A hasty visit
Sweet was the lingering taste of parting, of both my husbands’ lips on mine, still, and yet, as the carriage gently though stubbornly rocked my slouched figure on cushioned bench, said sensation was dullened by this chaos of thoughts that had been stuck with me since last morning. In my hand I held the rolled up parchment that I had gotten yesterday by raven. It had been accompanied by a letter from the newly appointed Grand Writer of the Temples of Naos. Cheerfully he informed me that his division had finally had a breakthrough in the magic based restorative process of old documents. Perhaps it was noteworthy that, as a child, I was raised by my father who, at the time, was residing and working at the Temples of Naos, but when I reached the age of seventeen, bandits had plundered the village and farm nearby and had laid arson to it and the Temples. Many ancient scripts, invaluable research journals, and important documents were lost that day, not to mention the many lives of those who fell victim to the bandits’ vile greed.
The document that the new Grand Writer had sent me was a copy of a journal page of my Great-great-grandfather, Elmar Kulmin, the “Leading Hands” of the Temples of Naos, during his days. Since Elmar had been a human, he had been long since dead when I was born, so with his journals burnt, his knowledge was thought lost until a few days ago. As much as I feel joy for the Grand Writer’s success, what he thought he sent me was an honor bestowed upon me, as a descendant of the Leading Hands of the Temples of Naos, was at the same time a shocking puzzle to me. For the moment, sitting in the carriage, I suppressed the instinct to untie the string that kept the copy rolled up. By now, after re-reading it a good dozen times within my office, I knew the contents as well as the inside of my palm anyway, and it would not answer any of my burning questions if I forced my eyes to shoot over the written lines yet once more.
When the carriage hours later arrived at Solfri, the capital of the Sun Elves, my back silently shot accusations up my spine. The tension I had unconsciously held up during the entire trip, and the poor posture along with it, was now giving me a taste of the aftermath to come. However, my worries and focus lay elsewhere. All too eager to solve my puzzle, and henceforth without giving him time to send a response, I had announced my visitation to my step father, who, to my knowledge, still worked at the capital’s Grand Library. The same impatience now drove me directly down the main road which led to the central ring of the city, and the guard from home, who got assigned to me during my trip, could barely keep up with my energetic strut, but I was unapologetic. Before long I arrived at the building of my focus and I pushed past the open gates, down the corridor that connected the public sections with the historical archives.
Showcasing discipline, a pale, tall guard stood between me and the next iron door I had to walk through. He raised his brow, then bowed his head respectfully without ever averting his gaze from me. “Greetings, Duke Feuergeist, and sunlight guide. Please state your business.” Usually I had all the patience in the world to understand that, despite my person here being well known over the years and countless visitations, the library and its employees had to follow protocol, but today, every second lost felt like eons and somehow I feared that if I dared even breathing slower, the world and time itself might come to a stop. Regardless, incomprehensible to me, I managed to pull myself together and managed to even show a quick smile: “I wish to speak with Duke Ivae’Ess.” With a short nod, the guard stepped aside, pushed the door open with a long, strong arm, and let me continue my path. “The Head Archivist already awaits your presence.”
At first I was met with another crossroads of corridors, steps up to the left, steps down to the right, but I knew my way around and chose the middle, leading straight up to the office of my step father. Manners had me knock but restlessness had me push the door open before any audible response – and then I halted.
The scent of parchment was so much stronger in this room, always had been. Perhaps, if I just gave the moment a chance and remained still, I could hear the old scrolls whisper to me their secrets. Small was the room, with windows even smaller, the light from the chandelier necessary to be able to read properly and yet, my step father, sitting behind his desk, which was nearly entirely hidden under stacks of documents, wore a set of glasses. Despite him being a Head Archivist, he never really asked for much for the purpose of his work, less even so did he expect unrequired conveniences deserving of the title of a Duke. It was a title he had acquired by marriage anyway, for it had been my mother, Dura, who had been the heiress of the line of Ivae’Ess, and she had fought tooth and nail to claim the right to be acting Duchess, honoring her late father – at least so I had been told.
