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I didn’t say anything for a moment. “It’s complicated,” I admitted finally, still staring at the tree.
“‘It’s complicated?’” She repeated, incredulous. “Seriously?” Her voice was still soft, but the raw pain was apparent. “That’s all we get? After twelve years? What, you think you can just show up here after all that time, say you’re sorry and we’re just supposed to forgive you?”
“Of course not.”
“D—n right, of course not!” She said, heating up. “We had a funeral for you! Dillan and I had to hold Mom while she cried about losing her daughter and try to tell her it would be okay, while we were still breaking from losing our sister! We both took time off from work to be here with Mom and Dad when Dad had his stroke, making sure they were okay, and where were you? Your work was too important to take care of your own father? To even let us know you were still alive?”
I dropped my head, closing my eyes as more tears came. They were absolutely right.
“What was her name, Chrissy?” Dillan accused. When both of our parents objected, he waved then off. “Oh, please! If she actually is Chrissy, then you know that’s what happened! She ran off with some bimbo and couldn’t even give enough of a d—n about her own family to let us know she was still alive! Did you think it was true love, Chrissy? She obviously didn’t, ‘cause she’s not here with you, is she?”
“Dillan! Please!” Mom gasped.
“No, Mom, it’s okay,” I said, releasing her hand. “He’s right.” I turned around to face them all once again. Dad had taken a seat on the couch, but the others remained standing. I took a moment, looking each of them in the eye, before addressing my brother again. “Her name was Kyrala. And she died. In nineteen eighty-five.”
“Oh, bulls—t, Chrissy!” He shouted back. “You weren’t even born in nineteen eighty-five! I wasn’t born in nineteen eighty-five!”
“I know,” I nodded. “That’s kind of the point.”
He took in another breath to start ranting again, but I held up a hand to cut him off. There was no Craft in the motion, no stirring of my Spark, but the force behind it was such that all thought of retaliatory accusations fled his mind. Everyone present felt the power and surety behind it, and those who had known me were shocked that I could be so forceful with such a simple gesture. It was a mark of how much I’d changed that I expected nothing less than the reaction I got.
I took a moment to gather my thoughts, and then I led my mother to sit down next to her husband on the couch. I returned to my place in front of the tree, considering. “Look,” I started, meeting each of their eyes in turn. “I know I’ve caused you all a lot of pain. More than you ever deserved, and more than I can ever make up to you. And I’ve missed so much, more than I could ever catch up on. And even if we had the rest of your lives together to fix it all, it wouldn’t be nearly enough time.”
I swallowed before I continued. “And I am fully aware that I have no right to come here, disrupt your lives, and ask for forgiveness for it all, and then leave again, just like I did before.”
“Chrissy, no, you don’t—” Mom started, moving to stand.
“No, Mom, please,” I begged, shaking my head. “Because the truth is, even though I’m here now, I can’t stay. I never could. Even if we said our piece, hugged it out, mended our fences, made ourselves one happy family again…I probably won’t be able to come back.
“So,” I continued, coming to the bleak point of my little speech. “The way I see it, we’ve got two options, here. We could sit down, and I could spell it all out for you, tell you where I’ve been, what I’ve been doing, why I never got in touch for all those years. And if I did, some of you would say it’s ridiculous, or insane. Some of you just wouldn’t understand. And in the end, after it’s all explained, some of you might hate me. And your world would be changed, your sense of safety, of surety, would be gone entirely, and you could never get it back.
“Or, we could forget that. We could come together and have a happy Christmas, like we used to. And we can laugh, and love. I can hand out the presents I made, and try to make up for all the time I missed. And then tomorrow, you can all wake up and I won’t be here, and you can remember it as a happy dream. Our Christmas miracle that was too splendid and too fragile to last. We say those things that we never said but wish we could have, have one more day as a family, and then I go back to being dead, and your lives can continue on as they always have.”
I looked around the room again. My words had had different effects on each of them. “I’m not going to make that choice for you.” I told them, shaking my head. “I made it the first time, and this disaster is where we ended up. I’m not going to take that from you again. Because no matter what, I can’t stay. We have this one day, and I’m going to make it what you want it to be.”
