Chapter 8: Stressed Out

Lately, I've been seeing stress.

I didn't know what it was at first, but I knew it wasn't normal. I started seeing it right after Turtle unblinded me, right after I sent him to collect that first box of ingredients. I was scared because I didn't know what they were, and I knew what everything was. If I went for a nature walk in the forest, I could recite the scientific name of every leaf, insect, every branch we walked by. This unknown confused me. I didn't like being confused. I liked to know what was happening around me.

For me, stress takes the form of dots: little black dots randomly scattered around my vision. They puncture my surroundings with their little roundness. They are spread pretty far apart, though, so even during the really stressful times, there aren't that many of them. I can still see everything crystal clear.

I saw the stress during those days when I could see but I had an uncomfortable bandana wrapped around my face. Even though all I could see was black, the stress was a darker black. The blackest black. They were a million times lighter than the normal black surrounding them, and a million times more distinguishable, too.

I realized it was stress right before that speech I gave everyone at the school assembly, the one about the medicine. I remember there was a moment I was worried that I would mess up and accidentally reveal that Turtle was an animus. I was worried that I would say something wrong or start speaking too fast or too slow and everyone would start laughing at me. I had a million horrible What Ifs pulsing in my brain that I tried to get rid of, but I just couldn't. Right at that moment, the dots came. One dot appeared on the left side of my vision, one on the right, and all of a sudden there were more black dots than I'd ever seen before.

I realized that the dots had come at the precise moment when I'd been stressed. Therefore, I concluded, the dots must be physical manifestations of my stress.

Physical is a bad word, actually, because the word "physical" implies that you could touch these dots and pop them like bubbles, but you couldn't. So actually they were more mental manifestations of my stress than they were physical.

I didn't really care, though I probably should have. All that mattered to me was that my stress was manifesting in my vision, and whether it be mental or physical, it was a very bad thing.

Bad things make me stressed.

When I fainted, the black that came over me was not the black of darkness. It was the black of stress dots. Millions, billions of them crowded together to clog my vision and assault my consciousness.

I knew it was the stress and not the darkness because the stress got to my vision before my consciousness. Usually, the darkness gets both at the same time. But I had a brief moment where I was completely conscious and capable of moving, flying, dancing even. But I was blind. I was worse than blind because when I was blind all I saw was darkness but all I saw then was stress.

The line between a physical manifestation and a mental manifestation of my stress had long ago been crossed. The dots were both, I realized then.

It was both because I realized that if I kept on being over-stressed like this, then the stress was going to kill me both physically and mentally.

So I needed to stop having bad things happen to me. I needed to take a break. I needed to relax and get a normal job and have a normal life.

And now this, this startling revelation comes at the worst time possible, a time when I'm already being pushed to my limits with this stupid healing business. Now I have a whole new situation to deal with, and it's a bad one.

I know my limits.

They're about to be broken.

And I'm going to break along with them.

I wake up to the sight of Sunny and Turtle peeking over my body, craning their necks like I was a wounded patient they were tending to. Sunny watched me with intense concern. Turtle watched me with a mix of concern and confusion.

"Are you OK?" Sunny worriedly asks me.

I don't respond. I'm still shocked by what Stonemover has said about my dad. Maybe I just heard wrong, though.

"You said his name was Mastermind?" I asked Stonemover, still in a daze.

"Yes, that was his name," Stonemover confusedly answered. "You know him?"

I begin to cry. It's a mix of happy and sad tears, happy because I've found a new part of my family, and sad because it might not be the family I wanted it to be.

"He's my dad," I choke out.

Stonemover's jaw drops. He's speechless. So is Turtle. So is Sunny. Sunny should have known, though. She should know the name of her boyfriend's dad. That's just something you have to know when you're in a relationship. It's not as important as knowing your partner's favorite color, but it's close.

"He is?" Stonemover asks me.

I nod. "He's alive. He's in prison, though. Captured and experimented on Rainwings. I saw it. He was torturing them. I've never forgiven him for it."

