In this chapter I have a lot of interrupt mind conversations. Please let me know if this makes it too hard to follow. Any suggestions for making the story flow more smoothly will be greatly appreciated !!! (I asked chatGPT but he was very little help ;).
"So, you are alllliive… ", Keefe said with a smirk, stretching his words a bit too long. He didn’t look surprised for some reason but he was examining Ben intently and Sophie noticed he was lightly tapping with his finger on his knee. Keefe was silent for a while and it seemed to Sophie that he was trying to tie all the loose knots in his head so she jumped and asked:
"What about Elinor? Is she also alive?"
Ben's previously confused expression morphed into a sad smile, he started fidgeting with the funny looking hat he took off earlier and was still holding in his hands. Sophie started to regret asking, what if Elinor did die? Why didn’t she let Keefe have some peace for at least a little while?!
“Indeed she is,” Ben answered at last and turned to Keefe, "thanks to you young man, and your unwavering kind-hearted mother. I truly never met anyone quite like her.”
Keefe seemed unimpressed "I can't believe I fell for this twice!", he murmured resentfully.
But Ben didn't seem to notice, his eyes became watery and he looked a thousand miles away.
Eventually Ben blinked, letting huge tears form in his eyelids and slide on to the deep wrinkles around his smiling eyes.
“Elenor, Leni, as she is called now,” Ben explained, ”was not supposed to be alive. Your mother gave her another chance at life. Both of us”. He stood there for another minute or so, while they waited for him to continue. When he spoke again, he only appologised for being a bad host and offered to make them some scrambled eggs with bacon and turned into an adjacent small room where the stove stood.
That’s it? Sophie thought… that’s all the explanation we get? She was sure Keefe was furious as well and she was about to stand up and drag Ben back to the table, but just then Ben turned pleadingly to Lady Gisela and said:
“I should have known you selflessly protected my privacy and not shared the details of my misfortunes, especially not with young children such as they were at the time. Dearest Gisela, could I impose on you to share the nature of our relationship with these young people now? So they better understand my motivation and commitment to your endeavour. Talking of the past stirs too many painful memories, and I am afraid to burden these youngsters with unnecessary heartache .”
Gisela nodded almost empathically and Ben thanked her with a slight bow, adding almost in a whisper “I long for the day I will remember no more of them”, stealing a quick look at Sophie.
Gisela kept her promise, she switched to French and started relaying the story of Ethan and Elenor.
Turned out, Keefe’s visit was not her first attempt at recruiting Ethan, Ben. She tried several years before when his wife Olivia was still alive. “But I made a mistake,” Lady Gisela confessed, “I was honest”.
Keefe made a loud snort, “Right like you are capable of that!”. Somehow in French snorts sounded much more becoming, making Keefe seem less like a pouting child and more like a sophisticated movie critic.
“Think what you will, but the point is, humans no longer believe in Elves so presenting myself as one did not work to my advantage at the time. Ben's wife was dying and he interpreted my offer as a cruel joke. That’s why I thought the Black Swans project would never succeed. Humans grow up so thick minded, it's almost impossible to change their thinking to adjust to a reality different from what they’ve learned. I was truly surprised that you were able to overcome that '', Lady Gisela said looking at Sophie, again with that warmish smile she tried on her during the cross-dressing incident. “But I guess I just overlooked the obvious: comradery. Humans are willing to believe anything you put in front of them if that means they are repaid with a feeling of belonging. Elves too,so it seems, just look at you and the Vacker boy! He is clearly a walking disaster, bad tempered, petty, vindictive, but you are willing to believe he is a kind hearted good soul just because you want to belong to him.”
Sophie glanced at Keefe and he was cringing and had a pained expression in his eyes, but Lady Gisela, who surely noticed it too, continued on as if nothing happened.
Lady Gisela must have known how Keefe felt about Sophie all through the "Foster Oblivion". Yet she let Keefe breakdown and mourn Sophie’s death and even took advantage of it, instead of telling him the truth and spare him the pain. Lady Gisela was truly cruel, and Sophie had no doubt that her mention of Fitz just now was very deliberate. But was it to insult her or hurt Keefe? Or MAYBE… maybe she was trying to create a rift in their friendship so it's easier for her to take over.
