Becoming

Chapter #11: Sofia "Reset The Balance"

While Kari and I try and keep Emily from going all ninja on bird guy, Ember talks to him. I can't hear what they're saying exactly, but Ember's mouth drops open for a solid thirty seconds and bird guy just stands there laughing. Finally, they come over to where we are, we're still holding Emily, but not as tight, and she's not fighting as much. Ember leaves bird guy to his flowers and comes to join us.

"So," She says, "I think we found the first part of the prophecy" Everyone smiles, except for Kari and I.

"What prophecy?" She asks.

"The one that you predicted," Sofia says, deadpanned.

"I didn't predict anything," Kari says, she's starting to get defensive.

"Guys," I say, "Calm down. We don't want to start a fight" The man smiles and claps at me.

"Finally, someone who has some common sense," He says, "I was beginning to worry for your group when she attacked me and her mouth dropped open whenever I wanted to talk about my plants" I smiled at him, but it didn't reach all the way up to my eyes. I don't like his compliments, or him in general.

"Who are you?" I ask coldly, even though that should be Kari's job.

"I am Damael, as Emily so kindly pointed out," He says, "And I know why you're here" He stares at me intently and smiles. Maybe he can be trusted after all.

We walked to the house in front of us, the humongous raven trailing behind us.

"I've taken pride in my garden," The man says, pointing to a group of very large pansies, "It's been the only thing to keep me going since the war..." He trails off, staring into the center of some Black-Eyed Susans. I hate plants, they were the first things I killed. It signaled the birth of my power, it killed me too. I hate thinking about it, the way the plant just curls up and dies. My disease spreads so quickly and I can't do anything about it. I can't control it. Wait a minute... Ava didn't wear gloves, she might have been working with The Demon but she still has my gift. She might understand. The plants he called his 'birds of paradise' squirted some yellow powder from holes in their stalks. I force my eyes to close, making sure none of the pollen got into my eyes. Ember sneezes heavily and pulls out a red inhaler. A girl at the orphanage had asthma. Since we couldn't afford the medicine, we kept her away from pretty much everything. One day it acted up for no reason and I shut her in my secret room, the one I found when I was eight, hoping it would die down. It didn't. Looking back on it, I think I killed her, I just didn't know it. I was gripping her shoulders so tightly, then, the veins where my arms were started to turn black. She died right there in my arms. Everyone else looked kind of disoriented, everyone except Ember and Emily, they just stood there, unphased, the inhaler was the only evidence that Ember even noticed the puff of pollen. Emily did nothing at all, the pollen didn't bother her. I just stumbled around a little until I looked at Damael.

"What war?" I ask, suddenly hanging on every word he says. His eyes grow sad, like he's remembering something terrible.

"Haven't you heard?" He asks. I shake my head, "I should tell you inside" He opens the door to his house and I walk inside alongside Kari.

"Guys! Don't go in there!" Emily says. Dameal looks taken aback, but I have no idea why, he probably didn't expect Emily to be this rude, and quite frankly, I didn't either. 

"What? How did you-" He doesn't even finish, Emily is staring daggers at him, he must be pretty freaked out. I glare at Emily, but Ember interjects before I say anything. 

"No, Emily's right. Let's be smart about this, we barely know this guy!" Ember says, grabbing my wrist. Why is she doing this? Damael is so nice, and he knows about the prophecy. He could be willing to help us. I wrench my hand away, she's lucky my gloves were on, I'm not used to people touching me. She's giving up priceless information for paranoia. I look inside his house to see a fuzzy gray sofa, a large television is installed on the wall in the corner, and a smiling woman resting on a soft chair smiling at us. She waves and I wave back, smiling in the same fashion as the woman. She looks to be about the same age as Dameal, with blue-green eyes, green hair that looks like seaweed hanging down her head and green lips. Emily hisses at her for some reason. I give her a look, she can't treat anyone like that! She just met her! The woman just smiles.