“You don’t know what you don’t know.”
Dave Meier
26
It had been a few weeks since Leyna and I had taken Raphael’s advice and took our time getting to know our past and enjoying life. We had fallen into routines around the mansion and around town.
There was a nearby restaurant in town by the golf course. We went there every Friday and enjoyed the company of various other locals. It felt more like a country club by the way we were treated, and the way all the regulars knew each other.
Our morning routine consisted of waking up at seven, tea on the patio, breakfast with Alexander, a walk around the property through the woods and time in the library reviewing the past and learning. Then, lunch on the front porch and a walk around the town square stopping in the shops, and enjoying some fresh brewed coffee while sitting on the park benches.
The evenings were sheer bliss. Dinner, relaxing and, well, the unrelaxing as well. Leyna was incredible. She was teaching me things I never knew. At the end of each day, we fell blissfully asleep alongside one another.
We had fallen comfortably into a peaceful life. Then one day after dinner, we were lounging with our coffee on the patio. The wood ducks and pileated woodpeckers were returning to their nests in the apartment complex of a tree on the edge of the grass. They’d crawl in, look out of the hole as if saying good night, and then duck back in.
“Leyna, Sevi, wake up!” cried Aysel, standing on the top of the table in black leather, stiletto boots, tight leather pants, and a black leather vest over a tight, cleavage revealing, tank top. Her hair was wild and spiked. Long chain earrings and chains around her neck completed the look.
“Where were you? A biker convention?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. But I’m not here to discuss my private life. You two have had enough time to relax. You both need to realize what you can do and how to do it, so I’m going to teach you.”
Leyna said, “Aysel, good to see you, but I haven’t been through any gates.”
“You’ve been through all but the last, that’s how you killed yourself five hundred years ago. You knew too much, too soon, and you weren’t ready yet. Now that Raphael and Sevilen did such a good job of fixing that bullet hole in your head and fixing the rest all garbled up with you, you’re ready to gain your powers back and the powers of the seventh gate.
“Raphael suggested I might mentor you when we all had dinner that night. I decided to take a break from my usual gallivanting and carousing and make myself feel like I did something good by teaching you. I’ll be staying here until we finish. Now quit with the peaceful routines and lovey-dovey stuff and let’s get to work.”
Aysel looked at me and I responded. “We don’t know what we don’t know, so I guess it’s time to learn?”
Aysel leapt off the table and landed next to me as I sat in the wicker chair. She crouched, looking like a little demon, grabbed my head and kissed me on the lips quickly.
“You’re too cute, Lord Sevi. You’re darn right you don’t know what you don’t know and neither does pretty Lady Leyna. Training starts tomorrow after breakfast, which, by the way, you must know is an indulgence, not a necessity, since you no longer need to eat to live. But I love breakfast, so you’re lucky. See you both in the morning!”
This time as she left, a vaporous mist lingered beside me with a contrail following her off into the sky. Nice touch. I heard her respond, “Thanks.”
“So Aysel is going to teach us both. Does she always kiss you on the lips and say you’re cute? Isn’t that weird for a great grandmother?”
“Aysel is a little different in the way she looks at things. I think we might get that way, too, over time. Gods have their own ideas of right and wrong, appropriate and inappropriate. I’m not sure we want to learn what she has to show us, though.”
“Why not?”
“Because we’d be pink monkeys, we wouldn’t fit into the rest of normal society. We’d drift away from it.”
Leyna stood from her chair and came over. She sat in my lap putting her arm around my shoulders. I took in the alluring aroma of her skin and felt her silken black hair brush my face. She looked into my eyes as she brushed tousled hair from my brow.
“Is that a bad thing? We could enjoy our lives together like a couple of hermits. Normal isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I never liked being like everyone else, and never was anyway, so I wouldn’t miss it. I could see where you might, but to be immortal, perfect, powerful, harmonious, happy, healthy, and wealthy? What’s not to like? Aysel always seems happy.” She kissed me on the cheek.
“I guess we may as well complete what we started such a long time ago. We all were made in God’s image right? Maybe there is some truth to that.”
I kissed her on the lips and looked in her e yes. “I want to live forever now. I guess I should use what I have and we should become what we are meant to be.”
Leyna nodded and winked. “Becoming a god can’t create too many problems, can it?”