I’m not really all that sure of what went through my mind at that very moment, whether it be a spark of hope or just the unwillingness to hurt a person I hardly know, but one thing I do know is that I made a decision that would impact my life in a way I will probably never be able to understand fully. It’s one of those life decisions that either makes you or breaks you, or maybe even does a bit of both.
“Kael, I guess I won’t leave, then,” I say, not even realizing what I’ve said. “But honestly, Kael, I just don’t feel like I really belong here. It’s just that everyone has their own best friend or lover or is perfectly content with being alone, but I’m not. I’m sick of being alone.”
A silence surrounds us like a sudden fog and I ponder at what I’ve just said. It’s like my heart took over my mouth. I’m really not the kind of person to wear my heart on my sleeve. I guess living through everything I have has sort of put a damper on my trust, but when I come to think of it, there’s something strangely comforting, something familiar about Kael.
I sit up straighter in the big leather chair and try to compose myself as well as I can, trying to make myself appear as confident and strong on the outside as I can.
But before the words come out, I feel my heart sink at the words forming on my lips. Why am I still so alone in a place so full of life?
I close my eyes and a stream of images of red wagons, great green trees, smiles on the faces of my family, old family snapshots of pets that have long been dead, blur through my mind like a freight train, howling and speeding by, and I can’t help but wonder if that precious, wonderful thing that I used to have is lost, if it has crumbled along with the people who once inhabited it. My home, a word that is not so much a normalcy but a fairy tale in this day and age.
Humans live in a world of truly pure isolation; we all believe we understand one another, but we’ll never truly know how one another truly feels. But somehow, through love and maybe some perfect planning from the guy upstairs, we find people who allow us to be ourselves and to flourish as we should. We find peace and acceptance with them.
Like a grand castle, we start from the ground and work our way up and out, making our home a place where we allow self-expression to flow, but also a place of protection and security. The locks are our moat, keeping thieves and wrong-doers away from the people we prize the most; the rooms are our towers, places that we dwell in when we need to put space between us and the outside world; the living room is our great hall, a place where jubilation and laughter was never too far away. But a house, just like a castle, is nothing without the people who make their life there. Without them, a house is nothing more than a carefully constructed set of boxes that houses nothing more than air and bugs.
As I look back on the brown stone house I took residence in, I think of how mistaken I was as I left it for the last time. I had believed that a home was nothing more than a place where you took residence, but now I see that it is otherwise. A home is a place that holds the love of your family and the love of life safely in its gentle hands.
My heart is full of repressed hate for the society that allowed a world that could’ve been great, that could’ve been prosperous and a place of equals, to crumble, yet there’s still that strange little shred of hope I still cling to. I know that my world will never be the same, but as a strangely optimistic person, I cannot just give up and throw in my towel. That single wish that lives inside of me, that wish that only asks for a life full of love, full of laughter, and full of freedom. And that single wish outweighs the hate in my heart; it has to.
I trace my fingers along the lining of the chair and look back to Kael, a man who has shown me nothing but kindness since they received me here. His eyes look upon with me with patience and I pull myself out of the world inside my head, the world I’ve resided in for so long.
“I just want to find a home,” I whisper, but it comes out more like a song that you hear traces of in the wind. My eyes waver from his gaze and I pick myself up off of the chair, unwilling to show the bashful rouge spreading across my cheeks.
But before I even have a chance to get all the way around the chair, I feel a hand grasp my own and in one quick motion I’m back facing Kael, but this time only a few inches divide our bodies.
“Well, love, if you’re willin’ to try and make one, I wouldn’t mind if you stayed here with me.” His eyes are as blue and bright as a spring sky and I can’t take my eyes off of them. Their soft glossy edges create such a contrast between them and his dark-haired stubble and Roman features that he looks almost surrealistically handsome, like that of a Greek god.
A rush of happiness precedes my automatic asphyxiation in response to any exciting moments in my life and I know words won’t be coming for a long time. As much as I want to say “hell yeah!” or “why the heck didn’t you say this a half an hour ago?!”, I know I can’t. But I know I can do something else in the mean time.
Before he can regret saying what he’s said and ignoring the pain in my wrist, I wrap my arms around his neck and plant one on him. Being that it is my first kiss, a rush of self-doubt and embarrassment floods through me in a half of a second, but as quick as it came, it drains out as he answers back. I can feel the stubble on his chin rub against the soft of my chin and I can’t help but wish this moment would never end. I feel his hands around my waist and as he pulls me closer and eliminates the space between us, I feel an emotion I haven’t felt in what seems like years (and probably has been).
I feel content. I can’t help but smile as he continues to press his lips against mine and it takes all my self control to pull away, my heart pounds out in angry response.
“So I’m really hopin’ that‘s a ‘yes, Kael, I think I’ll stay for a while,’” he says, his face inches away from mine. His thick accent adds a masculine lightheartedness that an American man could never achieve.
I pull myself against him, hugging him hard, my face pushed up against his chest. “Yeah, I suppose I’ll stay.”
I feel his arms coil around me, adding to my feeling of content. I feel like I’m being hugged by a grizzly bear, his arms powerful and warm.
“I don’t know what it is about you, love.” His voice is loud in my ears, but merely a whisper in a silent room. “But I couldn’t just watch you leave. I just couldn’t.”
“Well, lucky for you, I think I’ll be staying and helping out with the cause,” I say as I curl my fingers through his hair and pull back from him, looking up at him.
“Good.” He licks his lips. “We always need another able-bodied soul to help. You’ll be quite useful in the long run, I’m sure,” he says coyly, his hands grazing on my waist.
“I’ll do my best,” I say with a smile.