Stonemover processes this information in silence, then asks me, "Are you two on good terms?"
"I try to stay as far away from him as possible. So I'd say no."

Stonemover hung his head down, as if he were to blame for my father's psychopathy. "I'm not surprised, really," he told me. "Mastermind never struck me as the father type. Did he not tell you about me?"

"Not a word."

We all stood there in silence for a few seconds.

"You're my nephew," Stonemover told me.

I don't know why, but I never really understood that until Stonemover said it out loud. It felt weird. Uncles don't just appear out of nowhere like this. Neither do nephews. Yet here we were. Nephew and uncle.

"You're my uncle," I told him back. I said it very factually, very formally, as if I was making a decree: I, STARFLIGHT, THE FORMERLY-BLIND SON OF MR. INSANE, HEREBY DECLARE THAT STONEMOVER IS NOW MY UNCLE. LET IT BE SO!

Stonemover smiled at me with a warm, comforting smile. It let me know that he was happy to have me as a nephew. Maybe I wasn't the nephew he pictured, but he would take me in anyway. It felt good to know that. So I smiled back, indicating that I was probably happy to have him as an uncle. I wasn't sure yet. I still had to sort through my feelings a little further.

"And you two," he said, pointing a talon at me and Sunny, "are cousins."

My girlfriend is my cousin.

My girlfriend, who I have known since birth, is my cousin.

The gang is not going to be happy about this.

As we're leaving the cave, I decide to split up from the group and hang out with Stonemover a little bit longer.

"You sure, Star?" Sunny asks me.

Hearing my pet name being used in light of our familial relationship being exposed makes me very uncomfortable.

"Yeah," I say. "I just want to have a talk with Stonemover."
"OK," Turtle says. "Well, we'll be in the common room if you need us. Bye!"

They flew away, leaving me alone with Stonemover.

"Why are you still here?" Stonemover asks me. "Shouldn't you be flying with your friends, doing whatever it is dragons do nowadays?"

"I just wanted to talk to you about something," I told him.

"Well, talk away," he responded.

"It's about Turtle," I said.

Turtle, to the unassuming outsider, may seem like the least of my problems right now. After all, my girlfriend is my cousin, and I have to give dragons medicine that doesn't exist, and on top of this he has no friends. Why does Turtle even matter? Not just to me. Why does he matter in general? You need friends if you want to matter. Lonely dragons never matter because they never make an impact on anyone.

The problem with this Turtle is that he is starting to poke his head out of the turtle-like shell he's crafted for himself. He's making friends. He's inserting himself into more and more conversations where he is not wanted as part of the group. Before, he would have made one remark and left upon receiving the looks that say who are you? from everyone else. Now, he sticks around, gets acclimated with the group, and begins to make friends with them.

He constantly receives gratitude from everyone that he heals. His popularity is growing. He's gaining a reputation as "The Healer".
He's making friends. His whole winglet loves him. His self-confidence is growing. He's becoming a more outgoing dragon, more free-willed. He's letting the quirky side of himself show. He's finally getting rid of the loneliness that has clung on to him like sea barnacles for his entire life.

"He's becoming a little haughty," I say.

"Haughty?" Stonemover says. "He didn't seem haughty to me."

"Well, it's not really that he's haughty," I say.

"Then what is it?" Stonemover asks.

"Well, for the first time in his life he's making friends, and he's becoming more sociable-"

"That's a problem?" Stonemover interrupts. "You should be happy that he has friends. You sound jealous."

"No, it's not that. It's not what you think it is. Just let me finish-"

"Oh, I think this is what I think it is. I think you have no social life and just wish that you could make some friends like he has-"

"What I'm about to tell you, you can't tell anyone," I say, trying to talk over him.

"Oh no, poor Starflight, he can't bear to have his social issues be public information-"

"Turtle's an animus, OK?" I annoyingly tell him.

This shuts him up.

"That medicine we were going to give you - it doesn't exist," I tell him.

"What?" Stonemover asks. "How can that be?"

"It's the necklace he was wearing. It's magic. One touch and all your injuries are gone."