“I’ve known you always being just on time”, the man behind the desk spoke and as he rose to his feet, he took off his glasses and traded them out with a warm and welcoming smile. “Though, today, you are a bit over punctual, no?”
As I let my stiff shoulders fall and looked back over one of them, I gave my personal guard a nod to signal him to wait outside. With a polite bow he closed the door behind him, and I turned to face my step father. “My apologies, Malrah”, I engaged in the conversation, “I feared I would not be able to rest before I’d gotten some help finding the answers I seek. I pray my visitation does not come at too great an inconvenience.”
Anxiously I awaited his reaction, though it came as I expected and he moved around the desk and pulled me into a genuine embrace. “You are never an inconvenience”, he knew exactly how to calm me down. “Come, take a s- wait, let me…” As he realized that the chair he was about to offer me was, as per usual, cluttered in notes, I couldn’t help but chuckle. A sensation of arriving home flooded my chest, and with it a little relief.
One hand I laid onto Malrah’s shoulder and, when I got his attention, with the other hand I gave him the copy of the document I had received a day ago. “You read this, I’ll put the notes away. Don’t worry, I will not bring disorder; after all, I know my way around paperwork, too.” Even though my step father knew the truth in my words, he seemed a bit nervous as he watched me. Still, he followed my suggestion, and whilst walking back around the desk to reclaim his seat, he unwrapped the parchment. Not but two seconds after he had it unfolded, and I observed his brows climb up his features.
There it was again, that dreadful feeling that time was about to stand still as I shifted in my chair, quietly watching Malrah and giving him a moment to read. Again my attention was drawn to his eyebrows, which next he laid in furrows, then they rose back up – all the way up. “Hm…”
I perked up. Malrah looked up from the parchment and gazed at me, thoughtfully so. Tension returned into my shoulders, and my back muscles cried out in complaint.
“Hm.” Another short tone, and Malrah peeked at the parchment once more. At this point, I unintentionally let out a nervous sigh. What was a faux pas at least had gotten the other man’s attention. “My apologies”, he commented, probably realizing that he had just accidentally fed into my anxiety.
“So”, he fiddled with the start of his next sentence as he moved to stand back on his feet. It was the beginning of ponderous pacing, all too familiar to me. “The Rising Sun, yes?” Malrah directed his right hand to the back of his neck and moved his head left and right in his attempt to combat work-related stiffness, as I presumed. “Wasn’t Elmar one of your ancestors?”
“My great-great-grandfather”, I pointed out the exact relation immediately and shuffled my feet under my chair’s seat. For the moment, that helped me keep a healthier posture, though it did not take away the discomfort as I had been inwardly hoping.
Eventually, Malrah turned and glanced at me. “Right. Your mother always told me that the research of the creation of Fire Elves had not been started by her but by Simon’s family.”
Simon Feuergeist, my biological father, had told me just as much and no more before he had passed away. My mother had died before I had any chance to meet her, aside from the first two years of my very own life, before she had parted ways with me andSimon, and all I had ever gotten from the man that my mother married many years later, Malrah, were few small snippets that never completed the puzzle.
I let out another sigh. “My father had taken over the research that his father had left unfinished, yes”, I confirmed. “What you hold there is a copy of the restoration of Elmar Kulmin’s journal pages. As far as I know, he was the Leading Hands of the Temples of Naos back in his days, and he specialized in translations of historical and mythical texts.
“Well, we already knew that the Dragon of the Rising Sun was involved in the creation of the Fire Elves, for your parents-”
“Bathed me in his fire, yes”, I cut him off, fighting the urge to bite my own tongue. What had happened to my good manners and respect? Sheepishly I lowered my gaze and I pulled my feet back out from under the chair to lock my gaze with the tip of one of my heels.
When I heard the creaking of wood, I was able to piece together that my step father had sat back down in his chair. “Then what holds you so agitated, Asa?”