“I know yeh will, but love, can yeh promise me something?”
“Depends on what this promise is.”
He removes his hands from my waist and brings a finger up to his chin, with his elbow resting on his other hand, looking around quizzically. He wears a look of a man deep in thought and taps his chin playfully. His eyes move back to mine and while I look back at him, I feel his fingers intertwine with mine.
“Repeat after me.”
“Okay.”
“I, Aidan, promise that if I am ever to leave this compound,” he says with a fake girlish tone added to his voice.
“I, Aidan, promise that if I am ever to leave this compound,” I repeat.
“That before doing so, I will allow Kael a two day notice for mourning,” he says, gesturing a fake tear rolling down his cheek.
I can’t help but laugh. “That before doing so, I will allow Kael a two day notice for mourning.”
“On second thought, how about you just promise not to leave ever, under any circumstance. Well, unless I’m leavin’ too.”
Smiles come quickly to both of our faces and I look up at him, still in awe that this is actually happening. It seems so odd that something like this is even possible after all that’s happened, but I guess if
it didn’t happen then the world truly has ended.
Ghosts of my family, of my pets, of my friends, of my teachers, and of the people I would see on a daily basis, yet never speak to, flood through my mind like water through a colander. I think of what I’ve seen, who I’ve spoken with, where my feet have tread, and maybe the most important thing of all, why I’m here.
This hailstorm of images seems normal to me, maybe even customary as to how I live, and yet I can’t even fathom their importance. I know that I cannot. Perhaps when I’m sitting on my deathbed, listening to my heart patter weakly in my chest, hoping that death will greet me like an old friend, I’ll finally understand why I’ve lived and why I did not die with the rest of my family.
All throughout my life, I’ve been nothing more than a girl who has done what she’s been told blindly to do and through all of those little half lies, those arguments about whether or not I locked the back door, those lecturers who stood with puffed out chests on the stage of my school’s auditorium and told us about the great future that this nation was to bring to my generation, those evenings at the dinner table spent watching journalists who went through school in search of truth only to find that their mouths were merely strings to help move the machine’s puppet in the direction they commanded.
Through those and oh so many more occasions, I see now that I was duped. Deceived. I was falsely guided through a bright shining gate that ended up being no more than the barred entry of a caged cell that society has been being guided through since before my parents were born. My world has been inalterably controlled by the same group of heartless, greedy individuals, who have never seen through the eyes of the rest of the world, only through their own. They went through with the Slay as if it were a routine spraying of pesticides through a field of wheat.
We had lived in a world that seemed free, that seemed mostly benevolent, but then again—that’s just it. We thought we were free. Those who have reigned for hundreds of years behind a translucent veil with only their impossibly high sums of money truly are the masters of deception and manipulation.
I focus back in on Kael, who’s still looking at me, eyebrows creased in a look of interest and concern.
“Sorry, I guess I’m just kind of surprised by all of this. I guess I’m just not used to being able to actually feel real emotions now,” I say quietly, my eyes firmly fixed on his.
“I understand, love. We’ve all been through a great deal and ye know what? That’s one of those things that’ll always link us together. I doubt those who led this world into darkness ever envisioned us being able to link together from our losses. I have a feeling they expected us all to just crumble. I truly believe they overlooked one thing that could be one of their greatest downfalls.”
“What do you mean?”
“Back when animal life flourished throughout the earth, poachers would kill off the animals for their furs or body parts or whatever and the deforesters would come in and destroy an animal’s habitat—leaving them uprooted and homeless. This sounds strangely similar to our predicament, don’t you think?” I nod. “Well sometimes the animals would come back; well, not necessarily come back to their destroyed homes, but to a place where they were able to create a new one. They would mate and continue on their species and adapt to the possibly harsh new environment. They didn’t just give up and die. They fought back and they thrived.”
“So you’re saying we’re like animals?”
“Aye, I am sayin’ that exactly,” he says with a smirk. “We share the same drive to survive that they do and for that we cannot go around saying we’ve got nothing in common with them. Our habitats may be on a much greater scale than theirs, but we’re incredibly similar in the sense that we hold a desire deep in our hearts to prosper and grow and watch our own children grow as well. If we weren’t being pushed by this great force, we would’ve crumbled long ago at the first sight of famine, drought, or disease.”
I can feel tears pooling in my eyes at the thought of my parents never being able to watch me grow, watch me marry, gloat over future grandchildren.
“Babe, even if we lose our home, it doesn’t mean it’ll be gone forever. Home isn’t a place that is immutable. It is a feeling when you wouldn’t ask to be anywhere else in the world. People used to fuss so much over things—not even people—and they would go through their lives thinking ‘if I have more money, then I’ll have more happiness,’ but really it’s not even like that. Home and happiness come when you’re content with whom and where you are in your life and you wouldn’t have it any other way.”
He takes in a deep breath and I feel the warmth pouring from his skin. “Home isn’t four walls and a roof. It’s something infinitely greater than that. It’s a place where one finds comfort and peace.”
He kisses me again, but this time it’s soft, unhurried by the rush of the first time. I may not know as much as I should about Kael to become emotionally connected to him, but I know one thing, and that’s that this feels right. Every single thing about it.
He pauses for a moment after pulling away and looks down at me, his face pinched into a look of interest.
“So you will stay?”
“Yeah,” I say with a laugh. “Didn’t I already say that I would?”
“Aye, but I just wanted to make sure. I’m a man who values trust and I just had to make sure you weren’t playin’ me.” I can feel him nestle his chin against the top of my head and pull me into a warm hug.
“You promise not to hurt me?” I ask honestly.
“I promise.”