Gift from the Heavens

Prologue-Part 1

Xephos smiled as he gripped her hand. Even with her large swollen belly she looked like the most beautiful person imaginable to him. Even after all these years together, her smile still left him breathless. Her shimmering blond hair still begged him to be played with as she lay there. The two were excited and scared, as this was the day their daughter would be born.

He looked lovingly into his wife’s eyes before he gave her a swift kiss on the forehead as he was led away by a stern-looking nurse with surprisingly gentle, dark purple eyes. Xephos’s eyes glowed brightly as he walked away, “I love you, Avilah. Keep strong.”

She chuckled slightly at his professional tone and nature. He was easily discernible as a man of high rank. All those from wealthy families of power and authority were the same, cold, calculating and hard. Their emotions never showed on their faces and to many it didn’t seem they had any. Avilah liked to think that she had warmed Xephos up a bit. He had never been as bad as some of them, but his professional air was still foreign to Avilah, who had grown up in a much lower class.

The two had met, some years ago, in an academy, which only those from the most prestigious families attended. Avilah had gotten in because of her brains and her parents giving all they had into her attendance. The moment she had gotten there, she realized that she would not fit in.  It was easy to identify the classes by their glowing eye colors. The bright blue of the nobles gazed curiously at her commoner green eyes, and those lucky enough to get in with the purple eyes of the wealthy, but less powerful, glared enviously at her. She only got one kind look, from a handsome dark haired boy. Her heart leapt when she saw him and she was sure that his did too. Their eyes glowed extra bright every time they looked at one another. On Callarus they have a word for this feeling: ‘ellemnce,’ which roughly translates to ‘love at first sight.’ There are myths and legends as to why this happened, but nobody knew the real reason, but everyone knew that it only happened once, and some never felt it at all.

So here they were, Xephos and Avilah: the unlikely lovers from different classes, just like the beginning to a romantic story. But our story happens to begin at an end. The two had married and were having their first child. The day should have been a joyous occasion filled with celebration, family, and friends. But as we know, few things ever go as planned.

Xephos paced in a separate room filled with other worried looking men, who, one by one, were brought away to see their newborn children. The hours passed, and soon every man in the room had gone through that doorway and emerged again with a wife and baby. Every man except Xephos, that is. To him, it seemed as though he had been in that sterile white waiting room forever, just pacing and waiting. He looked up at the clock on the wall, watching the time fall away, until finally the nurse from before entered the room. Her eyes were just as gentle as they were when she led Xephos away from his wife, but this time those eyes weren’t happy. They showed immense sorrow.

“I’m sorry to inform you, but your wife, Avilah, has passed on,” the dark-skinned nurse with dark purple eyes told him, her voice even but sympathetic. “There were complications during labor, but your daughter is alive and healthy.”

Xephos could see the nurse’s mouth moving, could hear sounds coming from her throat, but he could not understand anything beyond the roaring in his ears and the hollowness consuming his heart. He breathed rapidly, as if hoping it would stop his world from falling in upon itself. Avilah, dead. No, it couldn’t be. Not the woman he had loved. Not the woman who had been his one and only love. It couldn’t be.

Not the beautiful girl that he had been with all his adolescence. Not the one who he had brought to his disapproving family, who turned up their noses and sneered at her green eyes. Not the one who convinced him that what his family thought of her didn’t matter at all.

Not the one who had brought a child into the world for him to raise on his own.

It couldn’t be true, but it was.

Somewhere in his fractured vision, he saw another nurse walking towards him, holding a tiny baby in her arms. Like a sleepwalker, he raised his arms and the nurse placed the baby into them.

He looked at his newborn daughter, her eyes glowing blue just like his, and a tuft of dark hair, just like his as well, but all he could see were the features that reminded him of Avilah. Her small nose, upturned corners of the mouth, and the shape of the eyes had belonged to his wife.

When it came time to choose the baby’s name, he picked one to honor Avilah. The females of Callarus were usually named from two different words combined, usually one chosen by the father and one by the mother. Avilah was a combination of beautiful and delicate. Xephos chose the words for gift, is, and star, lelle. It was a gift that Avilah had been able to have her daughter before her untimely death, and he chose star because she had always gazed up at them, loving the beautiful brightness that gleamed from the twinkling balls of burning gas. Stars were one of Avilah’s favorite things in life. Combined, the word meant ‘gift from the heavens,’ a phrase Avilah had often used to describe the baby growing inside her, as the doctors had always said she would never have children.

Xephos hadn’t forgot these things about his wife, not even after all the years without her.

Hey, Pizzas here! My brother demands to be credited because he made the cover, so my 17 year old brother made the cover :P

Hope you enjoyed this first chapter!