-rebel had never liked an overt amount of attention. When it did not put him on edge it made him distinctly uncomfortable, the feeling of many eyes upon him disconcerting when he had learnt to keep to the shadows so well. So no. He would prefer to not be the subject of Hay Lin's art.
"Are you sure? I could get a really nice picture of you with a sun-"
Suddenly she cut herself off, all but slamming her hands to her mouth. Caleb raised an eyebrow in amusement. Behind him, the crowd cheered once more as the heroine sprung to her feet and atop her foe's shoulders in one smooth move. The wheezing became a chorus of groaning pleads and desperate tempting. Offers of immortality, love, immortal love, the universe and, strangely, an array of flowers and sticks were put forth. All were all met with a resounding 'no' and the accompanying thwack of a stick.
"I'm sure," Caleb said to the girl before him. "I don't think anyone has painted Blunk before."
Hay Lin's eyes lit up with excitement. It appeared she had been suitably distracted from her creative mind's original subject.
"With a bunch of flowers or maybe a green banner or, oh! A red one! That would bring out his colouring well. And maybe with some of those masks, the big ones with the feathers and cloth hanging off them," Hay Lin clapped her hands. "Oh! I bet he will love it! Do you know where he is?"
Caleb grinned. It appeared he had done his good deed for the day. "He was trying to sell to the artists the last I saw."
The young commander stiffened as Hay Lin grabbed him for a hug. He returned it quickly enough, grinning further as the Air Guardian's smile widened in return. Then she was off, offering equally brief and enthusiastic farewells to Elyon and Will.
With another subtle glance at the red cape shadowing him, Caleb also strode away from the crowd. For a few moments he wandered aimlessly, trying not to think of snakes whilst trying to imagine Blunk sitting for Hay Lin's painting. For the most part he was succeeding. The small part that was not forcibly turned its focus back to the festivities around him. That in turn directed his thoughts back to Aldarn.
Now the young human had a goal, an aim, spurred by the desire to see his close friend amongst the merriment and liveliness that saturated the atmosphere. He moved through the streets to where he had last seen the young Galhot near the palace entrance. There were sights everywhere drawing his eyes, making his attention wander a little more than the former rebel was used to. Yet he could not help himself.
It was this lack of attention which brought about the next incident. Caleb was sending a passing glance over an group of children springing around beneath the legs of a performer clearly parodying an overly strict mother when he collided with someone as equally distracted. They gabbed his arms to both steady unlucky beings before quickly letting go. Yet, it was only when Aldarn's came into view that Caleb's hands loosened from their tight position.
"Caleb! Sorry, I did not see you." The young captain placed a hand on his head in embarrassment. His friend only grinned and shook his head.
"I was just as distracted," Caleb admitted. "This festival is really something, isn't it?"
Aldarn's smile was perhaps the widest Caleb had ever seen it save for when Phobos had finally been overthrown.
"I know!" his friend replied, enthusiasm colouring each word a vibrant shade of joy. "Have you seen performers in the giant purple masks with the Hoogong feathers? And to think I though that old man Hayes was lying when he told us that he had seen men on stilts mimic the courtship of the birds to the timing of twenty drums. And the tumblers! I cannot believe my eyes! It is only the first evening and I already think that I am dreaming!"
Caleb laughed. He beamed back at his good friend caught up in the latter's own happiness. There was no trace of the fear that had grasped Aldarn the days before, no trace of the shakiness that had besieged him in his shining eyes.
"I feel the same way," the young human said. "But if we were dreaming I think Drake would have already woken us for our own guard duty with that endearing grumbling mood he possesses in the morning."
Aldarn gave a short bark of laughter, but Caleb's own smile dimmed a little as his thoughts progressed further down an unwanted path. He fingered the bandages around his hands, consciously keeping his fists from clenching. He steeled a flinch as from the corner of his eye the parodied mother managed to all but hit one rascally child with a broom as they raced away laughing. An unintended parallel, it was nevertheless a reminder of how she had looked at him after he his rejection and perceived disobedience during their first real confrontation as… with her.
The young commander did, however, turn his head when a shadow appeared behind him as expected, a firm hand laid on his shoulder.
"Ah, Aldarn," came his father's voice. "I hope you will not mind if I steal my son for a while."
