Bridging Destinies

Chapter 12: Emotion In Shadow

Once we arrived close to home, we were met with an honor guard who helped us transport Belisael's body the rest of the way. We traveled by horse through roughly thirty miles of wilderness and deer trails until we arrived at the hidden complex within the wilds. Our home was hidden from humans, who could not see it either by satellite or from traveling close to it, through the effect of Light used as smoke and mirrors to hide us in safety. Those we could deter from skirting over and traveling into our territories, we did and those who we could not, we culled in order to protect ourselves. The preferred choice was determent.

Belisael's family greeted us with a mixture of loud grief and quiet acceptance. His mother and father were quiet, his mother's tears falling down her face in a flood of grief, while her husband watched his son's body lowered from its litter with a gentle stoicism. His own tears were on the verge of falling, yet held back by a dam of wisdom, procured over millennia of experience. He knew it was not the end for his son. It was only another journey. This gave him some peace, but did not keep his tears from building behind their barrier. Belisael's wife and child were much less stoic. She wailed over her husband's body, while his son comforted his mother, his own tears joining hers and falling upon his hands and her back as he leaned over them.

We stood around them in silence, allowing their grief to overcome us and mingle with our own as we paid quiet witness to the scene before us. Losing any one of our own was a great loss to us, always. The sacrifice Belisael had made was both a sorrow and a heaviness, and we honored what he had given for us. We grieved the necessity of it, as over the centuries humans had forced us into a small corner of the world that was left to us. It forced us against a kind of wall, our backs stiff against the stone that held us captive at one end, while looking out to the predator that stalked us at the other.

Belisael's passing was the effect we sometimes experienced as a people. If not his passing, it would have been another's. 'Possibly my own,' I thought, privately, and as I contemplated this harsh truth, I joined them in their sorrow. I was old, but not ancient, in the way of my people, and I had experienced many deaths over the centuries, yet for some reason that I could not immediately fathom, this passing had affected me more deeply than any I had experienced in a long time. As I watched the sad image before me, I found my own eyes leaking tears, in rivers matching that of his family.

~~~

I stayed with my people for a good six months, after returning home, before attempting another foray into the human world. It was after sitting with Sassa'aen, a dear friend and priestess, and telling her of my experience in Paris and then Korea, that she quietly said to me, "You must explore this shadow, child. The Mother has put it into place for a reason."

It had not been what I expected. I had wanted her to tell me, 'You cannot follow this path. It is a path too fraught with danger. It is a path among humans. It will lead nowhere.' At least this is what I had been telling myself, and when she had spoken completely opposite to what I wanted to hear, I simply looked at her with some level of disbelief.

Sassa'aen and I had been friends for a long time, first knowing each other in the days between when she was a novice to become a full fledged priestess of the Mother. She was there while I was blessed after my birth, she was there when I was a child running wild with other children my age, and she was there during my coming of age, when I turned from a child to an adult. We still maintained contact even after I went out into the human world to practice my craft, and I loved and trusted her deeply.

My long time friend laughed at the expression on my face and embraced me firmly with gentle compassion. Her arms moved from me smoothly, while my own, still in a kind of surprised shock, hesitated to leave the comfort of her touch. "I did not expect that." I said to her, looking into her eyes.

She laughed again, "Of course not. For it's not what you have been telling yourself, yes?" She asked. When I gave her a terse nod, she further explained, "Lariel said it well. You are connected to this man with many cords. And the Mother has brought him across your path several times across continents. And... " She paused, then continued, "She has thrown shadow across the paths, like so many fall leaves, so that you cannot see well where they lead. This has led to you seeing him once more after seemingly crossing his path by accident twice, yes? It must be explored, child. You know this. I know you do." She patted my hand gently, "I can see that you do. You simply do not want to follow." I turned my hand over and took hers in my own, seeking comfort but saying nothing, and she finished, "We must always follow in the way the Mother wants us to go. The path always leads us that way, if it's the path most meant to be followed. If not this life, then another. I know that you also know this." She finished.

I took a slow steadying breath and nodded cautiously, "So what should I do?" I asked, as if stalling.

Her response was made with a gentle laugh and a squeezing of my hand, "You must go back to Korea, child. You must meet him again, if needed, and you must discover what the Mother wants of you. First seek quiet and solitude to decide the best path to take towards the journey, and when you are done, go. Return to Korea and discover where your path will lead."

~~~

Days later, I prepared myself, ritually washing before diving deep into days and nights of meditation, seeking answers in the quiet. During that time, I stirred from it with a kind of realization as a vision of meeting him bloomed into my mind. It was then that I knew that I had to return to Korea. The desire and urgency to be near him again was stronger than I expected it to be, and I realized that I had been in denial of everything I did not want to face. Him. The situation. That he was human. And that I was not. And the difficulties that would create. Not to mention that he was a public figure known around the world and it was a necessity for me to hide, often.

All these thoughts stirred within me as I stood from the place where I had sat for days. I realized that in returning to Korea I would learn more about him, that I would create a meeting, and that I would learn of him and perhaps allow him to learn something of me, because the clear compulsion to meet and know him more deeply was growing inside of me as I allowed myself to open up to it more and more. And with this, I prepared for this new journey in my path.