For a moment, I rung with words. They were all there, in my head, yet ever so whirling like shadow spawn in a portal, feeding on my lack of sleep. “Wasn’t it that my mother told you that her and my father went through rituals and experiments to create… a Fire Elf? Me?”
“Experiments first, then they learned of a ritual in which they had to bathe a newborn in the fire of the Rising Sun, yes”, Malrah confirmed my memories.
As if I was able to read it from over here, I looked up just enough to peek at the scroll in my step father’s hand. My recollections of the contents were sufficient enough. “Yet the translation mentions nothing of a ritual. The dragon was actively seeking someone to give his blessing to.”
“Could have involved a ritual either way.”
I shook my head. “Maybe. Maybe not. Perhaps I am more hung up on the fact that the newborn had to be an elf that could withstand the heat of his fire. I know no other species or subspecies of elves, other than Fire Elves, that have a fire resistance… Aside from Volcanic Elves, but-”
“But you are no part Volcanic Elf.” This time it was Malrah who had interrupted me, and finally my gaze locked with his again, however, just for a split second, before he averted his. That answer had come from him all too quickly. Last night, I myself had spent at least an hour going through all of my knowledge of my bloodline, trying to figure out the chance of me carrying genetics other than the Sun Elven part and, from my father’s family, the human ancestry. Yet there he was, Malrah, immediately seemingly so certain that I was on the wrong path.
“Mother has never mentioned a Draconic Elf in the family, huh? Or rather, she specifically told you that it has nothing to do with that, do I understand you correctly?”
Malrah shifted in his chair and looked the bookshelf to his left up and down, as if I had just asked for archived documents that had long gathered dust. When my step father wanted to evade the direction a conversation was going, he’d attempt to appear painfully busy. Now it started to feel like the tension that had been sitting between my shoulder blades had moved to ball up in my throat, and it forced me to swallow hard. “You know something.”
At that point, Malrah took a deep breath. “Look”, I could perceive his tone shifting in order to conciliate me. “Dura had two requests for me when she was on her deathbed.”
My eyes went wide, my lips parted. For years I had always been told she had been executed for endangering political integration and peace! Deathbed?! Already I had learned something new today and I yearned for more, but I dared not speak. So Malrah continued, with his eyes now closed in resignation, almost as if begging for mercy: “For one, she asked me to not try and look for you before she’d had passed. She worked tirelessly to do anything within her capabilities to create a better Solfri for her son, and I was to not look for you to introduce the two of you, but she requested that I ensure your well-being after she’d be gone, as if you were my own. So I did.”
Frustratedly I huffed. “It was by sheer coincidence that I even found out that I am Sun Elven nobility. For decades, all I knew was that I was part human and part elf! Neither father nor anyone else at the Temples of Naos would tell me a single thing about my actual heritage.” Unable to hide my irritation, I clenched my palms and fingers around the arm rests of my chair until my knuckles hurt.
It was now that Malrah peered at me again with what I could only describe as regret in his eyes, not quite matching his following words: “Do you expect someone unable to do proper research and follow paper trails to become the Head Archivist of Sun Elven history? I know my work, already knew it well back then. Who do you think was the informant in contact with the Sun Elf at the Astral Gates, back when you had your stay there?”
Almost like a lighting spark, a piercing pain in my spine shot my body out of the chair and straightened my legs to a stand. This time it was me who was pacing, just not nearly as calm as the other man in the room had done it minutes before. My arms were crossed before my chest, my teeth grinding against one another. Malrah let me walk off my energy in silence until I decided to cut through it on my own. “And the other thing? You said my mother had two requests for you on… on her… deathbed.” There it was again, that unbearable lump in my throat, and I was unable to even swallow this time.
Instead of an answer, I heard Malrah rise from his chair, too, and walk towards the far end of the room. Wooden framed glass doors opened a hanging shelf and the unexpected ringing of two crystal cups almost managed to distract and relieve me from this growing dread, but it needed quite a little more than that. The bottle that my step father returned to his desk with perhaps could be that little more I was seeking.