Aldarn smiled and shook his head. "Not at all. There are still six more days of this-" He swept out an arm to encompass all the sights his words could not. "-To enjoy with Caleb."
"Enjoying yourself then?" Drake asked with a smile from where he stood by Julian's side, red cape and all.
"It's wonderful!" came Aldarn's reply. "I don't know what to do next."
"How about you come and watch me beat Vathek in a drinking challenge," Drake said, draping one arm around the young Gahlot.
"Don't the two of you have that challenge once every two weeks?" Aldarn asked.
"But how often have you seen the participants being forced to wear elaborate dresses to compete?"
Their voices faded as the pair travelled away from father and son to be lost in the crowds. Caleb's father, in turn, began to guide his son in a different direction heading for what soon appeared to be an isolated spot where worries about overly curious eavesdroppers would be almost wholly unfounded.
They came to a halt in a nook formed by the join of two corner stores. The younger human turned to face his older counterpart with the sheen of question in his eyes. It was not he who did the first asking, however.
"Are you alright?"
"I am fine, father," Caleb answered. He did not notice the way the older man's jaw tightened in something akin to well restrained anger at his words. Rather, the youth's head was bowed in well guarded thought. It did not take long for some of that thought to leak through in a carefully monitored manner. "What happened?"
"You became overwhelmed by panic," came the man's response.
Caleb shook his head. "No. I mean to Eric. What happened to Eric? Why did he think that-" a barely audible swallow "-Cedric was free and after him?"
Julian held back a sigh. "Eric is fine-"
"Except for whatever drove him to think that a still locked up monster was chasing him through a forest." The words were spoken with the tone of someone who would neither appreciate lies or coddling. Caleb stared at his father. "What happened?"
"If you would let me finish, I can tell you," Julian frowned at him.
Caleb rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. "Sorry…"
And there it was. The little sign that his son had not quite fully matured to manhood. The father in Julian clung to it with all the gracious hope he had even as his head nodded in acknowledgement of the apology.
"As I was saying, Eric is fine now," the man repeated. "Although we could not convince him to join the festivities."
Julian would not admit how he thought it had been the better decision. As much as Eric needed company and distraction, such a crowded, noisy place would not be conducive to his condition.
"He is still-" a glance towards his son's bandaged hands "-on edge though. From what we could gather, he did not think Cedric had escaped. He thought Cedric had not been caught at all."
"What?" Caleb's shock was almost as potent as his shock when Edric had come crashing though the trees. Almost.
"It appears Edric forgot that we had won. He was re-experiencing a memory from early on in the…Rebellion." If Caleb noticed that he was being carefully watched by the speaker he did not show it. Julian inhaled and continued on. "It was a memory where he and his raid party were indeed being chased by Cedric. Only he got out of it alive."
The man paused as his son took this in. The young commander mulled over the information, a slight crease on his brow where his thinking had tapped into a mine of worry.
"He forgot that we won?" The question would have seemed timid if not for the authoritative voice that Caleb had fallen back on out of instinct.
"He was caught up in a memory, enthralled by it, bewitched even. He did not know it was a memory when he set off running."
"Is that common?"
His father shook his head. "To that degree? Not in my experience, but I have known many over the years who have thought for several moments that the memory playing in their head was real. Some would freeze in place with a distant gaze as the scenes that played before them, but had not played for anyone else in days, months or years. Others would break under the strain of reliving their worst experiences becoming near inconsolable even to those who knew them best."
If that was not a blatantly subtle hint of what was coming than nothing was. Caleb had certainly picked up on the course the conversation was about to charge down. From the tensing of his muscles and almost clenching of his fists the young commander's thoughts about the subject change could be accurately deciphered.
"Can we not talk about this?"
"Caleb. We need to talk about this."
The voice's tone indicated that whilst everyone had been walking a tightrope around him over any topic that was not Blunk making off with Vathek's meal once more, that would not be an option for this conversation. The idea was further cemented in the young ex-rebel leader's mind at his father's next words.
"You need to talk about this."
Silently wishing for his hands to not shake and feeling no small amount of relief when they did not, Caleb straightened his back and stared the older man in the eye.
"What happened, son?" Julian's voice had softened, although it was no less stern in its command for an answer. "Did you have a-"
"No," came the sharp response as Caleb anticipated what was going to be asked.
"So you knew where you were?"
"No…" This answer was less certain of itself. "Look, can we not… Can we just leave it?"
