The Seven Archangels

29 - A Trip Down the Memory Lane - Sierra

Forest green. Aurelius' favorite color is forest green. Aurelius never told me that himself, I asked Gabriel. She used to tell me stories of the times Aurelius and her roamed the world together, just the two siblings. Aurelius had always loved the forest. He told me it was calming to be in the woods.

It was quite ironic how he didn't even know his eye color before I told him. He didn't even know how he looked like! He didn't want to be vain so he never looked at himself. He didn't care how he looked as far as he was presentable and his clothes were practical.

He also liked inventing stuff. Most magical items we had we actually his handiwork. He would always tell he just found them in the attic or something. I was the only one who knew.

Aurelius had given me his permission to enter his room whenever I wanted. I still had no idea why he would trust me so much. He said it was in case of emergency I could alert him.

Once, I had walked into his room when I was in a bad mood. Aurelius somehow always could brighten me up, both literally and figuratively. When I walked in he was so concentrated in his work he didn't notice I had entered. It was quite unlike Aurelius not to notice someone entering.

I had asked him what he was doing and he nearly got a heart attack. He had tried to hide what he was doing but I demanded to know. Reluctantly, he showed me a prototype of a scanning device. It would scan the surroundings a little like modern sonar and project an image upwards for the user to see.

It was quite ingenious and I had had no idea he knew how to even do this kind of stuff. I asked him what else had he made, eager to know more about him. He had just said, "Nothing much." His answer didn't surprise me even the slightest so I just kept looking around the room, trying to find something. Of course, he did try to stop me but eventually he gave up and accepted his fate.

Finally, I found a small panel hidden behind his curtains. Don't ask how our rooms have windows, I don't know. They always showed the same forest no matter where we had put our tent. There were three buttons on that panel. One said "Workshop", the second one said, "Bedroom" and the last one was just blank.

Curious to know, I pressed the Workshop -button. All the walls lifted up and everything but his desk descended through the floor. Mechanical arms set new walls in place. Only one wall was absent. Behind the absent wall there was a huge projection room of sorts. All kinds of machines and predecessors of computers were littered around the hall.

Holographic screens were showing information about gods-knows-what. I doubt even them would know. I looked around me and saw that the walls now had different kinds of tools and blueprints on them.

I looked at Aurelius, astonished at what I just saw. He just hung his head in shame and said nothing. Incredulously, I had asked him why he wasn't proud of all this. This was all magnificent. He had just quietly said, "Pride is the first step towards arrogance and the fall of a man."

I would've kissed him right there on that very moment if I wasn't so scared of rejection. I loved Aurelius so much I didn't know what I would've done if he rejected me. I probably would've died from heartache the instant.

I shook my head, trying to get rid of the depressing thoughts and decided to pay him a visit. I stood up from my bead I was laying on and walked to my door. I quickly looked around me and made sure no one was watching. It wouldn't have bothered me so much if someone saw me enter Aurelius' room, I was more afraid of someone else seeing his room in the workshop-mode, as he liked to call it. He had asked me to not to tell anyone else and even though I really wanted to tell everyone how awesome Aurelius really was, I couldn't betray his trust.