"Lucious!?" I practically yelled, with a shocked looked on my face. I sat straight up, my vision just coming back to me. "It is you Lucious, isn't it?"
"Yes, it is me Ezra.", he says with a smile, sitting next to me. "My family is here as well."
"I thought..." I say, with tears coming down my eyes," I thought you were dead."
Lucious looks me in the eyes, while holding my hands with a tender and serious tone in his voice.
"I thought we were going to die. I thought you and your family weren't going to make it out alive either." I notice a heavy weight seemed like it was pressing down on his chest while he was trying to speak.
"I thought I was never going to see you again Ezra." He grabbed my hands tighter. "When me and my family drove off, we drove for nearly an hour. It was the longest hour of my life. Seeing all the dead lands and no blue birds and no sounds of bugs chirping made it even worse."
I pull my hand out of his hands, which is pretty hard considering the grip he has. I try to calm him by brushing his hands and hair. "Why did you turn back?" I knew deep down in my heart why.
"I turned back for you." My heart skipped a beat, while he took my hand and caressed my cheek. "My family and I both just knew that we couldn't leave you, or your family. So, we decided to turn around and drive back, but we couldn't go back the way we came." He has a stress in his voice.
"Ezra, the rebels have become more aware of where people go and they will track you down from your prints and follow you. We couldn't let that happen. So, we drove through the country side, through the destroyed lands and trees." Disgust in his voice, as he spoke. "It was a horrible sight. I thought there would be more free, untouched, undamaged lands, but there weren't."
He stops talking for a second, looking down to the rock ground. He tries to catch his breath from remembering the sight. I could tell it bothered him deeply. It bothers me as well. If it didn't bother us, there would be something wrong.
I take my hand and lift his chin up, our eyes meeting. "Tell me what happened to you and your family," I say with a sincere tone in my voice. "I know it's difficult, it was difficult for my family, and still is. That time when we thought we would never see your family again, who cared for more than just materialistic things. We thought almost all was lost when we were separated in a blink of an eye, seeing your family ripped apart from ours. That took it's toll on us. We had to be strong, like you all are. We found a small area of land among the dark plains, and have been trying are best to stay unseen by the rebels."
I stop talking for a second, looking up at Lucious and say, " Seeing you here startled me." I say to him, confused. "Not in a bad way. How can you be here Lucious? Where is here, exactly I still don't know the answer to that. My family and I have been through these lands a few times and not once have we thought about going in these meadows. We should have, and maybe we would have found you earlier."
I am a crazy girl, I think, while I let out a sad giggle. Here I am again, giggling, at a time I don't need to be. I am though, because I am so happy to see Lucious alive, and safe. Sad, because all this time I thought the worst.
I still don't know where I am, except that I am enclosed inside rock walls, and there is a pathway leading to a few different areas. It's not pitch black, so I can tell that much from glancing beyond him for just a moment. I think back to the flower I remember seeing.
"What about the flower?" I say confused. "I remember colors and a myst, but that's about it."
Lucious puts his finger up against my lips, "sshhh...", leaning towards my face and puts his lips on mine. I kiss him back. Oh I missed the touch of his skin, and the warm embrace of him. I can tell he missed me too, his hands on my head, like he was holding the most delicate flower in the world. It is true, I am like a flower to him, I think smiling. My arms wrapped around his shoulders.
We haven't been kissing long when he pulls away, still holding my head, looking me in the eyes and says, "I'll tell you what happened with my family and I. The flower as well, my Ezra." He said with a smile, and a glimmer in his eyes.
I look back into his eyes, smiling as well with a tear running down my cheek. I'm so happy again, feeling once again like I did 6 months ago. I've been longing to hear his voice again since we had parted ways. I thought that I was never going to even get a second chance to see him, let alone hear him, but I am now and I'm never going to let him slip away from me. I'm just going to sit by his side, hold his hands, look into his eyes and continue to listen to him tell me about what had happened to him and his family.
It was like a dream.
We were driving away from the gazebo as fast as we could. We couldn't look back. If we did, we would die. My mom was driving, and my dad was trying to keep everyone calm, playing his flute. It did relax us, like it always does.
After a while of driving, I got as comfortable as I could just leaning against the window, looking out beyond the dark plains. Creston and Crestine fell asleep, by the sound of my fathers music. It would have put me to sleep also, if I didn't have so much on my mind.
I normally would of ran off with questions to my father, but at a time like this, I knew being calm would help everyone out more.
After what seemed like forever, I spoke and asked my mom, "How long have we been driving?"
"About an hour", she said, still looking at the road ahead while she is driving.
"We have to turn back mom." I say with concern and sadness. "This doesn't feel right. We can't leave Ezra and her family alone like this. They need us, and we need them."
She starts breathing a little more heavily, and looks over at my dad. He hears me as well, and stops playing.
He leaned over the side of his chair and looked back at me and said seriously, "You are right son. We should head back for them. I just wanted to see how long it took you to say it. We are, after all, nothing without the families around us." He smiled, and gave me a nudge on the arm.
My mom turned the vehicle around, and we headed back south to the great plains. The great dark plains is more like it. We couldn't head back the same way we came, so we took the first dirt road we found. We just kept driving to see if there were any live lands anywhere, but there wasn't.
A voice came to me all of the sudden, "keep off the roads", it said. I told my mom and she turned the steering while, drove right off the dirt road. Not that it mattered that she almost crashed our vehicle into the ditch that lined the dirt roads. I looked back at Crestine and Creston, they were still sound asleep. How they were still asleep through that, was beyond me.
It's a good thing she wasn't going really slow, otherwise we would have gone into that ditch. My dad was laughing. He loved that my mother wasn't a woman to mess around with. When your life is on the line, or danger is close by, she doesn't mess around.
