Seeking Spring

Forgetting Without Remembering

Chapter 6 | Forgetting Without Remembering

Today was a hot day. But it was less threatening than that of other days, where heat pressed to you at all sides, relentlessly pushing into your skin and extracting the life out from between the hairs of your arms and wrinkles behind your neck. He saw it in the trees. The room was still and the walls were still, yet outside the world shook and turned and suffered. Stiles watched, as others shuffled their brushes and pencils. But where noise was in his head, was not in the room or voices of the people, it was a roar that sounded from his sight. He heard a cry and a weep. The trees he saw suffered, in lines next to each other. The trees pressed to one another then pulled away, they hugged then retreated, they pressed then pulled and touched then turned. They loved then left. They danced on this motion till there was no more force to drag them together or pull them apart, no way to keep them entwined and no way to keep them from their yearning, their reaching. The wind had stopped. Stiles was now glad he was inside rather than with the trees that now stood still. His sweat was sure to show through the shirt he'd worn today. And the branches still reached across for one another, despite the lack of wind, despite all, he saw this. Stiles rolled his eyes and laughed behind his lips. The trees were fucking idiots, and yet many could live for so long. Maybe the reach does't kill you. Maybe it was forgetting to reach, that can. Stiles knew he was forgetting something, so he picked at his scalp further as if to grab at the forgotten and grasp it in remembrance. But there was nothing to remember, and even less to worry about forgetting. The teacher addressed the students, allowing Stiles to let it go, just a little. He reached for his pencil to write something down, and he laughed at himself for such a motion. Distracted by his daze his arm fell back into a palette next to him, blending the student's colors into a glob on Stiles' arm. 

"Oh I'm so sorry," Stiles exclaimed apologetically as he fixed what he could.

"You're alright."

She sat next to him with sketches already laid out over her table. Purple and white, and brown were in splotches amongst a few of the sketches where she had begun to build on. And amongst the papers she spread over her space there was one that lay above the others, with fresh eraser sheddings. A line of trees that wrapped around each other. She must've been looking too. Stiles looked back and forth from his arm to the sketch, still scrubbing at the paint over the elbow of his sleeve. 

He nodded to the to the paper, "cool sketch."

She lifted from the ground where she had picked up the fallen supplies. "Thanks," she settled back on the stool and looked over to Stiles, who's head tilted downward but his eyes also continuously flicked back and forth to the drawing and his sleeve. "You're bleeding," her breathing made the words airy and dry, and almost desperate. Stiles rose his head suddenly, she stared intently, frightened. He thought to look for a reflection, something to see what she was seeing. But her eyes clung to his stare in a way he couldn't control, which no force of physical will could overcome. With this, Stiles felt as though he should've felt trapped, vulnerable, or even scared. Only there was dullness as a trance would induce, yet he sat there feeling everything, as if he were speaking every emotion he had ever felt throughout his life directly to the girl across from him.

Her hands rubbed down her face, her fingers squeezing at the skin stretched over it. "I'm so sorry, I thought I saw something. Sorry."

Stiles thought his head had been snapped back into a position that must've been natural, or more likely his mind. He saw the flowers again but something kept him from staring long enough. He let out a reassuring laugh as he continued to rub at the paint on his arm, "it's fine."

She didn't look back at him for the rest of class. Whether she was avoiding him entirely or genuinely had no interest in him in the first place, Stiles didn't disregard her. His search history on his phone and pile of mythology books on his table in the library made it obvious, more to himself than others. He knew better though, to trust a new kid in this high school. He searched blood in every book and on every website he could come up with. Werewolves came up with nearly every other search and Stiles couldn't help but laugh after a while any moment it appeared on his screen or in the text. How many people in the world actually knew all these things called myths, actually existed? Where did the existence of these myths end? It began to feel as though anything ever written in every culture of mythology seemed to be real, maybe these things simply came about by a pen to a paper and enough lies. Suddenly the things could become real and exist on their own. Naturally, Stiles fell into the tracks of his own train of thoughts. Maybe I could write my own myth. Stiles flicked through the pages and over articles, scanning for the key word blood as he thought over storylines to play out in his own mythological story. He'd have to write a play blood every good mythology has a play blood and book blood  with a collection of all the myths blood and there has to be something blood about a moon blood in there, a moon blood that somehow controls blood and connects blood everything, a moon blood that brings things back blood a sanguinem moon.

