Nephilim Children

Chapter 10

Mum and I stayed the night at Grandma and Grandpa’s house in their guest rooms. I had my own bathroom and toilet, and I found myself in a big bath after a dinner of ravioli and mushroom sauce. I hopped out of the bath after about an hour. My fingers were pruned and white. I wrapped a towel around me and headed into my room. My wings hung limp and sopping behind me while I towelled dry my arms, legs and torso. When I was finished, I commanded my wings in front of me, but I couldn’t reach every part of them. Eventually I got frustrated and went outside. If I couldn’t dry them with a towel, air would have to do.

I stood on the veranda and made sure nothing was in wingspan distance. Then I wrapped my towel around me just a little tighter before I powered my wings back and forth.  They blew a few loose pieces of paper and gravel onto the grass below, but everything else stayed normal. A few droplets of water flicked off my wings but never made it to the ground, being immediately swept up in the miniature whirlwind that my wings had managed to create. I didn’t realise until a pot plant tumbled to the ground that I was being watched. I had turned to clean up the spilled and swirling soil when I saw my Grandpa looking at me intently through the window. His eyes narrowed when I noticed him watching me, and he quickly hustled off, leaving the curtains swinging. I imagined his shoed feet scuffling along the carpet and catching on it, and laughed. Grandpa and I had never really been all that close- Mum had made sure of that. She had had a bad relationship with him ever since she had me at the age of seventeen, and especially since he found out all those years ago what my father really was.

Of course, I didn’t want Grandpa to hurt himself, but it was always funny to watch people you didn’t really know do stupid things. Like tripping over flat surfaces. The few times I had been to this place, Grandpa was always falling over and walking into glass doors. It was always a sight, because he always made a fuss about. Mum often wondered out loud why Grandma was still with him.

Grandpa had been in some small wars before, and was one of the only people I knew that had ever fought in one. I greatly admired him for it, even though I knew barely anything about it. He told me once that he had been one of the only two to survive a bombing, and the other man, whom he called Watty, had been carried away from the bomb site by Grandpa. He lost his legs, and Grandpa is deaf in one ear because of it.

Grandma had been a nurse in one of those wars, Grandpa’s last war supposedly, and that was how they met. Call it fate. She was the one that cleaned up his bloody ear when he got back to his base camp. She also tended a little to the other man’s legs, but that was done in the most part by more experienced nurses. She was said to have sat by Pa’s bed when he got a high fever from an infected part of his leg- a piece of shrapnel had buried itself there. It was pretty serious, and Grandpa got so sick that he nearly didn’t make it. But by sheer will and luck, Grandma brought him back from the brink of death and slowly but surely mended him. They fell in love soon after, and when the war was finished, they got married almost immediately.

Grandpa always told war stories at any big family gatherings, and all the little kids would sit around his feet while he described the sounds and desperation of wartime.

I stood there, cold but dry, on the porch, the only light coming from the sun, pale grey and weak from behind the clouds. I sighed as I stared out at the setting sun, and I thought about my life and what it had come to mean to me. I thought about the old days, when Grandma would come over and care for me when Mum was at work. We would always bake cookies together, making them into all sorts of odd shapes. We even made a pizza sized cookie and had it for dessert. I tear slipped from the corner of my eye. I wiped it away with my fingertip, and held it to the light in front of me, studying it. It sparkled in the pale light, distorting the image behind it, sending a shower of tiny light beams across my face.

"You look very pretty, standing there like that. You sparkle just a little, like glitter," a voice said behind me, interrupting my melancholy thoughts. I started a little, still shaken up about being shot at the other morning. I rubbed my eyes to clear them of tears, and turned to face my mother.

"Thanks, Mum," I whispered, not knowing what else to say. After all, she was standing there, in all her glorious beauty. I had to supress the lump in my throat from leaking out, because she was so beautiful. "You sparkle, too."

Mum smiled gently at me, her eyes soft and warm, like a cookie fresh out of the oven. I found myself walking over to her, aand her arms wrapped around me- a little awkwardly, because of my stupid, dreaded wings, butthey were still as soft and warm and loving as her cookie eyes.

"I love you," she whispered into my ear.

A tear plopped onto her shoulder. "I love you, too, Mum."