The level of his distress must have been evident for his father nodded, moving to take his son's hands in his own. He stopped when Caleb moved back shaking his head.
"Besides, I am fine."
The hard jaw was back and this time Caleb noticed.
"Caleb, you and I both know that is a lie." Julian's voice was calm, his face a neutral mask save the growing crease upon his brow, but his inner unseen depths moved with the same frustrated anger that had been provoked when the same words had been spoken so foolishly before the incident a mere two days ago.
Caleb's own insides began to simmer with heat. "I think I can judge my own wellbeing."
"And I think that after what happened your judgment is questionable," his father replied in the same near forced calm. "You should know better than to keep such things to yourself."
"What is going on in my head is for my head alone. Unless it affects my duty-"
"I do not care about your duty!" The words were not shouted, but they were the first words to be as heated. Julian's frown deepened to rival the caverns that lined Meridian's rocky face. "What I care about and what concerns me more is you."
The youth opened his mouth in argument but found himself abruptly cut off as his father plowed onwards with his own reasoning.
"I cannot lose you. Do you understand, Caleb? I cannot lose you. Not to Phobos. Not to Cerdic. Not to Nerissa. Not to this." Julian ignored the way his son flinched at the mention of his mother, his point too important a one to make to be hindered by such discomfort. "I will not lose you if I can prevent it."
The man took a breath as his eyes, hardened with determination and simmering frustration from the past several days, bore into his son's own. There was a sheen of wetness there in the young brown orbs – whether from frustration or something else Julian did not know. Whatever reason for its presence, it did not fall. For it to do so was too much of a childish reaction for someone so distinctly not a child.
Julian grit his teeth and strengthened his resolve further. He would not see more than Caleb's childhood stolen from him.
"You will not keep anything like what happened from me if it happens again. You will not insist you are fine and continue with your duties when you are not fine and another can take your place. The Rebellion is over."
"But I am still a guard, a soldier. I am still a commander," Caleb argued, his reasoning tainted with the subtle echoes of resigned despair of the war weary.
"You are my son." Julian would not back down.
"And I have a duty to the Queen! I have a duty to Meridian! I cannot just overlook that. If I don't stand guard, if I don't keep watch, if I don't fight when fighting is needed, than who will?"
There it was. The crux of the problem. The unspoken question that drove the young ex-rebel leader: who will ensure that Meridian stays free even when it seems that its freedom is not being threatened? Especially then?
It was a question that was in turn driven by another: what if this paradise should fall once more?
Whatever the answer, it certainly did not include Caleb abandoning his sword for good.
Julian found himself faced with the same uncompromising sense of dedication and responsibility that had initially driven a barrier between his son and the recipient of his son's love. Now it was driving a barrier between them.
The boy had been raised on duty. He had developed amongst it. He had been taught duty and made to witness his first brutality for duty. He had been forced to wield his own brutal sword in the face of duty. He had lost his father to duty. He had nearly lost his own life because of duty. And, after all the duty forcing nightmares had been removed, that duty still stubbornly remained ingrained in the boy.
Julian inhaled. There was more to life than duty. He, who had experienced the times before tyrants reigned with an iron fist and razor will, knew that better than any child who thought that their entire world barely remained skating atop a bubbling pit chaotic destruction. There were times of war and there were times of peace. Now that war had ended it was peace that ruled. Caleb was, while understandably set in his opinion – an opinion softened by his exploits on Earth – wrong to believe that peace was so fragile that the merest hint of a whisper's breath could shatter it into a thousand belligerent fragments.
Yet his son was not wrong either. Someone had to be on guard to ensure Meridian did not fall prey to another tyrant, another monster, another evil thing that lurked in the dark dank bowels of the universe. Someone had to ensure the loss and heartache of before had not been in vain.
It's alright to be afraid. But what use were such words when fear meant letting down one's guard, and letting down one's guard meant the fall of paradise? But one could still fall even if paradise did not. Eric was one example. Julian refused for his son to be another.
"Caleb, son, you are not alone in this," he said slowly. "And yet you seem to forget that. Why do you not talk to us? Any of us? Do you not trust us?"
It was perhaps the wrong thing to say, despite being the right thing as well. Caleb shied back without moving physically, his face becoming shuttered and his fingers lurking dangerously close to his bandaged palms.
