The Lotus

To my mother Hala that I never forget, my amazing supporting family that is always there for me when I need them or when I screw everything up (a lot) and my friends that make me the best person I can be.

Chapter one: the vision

                  I drifted away to think about my mysterious family crest.  I remembered tracing it with my fingers. I remember how a little spark seemed to fly from it to my entire body when I stroked it gently, slowly, dreamily with my thumb on the cover of my family journals after reading them. I remember my thoughts drifting away with my eyes closed dwelling on the sensational feeling that crept over me, thinking about how such a delicate crest represented my family, from the founder of my family until now. How a simple crest represented so much, how it described our family in the best way possible, how it represented their power, struggles and their unique personality that allowed them to survive until now. Images flashed in front of my eyes quickly of the sons and daughters of Isis just from stroking it.

      I remembered tracking its delicate lines with the tips of my fingers and caressing it with affection admiring the rare shade of colors and the rest of the scene surrounding it. It was drawn with the blood of my ancestors making the crest itself powerful and indestructible through time. It deemed the journals to always be something more, something that pulsed a strange and mysterious vibe on its own, a melody only a few people know it’s true meaning, A melody that can make shills posses your body and make you compelled to believe that the words written in those journals had their own magic, That inside those journals you will truly know every single person that possessed them.

               Each one of those journals pulsed with its own melody. Each one contained a different story to tell and each and every one of them makes you know its owner better than anything else can. I thought of the crest drawn on the journals while I thought of this.

          I began sketching the outline with my pencil in slaw lazy movements on the drawing paper my teacher laid in front of me ordering me to start my work. My thoughts continued to wander about it but still My hand started making the outline I knew by heart from all the nights I kept thinking about it and about my ancestors that gave me my powers fouled by a strange power I didn’t know the source of in a trace of my own . I started adding the intricate details to the symbol ending with shading it. It still felt like it had a lot of power inside it although it wasn’t drawn by blood. It was very beautiful and simple nobody can deny that. My hands were making sure I am drawing it exactly like I saw it before feeling great respect to the delicate flower I am drawing.

            My thoughts drifted to how old the crest was. I started to think about what I knew about the origins of my family. I thought about how my ancestors originated from the ancient mysterious Egypt. I thought about how it must have been for them, I thought about the time where my kind didn’t have to hide their powers but instead were respected and appreciated for them having great power and being famous and loved by everybody living the way they were meant to live.

            I thought about how they helped build one of the most ancient powerful civilizations that lasted for nearly three thousand years. I thought about how their powers grew when people believed in them and their magic how their belief drove them to want to do whatever they can do to help them. How people believed they were gifted to help others by higher powers they couldn’t question. Their eyes glittered with respect and appreciation when they saw them.

              They didn’t think they were witches or sorcerers that sold their souls to the devil and were send to destroy everything they worked for. They didn’t fear them or feel the need to protect themselves against them. But of course that didn’t last.

              Daughters started spreading poison and lies destroying faith and the peace people used to live in.  Conspiracy and betrayal fueled by anger and jealousy filled their hearts. The flow of my ancestors, who couldn’t count a soul lost forever in the darkness like it was, encouraged others to push the limits more and more.

             Soon people mistook lies for the truth and started thinking seriously about chasing them, killing them and torturing them in the most disrespectable of ways. They blamed them if crops were destroyed by worms or lack of rain water or even a lady never giving birth to a baby boy. They saw them as an abomination, a disease that must be stopped.

              I imagined my ancestor Isis. I imagined her anger, grief and despair I f she knew what her people tried to do to her children after her death. Being hated by their people for some things they didn’t do. Hearing people cursing them, egging each other on to destroy them once and for all.

              They had the power to destroy every enemy they had but how could they hurt anybody else just because he doesn’t know the truth or refuses to see it, refuses to blame himself for his misery that tears him apart In some cases and chooses to blame somebody else because dealing with the pain and regret is too much? .I think they felt pity for those souls. Their actions fueled by the mere sense of absolute helplessness and weakness.

             I remembered a few lines I read in one of the journals. I remembered thinking of the reason they weren’t driven by the way they were treated to just simply destroy those people. The people that loathed them deeply and wished with all their hearts that they are destroyed. Somehow I knew the answer for my question. I knew they chose to spare themselves and the place they loved the hurricane that was going to take place. They were peaceful people who just wanted to be left be. They were too tired to cause destruction and horror.  They were paralyzed by shock and grief. I remembered the lines I read about this in one of the journals. The delicate handwriting telling the story of what happened to my ancestors. It was the handwriting of a young servant of Isis. A woman that lived in the late period of ancient Egypt under the rule of Ikhnaton the pharaoh that declared war against the children of Isis. He was afraid of their powers. Feeling threatened by them.……      “The shock of being accused and the disbelief that people who knew them well turned against them so quickly without giving it a second thought was the real reason they were paralyzed by the stab that was directed straight at them. By the amount of hatred people seemed to suddenly have against them. A grief greater than any sadness they seemed to face before drained everything inside them. For some it was much greater than they can handle. They simply gave up, others left and carried their grief with them to live a life of seclusion from the world, and some tried to explain but were overcome by the dark flow. They knew the people they loved would never come back but they were desperate. They were simply broken. Nobody suspected how great of an actor Ikhnaton is hiding behind the mask of some innocent soul searching for the one and only god to find an excuse to declare war of every kind against the blue lotus. His invisible hands in everywhere in Egypt see ked only the destruction of one kind and making them weaker and weaker by turning everybody against them with lies and trickery. He was a cobra no body suspected. He wanted to be the one with power. The one that has everybody at the palms of his hands. He knew this was the only to destroy the blue lotus. A direct power confrontation would have definitely led to his loss.”

              I thought about Angela. About how she somehow along the way made her way into my heart. She was my only friend but I wasn’t sure if she would understand, I wasn’t sure she would think me evil. I wondered about what would happen if she knew the truth, if she knew how much power I have. Will she run away and hide her fear that something that is as impossible as this might be true behind some lie she would make about me and fight me, see me as evil and soulless or would she understand?.

             She was always here for me, never wanting anything for her friendship. She simply seemed loyal and understanding to me but I was afraid. People always seemed to do the unexpected when they were forced with something they couldn’t understand, something that defied everything they ever knew since birth.

            Most of the time I felt guilty. She was so open with me, just herself with no secrets and no lies. I think about her when I see her like this, she is my only friend. The only one who is keeping me away from the claws of loneliness that keep trying to kill my soul.  I couldn’t stand to lose her, at first I insisted on locking my heart and keeping my walls high but somehow she wriggled her way in. the fear of losing her kept me from spilling anything in front of her. No matter how guilty I felt I knew that I trusted her, that I would be here for her no matter what but somehow I knew I couldn’t tell her.

Some people have minds that can tolerate the truth and others simply may collapse. You never know if this person was strong enough to handle the truth. The human mind will always search for logical reasons for what is very obvious in front of their eyes. I know Angela has a feeling I am holding something back from her. Like I am never really myself completely without her but she doesn’t push me. She knows nobody can force me to let all of my walls down. They will fall in their own time when I decide to let them fall. She understands that each of us has a secret he protects.  It was a constant struggle with myself if I really should let her see the real me but the possible consequences always prevent me from doing this step. I knew how disastrous the outcome might be.

That doesn’t seem to stop me from dreaming though, from imagining how would it be if I really told her, If I let her see me, the real me with the power of thousands of years running through my veins and my visions and my ancestors and everything. It never seems to stop me from wishing I could tell her somehow and still being the same way we are.

 I thought about the ones who survived. The ones that knew the truth,  that they no longer can live with people like these, People who had no hope of being rescued simply because they didn’t want to be rescued. They were their own prisoners. They didn’t try to remind them of the truth they once were sure of. They knew it was no use.  My thoughts drifted to Isis and how it all started with her, how her children didn’t choose their powers but yet had it in their blood any ways from her.

Isis whom they named her the goddess of life and magic, the queen of the goddesses with her dark black hair darker than night, her dark blue eyes embedded with every shade of blue, her slender beautiful body and her healing touch. The goddess that emerged from the Nymphaea cerulea to bless humans with her powers and to help them.

 I remembered Isis’s last words to her children that were passed on from father to son, from mother to daughter “my children will always have my powers in their blood forever. My powers will never fade throughout time but will last through out my children, children of Isis the goddess will always find their way through darkness as they are in no need of light, they are all the light they need.”  I thought about how people described her elegant, powerful, beautiful, mysterious, just and always wanting to do her best to help others who not only needed her help but also deserved it.

My thoughts started fading away and I pulled myself back to reality where nobody knew about any of my past. Where nobody knew about my powers or my story that goes back in time. A story that nobody would believe it is true. I submitted my painting to Mrs. Henderson my art and creation teacher tracing the details absently with my fingers for last time feeling a strange kind of ache inside me a loneliness for leaving the drawing behind for leaving a piece of me nobody knew about, apiece that represented a part of my being.

 I felt a connection to every member of my family. A deep connection that linked as together making us understand each other better than anybody else would. We were the blue lotus. We were all one huge blue lotus. My head aching faintly as I finally let go feeling lonely again, unable to be understood by people who surround me people who would never understand. I pushed the thoughts out of my mind and started forcing myself to complete the day.

The slight headache I started having after at the beginning of the day was getting worse by the moment I entered my English class room. I tried to ignore it and hoped that it wouldn’t happen in class. My head started to get foggy and I started having trouble concentrating. A sudden feeling of unease rippled my skin. I was sure of what’s going to happen next. I rested my hand on the door frame to steady myself. A flouting feeling spread through my limbs. My hands felt clammy and useless. I lifted one of my hands to my forehead clinging to reality. My breath was starting to get shallow. My heart raced.

My vision started to blur and I am sure now my eyes are starting to have that look in them like I am staring in outer space like Angela my annoying but often correct best friend always says teasing me.  My eye lids closed and I started falling to the ground before anybody could reach me. My classmates’ shouts started fading in the back ground as I blacked out once again.

 I was falling in the blackness that was surrounding me feeling numb. I was moving towards another place rushed through a dark tunnel I knew very well from experience. My body felt weightless and after a few seconds a light seemed to be slowly spreading in front of me. Adrenaline rushed to my tense limbs expecting anything now. The power of my ancestors was flowing through me. A huge wave of mysterious old power that surged through me, differentiating me from any other girl. I wasn’t a normal girl I was the child of Isis the queen of all gods.

 Colors flashed then a scene started forming in front of me. I blinked a few times and the image finally became clear. I was in a beautiful clearing surrounded by trees from every side. The sun was about to set shading the trees and making them look more beautiful.  I found myself relaxing against my will when the smell of the sweet exotic flowers there started reaching my nose when a small breeze swayed the flowers filling the air with their smell. The whole scene looked too beautiful and I was suddenly sure it couldn’t be any place inside the states. It looked like the country side in Italy or Spain.

 A splendid flock of birds caught my eye with colors bright and vibrant like day light in the summer. I followed the flock with my eyes until it flew over a pond. A small pond with sunset rays reflecting on it was in the tips of the clearing. My vision was captured by the dark figure standing by the lake but soon forgot about him when I saw the Nymphaea ceruleaon the surface of the little lake.

The sun rays reflected on the petals of the ancient stunning flower. The blue Egyptian mysterious lotus is spread along the surface of the lake making it look unreal and beautiful.  My heart started pounding in a frightening rate I never thought possible. Although by now the magical flower of resurrection and life is amerced under water after folding its petals I couldn’t stop myself from admiring it and the magical power it seems to radiate. I couldn’t really believe it was there.

 I wished I could be here when it comes back to life. To witness that golden moment when it comes to life again with my own eyes. I kept staring at my family’s symbol in front of me and thought about how the flower I was told was extinct long ago is somewhere hidden by thick trees waiting for somebody to find it. I thought of how I could possibly be able to find this place in the future. How I could really find the rare  Nymphaea cerulea. When nobody could. A jumble of feelings rattled inside my at once this was it. My families crest. The flower I have been thinking and thinking about. No drawing could be compared to the real thing. I could feel the presence of its power through my veins. Its magical smell seemed to surround me everywhere, to fill me inside out. It made the pond look scared and nothing completely like a normal pond. All the stories I knew about my family rushed back to my mind. My mind shuffled through them remembering every detail, every sentence, and every word of the stories I spend hours on reading.

A movement distracted me and I swirled around quickly to see what was happening. The dark figure by the end of the lake leant down with his broad shoulders and picked one of the flowers in a graceful quick smooth move turning slowly to his side and extending his hands to pick up the flower giving me a side view of him. My guards were up expecting a blow to come my way but slowly started to relax. The figure didn’t look threatening at all. Something about him was weirdly comforting.

 His shadowed haunted blue eyes were a deep blue ocean that seemed to have no bottom.  I couldn’t see his features clearly as he still mostly had his back to me.  He placed the blue lotus between his hands picking it up carefully and lifting it upwards. The movement made his shadowed figure look mysterious and alluring.  He seemed to radiate power and elegance. His dark curly hair added up to his image.  A white cotton shirt showed his muscles and tan. A leather jacket and a black skinny jean completed his look.

 I wanted to pass my hand in his curls and make him reveal his secrets. In his small movement he seemed to be gliding like he wasn’t like the normal dim witted teenage boys I see but someone who is really deep. Someone who thinks about things other than using girls and drinking until they black out.  He seemed to have a lot of secrets and mysterious sense of power. He looked at the flower with understanding respect. His eyes gleamed and reflected the rare blue black color of the flower he is holding in front of him.

 He looked very handsome like a traveler who was traveling for a long time looking for something he wanted badly at every place he visits. Like it was his destiny to solve that impossible equation and find what he was looking for, the whole point of his existence.

 For a moment He started closing his eyes slowly and a voice like a grunt came deep from his throat. Color was slightly drained from his cheeks. His rosy pink lips were sealed. His face scrunched. He seemed to lose his previous composure and his lean figure seemed to tremble with emotion. His confident fingers seemed to shake. He seemed like he was in the verge of losing control.

 “Grace……….”He called seeming like he was in pain after he sensed I was there. His voice shook with longing for the person he was calling for. It had a hidden warning in it. Like I was something he couldn’t get out of his head, like I am the only problem he couldn’t solve no matter how he thought about it. Like his previous purpose was a joke compared to me. His voice was low and husky sensed so much emotion and love and ache in his words. My ears ringed when I heard him calling my name.

 His voice sounded to me like a sweet melody nobody knows how to sing but him. I was suddenly nervous. My hands suddenly felt clammy against me.  His voice echoed inside me and awakened something inside me I thought was no longer there. An ache started there deep in my chest. He called my name like he knew me, like he knew me better than anybody else ever did or is going to do. Like he understood me. Like he really understood me for whom I really am. Like he understands because in some ways he is just like me. Warmness sprung through me. I belong in his arms they are my only home.

 He started turning slowly towards me and my heart started racing again. For the first time in my life I felt like I wanted to go to him, rush to him answer him with his name that I didn’t know. The need seemed to tremble my body with such force I almost cried. I wanted to support him and be there for him, calm him and vanish his fears. I felt like I knew every part of him.

 I was the only one who knew his secrets, his fears, his deepest hopes and dreams, the only one who understands him, the only one who had seen a glimpse of what’s inside his heart, the only one who knew everything about his past and future. Like I was the only one who knew who he really is. Like I am the only one who has that connection with him. He didn’t have to hide anything from me. Didn’t need to hide the soul I sensed in him. He didn’t need his protective walls and I didn’t need mine. He was a person I could depend on for real. A person whose path is like mine. Someone who wouldn’t judge me, who trusted me with his life.

 I started walking towards him but I couldn’t. I kept trying but the image started to fade away before he turned his face completely to me. I started clawing at the pictures trying to hold them together and preventing them from falling away from me leaving me with only questions and no answers. A deep hole started filling me. My mind raced with questions I didn’t get the answer for.

 School seemed like the last place I wanted to be in. I don’t really fit here. I can’t let my cover slip. I had to hide my powers, watch my every word and always stay alert. I couldn’t be myself here and I felt trapped. I was suffocating and I felt I was near tears. I was in a planet and others were in another. How can I possibly fit with those people? How can I ever be normal?

The whole school now knows about my “medical condition” that makes me faint and do some weird things I bet sometimes. Nobody talks about it. It was something to know and to keep to one’s self. Everybody about the unnaturally beautiful pale girl with the mysterious lapis lazuli eyes. Everybody thought there was something about her that was different. Her eyes were dreamy and full of secrets and always seemed to be sailing far away. Her brown hair flowed on her shoulders and touched the middle of her back. She had an aurora that pulsed with something different than others. Like she has something they don’t have pulsing in her veins. Something that forced them to respect her. To hear her opinions if she declared them and to let her be herself without mockery.

Grace was back to reality to her English class with Mr. Alaric and the whole class looking at her. She saw a lot of things in their eyes. They were remembering everything they heard about her every conversation that her name came up in. Angela and another girl were at her side. Grace remembered the girl after a few seconds Sandra she recalled her name to be a petite girl a little shy but she had a truly good heart. It was a little bit hard to remember her name at first as she always said her name in a quite muffled tone when asked by teachers in her classes. She remembered the girl from the few times she lingered around her.

Grace was somehow surprised and pleased at the girl’s sudden decision to help her up she barley let anybody see her face at any of her classes covering it with her dark black hair and hiding herself in the corner of class yet the girl had the courage to go and help her up risking being stared at for a couple of seconds while grace got up. Her cheeks flared a deep obvious red despite her attempt to hide it behind her flowing black hair. Grace was grateful the girl was starting to get out of her shell. At first glance nothing really is that special about her ratty clothes and pale white skin but somehow when you really look at her you can see the ever beautiful eyes she always seems to hide.

 The girl instructed by an invisible power seemed to somehow touch grace lightly feeling that grace is not like the others. Her pale white bony fingers never touched grace in one place over a few seconds.  You can’t just grope her arm and yank her up. She is to be toughed gently, helped without the need of words and brought slowly up. Where her slender figure regained the normal way it looked like. As Beautiful and graceful as ever. She is not a figure to be left slummed in the ground. It seemed somehow wrong not to help her up. Grace didn’t make a lot of slips but when she started to get up the look in their eyes started to fade away and was filled with something else.

Grace was grateful for Sandra and for Angela. She knew her friend would have her back even if she couldn’t really expose this one part of herself for her no matter what.  She steadied herself and turned to the teacher. He had a weird look in his eyes. His eyes shone with something she was too baffled from the vision in that moment to catch. She regained her composure and the fog in her head finally cleared.

 Mr. Alaric seemed to want to say something but couldn’t quite get it out. Grace’s powerful presence shut him up and after his mouth looking like a fish for a while his eyes returned to normal and in them was something like respect and a lot of things else and he  seemed to finally get his composure back. “Order…let’s get back to business we have a lot of work to take care of” his voice had a catch in it. Mr. Alaric cared about every student in his class. He felt they were like his children. It was hopeless sometimes he couldn’t really help himself. He respected grace and felt her power. He knew she was okay.

