Chapter 8: CHAPTER 6
Song of the Chapter: I Put A Spell On You ~AnnieLenox
Chapter: 6
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PERSPECTIVE: Aizea - The girl that hears after dark
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After an awfully short chat with my family, as soon as I realize that their eyes are reddening and I am entering the zone of complete risk, I retreat to my bedroom. I follow by the regular drill, change into a soft night-dress and slip under the comfortable duvet. My happy place.
But as I start thinking about the dream that would soon invade me, I realize that I actually can be happier than I am in my happy place. The sense of his scent curling all around me gives me the ultimate comfort and feeling of security that can be rivaled by nothing else.
I drift into sleep before the noises begin, and once again I am grateful to him for letting me enter his world so soon.
****
I don't stand in the usual place. The misty forests are not a few feet away from where I stand, but all around me.
I shudder as a scream almost escapes my agape lips.
But, then his calloused palm descends onto my mouth and I freeze. I am amazed by how secure his simple touch can make me feel, even when we are in the midst of the forests that I have grown up dreading more than anything else. I can't comprehend much else, as my upper arm is tightly grabbed and I am turned around.
Those amber eyes are blazing with ire. Still, his face is more like that of a God's than a normal person's. His features are frozen with rage, no expression leaking onto the perfection that is this creation in front of me. I have always known for certain that he is anything but normal. But the knowledge has never scared me, for I have always known that he is everything that is good and everything that is bright.
But his immense wrath scares me for a moment. "What?", I ask, sounding meeker than a trapped mouse. Well, that's a hilarious analogy, but that's how I think I can best put it.
"What?", he asks me incredulously, shock marring his features, and I almost hear the dam break. "Are you serious now, se agapó?"
I know that it is meant to be rhetorical, but I nod anyways.
"You went out with that beastly chit, on a date, and you are asking me WHAT?!", he pronounces the d-word as if that's some kind of a prohibited curse word. I frown. His grip doesn't loosen, though, and I speak before he says anything more.
"Look, I know that it was risky, but Andre didn't hurt me. I knew he would never consciously hurt me.", I reply firmly.
Afterall, I understand that he calls me some sweet endearments, cares for me, gives me advices that actually prove to be useful at times of dire need, has always been a good friend despite me not even knowing his name, his presence gives me a weird sense of comfort and security - but, my life is still mine, right...?
Our eyes clash like two sharpened swordheads, giving off invisible sparks.
I am angry too. He isn't allowed to instruct me about who I go out on a date or not.
Yet, as he stares right into my eyes, his blazing amber ones setting my comparatively-mundane gray gaze on fire, I feel warmth begin to pool up from the very core of my soul. For the first time, I actually start feeling my own soul.
I feel as if my body and I are distinct - just like I've always called my hair or nails distinct from the word me. And this mysteriously powerful and achingly handsome man is reaching out to my very own soul, wrapping it in relaxing warmth. Securing it with love.
I blink rapidly as the incredulity of this sensation settles in. This is more intimate that anything anyone can ever do for anyone - physical, emotional, whatever. I suck in a surprised breath, and his anger-frozen features finally melt. He's still incredibly mad, I can say.
"Felt that, princess?", he asks, sounding victorious. A winsome smirk finally traces his perfect lips, and my frown deepens.
"What even happened? And what in the world is your problem with me going out with Andre?", I ask again, almost expecting him to shrug without an answer.
But tonight is a night of surprises. "Except for the fact that it was incredibly stupid, that is, right?", he extends my question, antonymizing the meaning altogether. "Yes.", I snap.
"Well, princess, since you owe me an apology tonight, I might as well explain the magnitude of the risk that you've taken, to you, as best as possible, at the moment.", his voice has this serious lacing of concerned anger that makes me want to cower back.
But silly me can't even deny the fact that his amber irises have never been this heart-stoppingly beautiful.
"Do you know what they hunt?"
Such a small question and yet the biggest question that I can ever possibly ask. I have this feeling that my life is on a tipping point where this answer can send me into a tailspin from which I'll never quite come back as this me. Thus, I stay silent; waiting for him to drop the blasting truth.
"Do you, mia prinkipissa?", he asks again, his smirk slightly mocking my lack of basic knowledge about the people that I've been spending my whole life with.
I shake my head.
He shakes his own head in response. "Words, princess, I need responses in clear-cut words. Not in meek gestures. I don't thrive in your weakness like that spineless beastly chit that you went out with." He almost spits out the three words that indicate Andre, but my anger completely dissipates, as fear tries to claw its way up my throat.
I swallow against it's metallic taste.
How much more stupid could I possibly be? I didn't even have the basic knowledge that they went hunting every night.
Well, of course you didn't. Because, you've always been way too coward to speak a word about the nights, my smug subconscious taunts me. I don't have much time to process my subconscious's words, as the intensity of his question crashes upon me.
What did they hunt?
"No.", I whisper out my response, awaiting his answer to my unspoken question with more fear and anticipation than I have ever awaited anything.
"Souls."
His one-word answer gives me a sudden numbness in all my nerves. What is this even supposed to mean?
But, I don't have the time to ask him that question, as I can feel the wind picking up pace. I know he'll be gone before I know. But I can't allow that tonight. I want to know his name. I need to know his name. It feels as if my survival depends upon that tiny, but invaluable piece of information.
An information so invaluable that I no longer care about what they hunt. I know what he said was unrealistic, and there must be a metaphor underneath this. But, I'm no longer interested.
All that I am interested about is to finally be able to give a name to these glorious amber eyes that right now are so many layers deep that I have no idea what all messages he is trying to convey by just looking at me.