Mom was crying again. I didn’t need to sense her mind to know that she didn’t want either option; she wanted me to stay. But the rest of the room had come to a silent agreement. It was my father who voiced it first, looking up from holding my mother. “Look, Chrissy…” he began slowly. “I think we all deserve to know why.”
“Dad’s right,” Lisa agreed instantly, nodding, her eyes red but her face hard.
I nodded again. “I agree. And having the chance to explain is the reason I’m here. I just didn’t want to take the choice away from you.” I paused, trying to determine the best way to proceed. I couldn’t exactly do this the same way I had with Tam; I was much too big now. “Sorry,” I said after a moment. “I’m just trying to think of the best way to do this. I tried it before with Tam and it did not go well.”
“Tam knew you were still alive?” Lisa asked. “Why didn’t she tell us?”
“You’re about to find out.” I nodded to myself, a plan forming. “Okay, we’ll do this in baby steps, then. So, the first thing you need to know is that my name is not Chrissy anymore.” I gave a moment for the confused muttering and incredulous scoffing to pass before continuing. “In a way, it never was. Christine was only really a placeholder, if you will. A transition point between two more solid states.”
“So what’s your name now?” Dillan asked skeptically.
“My name is Virial,” I said, preparing myself for what always inevitably followed such an introduction.
“Jesus,” he breathed, shaking his head. “That’s a ridiculous name!”
“It’s actually rather traditional among my people,” I informed him.
“Your people?”
I nodded. “Yes, my people. I’m not human.” That statement had exactly the effect on my family as I had expected, so before anyone could get up any momentum in attempting to refute it, I cut them off, spreading my arms. “And since I know what that sounds like, I invite you to answer me this: do I look human? Can you honestly say I look normal? At all?” As expected, my question re-focused their attention on the oddities of my appearance, the eerie perfection of form, the uncanny precision of motion, and especially the jewel-like sparkle in my eyes.
“So humoring your ridiculous story, what are you then?” Dillan asked. “Are you an elf, like in those books you were always going on about?”
“No.”
“Oh, maybe you’re a vampire? Those are all the rage now, right?”
“Ugh, God no!” I shook my head, revulsion clear on my face. “I hate those things.”
“But vampires are real?” He said, back in his skeptical stride now. “Are you a werewolf?”
“No, I’m not a werewolf,” I said firmly. “You can stop trying to guess, Dillan. I’m going to tell you.”
“Fine then. What sort of fantasy creature are you, Chrissy?” He folded his arms over his chest, looking extremely upset. While Lisa hadn’t joined in in the exchange, she was thinking the exact same thing. My parents were mostly just confused.
“Our name for ourselves is Mauna,” I explained. “And this is where we start to run into trouble, because translating that into English is tough. There’s two ways to do it: one way to describe what we look like, which is problematic, another to describe what we do, which can give the wrong impression.”
“So, how did you ‘become’ one of these ‘Mauna,’ Chrissy?” Lisa pressed, skepticism thick in her voice.
“I didn’t,” I answered, shaking my head. “I was born one. We reincarnate. Well, we use the word ‘recur.’ I mean, the colloquial usage of reincarnation has basically just come to mean ‘rebirth,’ but the original meaning has a bunch of implications implicit in it that are really misleading, and…” I cut myself off. “Not the point. We reincarnate—we seem like humans while we’re growing up, but we’re not. And then eventually our real selves emerge, and we reconnect with our past lives. We can talk to them, remember their experiences. Use and build on their power.”
I could tell that I was losing them, that even with my unnatural appearance they were no longer willing to accept what I was saying. So it was time to give them some proof. “Here, look. I mentioned, Kyrala right?” I held out a hand in front of me, concentrating. For a few seconds nothing happened; the people in the room shifted irritably, their patience thin and anger beginning to boil. But just before it became too much, the room filed with the sound of a zipper being slowly pulled open.
Most of them turned to look. My long duffel unzipped itself, the edges of the opening shrugging apart. A few moments later, an object began to rise from within, floating gently into the air and up to the height of my outstretched arm. It was large and mostly rounded, vaguely shaped like a spade, twice the diameter of a large dinner plate and nearly two inches thick at the widest point, perfectly white in color. From certain angles as it drifted upwards, the light hitting it splashed off in myriad sparkles, as if it was covered in a paper-thin coat of diamond.
