Gabriel (Book 1)

Learning to Adapte..

April 14th, 2011

Uh....what do I say now? Things have been interesting around here. And Johanna has made it that way. I don't know about her anymore. I love her so much and feel the need to claim her as mine, but she does such weird stuff! Its hard to live with her. And hard to put of with her. I thought all humans were just odd, but no! This girl is mental or something! Anyway, here is what happened:

First, she makes me go with her into town. Not exactly what I wanted to spend a friday doing. Well, actually, I didn't want to spend any day doing that! She drives and I sit and watch the land blur by.

"Thanks for coming with me!" She chirps.

I smile and nod.

After a couple minutes of me not saying anything, she decided to keep the conversation going, "I think we need to talk." A deep, shaky breath, "Why did I dream about you for all those months?"

My head snaps up.

"You dreamt about me?"

I didn't mean for it to sound arrogant or anything. But, were these shared dreams?

"Yeah, that's why I said that I dreamt about you. Well, you and a little girl with black hair."

I stop breathing and time seems to stand still. In almost all of my dreams, she was there with Catia. We shared dreams! We-oh! We shared some frightening dreams.

"Were you ever trapped as a skeleton in one of your dreams?"

"Yeah! How did ya know?" She smiles.

"How can you say that with a smile?! That's horrible and morbid!" What the hell kind of human is she?!

"I don't know! Stop yelling at me! Why can't you be sensitive and sweet like you are in our dreams with the little girl?!"

Our. I do love the sound of that. OUR dreams. OUR life. It sounds perfect, doesn't it?

"That was a dream. This is reality-"

"Who was that little girl?" Johanna interrupts.

"Uh-well, um. She was my daughter. Her name was Catia." I say sadly.

"Aha! A reaction!" She points and giggles at my changed expression, "Wait. What do you mean 'was'? Won't she always be your daughter?"

"Well, yes. But she died 621 years ago-"

"So? Memories live on forever."

I know that. It kills me sometimes.

Just when I'm done talking and want this conversation to end, Johanna keeps talking.

"So tell me about her mother."

Leave it to her to bring up that topic of all others!

"My wife, Natalia. She is dead also. I didn't love her," those words felt weird coming out of my mouth. I didn't love her, but it seemed mean to say so out loud, "it was an arranged marriage. I did everything possible to try and get out of it," images of bars and bleeding noses filled my mind, "but someone convinced me to go back. That someone was my oldest brother, Nikolai, and I always hated him for taking me back. Always." No feelings of hatred surface at his name but I know I never forgave him for that. For making me give up freedom.

"Nikolai. That's a nice name. You still never told me about Natailia-"

"There is nothing to say."

"Well then-" she was hurt that I had cut her off, "what happened to Nikolai? Did he-"

"I killed him." Short and to the point.