RIGHT! THAT’S IT!
At long last Sophie wasn't two steps behind her enemies. She knew exactly what Lady Gisela was doing! She was using the same strategy with her and Keefe as she was with her attempts to take over the intelligent species. She created rifts between the species so they will not be able to form a unified front when she tries to overthrow the council. She was doing the same thing with Sophie and Keefe, trying to be kind to Sophie and mentioning her relationship with Fitz so Keefe will resent her. Mostly pushing Keefe’s buttons for now, but surely Sophie's turn will come too. Sophie felt triumphant but her soaring emotions must have gotten Keefe very confused and now he looked both pained and also very irritated. So Sophie boxed this new revelation for the time being and went back to listening to Ben’s story (the Gisela version at least).
Lady Gisela finished outlining the essence of human stupidity and was back to her dealings with Ben, telling about her second attempt, the one Keefe mediated.
“A few years later, Elenor started showing signs of the same illness as her late mother. The illness started at a much earlier age for her and progressed very quickly. When she was 10 or 11, it was nearing a stage of no -return as it was slowing down her growth to a stop, and that would not be possible to reverse. So I sent Keefe to try again but this time using a totally different approach. Humans, especially academics like Ben, value human science and mistrust their leadership, they call it government. So I made sure my proposal, and its motivation, were aligned with these two values. I explained the cure I was offering was a secret scientific development, made by a secret government organisation and that I am an agent of a secret rebellion that infiltrated the government organisation to liberate knowledge. This was something he felt comfortable believing and supporting."
Funny, Sophie thought to herself, that is not too far from the truth… but she didn’t dare mention it to Keefe. “Accusing” Gisale of honesty at any level will surely result in a huge fight.
"Ben accepted my help that second time and saved his daughter from the fatal disease her mother died of. But since I couldn't risk having this exposed, providing Elvin medicine to humans is not allowed, as you are well aware, I had to stage an end to their previous life and give them a new one. Elinor's memories were wiped as she was just a child and could not be trusted to keep her old identity secret, but Ethan, Ben, has been hiding the truth ever since. That's why their names are not so changed: Ben and Leni Carpenter. Ben took his middle name and Leni was the nickname Ben and Olivia called Elenor since she was little. Their last name is only changed in phonetics.”
“Right,” Sophie jumped in, “Wright actually means Carpenter in Gaelic, which is the original language of Scotland“, which she assumed Ben was from judging by his accent.
Sophie was so caught up in the story she failed to notice something didn't add up. But Keefe did..
"Ok, time to spill it out, what did you want from him? Why was it so important that you had to have him in your debt?"
Keefe sounded defiant but he still had that same pained expression in his eyes, was he that bothered by the comment about the comment Lady Gisela made about Sophie and Fitz?
"Aaa my ever suspicious son, don't I get any points for not being the ruthless murderer you thought me to be?"
"You are a ruthless murderer, and you deliberately led me to believe I had something to do with the murder of this family."
At this Keefe moaned in agony and released a heart tearing plea "STOP!!!", catching his head with both of his hands.
Sophie waited for no approvals; she placed her ungloved hands on his temples and burst into his mind.
Loud and stabbing scritches attacked her right away, leaving her no place to escape:
"JERK, JERK, JERK"
In the background she could hear Keefe's rolling laughter.
“Keefe!!!!” Sophie scolded him.
“Sorry(?)! You should have seen your face Foster, you are just sooo cute when you worry, did you really think mommy dearest can cause that much pain? In her state?”
Sophie was ready to mentally strangle him.
“Seriously though, I am really in pain, my head will likely explode any moment now, even without you blasting it with Foster rage. Any chance you can make them stop ?“
By “them” , Keefe meant Luna and Win of course, Silveneys baby alicorns, who were screaming in his head, probably for some time now. It seemed they couldn't understand Keefe's answer or plea to stop and so they continued bombarding him with their transmissions.
“Ok… but only because I don't want your mother to find out they can transmit to you. Otherwise I'd have let them continue reminding you what I think of your behaviour” but she couldn't help smiling in her mind.