Stonemover considered this. "What else has he enchanted?"

"Nothing. That's the only thing."

"That's a lie. You can't be an animus and not enchant one random thing for a stupid reason your entire life. No matter how many times your guardians hammer it into you, you always do it. I did it. I know he did."

"That's true."

"So you admit it. What else did he enchant?"

"Nothing."

"But you just said - how could he have lived his whole life as an animus and not have improperly used his magic once?"

"Maybe he didn't live his whole life as an animus."

Stonemover finally gets what I'm trying to say after 5 seconds of thinking. "When did he realize he was an animus?" he cautiously asked me.

"A few days ago."

"WHAT?" he exclaims. It's the most surprising thing he's heard all day. Even more surprised then when I revealed I was secretly his nephew. I contemplate bringing this fact into the conversation, but decide not to, figuring that I don't want to come across as a jerk to him. I wonder what things surprise him the most.

"How did he only manage to figure this out now?" he asks.

"He said the phrase 'if I was an animus'," I told him.

"Ah. And he actually was an animus. Unbelievable."

"I imagine you can see why a newly discovered animus gaining confidence would be a problem."

"No, I don't."

"What?" I asked him. "Why?"

"It's not a problem yet. That's a better way of putting it."

"What do you mean not yet?"

"I mean that he's not going crazy yet. At least, I don't think he is. So he should be fine. When he starts exhibiting symptoms of craziness, then it's a problem. I wasn't a problem at his age, though, so he should definitely be fine."

"But what if he does something stupid and makes a mistake?" I ask him. "What if he gets cocky and starts misusing his magic or something?"

Stonemover thinks for a second, debating what to tell me in response. It's something I would do. Like uncle, like nephew.

"Do you trust Turtle?" he asked me.

"Of course," I said. "I'm just worried about him. To be quite honest, he's not a very smart dragon."

"Starflight, if you trust him," Stonemover told me, "then that's enough. It's not worry you feel for him; it's concern. That's completely natural. But you have to trust that he'll make the right decisions. And you trust him, right?"

"Yeah," I said.

"So let him do what he wants. He already has parents to watch over him. He doesn't need you to be his dad. You are not responsible for him, Starflight. You are not his responsibility."

I fight back tears, because somehow Stonemover's psychoanalysis of me has been spot on: I've been treating Turtle like a son. I have felt responsible for him. I cry, horrified by my overbearing personality.

"Trust me, Starflight. I know what it's like to feel responsible for everyone. I felt responsible for my entire tribe when I left home. It felt like I was their representative."

"I - I am their representative," I squeak out.

"No, you're not," Stonemover consoled me.

"No, I am," I corrected him. "I'm literally the official Nightwing Representative for Diplomatic Relations."

"Oh," said Stonemover. "But are you the representative for Turtle's life?"

"No," I said.

"Then stop acting like it," he said with a smile, a hint of his old, lively self showing.

I smiled too. "Yeah," I said. "Thanks for the advice."

"Anytime," he told me.

"You're a pretty good uncle. You're a natural at giving uncle-y advice. Was that really your first time?"

Stonemover laughed. "As improbable as it may seem, yes, it was my first time."

I laughed too. "Can I really come back anytime for advice? Because already I feel so much better, and I may want to feel like this in the future."

"It's not like I'm not going to be busy, so absolutely!"

His welcoming words make me smile. They're so positive, so incredibly mood-lifting after the gloomy conversation we just had.

"Well, see you around, then," I say.

"Goodbye, for now, Starflight," he says. "Watch Sunny for me!"

"I will! Bye!" I say. Then I turn around and fly out, out of the cave and up into the bright blue sky.

"Come visit me soon!" Stonemover shouts at me as I leave. I resolve to visit him as soon as I have the time. But I won't have free time for a long time. Unlike Stonemover, my schedule is very busy. And my new family is only going to make it busier.

Even when something good happens to me, whenever someone like Stonemover comes around to take some of the stress off of my shoulders, something always has to put the stress back on me.