Emmeline, the girl in the storm

Learning to communicate

"He was already in it."

"Don't," Emmeline begged. If there is only so much a person can handle, Emmeline's limit was her grandfather. "Why do you hate me so much?" she asked, changing the topic to something she did want to know.

"My father chose you and your mother over me," he replied easily. "I may have been a little angry aboit it for the last few years."

"Twenty one years," Emmeline corrected.

He nodded, and looked away from her for the first time, "It's a long time to be angry, but I realise now that I may not have understood the reasons he left as well as I thought I did, and your mother may not have been the reaso—"

"He loved my mother!" Emmeline snapped, perhaps unreasonably. "Besides, what is twenty one years in the face of how many thousands you've apparently already had with him?" She couldn't imagine the loving man she had known as her father to be thousands of years old.

"You could not possibly understand," he said.

She fell silent, realising that her words were likely hurting him just as much as his words hurt her. The truth was that the man she thought was her father, was actually his father, so just as much as she had loved him, Charon loved him also.

"Why am I so much like him then? My mother would tell me how alike we were all the time," she said finally, her voice sad.

"He brought you up, he was the father you knew," he said, attempting kindness, "you are more closely like him than you are like any other human on the planet, because of your origin. He was most likely the one who taught you how to blow up ravens."

"What?"

"At the mansion, those ravens, you made a good mess of them."

"I did that?"

"Well I didn't. I would have done something a little cleaner, like make them fly away or turn into something else." He raised one eyebrow at her. "But I couldn't because his power there is too strong." He raised his eyebrows. "Apparently it wasn't too strong for you."

"What was that place, really?" she asked. For now, that was the easier question than trying to understand how she had been able to 'blow up' ravens.

"You have so many questions," he said in protest. He put his legs up on the bench and turned to lean against the wall and close his eyes.

"Was it real?"

"The mansion? Yes. We can manipulate human perception of space and time quite easily."

"So I was in the house the whole time?"

"Yes."

"Could you see the snow? And the ruins?"

"I knew they were there, but I could see the house also."

Emmeline sat silent again for a long while, chewing over all her thoughts. A few of the jumbled pieces had fallen into a semblance of order but it was a lot to take in, and there was still an awful lot she just didn't understand.
"What exactly are you?" she asked finally. "You don't actually ferry the dead over the river Styx, do you?"

"I have nothing to do with the death of humans."

"Why then–"

"Just like he said to you, we get called many names by the people and civilisations who have known us. It's a very human habit to label things and fit them into nice little boxes."

"So Charon is not actually your name?"

He shrugged, "I like it though. But things are different on the other side, and after a while names tend to lose their value to the owner."

The other side. This was another topic Emmeline was not ready to address. The other world, the place where these mythical creatures apparently came from. The place between earth and which Charon could apparently pass freely because he was a gatekeeper.

She shook her thoughts off, and looked him straight in the eye. "I need to clarify a few things. That monster?" her pleading look finished the question.

"Is your real father? Yes."

"And he needs my blood to go home?"

"Yes."

"And I would have to die for that to happen?"

There was a delay before he said, "Yes."

"And you happily took me right up to his door step and dropped me into his lap!"

"Is that a question?"

Emmeline didn't know what to feel. "Why didn't you leave me there then? Why not just walk away?"

"I had second thoughts," he admitted awkwardly.

"What? So you just randomly grew a conscience and a set of balls at the last moment and now you think it's okay to just change your mind and play the hero!" She was angry again.

"Please calm down," he said quietly.

"Why did you even take me to him in the first place then!" her voice rose a little higher with each question.

He put his hands to his temples, "You ask too many questions," he moaned. "At the time I thought you knew what you were. I thought you knew who my father was, and I thought you knew that he died to protect you, and I was angry about it."

His words shocked the anger out of her. "So they are dead," she said.

He nodded.

"And my grandfather too?"

He bit his lip and nodded again. "I'm sorry," he said finally.

"I'm sorry too," was the only reply she could manage.

"Let me take you home," he said, after a few minutes of silence had passed between them.

"I can't go home."

"I believe it's the safest place for you to be at this moment, and you need to sleep."

"I can't sleep," she protested.

He shrugged, "Well do whatever you want then, but you won't have a hope of surviving if you don't start making some wise decisions very quickly."

She didn't have a clue what he meant by that, but looking over his head and out the door, she realised it had started to snow again.

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Day 13. Another one of my creative co-conspirators, Priya, gave me the theme for day thirteen, learning English.