 One look at how powerful and composed she looked now would power that. The glimmer her hair seemed to have would back that up; her eyes would show you how nothing is really wrong with her. She wasn’t weak like others. She didn’t cry she didn’t flush or turn an embarrassing shade of red and he respected her yet more for it. She had something about her you can’t over look. She had ancient magic flowing through her. Her eyes were fierce and a fire seemed to be burning in them, warning anybody from talking about it or thinking she was weak. Grace’s eyes also had something new in them something to do with the vision she just had. Power surged through her and her mind raced with everything she saw.

…… -~(*)~-……

Chapter two:  nightgowns and chilly night air

Grace wok up from her small bed in the corner of her room drifting slowly from her white bed with the delicate intricate shapes carved in the mahogany wood that her mom bought her when she was a little girl. Her rosy soft silk gown that always made her look more feminine drifted down her legs after being hitched up in her sleep.  Her bedrooms curtain moved slowly in a lazy movement with the wind outside. A small shiver ran through her body that she couldn't ignore. Grace started walking in baby steps to her bathroom after reaching for her slippers and finally finding her fluffy pink slippers  after she had to look under her bed.

Grace stared at herself in the round mirror of her bathroom. She felt slightly cold now. Night gowns were simply not her thing. They always hitched up her legs leaving her unprotected from the night cold air and leaving her feeling naked and exposed. She never thought she would be wearing that gown again but here she is in the frilly gown her aunt Loretta bought for her. Aunt Loretta’s face appeared in her head instantly. She was her god mother, her role model, her everything. Every single detail of Aunt Loretta’s face was Cristal clear in her head. Her soft haunted eyes, her cheeks that always had a slight color to them, her smile that seemed elegant and easy and comforting, and her black brown hair with soft curls that seemed to have a glow to them. 

Grace remembered it all. She missed her terribly since she was gone. She missed how she had a certain way of making everybody feel at home, how she was full of life and energy, how she once ended up being chased around the room after she lighted a semi circled shaped house missile. Aunt Loretta had to go to London in business. It was the very first time aunt Loretta left her behind. Grace didn’t know she would feel so alone without her. she started to miss the annoying things about her aunt that soon became her trade mark, her fascination with wearing the color red that grace was convinced she would look like a clown in, the way she knocked on the door every day in that special rhythm of hers that nobody can imitate announcing in a loud singsong voice that she was home.

She always seemed to know what to do as she was the only one who had powers just like grace. Grace wrapped her arms slowly around her chest suppressing the shudder that was getting ready to run through her body. She wished badly that her aunt was here. That she would tell her what she would do with the vision and with everything she saw. She felt helpless and not like herself at all. There was a layer of thick air that surrounded her body making her muscles taught and making every nerve in her body on edge. Something is going to happen grace knew it. She knew it in every bone in her body. the powers she tried to suppress for a very long time were warning her, telling her to stay alert and making her feel like a huge weight was on her longs. If she closed her eyes and let the feeling that has been nagging inside her to take over sending a wave that seemed to twist her insides the moment it took over she would be sure. She could almost see it right in front of her.

 Her mom and dad would be of no help. Her dad having no idea at all about her powers being born from a family far away from her mother’s. Her mother being separated from her father lives in a different state completely from grace keeping in touch with her with only the letters grace gets every couple of weeks. She couldn’t wait to write a letter to her and wait around for her answer. She needed to talk to someone, get it out of her and listen for the advice she’s given. She didn’t feel quite at ease talking to her mother. Somehow she knew she would end up feeling mush worse after she talked to her if she bothered to respond at all.

