My work here is done! I now have all of you firmly in the Lone Power's court. Mwahahaha!
Okay, that wasn't my only work, but I've always thought of Him as basically a good guy who was doing what He perceived to be best, even if no one else saw it that way. Introducing death obviously wasn't a selfish action–he did it for the good of Their creation. But I digress.
A super huge thank you to Reading Redhead for beta-reading this chapter on short notice when I was feeling a bit insecure on its contents. Her comments helped me tweak the chapter a bit closer to perfection (though, alas, it is still far from it). She also caught several silly grammatical errors, keeping me humble in my tirade against the desecration of the English language by this amazing and terrible technology of the Internet. Any remaining errors are mine alone. Red, I'd bake you cookies if transporting them to you wasn't such a problem.
Just for the record, that last chapter is the only one in the story rooted firmly in research (Won't Richard Peck be proud...)–solid scientific research, it was. Autotroph is a real word–it's the scientific word that means an organism that synthesizes its own nutrients. Heterotrophs (which is also a real word) cannot synthesize their own nutrients; they must absorb them from another source. Most scientists agree heterotrophic organisms originated first, followed by the autotrophs (The first of which might have been chemioautotrophs and not photoautotrophs like I–or rather, the Lone Power–said last chapter.). Contact your local science text for more information if, for some strange reason, you are simply fascinated with prokaryotic organisms.
You guys sure have a soft spot for Kit, don't you? This is not his story, and the only reason he gets to be in it is that he is a big part of Nita's life. That gets him a little part here. Patience, my gentle readers. His time will come.
Thi– Think about the ending grammatically (Wow, that makes me sound like a nerd. :P) If the Lone One had no idea whereHe was, wouldn't He have asked "Where are we?" instead of "Where were we?" "Where were we?" implies that He is start back up at something He at stopped doing momentarily. I do see how I could have made the ending better and clearer, though. Keep the criticism coming–it really helps.
Okay, now that you're sick of hearingme talk... On with the story! (Which will be continued after 100 reviews...)
"So..."
"So...?"
So here he was. So here she was. Ten o'clock in a well-lit bedroom of a dark house. So here he stood and sighed, hands grasping frantically at air, as if the words and answers he was so desperately seeking were tangible, floating in front of him. He could snatch them if only...
But they were not tangible. His arms fell to his sides. They weren't even articulatable. Articulatable wasn't even a word.
Damn it! Focus. Who the hell cares if articulatable is a word? That isn't the point.
So here he was. And so here she was. So here was the rift that had grown between them. So here he was trying to mend that rift, or at least acknowledge its presence while in her presence.
"So..." he began again, hoping he would find something articulatable this time. Something to shape the whorl of emotions flooding his mind. Start simple, build up. Start simple, build up. Yeah, easier said than done.
"So you're sitting in my bedroom—uninvited—looking like you're getting ready to ask me if I killed your mother."
So here she was, angry and distant. Here she was so unlike his best friend, so unlike his strong wizardry partner. So changed in the last three months when she had been pulling way from him, becoming such the enigma.
"So..." he began for a third time, trying to maneuver the conversation in the direction he wanted it to go. "Where—where were you?"
"Excuse me?" She rolled her eyes toward him, nonchalantly flicking a strand of hair out of her eyes.
So here he was, a striking reminder of her own inadequacy. Here he was with his sympathy and his exasperating patience. Here he was despite all her attempts to keep him at a distance. To keep him from seeing through her façade. To keep him from seeing that she was living a double life.
So here she was trying to preserve her secret. And here he was trying to delve it out.
"Where were you?" he repeated, rising and walking toward her. Concern tainted strongly with frustration flowed from his fingertips as he tucked the truculent strand of hair behind her ear and softly picked out the flecks of grass, leaves, and small sticks that littered her messy ponytail.
So here she was, wracked with guilt she could not show. Here she was, not knowing whether to laugh or to cry or wince or shrug as the debris Kit picked off fluttered to the ground and her mind fluttered around her earlier excursion in the park.
She turned her head and shrugged away from him. "Why is that any of your business?"
So here he was, fed up with the cold shoulder. So here he was, a mess of emotions and a soon to be failure at reconciliation.
"Why do you have to be so goddamn cryptic?" He threw his manual on the floor. She hadn't noticed he was holding it. "It's not like I've been your best friend for several years. It's not like you've been avoiding me like the plague recently. And, speaking of plagues, it's not like you were supposed to meet me at Huxemburg Lab this evening to discuss with Aroba Listrena less lethal ways for it to broaden its selection of food sources. Because it sure is difficult to convince an entire species of virus not to turn its sights on the human race when only a single member of the said race is there."
So here she was, remembering that important engagement, and here he was, trying to forget what he discovered there.
The words floated across her mind—
"Six-thirty at the lab, okay? It's important."
—just as the flowing Speech character floated across his, along with the question that haunted him until he found out an answer he didn't want:
What does it mean?
He sank onto her bed. This was not how he wanted to start this discussion. But anger, so long repressed by him where she was concerned, flared violently. He tried to stifle it, but it had been too long stifled. Why? Why couldn't he control it? He wasn't going to reach her with anger.
Who the hell am I kidding? I'm not going to reach her without anger either.
Kit flopped over and buried his head in her sheets. He took a deep breath, then propped himself up on one elbow.
"This is the first time I've been in your room in two and a half months, Nita. Do you realize that? Two and a half months. I used to be in here two or three times a week, working on homework or wizardry or just hanging out..." He drifted off, tilting his head to one side. He sighed. "There's no value in nostalgia, I know, but–"
She snatched her pillow out from under him. "Look, Kit, I realize I have been a little busy lately, and as pleasant as this stroll down memory lane is, it still does not justify your presence in my bedroom at 10:00 at night."