*

The bell fell against the door. Scott dropped his bag from his shoulder, pushing his jacket into it.

"Scott?" Deaton called from the room behind the counter. Scott watched as Deaton pulled around from behind the doorway. Once he caught glimpse of Scott he dipped his head back away into the back room, signaling with his hand for Scott to follow him. 

Scott crossed into the room. "You smell it don't you, all day?" Deaton hadn't even allowed Scott to look directly at him since he'd entered. He now raised his head and stared directly at the man across from him. He leaned against a metal table with a face that Scott couldn't exactly make out. 

He shook out his confusion with a tilt of his head, "yea I mean, kind of like - dusty pennies." Nothing in Deaton's face changed, he'd expected that answer. Where was this going?

"There will be a lunar eclipse tonight," Deaton began cleaning equipment with his back turned to Scott. Scott neared towards him, picking up a towel and cleaning the washed equipment Deaton set beside him. 

"Yea I already told Liam. No strength or any werewolf things like that . . ." 

"There's a prophecy with this one." Deaton began handing the tools directly to Scott. The towel became too wet to dry anything more.

Scott let out breath that drained a laugh, "don't they all?"

"In Christianity, they believed that there would be a time when their god would return to Earth." Scott set down his towel, looking directly at Deaton who kept washing needles and tubes. "When the sun goes dark and the moon turns to blood - it would be the end of times."

"Are you talking about the blood moon? Shouldn't the world have already of ended by now then?"

Metal clattered in the sink, Scott's ears tensed. "Prophecies aren't as viable as myth." Scott laughed at that remark. Deaton continued, "myths - those are the real things. See there was a story about the blood moon among mercenaries." Deaton dried his hands and faced Scott and the tone of the room darkened against the light that bore its way through the window of the office. "The worm moon used to be the only moon we of the supernatural world knew of, that was a moon with enough power to revive the dead. However, hundreds of years back, word of other stories coincided with our ever-extending world. New creatures were being discovered more than ever before, as well as different mercenaries that traveled alone or along with packs. More connections were made and soon mercenaries were communicating with those who they had never knew existed before." Deaton let out a heavy breath, "as you could imagine these mercenaries who gathered were eager to share their knowledge. They met and told stories, compiling knowledge into records. But there was one who wasn't as eager to share her stories as the others. It wasn't until the crowd was ready to dismiss did she decide to tell her story." 

Scott listened intently now, the story felt above a myth and wove like a legend. But Deaton had never lied to him before about these kinds of things. "She talked on about the dangers of resurrection, something all the mercenaries claimed to be very aware of. They urged her on to get to the point till she finally let go of her secret - the one of the blood moon and its power to bring the dead back to life. She claimed she had seen it with her own eyes - performed by a lone mercenary. They asked her how and not till past the night and into the next did she finally tell. She held onto that secret for a while, and with good reason."

Scott leaned back, crossing his arms over his stomach, "why are you telling me all this?"

Deaton let his face fall as if that had been the question he had been waiting for the whole time. "Because your friend is very smart - and persistent. I'm sure he knows everything  I just told you and more." Scott's eyebrows dragged inward. Deaton came forward off of the metal table, moving towards Scott. The sky outside was dimmer now. "Where is Stiles right now?"

Scott couldn't think of where he could be since the school day ended. A growing anxiety drew into his face. Deaton followed this look Scott gave off and trailed his thought.

"I suggest you go find your friend."