"I don't talk because I don't need to. I am fine."
As the three words were spoken once more something in Julian snapped.
'No, you are not! Caleb, you need to let someone in. When it comes to things like nightmares and panicking, the men who refuse to accept that everything is not fine are the ones who lose more than just their sleep."
He knew his words were harsh, but the man could see no other way to get his message heard. As it was, his anger was doing its best to control his tongue, albeit unsuccessfully, lending a further hardness to his voice. And still the boy refused to listen.
"You cannot force me to share what I don't want to share."
And therein laid the problem. Caleb would not bare his soul, his fears, without being forced and Julian, for all his yelling, would not truly force his son to do so. They both knew it. They both knew that each other knew they knew it. So they were left at this uncomfortable stalemate, this impasse built of duty and terror and need, both to save and survive, that they could not surpass.
Yet neither would give either. To them their place was too important a one to hold, and so they remained at their impasse staring at each other with eyes more frustrated than anything else.
With nothing left that was able to be said, Caleb turned away first.
He all but fled, dodging and weaving between watchers and performers alike in his angry strides until the shadows in the corner of his eyes found themselves well and truly lost. Masks loomed from the sun's fading light like the grotesque mugs of monsters once faced, but no longer existent.
They do not exist.
But despite the smiling faces around him Caleb could not believe the thought. Instead it fueled his anger towards his father, towards himself. If monsters existed then not being fine would not cut it. Not be fine could not cut it, could not be it. And to abandon his duty as watcher and protector…
The ex-rebel leader would have given a short barking laugh had not the same instincts which had lost his unwanted tail also tasked itself with keeping him silent. If he allowed himself down off the high floating wave that his anger had borne, then he could feel the sharp edges of weary hollowness and something else he was less happy to admit breeding in his heart.
He could not abandon his duty; that had to come first before even himself, before even her. It was the core of who he was, the thread that had finished sewing him together as he had grown from boy to-
His eyes caught a glimpse of a drawn face in the shine of a glass window pane. Deep lines seemed to cross the skin even though they appeared nowhere on it, ghostly signs of a fatigue that had less to do with sleep and more to do with spirit. The eyes seemed both dull and burning all at once. The mouth looked as though it had nearly forgotten how to smile.
To this.
The ex-rebel leader's steps began to slow in pace as his frustration eased towards the back of his mind, still simmering away but no longer propelling him forward. His hands fisted than fell loose, more out of lack of will than anything else.
He was tired. Of what was hard to say, there was just too much. He was worried about Eric, about memories becoming real and reality being discovered as nothing but a mere memory. He was worried about being tired and tired of being worried.
The nightmares that had plagued him the past couple of nights did not help either.
Caleb absently took note of the dwindling number of performers and the painters who were finishing their works in the last of the day's light as he walked. Music too was beginning to drift through the air and his fury, signaling that the night's dancing would soon begin. Words also drifted through the air as he wandered past one particular street, familiar and argumentative words.
"If you think I am going to join in one of those tumbling acts, you can think again. I do not want to get my hair dirty."
"Come on, Corny. What's a little dirt? Not like you have power over it or anything."
"Don't call me 'Corny' and a 'little dirt' to you always ends up with me covered in muck!"
The voice of the first speaker pulled Caleb unconsciously towards it as though it were a magnet and the boy a stray piece of iron caught by its invisible alluring force.
"Babe, after all this time I still don't know how you became the Guardian of Earth."
"It's because she is more beautiful than any flower in the universe."
Irma raised her eyebrows at Caleb's comment and smirked. "Are you sure it's not because the people she choses to date have mud for brains?"
"Speak for yourself. My brains are perfectly intact and mud free," came the good-natured answer.
"Hey, play nice you two," she cut in from where Caleb had wrapped his arms around her slender waist.
Irma shrugged. "He started it."
"How did I-" the former rebel spluttered indignantly.
"Well, your overwhelming concern about your hair and questionable choice in boyfriends is not going to stop me from having fun," the Water Guardian cut in over the top. "See you round."
Like her element, Irma evaporated into the air leaving Caleb alone with the girl in his arms. She turned to face him, eyes honing in on the stark white replacing his usual gloves.
"What happened to your hands?"
"I cut them," Caleb replied forcing himself to refrain from scratching the bandages.
"On what?"
The ex-rebel leader did not reply.