"A little busy?" His anger flared once more. "I'm lucky to get a half nod of acknowledgment in the hallway at school. Damn it, Nita, we're partners, and you haven't done one lick of wizardry with me since you started sleeping with Brandon."
She whirled on him, voice shaking. "What I do in my life, on my own time, is my own business and my business only. So if you've come here to give me any of your hypocritical morality bullshit, I—"
"You're right, Nita. You are absolutely right," he cut her off, standing. "What you do in your life and on your time is your own business. If you want to screw all the guys in the whole damn state, knock yourself out. But this isn't about your time and your life is not entirely your own. You pledged your life to fighting entropy, to lessen the savages of death. Part of your time—part of your life—has been dedicated to that. And it seems as if you've forgotten that lately."
"I've forgotten nothing, Kit," she said, tears springing to her eyes.
"Then you've simply disregarded it? Just, just up and disregarded your responsibilities, even as you kept full awareness of what those responsibilities were? Hell, Nita, is that so much better?"
"You don't know what you are talking about," she snapped, knowing even if as she said it that he knew exactly what he was talking about, that the tears threatening to spill over her cheeks were not tears of indignation or righteous anger, but of shame at being called out on the most terrible mistake of her life.
But she could not admit this to herself, and she could most definitely not admit it to Kit.
"Maybe you just can't admit that I'm changing, Kit. That my life is changing, and that the course it takes may not include you. Surely you've realized this these last several months. So perhaps now, you need to stop these ridiculous delusions of my inadequacy, and just be honest with yourself." Again, she knew the words she had spoken were wrong, that she was the one deluding herself. But this did not stop her from spiting such venom.
"Honesty? You want honesty? Okay, let's be honest. Who the hell is he, Nita? Who is this 'Brandon' you're so wrapped up in?" He muttered a word and plunged his hand deep into nothingness, pulling out his recent source of internal torment.
"What do you mean?" Fear flew to her face as her hand flew to her stomach, grazing the place where He had traced the characters what seemed like a lifetime ago.
Kit flung a glowing Speech character down in front of her. "Do you know what this means?"
Nita studied the character. It looked familiar. She had seen it before, recently... But where or what it meant, she did not know.
"I have no idea." Her anger faded a little as curiosity crept into her voice.
"That's pretty damn unbelievable since it's a character in your own damn name."
That's where she had seen it... her name. According to the manual. She had noticed it recently, but never took the time to look into what it meant.
"I–I really don't know," she stuttered, her voice catching.
"Are you lying to me or have you really become such a shabby wizard that you don't even bother to investigate non-initiated changes to your name? Either way it's pathetic." He gazed at her, hard and unfeeling, distant from his earlier passionate anger.
"Look, why don't you cut though all this B-rate private eye interrogation crap and tell me what the hell you are getting at. For that matter, why were you even messing with my name? You know how dangerous it is to mess with another wizard's na—"
"For your information, I was not 'messing' with your name. While I was waiting for you not to show up, I was preparing protection spells for us in case our planned discussion with Listrena took a nasty turn. I put in your name, with the intent of having you check it later, of course, so that you would not be hung high and dry if there were an emergency. But then, I noticed something curious. A symbol I had never seen in your name before." Kit started to pace, a metrical trek from the bed to the doorframe and back again, as if the regularity of his walk could regulate the situation.
"This is not terribly odd; people are always changing, and you seem to have done a lot of that lately. But I had never seen the character before. Again, not terribly odd, for while my Speech is fluent, it is not all inclusive."
"Get to the point already," she snapped, irritated by his newfound aloof arrogance and nervous at his pacing.
"I started looking in my manual. Started in the obvious places, chapters on Naming and Description. No luck. Then I noticed a subsection I'd never seen before, on Markings. Do you know what a Marking is, Nita?" He lifted his eyebrows, waiting for a response. She stared coolly back, hoping he did not see how much he had fazed her.
"Markings, apparently," he finally continued, "are symbols the Powers attach to wizards' names as a sort of signifying claimer. They Mark their heroes, their enemies, their pet projects, so that other Powers don't interfere. I was surprised that I had never heard of this before, until I read that Powers stopped Marking millennia ago. They came to the consensus that it was unfair to the mortal, that They should refrain from such direct interference in mortal lives, and that They do not have the right to claim a particular mortal as Their own.
"Yet, you have a Marking, Nita." He turned that gaze upon her again, that aloof, arrogant gaze, as if he knew all the answers, but was patiently waiting for her to confirm that she knew them, too. "I first thought there must be some mistake, but no. No, there was that elusive character staring clearly out at me from the page." He paused as he realized his voice of reaching a pitch of hysteria. Collecting himself, he continue with an air of calm he did not feel. "Do you know what Marking you have, Nita? Do you know what that glowing character signifies you as?" His lips twisted sardonically, completely outside his control.
She shook her head, her brow furrowed, studying the character that still floated between her and Kit.
"That," he declared with an abrupt gesture, "That is the Mark Powers bestowed upon Their lovers."
Nita sank to the bed in shock.
Kit continued pacing. "'Their lovers?' I asked myself. Surely there must be some mistake. Surely, I was mistaken. Surely you couldn't hold this title. You couldn't be Marked. The Powers had forbidden Marking among themselves. So what Power would risk the anger of His or Her fellow Powers to Mark a mortal lover?"
"I–I—" Blood trickled down her lip from a nervous bite that was too forceful. She didn't notice.
"No, go on," Kit said, pausing in front of her with what appeared to be a mildly amused smirk dancing across his face. "Tell me, Nita. Tell me. Who is it exactly? Surely you know? After all, you're the one screwing Him."