When the object reached the height of my hand it slowed, then began to drift towards me, drawn across the living room by pure Will, made realized as physical force by the power of my Spark. The outstretched hand wasn’t actually necessary to manipulate objects, but even with all my strength I was still learning how to manifest Will, and it helped to sell the idea that I was controlling it to my family. As the object floated towards me the crowd parted, their faces a mix of amazement and confusion. A second or two later and I reached out and grabbed it from the air.
“Holy s—t,” Dave muttered.
“Here,” I said, handing the gleaming object to Mom to inspect. “Kyrala was my Predecessor. My most recent past life. This was one of hers.”
She took it, looking from it to me in wonder. “One of her what?”
“One of her scales,” I answered, smiling.
“Scales?”
“A dragon,” Dillan said, finishing the chain of logic first. “She’s saying that this Kyrala lady was a dragon. Which means she’s saying that she’s a dragon.”
I nodded, my eyes closed. “And the point goes to big brother!” I opened my eyes to gaze across the room, their inner light blazing out and filling the living room with dazzling emerald brilliance. “Yes, I’m a dragon. Although we really do prefer Mauna.” Almost as one, the members of my family gasped when my eyes blazed with light, most of them raising a hand to shield their own eyes from the intensity.
After a few moments, I dialed it back, dimming the glow to something softer. “We’ve been around for hundreds of millions of years. I’ve been around for hundreds of millions of years, over tens of thousands of lifetimes, living and dying and living again.” I looked around again, no one willing to meet my shining gaze. Except my mother. “I chose you,” I told her softly, reaching out a hand. “The process is…weird. Hard to understand, even for us, but we choose who we recur as, and I chose you, Mom. Dad. Dillan. I chose you all to be my family, to grow up with you, to learn how to see the world’s beauty again through new eyes. To learn again how to love, and to remind me how pain and loss can make love all the more incredible. And that means that you’ll always be my family, even if I live another hundred million years more.”
I leaned in, wrapping both my parents up in a big hug. I could feel their confusion. They didn’t understand what I was saying, not really. It was too big, too unexpected. But they still loved me, that much I was sure of.
“But you don’t…you know, look like a dragon…” I released my parents and looked up. My brother’s skepticism and anger had receded, leaving mild bewilderment behind.
“It’s complicated,” I smiled. “Here, let me show you…”
Time to blow their minds.
I thrust a hand out towards the window, and as I did, the wall of the house melted away in a noisy rush, fracturing and spiraling out of existence as if it had been nothing more than an image in a kaleidoscope. Behind that wall another world waited, and in a fraction of a second it was as if the side of the house simply opened up into another place, another time.
Just behind the couch large, leafy ferns flourished. Low, clinging mists drifted in through the now open doorway, and out on the open plain visible in the mid-afternoon sun wandered herds of dinosaurs: a family of hadrosaurs grazed on the low branches of trees, while a short distance away a pod of horned ceratopsians wallowed in a wide, shallow pool. Cassie shrieked and jumped as an enormous dragonfly that glittered azure buzzed into the living room and alighted on the TV on the opposite wall with a tinny sound of impact, turning this way and that to observe its strange new environment.
“Oop!” I laughed quietly. “Zii zii…” I sent a mild gust of wind its way, coaxing it back into the air and through the opening in the side of the house. As we watched it buzz its way through the sky, two figures emerged, walking through the ancient paradise. They were Mauna. One was enormous, well over two hundred feet in length, his stately head nearly eighty feet off the ground. His scales shone like moonlight reflected on perfectly still, black water, rippling with the light as he moved, flowing with slow, impossible grace. Next to him and significantly smaller (yet still very large) was another Mauna, her armor a pretty sky blue, patched here and there with bands of deep midnight. The pair walked slowly, observing the world around them and speaking gently in our ancestral language.
