The Watchers Wake

Chapter 18 - My Father Fell

“You are all our children, the Nephilim, never be ashamed of that.” He turned and looked me in the face for a second before turning back to the window.  “No matter what is written or said about Nephilim you were conceived with love and although we were never allowed to stay we wanted to.  We just didn’t have the choice.   It has been our burden to bear.  It is our cross. We love women but if we find love we are doomed to never be with that one and to never raise our child together.   All I really get is sex, not love, not companionship and never that comfort that exists from love.  I just get the heady lust.  I am sorry Natalie but I envy you.  What you and Scott are growing I will never have.” He looked away from the window as he swirled the coffee in his cup.

“Please don’t blame your father for his absence.  Don’t make assumptions about him because you will never understand, you can’t understand.   Natalie, we all suffer in our solitude.  We all feel the pain of knowing that our offspring don’t know us and live their lives in complete isolation from us.  We all have generations of children now in the grave who we never had the opportunity of meeting.  So don’t feel bitterness.  I am positive that if he could have been there for you, for every one of your firsts, milestones or to comfort you when you needed him, he would have been.  Who knows maybe he was, maybe you just didn’t know he was.”

He rinsed his cup out.

“You know who he is don’t you?” I whispered.

Jari stopped what he was doing.

“Yes, I know all the children and I see the grief on the faces of my friends,” he breathed the words.  Then he turned to me and leaned against the bench with his arms crossed on his chest.  “But Natalie, I can’t tell you.  It’s not my place to tell you.” He smiled a small smile that didn’t reach his eyes. 

Then he turned back to look out the kitchen window.   I knew that his eyes were now closed.  I had the feeling that he had just given me a rare glimpse of his soul, not only his soul but he had given me a glimpse of the heavy burden carried by all of his kind.  They were lost and miserable. 

“Scott is ready for you. Have your shower Qaddis.  We have work to do.”

I could think of nothing to say to him.  So l walked away from him, and left him to his personal agony that I now knew was so close to the surface.

I was about to open the door to the bathroom when I heard the shower, still running.  I looked back to see Jari watching me.  I shook my head at him and he shrugged and chuckled softly. 

He had tricked me.  He had distracted me with the intention of having me walk into the bathroom while Scott was naked in the shower.  Well, maybe his suffering wasn’t as close to the surface as he implied then.

 I left Scott to shower on his own and instead went to wait in my room.

I lay on the bed and closed my eyes.  My mind spun as it tried to accept everything.

This could be a dream.  That would explain everything. 

After all it was pure fairytale.   Well OK not so much a ‘fairy’ tale more like a full on fantasy, hot mostly naked men included at no extra cost!  This just didn’t happen in real life and it certainly didn’t happen to me. 

If we are talking reality then let’s not start on the Angels and monsters, sorry Fremd.  I laughed softly to myself.  I wondered  if they all looked like Sid?  I didn’t expect so.  But what did they look like and how come I had never seen them?  Then there were the Egregore or fallen Angels, really what were they all about.  Were they Angels or demons?

Actual that was a point.  I had not been raised with a religious background but I did know that fallen angels weren’t traditionally the ‘good guys’.  I seemed to remember them being associated with demons, hell, sin and other imagery of Satan.   I mean wasn’t Lucifer originally and angel who was cast down from heaven?   But Jari did say that, didn’t he, that they were universally condemned.  So my guide to be a Qaddis was a bad guy.  Well he did wear a lot of black, right?