Sophie sent images of her and Keefe snuggling them and they calmed down a bit.
“Thank you!” Keefe said, “This was almost as exhausting as fighting king Dimitar himself”. He seemed relieved and Sophie was too, knowing that his pain had nothing to do with her and Fitz.
However, the quiet didn’t last long, and instead of hauling JERK, Win and Luna started chanting "Fitz, Fitz, Fitz ''.
“Soon, I promise! Before sunset.” Sophie transmitted. She knew she couldn't delay much longer before she would have to update their friends and her family back at the lost cities about the deal they made with Elysian, but now was not the right time. After transmitting one last parting chant "JERK visit, JERK visit, JERK visit" the alicorn's transmissions stopped.
“I think maybe we should keep the connection open, we'll have a better chance at figuring out what your mother was up to with the Carpenters that way. “
“Good idea! Get ready to be blown away by the Keefe genius as I unveil all her lies.”
“Actually...” Sophie started proudly,
“I think I already uncovered one very important thing…”.
Sophie told Keefe about her theory of how Lady Gisela wants them to drift apart and how she may be using Fitz achieve that.
“So when she brings up Fitz and me again, it'll be good if you pretend you are hurt… so she thinks it's working.”
"Pretend…" Keefe repeated… as if trying the word out, to see if it fits. Sophie could almost sense his discomfort and started seeing golden memories start to bubble up. But he shoved them away and concluded:
“That does make sense, good job Foster. Beauty, power and brains, almost feels like you hardly even need me…” he teased, fighting again to push those gilded memories away.
Those were the memories he didn’t want Sophie and Fitz to see when they were trying to recover the memories his mother tried to erase. With the oblivion behind her, Sophie had a nagging feeling that these were memories of her and Fitz, or worse, her yearning for Fitz in some embarrassing way.
“I do need you Keefe!” She protested and then more tenderly "you know that right? "
“I know, Foster, even without my empathy but that's not what I meant. I want to be useful and not some weak liability you need to defend and protect all the time.”
If they continued this path Sophie was afraid he might find out about her secret part in the deal with Elysian, so she decided to dodge, in the most obvious but also the most reasonable way:
“I think your mother is starting to lose patience. Can you make up some story, without letting her know about the alicorns?”
“Foster, Common! I am the king of making up stories!”
“See, and you were saying I don’t need you” - it worked, he smiled and seemed to be back to himself.
“You know what Foster, maybe Fitz is ok being flexible about what murder is, but I set my standards a bit higher than that. Whether Vespara was a villain is irrelevant, mother here killed her in cold blood, and if this wasn’t a murder she wouldn’t have had to trade her mortality for her sanity.”
Sophie was taken back by this for a second but in her mind, Keefe whispered:
“What? You don’t like my convincing act?”
Right, she was being stupid, she should really be a bit more confident in this relationship.
“I asked you not to talk in the enlightened language!” Lady Gisela said scauling, but Sophie could see a glint of a smile in her eyes. Seems Keefe’s act worked.
“Will you answer my question? What did YOU want from Ethan? Cause we know you are not a “kind hearted soul” either.” Keefe insisted, using the same description she used when talking about Fitz.
“My, he is good!” Sophie thought to herself.
“The best!” Keefe replied, with a mental smirk.
Urgg keeping this connection open will be hard, she thought, this time remembering to compartmentalise her thoughts, so they are not fully exposed.
“I didn’t want anything from Ethan," Last Gisela stressed, "but Ben, Ben gave me the key to fulfilling my plan.”
