The Lost Kingdom (The Fifth Element Chronicles)

Chapter 18 [part 1]

When Syform told me that I should find someone called Caelus and that he would be the answer to get to the Tree, it sounded crazy to me.

But in the last little while, I had come to believe it.

Caelus made me strong, he gave me confidence, he had shown me a side of me that I didn't know before.

With him I felt I could get to the Tree, that I could do anything.

But now, now he wanted to give up this quest.

Could I blame him?

I couldn't force him to go with me. It wouldn't be fair.

But I couldn't deny that I needed him either.

We were so close.

Giving up now seemed ridiculous.

I had to help him overcome his fear.

But how was I supposed to help him get over killing his own mother?

How could I ask him to relive something like that?

How could I look him in the face and tell him not to feel guilty about it?

This was the end.

This was as far as we had come.

I would have to go back to my kingdom, try another way, find another cure, because otherwise all those people, all of them, Russell....

'Are you there?' He asked me and I noticed I'd been lost in thought.

I looked at him and then I just faded away.

I woke up in my bed inside the tent.

He had pulled off my boots and covered me with blankets, just enough to keep me warm.

My head was spinning, but it was my stomach that made me get up.

I came out of the tent and there he was, cooking some fruit over a small fire into a kind of jam.

'You're up,' he said without stopping what he was doing on the fire. He was squatting with his back to me and yet he had heard me.

'I don't know what happened to me,' I confessed and walked over to him.

I sat right in front of him, hoping the conversation would be born without being so awkward.

'Too many emotions for one day, princess.'

He poured the mixture into a pot, and offered it to me.

'Eat.'

I took it and began to eat a spectacular combination of red fruits. It was so delicious that for a few minutes I just concentrated on emptying the pot.

He ate in silence, trying to steal brief eye contact from me.

When I finished my plate, finally giving him what he wanted, I looked up at him.

He was staring at me, perhaps expecting me to be the one to say something about everything that had happened.

But I didn't say anything, because I didn't really know what to say.

'So... you dream that I'm dead,' he said out of the blue.

'Excuse me?'

'That was one of your fears, that that dream would come true. I didn't think you'd be afraid of me dying, I thought it would be something that would make you happy and that...'