"What's your name?", I ask him, like many times before. But this time there is this strange genuineness in his intense gaze that tells me that I will indeed get yet another answer tonight.
"Lloyerd.", his warm velvety cadence rings with such passion that for a moment I am overwhelmed. Like he has just rendered himself somehow vulnerable by giving me his name.
His hand is extended towards me, his eyes asking me to put my hand in his. My hand automatically moves from my side, almost as if it has a mind of its own, but I catch it before it moves further.
Raw pain flashes across his face, and his eyes are burning in it. And before I know it, he's gone.
But the dissipating cool air is still hanging heavy with the sound of his name.
"Lloyerd.", I whisper it, and it sounds like a prayer that rips out all the way from the core of my soul, and I hear a soft chuckle somewhere in my mind.
****
I wake up with a start, my eyes flying open.
Time must be relative, or else it couldn't have been possibly morning already. But, his name still hangs heavy in the air all around. Wrapping around me like a blanket, rivaling the comfort of the soft blue quilt on my skin by a million folds.
I get up slowly, still startled, and I want to take his name again. It's such a uniquely beautiful name. Just like his eyes.
Just like him.
But I don't.
Instead, I creak open my bedroom door and walk into the living room. Today, in the bathroom mirror, I see a girl with flushed cheeks, her gray eyes warm with an emotion so intense that the intensity of Andre's gaze is nothing in comparison.
Yet, Lloyerd's eyes held more intensity than this heart of me can ever bear.
A soft smile spreads across my lips. I vigorously shake my head to clear it.
Once out, I see the kitchen-dining space till blissfully empty and thus pour cereals for all of us. I heat the milk and pour those into Chorsh and Sheroa's cereals. Melinda and Rubelle like their cereals rather crunchy.
As I am about to plop down onto one of the chairs at the dining table, I suddenly remember my and Melinda's 'interaction' from a morning before, and I move to my room.
Placing the cereal bowl on the bed-side-table, I open the window, taking extra care to be quiet. Outside, the cool pink morning light falls soothingly all over Zaayes. The fringe of the forest can almost be overseen from here, and the mists, making the darkness seem impermeable even in the daylight, seem to beckon me.
I grip the bedsheet, trying to derive power to resist the call of those forests.
I'm pretty early this morning. Quite earlier than usual. Although it's dawn it's quite early. I start regretting the decision to be out and about already. I regret the decision of even getting out of my quilt.
But I know that it would never make me feel taht safe again. Not after I have felt his...err, Lloyerd's... true warmth. I don't care if he was livid or not. The security of his simple presence by my side can be rivalled by none.
I move to close the window, and I almost do it too. But I freeze when I see it. Rather, them.
Three shadowy figures of beasts slowly emerging out from the depths of the misty forests. They have certain similarities with how I've heard wolves look. But I can bet they are much more enormous and wilder.
I don't wait for their shadowy figures to become prominent. I shut the window back into place. Carefully, however - with not even as much as a squeaking noise. I lock them silently and hurriedly, and the door is the next.
I completely ignore my burning curiosity until I am under my soft blue quilt, that no longer gives me pseudo-safety.
The poor cereal-bowl sits waiting on my nightstand as I flick off the light of my bedside lamp.
"Souls."
That one word comes crashing back to me with doubled, or maybe tripled, intensity and I finally feel the nerve-racking terror that I should've felt then and there only, instead of the numbness.
That one word had such a scarily mythical insinuation that I couldn't quite swallow. How do you swallow the knowledge that...
I don't allow myself to even complete the question. I have been asking too many questions for my own good recently. I should instead settle for peace whilst I can still think of affording it.
Therefore, I instead decide to toy with the beautiful name that I have come to know today. "Lloyerd." Although, my heart says that with every beat, I don't.
And then I sing.
The melody is sweet. It's a song that I don't know where I've learnt from. Because I've known it for as long as I can remember. But, I don't remember where I know it from.
Maybe, my biological mother ever sung that to me. But, the implication that comes along - that Sheroa had someone in his life before Melinda - feels just as untrue as ever.
So, I don't think anymore. I just sing. Softly.
"I knew that I had caught a star in my hands that night,
I told you but you never believed.
I told you that I had caught a star in my hands that night,
I told you but you never believed.
Because you never knew that we could be so lucky...
Because you never knew that she could choose us...
But then I told you that our love would make her think so,
I told you that our love would make her feel so,
I told you but you never believed.
And yet, here we are.
Here we are with our princess in our arms...
Here we are with the shining star beating with life that our love made.
Here we are with our princess in our arms.
And I tell you this again, because,
I always knew that I had caught a star in my hands,
I told you but you never believed..."
The song is just too beautiful too have been conjured up by my own mind. I know that I have heard it before. But where, I can't remember.
So, I settle for singing it again, and again, till I finally hear light knocks on the door.
I immediately throw the quilt away, swing my legs onto the floor, and the cool floor again awakens the groggy nerve-ends of my warm soles. I hurry to the door and open it.
Chorsh stands there with a wide smile and his cereal-bowl in his hand. I immediately have this picture in my head of one of those shadowy beasts having his cool brown eyes. I internally cringe, with more disgust than fear.
"Good morning...", he greets me. "Good morning.", I quickly recover and greet him back.
But even as I grab my own bowl of cereals and finally go out into the dining space and slowly the rest of the family takes the rest of the seats around the table, the sound of his name wraps its enchantingly sweet tentacles around my heart - conquering it all over again.
Every morning I am even more into him than I have been the previous one.
However, now I atleast have a name to give to that perfect face and blazing amber eyes.
Lloyerd.
I chant that name in my heart, not daring to speak it out loud, even as I go through the motions of the day.
________
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone