The Great Goddess Tree Tale

XXVIII - Holver's Return

The traffic in the Capital was chaotic lately.

Constructions on public streets were just disturbing the slow movement of the cars going to their houses, after a long day of work. It was rush hour and to Holver Salans, son of Mat Salans and Kalima Noisiv, it had no use: he would have to wait, and possibly being late for classes again. A few months later and he would finally end his graduate degree. He already graduated in Physics and now, two years later, he was finishing the graduate degree on Geology.

Returning from the University he went straight to the tiny apartment that he rented because was close to his job. He got to the messy apartment of two rooms and a single bathroom and searched for something to eat on the fridge: as always, empty.

Holver asked himself why, if he was the only resident on there, he always search for something on the fridge once he never refills it:

"Yup. Would be certainly a misrepresentation of the Physics Law! How could possibly have something in here if anyone never put anything in there! Things couldn't just appear from beyond like happen on comics."

He took a hot shower and when he got off, he saw the picture of his last girlfriend, Katie, that was on the nightstand. He looked at her fondly and sighed:

"Yes, my friend... It was the strike three... You tried but couldn't tie up this naughty boy, hum! Others tried as well, my dear! Better luck next time!

Actually, it was Katie who dumped him after a two-year relationship, under her view - with love but without focus. She was older than Mat and wanted to get married soon and raise a family while Holver was trapped in his inner world, sometimes lost on physics calculation of his job sometimes dreaming about space worlds, supernatural adventures that he loved to watch on cinema screens and sometimes he lived just loose on his life, adrift. It wasn't the time to start a family, he thought. When she finally realized it, packed her stuff and that place was never more so clean and tidy as when Katie was there.

Holver wasn't any kid as well. He was thirty but had the heart of a frolic and dreamer boy. Responsibilities like marriage and kids were out of range for him, at least for now.

Despite being a little oblivious to mundane issues, he was very focused on his work and studies.

He had been working on that demolition engineering company over five years and recently he became Field Operations Manager. He had under his command more than twenty workers. He was very meticulous on his job and nothing got away from his watchful eyes. The project and the calculus should be very precise, different from the concept that regular people had that was very easy just "explode" things, just putting a certain number of explosives on a corner and lighting up a wick.

Holver entered that job field accidentally and, apparently, it hadn't any relation with the fact that his father died on an explosion, and the parents of his father died on another. He, in fact, liked to work with the dynamics of the bodies, materials; to see and understand how elements behave under acceleration, under pressure, and how they combined they energies between them, in one moment assembling, in other repulsing, and on another merging themselves. That is the reason that he has chosen Physics. Beside discovering about the nature of life he also had interest in its many interactions.

It indeed couldn't have many relations, his profession and his father's death, because even though Kalima tried so much to make Mat alive on her son's mind, he had almost any memory of Mat.

Sometimes some shadows of his father's face and voice would resonate on his mind, but he couldn't be sure of anything. His father was just a figure, despite all the struggle of Kalima, during all his life, to make him "present" and "real" for Holver.