Unmoved, I watched the other man fill the two cups with a liquid almost as clear as the cups themselves, before he handed me one of them. Hesitatingly I took his silent offer and looked down at my drink, before noticing my lack of care for what it was and taking a big swig. A groan escaped my throat, which was burning with anger right before it relaxed. I audibly exhaled.
“So?”, I pressed to pick up where we had left. I was not going to let this man off the hook so easily.
“So”, Malrah repeated after me, the tone still rather defeated, and his figure leaned forward, with his free hand supporting himself off the surface of the desk between us. “Dura also asked me to not tell you how she and Simon managed to turn you into a Fire Elf, you hear me?”
At that I froze in place and shot my step father a protesting, harsh glance. Before I could say a word, he tried to silence me: “No. Asa, I have promised your mother and I am not one to break my promises.”
Again, my feet carried me back and forth in the small office, and for the first time I, quietly, cursed the fact that my step father, nobility and renowned librarian and archivist, would not ask for a little more space – it was like being stuck in a horse’s transport box, just even smaller, with all the side tables and shelves and stacks of documents. Contemplating my next sentence carefully, I observed my step father as he likewise watched me in return. What I had gotten myself into was no longer just research, nor a family visit, so it dawned on me. As a matter of fact, I was in the middle of a debate, and if diplomacy wasn’t the very strength of me, Duke Asazoh Feuergeist, the Silver Tongue, then what was?
With a confident stance and a calm that surprised even myself, I addressed my step father: “Contradictory, Malrah.” The expression on his face told me that I had caught him by surprise. “Let’s go through likely events, I have no concern that you’ll understand the picture. After all, by now you know me rather well.”
Malrah tilted his head at first, but by taking a seat and leaning back, with his eyes still locked on me, he wordlessly signaled me that he was willing to listen.
“For as I understand the want and need to protect one’s own children, as I have my own”, I stated, “And for as I understand that information can be hurtful, dangerous at times, even, I must also remind you of something that you and I are very familiar with, and that I apparently inherited from both my parents.” The dramatic pause I made hopefully had Malrah pay the attention I required. I smiled at him, fishing for sympathy, before I revealed what I had been hinting at: “The never quenched thirst for knowledge, and furthermore the relentless determination to find answers.”
At first, Malrah chuckled, then he shook his head and averted his gaze. “If you are trying to convince me to break a promise by telling me how much you want to know a secret, I must disappoint you.”
“Oh, not at all”, I was quick to correct my step father in his overzealous presumption. Satisfying was it to observe how I had tossed him into even more confusion and anticipation than so far. “You did promise my mother, after all. If I cannot get the information from you, I will have to go seek it elsewhere. Not even only for myself, but for my very own children also. If there is only the slightest chance that my descendants, blood related to me, inherit anything that could compromise their happiness, their well-being, their safety, I must uncover it and do anything within my capabilities to protect them.”
Narrowed eyes were pinned onto me; I would not buckle. Perhaps I even ever so slightly shrugged my shoulders before taking another sip from my crystal cup and putting it onto Malrah’s desk afterwards. I acted as if I rang for words, battling with melancholy, I knew the motions well: Fluttering eyelashes, the gaze dropping for a split second before jumping back up, accompanied by lips parting only slightly, closing again, forming a smile that would accuse the rest of my expression of being full of nothing but lies. “I’ll be okay.” Consciously so I added another break, to give Malrah time to doubt my statement. “It’s not the first time I undertook dangerous journeys for research purposes. Besides, I’ve always been utterly curious about the Calcite Peaks.”
“Are you mad?!” I watched my step father sit up straight, the grip around his cup so firm I feared it would shatter. Fortunately, it was of fine and strong quality. At least that bit of luxury he allowed himself here in his office.
