The Moon Kissed

27

Chapter 27| Where Two Beat as One

I was crying, and I had no idea why.

I couldn't feel my heart breaking, I didn't feel sad, and I wasn't hurt. But maybe I was just too numb to feel my heart breaking, to know that I was sad, and to know that I was hurting. 

Deep under the blanket of this numbness, I could feel the hollow cavity growing inside my chest. I missed my home, my sister, Milo, and Celia. I even missed all the jerks at school. But I think I was crying because I missed my Dad. 

He wasn't my real father. He had hurt me, and he had haunted me. But despite it, I still loved him because he had loved my mother, he had loved me and he had raised me as his own child. He had earned the right to be called Dad. Caesar had lost that right–in fact–he never had it. He wasn't there for me, he didn't teach me how to observe the world around me with open eyes. He didn't teach me how to ride a bike, and how to fight through the pain of falling off the bike. He wasn't there to show me how to survive after my Mom died. He wasn't there. 

Pain arched through the numbing blanket, shooting at my heart with its bloody arrow. I gasped, putting my hands over my heart, trying to grasp the pain and pull it out. But the arrow made it's home inside my heart, latching its talons to the fabric of my emotions. It seized control of my lungs and my throat, drowning me slowly in the sea of sorrow it made from the tears that I had cried over all the years of my life. 

"I'm sorry," I gasped out at the silence of the forest, "I'm so sorry." I don't know why I was apologizing. I hadn't done anything wrong. I hadn't created pain for someone else. I hadn't terrorized someone with my feelings. I don't know what I was sorry for. 

"You are a warrior, Calina," I hear someone say, "And warriors do not apologize." 

I spun around, screaming at whoever it was with such ferocity and such devastation. My scream echoed against the trees, against the ears of the wolves roaming the forest, and against the ears of the gods above. I screamed again, the sound turning into a roar that rivaled the roar of fire boiling beneath the blanket of my skin. 

"I'm not a warrior!" I screamed, "I'm not a fighter! I'm not a leader! I'm nothing that I'm asked to be!" Through the haze of my tears, I could see an old male standing there, leaning against a spotless cane that had a wolf head on the top. As I stared into his blood red eyes, I was not afraid. As he drew closer, the shadows circling around him, I was not afraid. As he stood in front of me, his head towering above mine, I was not afraid. 

"You may think that you are not those things, and you may try and convince yourself in vain. But you are those things, you are a leader, a fighter, a warrior, a survivor. You are everything that you've been asked to be and more. I asked you to be resilient to lies, and you have. Caesar asked you to fight, and you fought. Rese asked you to forgive him and you forgave. You asked yourself to forget, and you remembered." His words made my pain dig its talons deeper into my heart. 

"You do not know what I have asked myself." I tell him, my voice hoarse from screaming. 

"Oh," He says, the corners of his lips curling up, "but I do. I know you asked yourself to stop crying. You asked yourself to ignore the pain. You asked yourself to fight away the demons. You asked yourself to turn away from the lies. I know what you ask of yourself, and they are things that cannot be done." 

"Who are you?" I ask him quietly, tears still in my eyes, and he smiles, his sharp teeth glaring at me. He takes a step back spreading his arms out a little, still holding onto the cane.