“You see, Ethan was a respected academic, he studied politics and social orders, or something of that sort. At some point he must have realised that the human perspective was very narrow and self centred, and he started to contribute to the development of a new field, called astro-sociology. So juvenile, humans cant perceive the existence of intelligent species on earth so they invent such species that may exist outside of it, astro-sociology is devoted to basically study interspecies relations . It's quite complex and most researches focus on 'first encounter" management of different species and things like black forest theories, but Ben seemed interested in working on developing dominance models. These were much more interesting to me, since they explore how one species can rule the others, and Ben had a few brilliant ideas sorry that. His work was interrupted, when his wife was diagnosed and became sick and since I had keen interest in him completing his work I offered my help to assist with the “distraction”. Turned out that his wife dying actually gave him a new boost. His work was not appreciated by his peers, humans think it outrages to even imagine other intelligent species, even in space. So he published most of his astro-sociology work as Ben Carpenter rather than Ethan Benedict Wright the 2nd. When his wife died he drew away from his friends and colleagues and buried himself in astro-sociology, which was very fortunate for me. When his daughter got sick however, it seemed he would surely die along with her. So as he said, I gave them both a new chance at life. And you my dear son can take some of the credit for them being alive. The only thing I asked in return, up until now that is, is that Ben continues his very important work, which I have been using to design my rebellion."
"It would have been nice if you were as generous with information when I was beating myself up for killing them " Keefe couldn't help to protest.
"But I was!!! " Lady Gisela said, a mischievous smile over stretching her face. "If you'd have just listen Keefe... I tried telling you to read my archive, I gave you the key and practically handed it over to you. If you read it you would have understood my plan, and Bens part in it, and would have had ample proof that Elinor and Ben were alive and well. You really need to learn to listen and cooporate. And you miss Moonlark would have done well to treat my work with more respect, you could have
Learned a thing or two about true leadership. Free of charge.”
Sophie could have given him this archetype, she found it in the neverseen warehouse she burned, but she let it burn instead. Was this another attempt of Lady Gisela at trying to create a divide between Keefe and her? If so, this was a really good one.
“I am sorry I let it burn” she said to Keeefe in her mind.
“It's ok, you couldn’t have known” he tried to reassure her. “Really Sophie, I can sense she is hiding something, so even if it was written there, I am sure there were a bunch of other lies and mind tricks that would have messed me up even worse.”
“Are you satisfied with my answer SON?” Lady Gisela asked expectedly.
Keefe decided not to mention he could sense she was hiding something. So he just nodded.
“Good, cause it seems breakfast is ready”.
Ben was approaching the table with three places of scrambled eggs and bacon, toasted black bread and some girkins.
Lady Gisela looked uphold when Ben placed her plate in front of her. ‘Is something the matter he asked?” with a very worried look on his face.
Lady Gisale didn’t deserve Sophie's help, but if they really had to live with Ben, Sophie might as well make them seem as human as possible.
“She, is vegan.” she explained on Lady Giselas behalf.
“Ohh I am so sorry, I didn’t realize that.” Ben said and removed the egg and bacon from Gisela's plate, leaving only the girkins.
Sophie almost declared Keefe as vegan as well but a growling sound from his stomach and a kick in her foot stopped her.
“Hey, you could have asked,” she said in her mind.
“Sorry Foster I act faster than I think and this was a matter of life or death. You wouldn’t want me to die of starvation now would you?”
Ben went back to the stove room and came back with another plate and sat next to Lady Gisela.
“I believe our introductions got interrupted by the surprise of my continued existence. Shell we pick up where we left off?”.
Sophie and Keefe seemed puzzled but Lady Gisela didn’t miss a beat.
“Of course how rude of me, this is Sophie, she is very interested in astronomy so I am sure you’ll have a lot to talk about, and you already met Fergus, though he has grown so much he’s hardly the same child.”
Keefe turned red, but didn’t say a thing…
“Well he does seem to live up to his name though” Ben said looking very pleased. “You know son, in these lands, Fergus means “The strongest of them all!”
Keefe nodded, trying to hide his face in his hair and shriveled a bit, his shoulders slumping.
"Great! I knew it will be connected to her legacy somehow" he thought.
“FERGUS?!?!?!” Sophie couldn’t hide her surprise, Keefe was not a very human name but out of all the names in the world, Fergus seemed a very strange choice, and not very french sounding either.
“It's my middle name… “ Keefe explained “I tried to keep it a secret, but count on Mommy dearest to make sure I never get a break.”
“Ro has been having a blast with this… she even started composing the ballad of the moonlark and her fear-goose when I told her about us. Sorry, for not asking you first but there was no way of hiding it from her. "
That does sound like Ro, Sophie thought but wait…
“When did you tell her about us? She has been away ever since you came back? Is she here?"