Quest For The Key

Chapter 33: Family Reunion

 A face is special,

in one way or another,

whether it be of a crying siblings, a dying dog or a joyful and proud mother,

each one has its unique print,

but while away for awhile we may regret,

not looking at those everyday faces enough,

so that now even the simplest of the simple faces,

 we now sadly forget.

The castle of Obradome soon opened out and Maple and Jack saw tiny figures on the ground. Most didn’t even suspect that two children flew overhead. Behind the towering castle they landed as they did not want to make a scene. The two crept into the forest and drank from a stream, watching as their once powerful, beautiful wings disappeared from sight. Only then did they walk to the draw bridge of the castle and even without the wings turned heads. People knew who they were. As Maple and Jack approached passing villagers clapped and hooted. 

In the castle people carrying things and walking by with papers stopped and stared at the two filthy, blood stained, matted haired children and shouted. Maple recalled on the first time they had come to these halls, they had been outcasts like un-wanted guests. Now people welcomed them like they were home and strangely the castle felt like home to them now. They left as a disgrace and came back as heros. 

Right up the wooden door they marched with pride but when they walked in the two saw a couple bending over each other weeping.

"Why are you crying?” asked Jack who did not recognize them.

“ Why?” the man restated the question trying to comfort his wife. Maple didn’t even recognize the voice but as he turned the two children realized it was their parents crying and ran to hug them. The parents  shocked couldn’t say a word but hugged their beloved children close. Everything was starting to get a little personal when Centra waltzed in the open door and joined in the hug exhaling deeply, overjoyed. Centra who had hated Maple now acted like he had been the bolt that had kept this whole operation together.

“ I thought I would never see you again my child. Your father and I began to lose hope but when the sound wave came so suddenly during Jealousy’s execution and you did not come back for awhile we began to think that it might have killed you.” sobbed Lauren with tears of joy now. The children hadn’t though about it till now.

“ Jealousy! Where is Jealousy?” the two shouted excitedly together. Mr. And Mrs. Woodmer exchanged there famous look of concern.

“NOOOOOOO!” Maple collapsed to the ground by the bed.

Jack put a hand on her shoulder. In the bed lay Jealousy, unmoving, her face as graceful and angelic as an angel. You would have thought her asleep but her breath was gone. Her chest lay flat on the bed and her lips hardened together. Maple lay a hand on Jealousy’s face and bent over her a hot tear falling on the fairies cheek. Maple brushed it away feeling Jealousy’s cold dead skin. Strange though her whole face had turned a sort of pink colour as if it were burning from the inside out which only made her look even more amazing. 

“I guess we need to burry her somewhere?”  Sighed Maple drenched with despair.

Just then Jack remembering the Iran flower he had seen in her garden and the facts fit together perfectly with Centra’s who told the group how beloved it was to her. Maple thought back oh so long ago when they had been to her house last. She remembered the majestic purple and white flower in her garden. “ In the garden, that is where we will burry her.” she said.

No one argued with her and before long they  were lowering her into the earth. None of them really knew her but they all cried, especially Maple. She felt like she had in her dream, lost. As the family stood there looking at her in the open earth because she didn’t have a coffin made, they felt a cold breeze fly up past them from the grave and faintly heard a manly voice whisper “Thank you”.

At that moment her burned pink skin returned to its colour and they covered the whole back up. Jack and Jeremy left Lauren and Maple to greave , and still weep. Maple’s dream was now more real then ever but Jealousy had freed her. In her dream Maple had stood crying unable to move. Now she turned away from it all, away from the quest and Pepper, away from her friends, and fairy’s, dragons and magic and walked back home, back to the place she knew the best now.