07-30-2010, 06:07 AM
32. Denial (cont of safety)
He had aged eight years before she felt comfortable taking him out.
For eight years they had lived under the protection of Heso, the green-eyed youth, son of the lord who had ordered the attack on her second home. He had offered her anything she would need and she had taken most of it and hidden away in the rooms provided for them. They weren't the rooms she had shared with her husband, but they were something.
Eight years she had spent segregating herself and her son from those people. She accepted the three daily meals in her quarters and allowed servants to clean while her child napped in her arms. After eight years though, that world she had built up to keep others out was no longer big enough to contain him. She relented to free him from his cage, her only sanctuary.
His violet eyes sparkled to see the world suddenly much bigger than he had thought. Of course she had told him, but what were stories compared to what can be seen? His shoulder length white hair trailed along behind him as he ran down the halls, passing door upon door to other quarters much like their own.
"Shonasha," she called after him as she made for a hall that led outside, "This way."
It could have been a greater sight. The garden where he had been born was little more than some patches of dry shrub and short prickly cactus. True to her word, Morigan had not cried a single tear after her husbands death. Just as it had been when she had first arrived here, the jungle had withered and died. The winds had changed and few clouds passed over the mountains to the north. Heso's father had had men slaughtered for this land only to have it dry up around them. Nothing lay outside the walls for miles aside from desert. But they lived on.
She shook away the thoughts as she watched her son take to the earth. Whatever he had gotten from his father, he was still a child of the Elreen. The barren earth cried out to him weakly. Humming to himself, he raked the ground with his fingers. The dry dust fell away before him as he dug deeper. Here the ground was at least somewhat moist. "Here you are," he said as he packed the earth around a shrubs base. "That feels better doesn't it?" he stroked the plants dry fonds and exclaimed when he found a single bud adorning one of the branches. Without a thought he reacher out to the bud and drawing from it's Life, forced it to bloom.
"That's quite the power you have there,"
Shonasha started and tumbled off his feet. He had been so caught up in the plant that he hadn't noticed the man step up next to him. Instinctively he looked about for his mother, but she was on the other side of the garden, tending to some of the worst of the plants.
Remembering what his mother had taught him, he rose to his feet with a jump a bowed his head to the man, "Hello. I'm Shonasha, son of Morigan, it is an honor to meet you."
The man chuckled to himself. Shonasha looked up into his bright green eyes as he wondered what was so funny. "Ah," he said, noticing the inquiring look, "Most races are paternal,"Another inquiring look," they go by the lineage of their fathers."
"Elreen don't," Shonasha said proudly, "It would be an insult to the Great Mother who birthed us all. Besides," he said shuffling his feet in the dirt, "I don't have a father."
"No, I suppose you don't," The man smiled sadly, "Well, Shonasha, son of Morigan. I am Heso, son of Hasen, Lord of the West. It is a pleasure to see you again, your quite a bit bigger then you were before." he said with a chuckle.
Shonasha's violet eyes grew wide, "You know me? Truly?"
"Truly," Heso smiled, green eyes gleaming, "I know much of your past and quite a bit about your future. Would you like me to tell you?"
"Oh yes. Please do te-"
"Enough!" Morigan cut in. There was a fury in her as she shoved her son behind her, blocking him from the young man.
He rose, straightening casually and fixing her with his green-eyed smile, "Morigan, how are-"
"Silence! I do not know you boy." she spat. She gripped her son's shoulder behind her, taking strength in the need to protect him. "Your kindness does not give you permission to speak to my son."
"My lady, you cannot keep him hidden away forever. All boys must become men one day,"
"Then let me return to my homeland where he can be raised to be a man of his own people," She pleaded.
"You will never make it there alive," Heso said. Shonasha found himself staring at him, for the man's green eyes suddenly looked as if they were fixed somewhere far away, "You would die before either of you ever saw it."
"Then I will raise my son as I see fit!" she spat. Shonasha was whisked away, back the rooms where he had spent the first eight years of his life, but something had changed. Shonasha was no longer content to stay there in the company of his mother. He now knew that there was much more to be seen, much more to be known. He wanted to talk again to the man with the green eyes that looked far away, he wanted to know.
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