The Vaticinator

17. Welcome To My Family

“You’ve got to be kidding.” I hear Neal’s voice.

I lazily lift my head to see what has him whining only to catch him fretting over a suit package. I frown, then sigh and then eventually increase the volume of my iPod and settle back more comfortably on the bouncy mattress. For reasons we didn’t fret over, Neal and I are given a single room. With two different queen sized beds of course. The several rooms in this mansion are meant for the guests from other realms. Nobody really lives in the mansion except for three of the council members who sway between their own houses and the guest rooms of the mansion. I don’t blame them. The guest rooms are strikingly comfortable, if ungodly expensive looking. Our own room is quite big, enough big for me to feel lazy to get up and open the door of our room, if someone comes by. Again, I will not blame myself. I will blame the ridiculously comfortable mattress that is literally molding with my sprawled body. I detect movement in my peripheral vision and turn my head to see an annoyed looking Neal. No surprise there. He is annoyed most of the times. Nonetheless, I sigh and remove the earphones plugged in my ears.

“What?” I ask.

“Why the hell do we need to wear a tux for a ‘judiciary get together’?”

“It’s a tuxedo?” I ask, lifting myself to sit.

In answer to my question, Neal picks up a package which is suspiciously similar to his and tosses it across to me. I catch it and fumble with it a bit before revealing the tuxedo which has a nametag with my name written on it in its foremost breast pocket. I throw aside the name tag and appreciatively marvel over the tux.

“Why do we have to wear this shit?” Neal grumbles loudly, still fretting over the pieces of his tux that he has laid out on his bed in between the ocean of books.

Neal requested that he be well known to this arena now, so he expressed his desire to read some of the historical books concerning the Therians and the Realms. Since I am not talking to my father, Neal himself went, albeit reluctantly, to put forth his request. In two days’ time, he has finished four of the humongous books my father has lent him. Not wanting to appear clingy, he next approached Anastasia and asked for some of the books which the latter was much too happy to give from the mansion’s library. And so, even today, Neal has spent the whole day with his nose buried in some book.

I have noticed that when he is engrossed in his reading feat, he doesn’t at all care about his surroundings. The other books will remain haphazardly sprawled on the bed, the bed sheet will remain wrinkled, the porcelain plate with unfinished food will remain at one corner and the half-eaten apple on the bedside table will remain just that, a half-eaten apple.

Unlike what I had assumed, Neal is not the type to spend hours in a library. He instead settles comfortably on the bed and lets the world war begin around him not even lifting his head when I accidently make a loud sound while bumping into stuff. Boy, can he read. Even with my excessive curiosity I used to manage to read one book in a week and here is Neal, way past his fourth book on the third day. But he is a clumsy nerd, not worried about the chaos around him due to his ignorance.

I shrug at him now, nonchalant, “This whole place seems high maintenance.” I supply.

“That’s fucking peachy.” Neal says in sarcasm.

“I am sure if you make your ill favor known to the council, they will definitely do something to remedy your mood.”

Neal throws a dark, warning glare at me. I am not wrong about the council members fawning over Neal. But the reason behind their support for Neal is a very different matter, something which Terry uncle brought to light when I had jumped him for millions of my unanswered questions. According to him, most of the council members accepted Neal because they fear him. They believe that if they reject the vaticinator then the vaticinator may envisage and grant them with poor future. The ones, who declined the acceptance of the vaticinator, are actually the ones who believe that the vaticinator has already worked his magic. He has probably already incurred the future and therefore is facing no problem in being accepted. That doesn’t mean they are not ‘afraid’ of ‘offending’ the vaticinator. The vaticinator, after all, has the power to develop the future of us all by simply closing his eyes. Or so they think, as none are even aware of how long it takes for Neal to accomplish that.