Unless one had a death wish, The Calcite Peaks were no place a human nor elf would dare wander. Numerous dragons watched its outskirts, guarding the borders of the lands, and they were to burn, tear apart, or eat anyone foolish enough to cross their path.
Enough of the play. I knew and he knew that the picture I had just painted was likely to become reality if Malrah was unmoving in his decision to keep secrets. With the seriousness that the suggestion of visiting the Calcite Peaks required, I stared the elf before me down. “You know. You know I’ll have to go, or else this will never let me rest.”
Groaning, my step father put his cup onto his desk and frowned. “By the light, you are just as reckless as your mother. You are way too much like her!”
“I’ll take that as a compliment”, I said in a monotone voice. “But back to before, Malrah. This situation is a little contradictory for you.”
“How so?”, grumbled the man who had married my mother.
As I felt a little guilty for twisting the knife, figuratively, I bit my lower lip. “Your first promise to my mother was that you’d ensure my well-being…”
“…”
Finally, I swore it had happened – time had come to a still-stand. I couldn’t hear the rustling of paper, not my own breathing, wasn’t even sure if my heart was beating anymore, yet I forced myself to not move. I knew that Malrah needed this break, for I had put him into a cruel position.
Missing Puzzle Pieces
Four. Five? Maybe it had been five minutes already that we had been sitting here in silence, face to face once more, Malrah in his comfortable cushioned chair, and I with my feet tucked back under my wooden chair. After I had announced to the man before me that I was returning home to start making preparations for my journey to the far East, he had told me to sit back down and act like a son for once who gave his father a break, even if we weren’t blood related. Then he had refilled his cup, then mine, and whilst I sipped from my drink every now and then, waiting for him to be ready to speak, he had only stared at the substance meant for him to drink, without moving any limbs. His inner struggle was painted all over his figure and I wouldn’t dare imagine the battle he had to fight on the inside. One promise, or the other, both to the woman he had dearly loved – which one would he decide to break? No help was the fact that it was that same woman’s son who was forcing such an ultimatum onto him.
As time passed, I wondered if my children would ever do such a thing to me, and I remembered Skav, who had stubbornly resurrected a turtle with forbidden arts whilst we, on a mission as the Sentinels, were watched by numerous skeptical and judgmental eyes on dangerous terrain. The only choice left back then for me had been to protect the rest of the Sentinels, relying on me, and so I had made the heart-breaking move to cast out a young man I had adopted as my own son, for him to seek safety and warmth elsewhere – at least for the time being.
My heart still bleeds today as I think back to those times, and it would hardly be bearable if it wasn’t for the fact that Skav had grown into a strong, smart man, not letting hardship and loss ever cut off his way. Had my mother felt the same pain when she turned her back on me? Worse?
“She hated that word.”
When Malrah’s mutter singed through the quiet, I nearly jumped. “Huh?” was the only thing I could respond with in my confusion.
The man let go of his cup only to unwrap the copy of the journal page that I had brought with me. Stoic was his voice when he quoted the writing: “And he protected the Singular Tree and the Skyflame Trees, wanting for the memory of his lost sibling to remain… undefiled.” Rustling of finger tips moving over parchment, before he picked another line. “So he seeks a newborn Elf capable of withstanding the heat of his fire… undefiled.”
Considering the meaning of the word that Malrah had pointed out with precise breaks, I found myself struggling to understand why one would hate this particular term. Perhaps one could dislike it or dismiss it, perfection was the enemy of good enough, as life had taught me, but hate was a strong feeling to have for a word like ‘undefiled’.
“In the notes that Dura had kept on her research, this one word was a constant. Some of these translated lines here I recall. Your mother didn’t have quite an elaborate translation of the ancient text like this but… she had enough.” With a frown, Malrah handed the parchment back to me; I didn’t bother taking another look, I knew the passages, knew he hadn’t misquoted. “You know, I like to think that your mother is with the Winged Ones, and I bet that a good two dozen of them are having to hold her back from rising from the dead, only to berate me for having the audacity of taking that word into my mouth.”