She narrowed her eyes. "Caleb." The tone was not one to be ignored.
"It wasn't intentional. I didn't even realise I had been clenching my fists so hard until after it happened," he gave in, rubbing his forehead partially in a poor attempt to shield his eyes.
"What happened?" Her tone had softened even as her own gaze pierced the frustrated and anguished depths of his own. "What's wrong?"
Caleb looked away. He could not form the words on his tongue even if he wanted to.
"Fine," she breathed, her golden hair brushing against his coat as she leaned forward. One slender hand reached up to cup his cheek. "But just so you know, I've heard that talking helps."
Her face drifted away leaving the tantalising prospects of a kiss unanswered. Instead she took up his bandaged hands in her own. The tension in them dissipated almost immediately as the music began to take a fuller form in the atmosphere.
"Dance with me." It was more a demand than a request, but the honeyed tone of her voice nevertheless sent shivers down his spine. Pleasant shivers.
Lutes and bells and thrumming drums began a steady beat. It was different to the music present at the Earth parties he had partaken in and the songs that she liked listening to. Instead of standing apart, they pushed close together like the other couples that were slowly flooding the street in place of sole figures retreating to the edges watching, waiting for the magic of past tales to be brought back to life.
Their fingers linked further together, her chest brushing against his, their feet avoiding each others' in a complex twist. Her hair swung out and back around. Caleb's lips twitched into a smile.
The pair shifted back and forth with the same grace that she used in summoning her brazen element and he used in avoiding the notice of others. Round they spun, taking a step back then to the side as they spun again with the others around them.
Her head came to rest on his shoulder, contented sighs brushing the skin of Caleb's neck. If he had to choose to relive a single moment for the rest of his life it would be the one he was in now. In that moment there were no bad dreams or threats of death. In that moment there were no panicked confrontations or shaking hands or demands that he could not fulfill, or duties that he had to.
In that moment there was only him and her.
So, as the sky turned ever blacker, they danced the dance of lively youths from fanciful tales in despairing worlds, twirling and dipping to the rolling passion of the music that hung in the air around their own young and ardent love.
Alright. So the quality of this might be a bit bodge because I wanted/needed to get this done so I could get back to studying (I'm one of those people who has an incessant drive to finish a chapter once started...). Hopefully it is alright and the characters are all in character.
Also, I don't know whether such a festival is a thing in Meridian (and I don't think it is to be honest. So sue me…or don't because I am not that rich to be able to afford it ;) Anyway, I needed something that the gang could be involved in that involved, in part, dancing. I felt like this would be a plausible thing in a kind of medieval society (so to speak) – a celebration of acting, dancing, music (i.e. the arts). And I also felt like it would highlight the change between a certain tyrant's rule and that of Elyon – I doubt Phobos would have allowed such festivities during his reign and I thought it would be good to explore how such traditions can thrive again under Elyon. I also thought it would be interesting to explore given that – if Elyon is 13 and Caleb 15 when the first season happens, and Phobos came into power at Elyon's birth (which I am assuming happened) - Caleb would have been 2 when Phobos became a tyrant and so would not remember such festivals. I thought that sort of thing would be interesting to explore with his character (and Aldarn's a bit as well) given he was mainly raised in a brutal dictatorship/civil war/rebellion.
On another note, as you can see, this continued on from the previous chapter exploring some of the consequences and rounding Caleb's reaction to it. I don't plan to have his and Julian's anger with each other extending for too long, however I do think the anger is in character. It deals with the Julian's budding anger as a father from last chapter at Caleb denying anything was wrong and rejecting help (when he obviously needed it) to his own detriment – and Julian's frustration at being unable to help – which he couldn't express last chapter properly given the situation. Likewise, it explores Caleb's inability to ask for such help or truly accept his situation (based off my assumption he would have been forced to learn to not depend on anyone or show weakness, as well as him having developed a deeply ingrained instinctive need to maintain control of himself and situations in order to survive – which losing control of his body and emotions last chapter shattered). Hopefully ther argument was alright... I wasn't too sure about how well I wrote it.
Anyway, I am taking suggestions/requests (the next two chapters will be fulfilling two such requests when I get around to writing them).
I hoped you enjoyed reading this, and I hope even more that you will be kind enough to review (thanks to those who already have, and have favourited and/or followed this story - it is much appreciated).