"Mi lady ", my dad says "I know we need to stay as safe as possible. Let's not end up with our heads in the ground."
My mom laughed. " Ok dear, I'll be more safe.For you, myself, and the children." She blew a kiss too him, and he caught it.
"I'm not usually this wreckless", she says, trying not to show what little tension she still had from when we were driving off in a hurry from the gazebo. My dad leaned his hand, and stroked my moms arm, calming her.
They acted like this since I was old enough to remember. Silly, crazy in love, even though all this wrong in the world is going on. They just try to keep a strong head on there shoulders, to show us that losing grip won't do any good. Like my dad always says, You have to be calm before the great storm.
The forest area we were driving in was all dark, no plants, no animals, just dead trees lined everywhere. No sound of the little birdies singing. No wiggly worms in the soil. No golden fish, splashing in the waters. No humming birds getting nector from flowers. There wasn't even the sweet smell of flowers, that reminded me of you. It went on like this for nearly half an hour.
Like a bult of lightning that comes from the sky in the winter, we drove right up to a spot of land that was not contaminated, in the midst of this destroyed forest. Maybe this voice was trying to lead us to this spot. Maybe that's where me and my family were meant to stay, waiting for you Ezra. None of us were certain, but what we did know was that it seemed out of the ordinary, but we were thrilled and ecstatic.
The vehicle stopped and we all got out of the vehicle. We had to wake up the twins, who had no idea what was going on. After we told them, they were all smiles, hopping up and down and kept asking me over and over.
"What else did the voice tell you?" Crestine asked in a happy voice.
"Did it say that we were going to be feasting soon?", Creston said sadly "..because I am hungry!"
Crestine and I laughed. Out of everything that has happened, all he can think about is food. It's so like him. We never minded his sillyness, it always brightened the mood, no matter how poorly we felt.
"I haven't heard anything else besides what I've already said." I wished it would of told me more about when I would see you Ezra. I didn't think bad about it though, because it did bring us out of the dark.
A sad look spread across both of there faces, but not for long. They both turned around as soon as they noticed I was looking at something. They both started running towards the greenest grass and just spun around in cirlces, with there heads looking up towards the sky. My mom and dad were standing by the front of the vehicle, looking happy themselves to see there babies happy, for once.
I was leaning against our van, when a huge gust of wind came from the south heading north, straight into a meadow. The wind was so strong it pushed over my brother and sister and they fell to the ground, looked up at each other and just ran towards me.
"Did you see that?" Crestine asked, looking at me with a half grin, half worried face. "The wind pushed us over! Now tell me that is not odd. There was no wind at all, and wham, out of nowhere a huge gust comes our way and pushes us over!"
"There's nothing to be worried about Crestine, it's just the wind." I tell her, trying to comfort her. I knew something else was going on, but I didn't want to say anything because I still had no idea for sure what was going on, except what we had already seen.
Creston said seriously, but at the same time with humor, "Crestine, don't worry about that. I'll just stand in back of you next time there is wind so you won't fall over, and I will." My brother always had his eye on anyone, or anything that even came remotely close to harming our sister.
Crestine and Creston looked over to where our mom and dad were standing, and they had been waving at us to come over to where they were. We ran over, but like always, my brother turned it into a race between us. He always turns anything into some type of physical competion whenever he can. My sister and I just ran, trying to keep up. He was a fast runner, more like sprinter.
My family and I were all standing in front of the meadow now, just enjoying the air, and the sunny skies. Haven't seen them in a while. Out of nowhere again, another gust of wind came, this time stronger. My sister fell into my brother this time, and it caused him to almost fall on his face. I was standing behind her, and tried catching her, while I tried keeping myself from falling over. It didn't work though. All three of us went tumbling to the ground.
"Oops!", I say to my sister. "I didn't mean to land on you."
She pushes herself out from underneath me with a grunt and laugh "I'm just glad it was Creston that landed on me".
"Hey, I'm not that heavy!" We all smiled, and then got up, looking at mom and dad. They would of fallen over if they weren't already standing by a tree. Lucky them.
We all thought it was no coincidence that there were already 2 gusts of wind, coming from the same direction, headed towards the same direction. We knew someone, or something was trying to tell us to go into the meadows, so we did. We all walked over the bridge that lead in and over a small creak that lead through the most abundant forest we've seen in a long time.
We were all aww struck with what we saw. Birds chirping away up in the trees, bringing there little babies worms to eat. The fish in the stream were healthy, swimming along. There were squirrels running up the trees. There were bees collection nector for honey on the wild flowers that grew almost everywhere. My brother ran over the bridge, past my mom and dad straight to a huge grape vein. He was so hungry he just kept picking at them, eating until he was content, which didn't take very long.
The rest of us just sat over where the waterfall was, and enjoyed the green grass and the sound of music from the bugs, the bees, the trees, the water, everything. Creston came over a few minutes later and handed us some peaches and apples he got from nearby wild fruit trees.
"This is amazing." My mom said cheerfully, looking at my dad, who too, was smiling up a storm.
My dad spoke to us all, "Yes, there is always light even in the darkest hour. We have to protect the light though, in order to survive this darkness."
I agreed, we all did. But we all wondered, how was this possible? How come the rebels haven't torn this up already. Maybe they haven't came across it because it was in the middle of a very large area of land that they were destroying, that they just didn't see it. That's all I could think of. That's all we could think of.
I realize how long I've been talking. I look over at Ezra, and she is still just listening to me in aww at what I've been telling her. That's what I love about her. She is so open minded. It blows me away, not the wind though, thankfully. I start telling her about what happens next, still holding onto her hands, afraid to let go, afraid to lose her again.