I smiled to myself, watching the amazed reactions and rapt attention of my family. The entire display was an illusion manifested from my Spark, even the bug and the mists that appeared to extend out of that other world and into ours. I had molded it to the perceptions and points of view of each observer, giving it the appearance of depth, but it they tried to hop over the couch and through the apparent portal, they would run into (and likely crash through) the window out into the mild Christmas morning.
“Can…can they see us?” My dad asked nervously, gripping his cane tightly as one of the hadrosaurs wandered near, and the two Mauna meandered closer.
“No, Dad, they can’t,” I confirmed. “Those are Mauna, in our true form. When we Hatch, and the truth of our nature is revealed to us, we keep the form we were born into as a second skin, something we can return to if needed.” I laughed quietly. “It changes with us, though, which is why I don’t look exactly the same as I did before. But it’s very helpful to not have to be fifty feet long all the time.” I watched the reflection of my ancient people for a moment as they stopped, standing side by side and observing something. A lesson was beginning. “The big one is Ladreain. He was the teacher and mentor for Kyesh’aa, my past life. That’s her, there. This was the last life I led before the end of the Cretaceous.”
We watched for a few moments before I moved my hand as if I was flipping the page of a giant book. The scene changed again, the sound of rushing wind and the kaleidoscopic spinning impressing the weight of ages on the change. As usual, the hand gestures were completely unnecessary, but the people around me expected them.
As the new scene coalesced, the wall seemed to lead to a vast desert of yellow sands. Two figures, a man and a woman, stood nearby, facing out at the tower of ancient scaffolds surrounding the massive blocks of the Great Pyramid as it stood partially constructed. The man himself was fairly unremarkable: he was elderly, his skin tanned to leather by years in the harsh sun, but the simple but ornate decoration to his robes indicated he was a person of status.
The woman next to him, however, was stunning. A long cascade of flowing red hair tumbled down her back, and her skin was nearly ivory white, her eyes gleaming like diamond, burning with a quiet inner light. She wore a simple shift, which left her breasts bare; I could have altered my illusion for modesty, but that had been the fashion at the time and I didn’t want to pretend things had been different than they were. She stood with a poise and precision that made even my own seem clumsy in comparison, and she stared off at the construction taking place across the sands, her expression inscrutable.
The man looked at her, clearly deferential, and spoke softly in old Egyptian. After he finished, the woman nodded ever so slightly, and the man, satisfied, turned and walked away, his destination hidden by the angle of the view.
“That is Kyrala, my Predecessor,” I told them, watching as five new figures flicked into visibility, having been standing unseen not far away. Each of them shared had gleaming eyes, greens and blues predominant, and each moved with uncanny grace, although not nearly as refined as that possessed by my past life. The group began speaking in Umauni, discussing the progress and timeframes of the project. I understood it, but I didn’t add illusory subtitles or alter the sound of their voices.
“Is that…the pyramids at Giza?” Dillan asked in awe. “Your…this Kyrala lady…she used slaves to help build the pyramids?”
“The Great Pyramid was not built by slaves,” I told him. “It was built by thousands of master artisans, from all over Egypt and from neighboring kingdoms, and they were paid very handsomely for their skill. The Pharaoh wanted only the best for his tomb, and was willing to pay any sum for it. Thankfully, he never figured out that his tomb was in fact a prison for…something…that threatened the world. If my people could have built it ourselves we would have, but there were some unfortunate complications that prevented us from doing so.”
I watched as the group dispersed, leaving Kyrala alone on the sand dune. She hadn’t moved, hadn’t even turned around during the conversation. “Thankfully, when we approached the Pharaoh’s chief architect, he was willing to help us. And to convince the Pharaoh that he needed such an elaborate tomb.”
“What’s in there?” Lisa asked tentatively.
I shook my head. “Can’t tell you. The thing the Great Pyramid was built to contain is memetic. It spreads and grows stronger the more people know about it, so telling you would actually put the world in danger for no reason other than that information about the thing has been spread.” I spared a glance around the room; that statement had invoked a not-insignificant amount of fear. “I told you your sense of safety might be compromised by me telling you the truth.”
