Lilac

Chapter Thirty-One

RECAP:
Lilac has been abducted while Ethan was away on a meeting organized by the Higher Council. The alpha goes home to a pack with dead spotters and no traces of his mate. The series of events eventually led to the telling of Ethan's dark, traumatic past.

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Many people believed that love and faith were what held the fickle strands and threads of the world and the human race together, but in the eighteen years that have passed- with every fall of snow, raindrop and old leaves that signified the unforgiving continuity of time which made everybody want to cherish each second of life that compared to the immortality of love and faith, was short and fast- Lilac, isolated by walls and vast amount of knowledge that couldn't be mustered by other people, had one, solid belief.

This certain belief was that more than love and faith, it was kindness that held the world together.

It was what made life worth living, and it was the goodness of everybody's soul greater than their innate and finite human weaknesses- envy, greed, jealousy and selfishness- that kept the world livable.

Meeting Ethan had not changed Lilac's belief as much as it had extended it. Kindness kept the world survivable, and there was no love that thrived without kindness, nor was there affection and warmth without the good conquering the bad.

Ethan had not been Lilac's armour as much as he had been a comrade, and he had not been a superior as much as he had been an equal.

Lilac didn't know how to define or classify love the way other people her age could. If she were to be honest, she didn't know how to identify it either.

But she did know the burn and light, the way her heart would beat maybe a little faster than it normally would when his gaze met hers, the shivers and the pain of seeing Ethan struggle with his demons and nightmares he seemed to want to share but were bigger than the man himself.

Lilac felt for him in a way that couldn't be contained within the boundaries of words. Lilac deciphered him with the embers in between their sealed lips and the wind in between their quick-witted banters, and somehow she knew he was embedded into the little cracks of her soul.

In a finite lifetime, only few things could be constant. Not even time itself was constant; only its fast paced movement.

But how could it be that Ethan was becoming a steady anchor in her life? Was he becoming a constant to her?

Unbeknownst to Lilac, the sentiment was mutual, and even more- Lilac was the remaining pillar that held Ethan up. And having this much power over another person was dangerous, the same way most great things came with danger and risks. Lilac and Ethan's relationship- although in a healthy pace... the extent of how they cared for one other and bloomed within each other's presence- it was so beautiful it was dangerous.

Lilac was not dumb; she learned fast and most often quietly, but she was inevitably innocent when it boiled down to a lot of things. Despite this innocence, she wasn't naive. Naivety contradicted the very essence of their being, but innocence did not. Innocence towards a lot of things were one of the prodigies' curses, and it was not a fault as much as it were a sacrifice.

To know things, one must forget himself, and this was The Prodigy's Vow.

Secrets upon secrets and free halls without the freedom that could only be drawn from the truths were what defined Lilac's years of childhood and adolescence, and maybe this was why she believed in kindness the most.

While the people in the Great Hall have been very wise, very kind, and very compassionate, the life Lilac had lived-honesty and objectivity as standards-had not been very kind.