Guardian
The celestial beings slid silently between white clouds on their way to the meeting, their voices echoed off walls featuring full-length murals of star fields. Whispering filled the room with a rising tension. The twelve kings and queens making up the group of Guardians stood in a circle, eleven of them deep in conversation, using their unusual black hands expressively, their faces ripe with worry. One of them, though, stood quiet, silent, his tired eyes closed and his hands together and crossed in front of him.
"Piero," called a feminine voice next to him, "are we here to discuss Cassie? Please, we want to know what you think."
Piero turned to see the beautiful Helena, with her dark hair in braids intricately woven all over her head, Her apple-green eyes sparkling brighter than a million suns. She stood there impatiently expecting an answer.
"Yes, Piero, how do you feel about Cassie failing her assigned mission?" Piero's younger brother, Alexander asked, staring at him, arms folded at his chest. He could still see a few lines of black slithering up his arm, like spilled ink soaking into parchment paper.
"She is not failing," Piero insisted. "The curse our ancestors put on Icarus is now resting on one of us, Cascadia."
They all cringed quietly, though it wasn't a surprise because everyone knew a girl would be cursed next and that Cascadia might be the one.
Piero paused to reflect on a vivid memory when, along with the other Guardians, he studied the Asterderis which foretold the fate of every being—Guardian, immortal, human or animal. An intricate map of constellations and celestial figures, the Asterderis alignments formed images, one being of a white rose standing out brilliantly in the deep blue sea of endless space.
"Listen, Cassie is admittedly a young Guardian, but as my apprentice I taught her well. I'm asking the council to give her a few more days to fulfill her mission and convince Icarus to kill himself," Piero requested, but carrying the weight of someone in authority who was highly respected.
His motion did not go unchallenged.
"But so much can go wrong. Icarus was meant to fall in love with a human, not a Guardian. We are immortal. If Cascadia isn't able to break the curse, will she die?" Helena warned, turning to address the group.
"No one knows, but that isn't important right now," Piero replied strongly in support of his position.
"And no one will ever know," Heron shot back while staring down each of the other Guardians.
His black lines so thick they covered both his arms and were beginning to grow up his neck. Arching his white eyebrows, he turned to Piero.
"We'll give her two weeks. If she doesn't convince Icarus to leave this world once and for all, we will have to assign another Guardian apprentice to the Icarus mission."
"Oh, and just what mission did you have in mind for Cassie?" Piero challenged.
"The fact that Cassie is now part of the curse changes the entire game plan," boasted Alexander, as if his insight represented a brilliant chess move and the issue of what to do with Cassie was part of a hotly-contested chess match.
"I submit that Cassie must be kept away from Icarus. I propose that she be brought back here and not given access to the human world. That's the only way to keep Icarus from falling in love with her," Alexander boldly insisted.
"You have no idea what you are talking about," Piero spat back. "You are just too young to understand the depth of what's going on with them."
Though Alexander was 1,000 years old, that was young for Guardians.
"I also propose that if we change the assigned Guardian, my apprentice would be the best choice for the difficult assignment," Alexander continued confidently.
Heron stared down both brothers. How could they be so different from each other—Alexander the warrior, Piero the intellectual.
Piero, typically rational and logical, accepted Alexander's proposal, but with every confidence that Cassie would fulfill her mission.
Heron only met Cassie once, her quicksilver wit, charming smile, but most of all courage and strength under duress made him believe she was right for the task. The question—was Cassie strong enough to fight and win a life-and-death battle against the power of love?
"Cassie will have a month," were Heron's final decisive words, echoing uncomfortably in Piero's head. A spiraling veil of soft blue clouds in form of a cyclone carried them back to Earth.
➳
Cassie roamed the streets aimlessly, hoping not to run into Tate—her palms sweating, her legs shaking. Finally, she gave up trying to avoid him knowing there was a good chance they'd eventually cross paths by coincidence. Ever since visiting him, she was anxious and paranoid, oceans of troubling thoughts of Tate crashing like tidal waves onto the rocky shores of her manic mind. She needed to get back to her normal life. She missed her ballet classes, her home and she needed desperately to rest. More mixed emotions swirled around in her conflicted head.
Normal. Does that even exist? No, it's just an illusion of perfection, which is another fantasy and like most fantasies simply will never be realized. Humans dream of being immortal. For them, that would be a fantasy come true. I'm an immortal being, so I guess I'm a living illusion.
Cassie thought more about illusions, mirages, and boys with wispy feathery wings on her way back home.
Slamming the front door, Cassie stalked the stairs to her room and collapsed onto her bed. Quickly tears damped her pillow. Clearing them off her face with her hands, they were now tainted with black makeup. She looked at the ceiling; at the little lights she hung with Piero when she was little—when she thought she was human and Piero was her father. She remembered how much they looked like stars. She was always drawn to outer space, but more, she loved knowing there existed something outside of her world, though it made her feel like a single grain of sand on an endless beach.
Cassie remembered a quote scribbled on a wall, "You are whoever you want to be," and remembered writing it upon finding out that both she and Piero were Guardians and that she was destined to stop Icarus from fulfilling the curse.
Looking in the mirror, Cassie could see she was a disaster and badly needed sleep, but her mind was an engine running at full throttle desperately trying to figure out her next move. Then, it hit her—sometimes there is nothing to be done, sometimes you just have to cope with reality and face your fears, or in this case the injustice that's been thrust upon her. After all, it's just life—the shitty destiny that fell in her lap.
Upset building to anger, Cassie stood up on her bed, ripped the string of lights from the ceiling, and launched the mirror into the floor, screaming and cursing. With her rage spent and nothing left to destroy in her room, she sat on the floor desperately perplexed.
Going over her options and with a pencil she found under her bed she a list of options on the wall.
CHOOSE YOUR DESTINY:
1. Do what the guardians want you to do
2. Let your self fall in love and die.
She looked around her bedroom, lips tightly together and tapping the pencil on her fingers, so the mess and realized her life was in chaos. There was nothing left in that house valuable of breaking. She smiled, went back to the wall, and wrote,
3. Break Tate's heart.