I turned back to the image. “Luckily, there’s only one of it, and two-and-a-half millennia trapped in the Pyramid weakened it to the point of near powerlessness. It’s no longer a danger as long as those of us who remember it don’t actively spread information about it. The Great Pyramid could be leveled with no consequence.” I smirked, answering a question they were thinking but hadn’t asked. “And no, there is nothing in the others. The other Pharaohs saw that Khufu had a snazzy tomb and wanted one, too.”
After one more moment, I turned my hand again, shifting the scene. “Perhaps something a bit more recent…” The new scene was looking down from above, through the ceiling of a small, crowded bar filled with young people enjoying drinks. In the center of the image was a small table with six young women, each wearing revealing attire and toasting.
One of them, with lovely mocha skin and dark expressive eyes, handed a triangular glass with a long stem that was filled with green liquid to one of her friends, a girl with long sandy hair and hazel eyes. “You’ve been good, have one of these!”
“I feel good!” She took a drink, moaning with pleasure as the alcohol hit her lips. “Oh, God, I needed this! I’m so sorry for scaring you earlier. I think it really was just stress.” As she went to take another drink, her entire body spasmed, flailing and retching in excrutiating pain, unable to scream as her voice caught in her throat.
I looked away from the image, watching my family’s reaction. I didn’t need to watch, even as I shifted the image again to show the tiny bathroom that had been seared into my memory as one of the defining places of my life. I was intimately familiar with the details of my own Hatching. I explored the faces and minds of the people around me as the image of my younger self played across the wall.
“Oh God…” “Go away!” “Who are you?” “What’s happening to me?”
The hearts of my parents and siblings were breaking as they watched me twitch and writhe on the floor, shouting at a voice that they couldn’t hear. When my first shift occurred moments later, revealing my tiny, black-scaled form as a brand new hatchling, my mother and brother jumped.
I allowed the scene to play a little longer, until Tam had led me from the bar and into the waiting cab, then I changed the image again. Now, hiding in the ceiling of my college apartment, we watched as Tam entered and I tried my best to explain to her the incredible change I had undergone. When I showed her my true shape and she reacted with fear and anger, a ripple of indignation passed through the gathering.
“What the hell, Tam!” Lisa whispered as she shouted her final words and slammed the door.
“One more…” I told them, shifting the scene. I jumped through time, pausing at several points across the next few months. Me in a dirty motel; sleeping in my car on the side of the road; sleeping in alleys; finding an old friend, Joe, who was now deceased; my encounters with the creeping terror that had been preying on them (“THAT’s a vampire…”), and my final, heated fight with the beast.
As I was found by my people for the first time, and they led me away to a new life, I closed my hand into a fist. The images disappeared, the window and the outside world fading back into existence. When I was finished, I stood with my hands clasped in my lap, waiting for reactions, my eyes still glowing gently. My family looked around, meeting my eyes and each other’s, processing what they had just seen, both the events shown in the images, as well as the very existence of the power that had allowed those images to appear in the first place.
My brother-in-law was the first person to speak. “So, magic is real? Monsters are real?” He reached out to take his wife’s hand, and then to touch the head of his little baby, still sleeping in her rocker. He looked at me, and the quiet fear he was feeling was clear on his face. “What does that mean? How…how can…?”
I nodded, understanding his question without him needing to finish. “Yes, magic is real. We call it the Craft. Willcraft. And yes, there are some real monsters out there, that are incredibly dangerous. And I know what you’re feeling. You’ve got a brand new family, just beginning to bloom. How can you possibly keep her safe from something so unknown, so scary?
“But you don’t have to.” I cast my gaze around the room, pulling everyone’s attention in once again. “That’s our job. Because like I said, there are two ways to describe us. ‘Dragon’ might be the word that describes what we look like, but ‘angel’ is the word that describes what we are. We’re part mortal and part divine, and we were created—we exist—to protect this world from those dangers.”
I reached out a hand for my mother’s, pulling her up for a hug. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get in touch earlier, but there was so much I needed to do. To keep other people safe. And that’s why I can’t stay. Because there are so many things that need to be done to make sure you all get to keep on living your lives without needing to worry.”
I let her go, looking deep into her eyes. “But I’m here with you for today. So what do you say we break out some breakfast?”
Re: I Did Some Writing! It Has Dragons! Wanna See?
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