The Gunpowder Society

6. "The First Supper"

The others held up their glasses for the toast, “To the freshmen.”

They continued to feast and drink a bit before Gwen broke the silence, “Father, may I ask a question?”

“Of course Guinevere.  What is it?”

“In your toast you say we are the first new students in fourteen years,” she stated open-endedly.

“That is correct,” Fr. Maven responded.

“Well,” Gwen paused a bit and turned to the older students, “When were each of you found?  How old were you I mean?”

“What are your powers?”asked Peter excitedly.

The three students remained silent and stared at their plates for a moment.  Then they looked over at Fr. Maven with looks of ‘do you want to tell the story?’

Fr. Maven placed his utensils down and cleaned his hands on his napkin as he finished his bite.  He placed his napkin on the table, scooted his chair back a tad from the table, grabbed his wine and then sat back and crossed his legs placing his right ankle on his left knee and began, “As Mary mentioned, this school was founded approximately fourteen years ago.  However, the full story started a few years before that.  I had moved from my small hometown to the city and shortly after began encountering a string of strange peculiarities with myself and my body.  There were displays of physics which no human should be able to produce; scientifically speaking.

I think one of the first times, even before moving to the city as an adult, that I can recall where I am almost positive it was a gift like you all have been given was at a time where my family and I went to the beach.  I don’t remember most of it, but based on what my family told me, they couldn’t find me on the beach for a long enough time where my parents became very worried.  They got the life guards, they called the police, and right at the police were about to begin their dog-led manhunt a life guard who was out in the ocean searching yelled that I had been found.

As my mother retells it, it had been so long and the life guard was out so far from the shore that to have found me at that point could only mean I had died.  The lifeguard paddled my body in.

As he met us at the shore he pulled my unconscious body off his board and with a look on his face of pure distress said, ‘He’s alive.’

One of the police officers in charge said, ‘What?!’ as he couldn’t believe that an unconscious child who had been floating out at sea could possibly be alive, ‘You found a pulse?’

‘He’s breathing,’ the life guard answered.

‘How is that possible?’

‘I don’t know.  After I thought I saw him I paddled over for a good five minutes and when I found him he was floating face down.  He has a good size laceration on the back of his head.  I think he was knocked out,’ the life guard told.

‘And when you got him out he started breathing on his own?’

‘He was breathing when I found him,’ the lifeguard replied.  The police squinted in confusion at what he was hearing.  He clarified, ‘When I found him face down in the water, he was still breathing.’

My mother remembers the mixture of feelings she had at the moment where she was both eternally grateful for me still being alive, but distraught as she understood the impossibility of how I was still alive.

‘How did you know he was breathing?  The motion of the water could appear like breathing,’ the cop said trying to make sense of things.

‘He was breathing when I got him.  I’m sure of it.  He was breathing really heavy like he was out of breath.  When I got him up on the board and flipped him over water came pouring out of his mouth and nose with every breath.  He didn’t miss a beat.’