Learning a New Life - 13. Chapter 13

Michael awoke in his room, sitting up and yawning as he stretched his arms towards the tightly woven branches. The smell of the forest and the chirping of birds greeted his senses as he got up to grab his leggings and tunic. He felt a weight on his chest as he stood, and upon looking down he saw the crystal hanging from his neck. That was when it all came back to him.

"Nate!" he shouted. No one came. He clutched the crystal and recited the spell, but he did not come. It hadn't been a dream – none of it was. The dream within a dream where his love had visited, whispered those final, cryptic words – it had been real. Nate destroyed himself to save them.

Michael scrambled out of bed and out of the hut in the trees. The few elves who were walking about looked downcast and were quickly moving among others who were in mossy beds and being tended to for their injuries. Others were deep in apparent meditation, manipulating the subtle threads that bound them to nature to heal the damage.

Michael grabbed the nearest one and asked where Susan was. The elf pointed, and Michael ran to the next hut and burst in. Susan was lying in a bed, sobbing still, the pillow wet with sorrow. Michael approached her, now quietly, and sat in a chair next to the bed.

No words needed to be exchanged, they had both lost someone they cared for with all their hearts. The question now was how to move forward.

They rose together and walked out, back into the tree-filtered sunlight. Tharon was there waiting, again chosen as he had the most experience with humans beyond Corther. There was nothing the two humans could do to help at this point, and so Tharon transported them back to Susan's house, one that was going to seem much emptier now.

As Susan and Michael sat in the living room, neither said a word, and neither could think very coherently. How much time had passed before the hallway clock struck the 4 o'clock hour, neither could say, but it did bring them out of their mutual stupor.

"What happens now?" Michael asked.

"I—I don't know," Susan replied.

"It's over, though."

"This, yes. And hard as this is, we will both recover. They will both be a part of us, forever, but with time it will hurt less."

"I don't want it to."

Susan looked at Michael's pained visage and realized the sincerity, but she knew better. "I know you say that now, and you feel that if you stop hurting that you're forgetting him, and that he didn't mean as much to you. It's not true."

Michael didn't say anything.

They sat in silence for several more minutes and then heard a key in the lock. Shawn opened the door and saw his mom out of the corner of his eye. He closed the door and said, "Oh, hi Mom. I didn't know you'd be home yet. Is Grandma back from your meeting, too?"

Susan started to choke, but Shawn didn't notice as Michael took the opportunity to stand and cross the room.

"Hi, my name's Michael. And you must be Shawn, right?"

"Yeah, why are you here?"

"Well, I'm a friend of your mom's. She has a lot of stuff to take care of right now and it might be good if we let her deal with things alone for a bit. Do you want to go outside for a walk?" he smiled at the teen.

"Um, that's kind of weird … how about I just go up to my room and do homework?" Shawn said as he started up the stairs.

Michael watched him as he got to the top and turned into his room before going back to Susan.

"Thank you," she whispered.

Michael sat next to her and then replied, "You're welcome. I know you bound your sons' powers and so I'll keep a low profile and should probably leave, but we'll keep in touch? There's something … perhaps 'intriguing' is the right word … about Shawn …"

Susan nodded.

"Okay. I think that, just like you, I want to be alone for awhile. I'm going to go back home. I'll tell Avery I'm taking some time off." With that, Michael mouthed a single word and with a small gesture he quickly faded from the room.

* * * * *

Much later that night, after she had found a way to tell Shawn and Will about their grandmother, Susan was in the attic with a pen and The Book open to the family tree. She turned to her mother's page, annotating it with the details of her death, the occasional tear dropping towards the pages before vanishing just above the surface.

As she finished, the pages fluttered and turned to that of her sons, and their inherent abilities listed: Shawn, Telekinesis; William, Premonition. The heavy lines through those words and the note she had made many years ago about binding their powers wavered and shimmered. Susan gave a wry smile before saying out loud, "Not yet, mother."

* * * * *

Much later that night, Shawn was still moping around his modest house, having alternated between watching television to sitting at the kitchen table to sitting in the bathtub to soak until he turned pruney. At last he decided to go to bed, hoping to sleep off some of his depression and dream of happier times, or to simply let Hypnos take him to oblivion for the night.

He crawled into bed after placing the necklace in its bag on the nightstand and looked around the room at the painted forest scene. Nate had never gotten a chance to enchant the walls to make them seem as though he were really in the forest, as he had said he would eventually be able to do those several months ago.

As Michael looked dully towards the walls, he began to chant words that he didn't know, and his hands stretched towards the edges of the room as he saw thin, smoky, green tendrils extend towards the walls and ceiling. As he continued doing what he did not know he was doing, the room began to shimmer and reform, taking on the forest scene that had been painted before but now seemed entirely real.

Michael's chant stopped, his arms lowered, and he felt a little drained, but much less-so than he should have. He looked around at the virtual forest that was now his bedroom, and remarked out loud, "Woah. What was that?"