So many questions and my step father was only adding more to my list, but I gave him time. More time. At least we were making progress, to some extent.
Suddenly, Malrah picked up his glass and near-emptied it with two large mouthfuls. Once he had caught his breath he cocked an eyebrow at me. “Did you know your parents had once traveled all the way to the Western Continent?”
I shook my head and tried to catch up with my own drink, nearly choking on the burning sensation in the back of my throat, which brought tears to the corners of my eyes. That didn’t irritate nor stop the man before me from talking, which I was rather happy about.
“Yes, they sure did. As you know, Sun Elves and Fire Elves differ from one another in genetics, so for your Sun Elven parents to have their own child become a Fire Elf, they had to find a way to force near instant genetic change, or so was their thought process. Where better to study quick genetic change if not within Blood Elves, who, if rumors are to be believed, have overcome an heirloom of a genetic curse within just one generation, evolving into an entire new species?”
A bit taken aback by that I blinked, nodded. “I had never thought of that. That’s clever”, I noted, but left it at that to not derail the conversation.
“Yes. No. Sure, yes”, Malrah muttered again, and I couldn’t quite tell if that was his defeated demeanor or by now the alcohol’s effect speaking. “But at the end of the day, they were none the wiser after their journey to the Blood Elves. It was a coincidence that they took a detour to the Demonic Elves, who pondered not in the past but praised the present and life and the wonderful things they had, such as the convenient material that they called – … You want to guess?”
Glass on my lips again, I froze and laid my brows in furrows. Carefully and with a low voice I took an easy gamble, “Undefiled?”, and watched my step father nod slowly.
“‘Undefiled’ is what the Demonic Elves refer to when talking about a mineral they discovered. It is fibrous, pretty when in skilled hands, and the most impressive trait is that it can lie in scorching fire and comes out as pure and unmarked as it was. Dura told me she fawned over the candles with everlasting wicks made out of ‘Undefiled’ when she was there.”
Amazed by the existence of such a material, I tried to remember if I had ever heard of anything alike. For a second I even considered diving into my arcane potential, to see if I had stored any documents or texts on minerals, so I could compare, though that would have been rude given the current situation. “Honestly, that is hard to believe. Was the material real or was it a hoax?”
I heard Malrah chuckle. “Oh, it is real. But every miracle comes with a price. You’ll catch on in a moment.” With a nod I gave him to understand that I’d remain patient, and so he resumed. “Your mother was overjoyed. A fireproof material that carried the name of the term she had noticed in her studies over and over again and practically clung to – she could not pass the opportunity to use it. All of her focus went on possible ways to use the material and she found an experimental scientist who was looking for fireproof material to treat a hereditary skin disease; his patients would have their skin crumble when it got too warm, I believe. I am not so sure about that detail anymore, it’s been many years, please forgive me.”
Once more I was eager to look for documents in my arcane potential but by now I had a haunch that my difficulty managing my curiosity came from the influence of the alcohol I was constantly nipping at. I suppressed it. Wanting to not fully indulge myself and risk forgetting this very conversation, I put my half-emptied crystal cup down.
“The doctor had some minor success with his treatment. More importantly he noticed a slight genetic change in the patients he was treating. It was just what your mother was looking for, and months later, when she was pregnant with you, she started undergoing treatment with ‘Undefiled’. When you were born, the doctor feared you were terribly ill. You had a high temperature. Dura knew better, though. She realized her experiment was going as planned. Better, even. Her and Simon took you to the edge of the Calcite Peaks where, apparently, the Dragon of the Rising Sun had already been awaiting you.”
“The day I became a Fire Elf,” I heard myself saying in an amused voice that I surely had not intended. It earned me a stern glance from Malrah. “Apologies…”
Clearing his throat and wrinkling his nose, he chose to continue where he had left off. “Dura said she was so happy that she had managed to give you a better life, blessed and prolonged, that she wanted to give you a sibling, too. The doctor whom she had worked with had sobering news for her, however. Dura had lost her ability to procreate. Infertility…”
Somewhat overwhelmed by the sudden compacted amount of information, I held my breath and looked at the man before me with widened eyes.
