Vespers (Fields of the Nephilim: Interlude)

Chapter 11

I’ve been walking nowhere for a couple of days. It might have been a week now, I don’t know. My lips were parched and I longed for rain. I remember waking up to a dream of swirling lights and I felt like I was floating in time. I don’t quite remember where I’ve been or where I was going. My back was heavy like there was some kind of great burden left there. I’ve stayed in the desert since my awakening and I could still feel the pain in my sun burnt skin.

It was that certain night that everything came back to me as I have finally escaped the burning agony of the desert. I was then lying down the road, almost dead when a kind woman found me and took me home with her without any hesitation. It was too good to feel again the warm touch of a mortal. She fed me at once, bathed me and finally healed my wounds with her herbs. There was no fear in her eyes. It was pure kindness and hospitality. I knew that night I still have the dagger inside my breeches but I saw that she only set it aside like some precious possession. I remember asking her what she sees in me.

“A wounded child my son” she only answered without even questioning my wounds or the dagger. It was then I remembered my wings and knew they were not visible. I was glad. Gehenna might have been just a delusion but nevertheless, I was glad to be in this woman’s care.

That night I slept peacefully. I didn’t dream of Lune anymore. It was the second night that I dreamt of Mina but it was just a passing shadow. I was then awoken by my own tears. The kind woman was immediately sitting by my side and I remember crying hard in her arms like I did before in the arms of Ariz.

I was nurtured in that bed for nights and days. Sometimes I dreaded sleep for the fear of waking up to yet another endless night but the sun always peep through my window nonetheless. I let time passed and when I was finally out of my delirious state, I woke up to my first real sunlight.

I had my fill of studying the cozy room where I’ve been kept. It was nothing but pure comfort and safety in its simplest yet grandest way. I was covered in warm quilt of bright colors. The small bed was propped in the corner of the room. The window was always open even before I open my eyes each morning and from there I could feel the cool wind through my face. The whole place was always kept clean. Beside the bed is a small table with a glass and a pitcher. The runner looked refreshing as well with its knitted yarn of green and yellow and purple. There was a small stool nearby where the woman would sit every time she kept watch.

I slipped out of the covers and drank from the cool water contained by the pitcher. I was just too thirsty. There was a mirror right by the door of the cabinet and as I peered through, it was like the first time I actually saw myself. I was clothed in an oversized shirt and pajama. My dark silvery hair was longer than I remembered. It almost reached my shoulders now. I might have looked like a boy of seventeen with an average height and medium built. My face seemed roughen by time but still it has that subtle translucency which reminds me that I am not fully from this world.

The first time my feet touched the polished floor which was made of hard and smooth redwood, I felt like my world was still spinning round. I steadied myself as I attempted to get up once more. The floor was cool and it’s as if it has soothed the scabs and blisters that had once tortured my bare feet. I took one slow step, then another towards the door. At once I saw it open and there she was rushing to meet me. Her face was full of worry yet delighted upon seeing me back to my feet. I think I managed to give her my most thankful smile. She was beside me at once, her arms around my limbs so as to give me support as she led me out the room.

“Thank you..” I was still murmuring.

“Hush hush. Now come, the sun had just peered out and it will be good for you to have some. Why, look at you. You still looked pale!” she was then leading me outside the porch and into some kind of a lawn outside. We sat down the wooden bench under the trees which name hasn’t yet registered in me.

She went back inside then came out with two cups of steaming coffee and a basket of biscuits. This she laid on a small table nearby.

“Drink this, it will make you feel a lot better” she said as she handed me one of the cups. It was a delicate piece of white porcelain with soft paints of animal figures. I took it graciously and let the warm coffee slid down my throat smoothly. It was bitter and good. I was now expecting for her questions about who I am and where I came from but the silence went on. She will just hand me a hot biscuit every now and then. It was then I who broke the silence.

“Are you not afraid of me?” I asked without looking at her.

“Is there anything I should be afraid of?”

“But you saw me like that…just out of nowhere” of course I was pertaining to how I might have looked the time she found me----all wounded up like that, and the dagger in my possession. She didn’t answer to this for a while the she stood up in front of me so I could see her back as she seem to muse, looking up into the bright sky. She was around the late thirties of age I could say. She was wearing a peasant skirt and a shawl was around her shoulders like a gray smoke that hung down on her. Her hair is a mass of thick brown which was tied behind her in a mess of braid. She looked at me with her dark eyes, and then she spoke.

“Remember what I told you the first time you spoke to me? I see you as a wounded child. You must have been a suspect of a crime, a victim, a bandit, I don’t know but there is no mistaking that you needed help and that I was the one who found you. The night before then, there was a great fire nearby. It must have been one of those arsons. It’s been ongoing all over the town now; murders, suicide, robbery. I don’t know what’s been going on anymore but I was always there attending to the patients, it was when I saw you. I thought you were one of those victims…”

“But you saw me with that blade….”

“You might have been a corpse as I saw you lying there without it, right? It’s for your own protection” she said this like she was trying to deny whatever thoughts she could have against me.

I just nodded. She is right in some way, I thought, as my mind pictured the image of my guardian angel. Ariz. The name registered instantly inside my head as all the memories were now returning clearly like it was just from yesterday.

“Do you remember your name? And your family so I could try to reach them?” her face was once again beaming. She was earthy beautiful in her age, but then I was distracted with her question.

“My name…I…” no words would slip my tongue. I just couldn’t say it.

“Have you forgotten?” again, there was that worry.

“Uh no, it’s Cien…” finally, I was able to pronounce the given name for the first time.

“It’s lovely. And your family? Where can we reach them? They might be worried now------“

“I don’t have. I don’t have a family. I think I…I’m.. I’m alone” I said this with a tight chest. My own voice sounded so painful even to me. She might have thought that I’ve lost my family in one of those ongoing cases she had told me so she didn’t ask me anymore. She reached for my head and buried it in her bosom as her hand ruffled through my unkempt hair.

“There, there….” She said like I was crying, though I was not. Then she let go of me and went down her knees so she could see me in the eye. Her eyes were full of mortal life as it shot right through me. She was now brushing off whatever dirt she saw in my cheek as she was smiling like thinking of a plan.

“I believe you have nowhere else to go. I would like you to stay here then. You can call me Aunt Maggie or whatever you prefer. I’d love to have some company. This house is mostly empty you know” she said as she glanced at the wooden house which stood, yes, alone in the middle of that yard surrounded by nothing but grass and trees.

I might have nodded then for she again ruffled my hair delightfully as she rose to bring the empty cups and basket inside the house and into the kitchen.