“It was then that she first started to consider possible long term effects of her experiments and decided to focus her studies on that. You were but a year old when she was diagnosed with lung cancer.” I felt my heart racing in sorrow. “At the same time, Solfri was giving her an ultimatum. She had to abandon you and Simon, cast you out, for creating something impure such as you – the irony, given the name of the mineral used – or she could go with you, give up her entire possessions and her title, never to return. Now…”
For ever questioning my mother I felt guilty, and at the same time I hated her for being so careless, so reckless. Was I allowed to hate her? She had wanted to give me a better life. Had she expected me to love her for that? Was I allowed to love her? My pained expression must have already told Malrah how I felt, as his voice turned softer. I was in shock, I was worried, I was hurt.
“You already know she let you go, though for so many reasons she never wanted you to realize. For you, she had to live on. Without her possessions, she could not have paid for the treatment that prolonged her life for so many more years. So she stayed in Solfri, and lived on. She never managed to find a cure nor the answer as to the question if you would one day suffer the same fate, but she invested all which she had, in making Solfri a better home, should you ever claim your place – and you did. Had she instead gone with Simon and you, she would not have lived to witness her very own son string his first sentence together.”
Heavily I shook my head. “Why did she never tell me? Nobody… why did nobody… she could have visited, she c-”
“No, she was forbidden.” Deliberately, Malrah stopped me there. “When her life was nearing its end and she knew, she tried to learn of your whereabouts, at least make sure that you’d be alright, but she was found out. It’s what she was sentenced to death for. When she parted ways with you and Simon, she was given very strict limitations and clear rules. One mistake breaking the contract and- Well… that is what happened in the end. Would have ended Simon’s life, too, had he still been alive at the time.”
At that moment, I must have been the most pathetic image of an Elven Duke ever known to Hesou, slouched into a small figure on a shabby wooden chair, fighting sudden hiccups because I had forgotten how to breathe properly for a minute or two. Or perhaps the alcohol had been to blame. With a swift move, Malrah pushed my cup towards me again. “Drink up, Asa.” So I did.
“She did not want you to… tell me?”
A long, breathy sigh came from the man on the other side of the desk, then a pause, then another sigh. “Dura wanted me to precisely make sure that you have everything you need, especially should you ever develop cancer yourself. Treatment, notes, research, money, moral support – everything. At the time of her passing we had no idea that you would undergo yet another genetic change in your life that enhanced your regeneration so wonderfully. When I learned that you had become an Anti Demon, I never saw reason to break my promise to her and tell you and make you worry for naught. Look at yourself! Tell me that which you knew before had not given you more peace than your newly found revelations today. Dare try telling me you weren’t content before in believing that your mother had simply chosen career over family.”
“How is that better? I thought I had meant little to her, I cared naught for her. How is that any good? You should have told me the truth, years ago, right from the start! I would have…” My voice cracked, loud, low, raspy, strong and then shaky again, and near the end barely a whisper. “… wanted to know.”
“Precisely. You thought she didn’t care, so you could – just as easily – simply not care, and move on. Now that you learn that she was dedicated to your happiness all along but made immensely immoral choices, such as experimenting on her unborn son, will you ever know how you are supposed to feel about her?”
Mouth agape and in disbelief I stared at my stepfather. Harsh and cold was the truth he spoke, he had aimed just for what was aching to shake me awake. I had demanded nothing but the truth and here I sat, an utter mess. Perhaps my mother had known best all along not to teach me everything. It stung and tore, wanting me to break out of my own self – anything to detach my mind from my aching heart, even if only for a short chance to catch a break. For now, I couldn’t wait to return home, into the arms of my beloved husbands. Perhaps I would finally heed their advice and take a day off work.