. A thousand mixed feelings runs through her when she does. It is not like talking to her aunt. It was not as easy as talking to somebody who  was there for her other than talking to someone you hardly talk to, feel the erge to watch your every word with. She wouldn’t know with one look that something is wrong with her like aunt Loretta does, she wouldn’t notice that she was holding something back, that she was upset or even mad. It simply wasn’t the same. Sometimes she would be holding back tears and she wouldn't notice she would simply keep on continuing to stab her with her words one after the other.

Sometimes she doesn't seem to realize the pressure grace was under. She had to cook, clean, take care of her dad and keep him from neglecting himself because it was simply easier. She also had to keep her grades up, keep her powers in check, take care to watch her tongue around her best friend and somehow tolerate her mother's constant criticism. She felt trapped. She didn't know how she ended up like this and she didn't know how much time she had left before she cracked. She couldn't even open up to her best friend. Her latest anxiety didn't help the situation either.

 Grace wore the gown last night when she wanted to feel the warmth of her aunt when she handed it to her. Her eyes shone with love and her hand softly caressed her cheek, murmuring how much she loves her more than anything else. She remembered how warm she felt when she put the piece of cloth on like her aunt was holding her in her arms covering every part of her body with her warm tender embrace. When she wore it her aunt didn't seem away she seemed to be right there with her her scent filling her nostrilles and her eyes boring into hers.

She was the first to explain what was going on when grace’s powers started to kick in. she made grace calm and stopped her from freaking out. She explained everything slowly, carefully without being bored or fed up. She then answered her questions and slowly calmed her fears. It was a little hard to keep in control of her powers but Aunt Loretta was there for her helping her step by step be completely in control. She helped a lot with the emotional roller coaster grace was having back then. She found herself secure and safe in her arms when nothing around her made sense. When a touch of her hand can make something disappear or turn from blue to green.

 She remembered how her aunt looked when she was using her powers, like a goddess no less, her familiar face transformed into something else, something that was by far too beautiful to be human, she was alluring, captivating, magnificent, elegant and powerful everything grace couldn’t be. She was owed by the heavenly creature her aunt transformed into; she could never be like her, never like this angel in front of her. Aunt Loretta’s picture was stuck in her head she could never forget how she looked that day.

She felt scared for some reason when she saw her like that. She would never be like her. She felt like she was in an alcove all by her own. feeling like she couldn't possibly belong with people like this like she was just a bystander that was lucky to happen to watch something like that but no matter what she did there seemed to be a glass wall between her and what was on the other side. There was something that she lost that she knew she couldn't get back that made her different from them.

Grace couldn’t imagine her mom looking as graceful as her aunt. There was something in Aunt Loretta that simply wasn’t in her mom, something that made them both so different from each other. Grace felt it from her mother’s letters. She always lacked something in those letters. Her handwriting lacked the beauty her aunt’s handwriting had. Her pes were a little lopsided and her tes just seemed wrong.

Her mother’s letters always seemed somehow like they were the letters of someone so distant from her. Someone who wrote to her but had no real intention of getting closer to her. Someone who was lost and had no one to come to their rescue, someone who didn't know how to be rescued, someone who wasn't sure he wanted to be rescued. There seemed to be emptiness in her letters that reflected the emptiness that seemed to be settled in her eyes.

Once again grace remembered the lesson she learned long ago. Nobody believes they can deal without their mom which is true but somehow grace knew it wasn’t completely true because if somebody’s mom is taken from him god always gives him somebody else, somebody who acts like a mom to him even better than his mom ever did. It can be one person or it can be more because without those people no one can cope.

This was the secret of how certain people can go on with their lives. Grace remembers very well the looks she used to get. The pitting looks that people shot her when they knew her mother left her with no reason saying she just can’t take it anymore and had to go somewhere else where she could have a life instead of being a non paid full time nanny. As much as people tried to hide it was crystal clear the way their eyes revealed the thoughts that now haunted their eyes

“In spite of everything my mom does the embarrassing things she does, her clumsy moves, her smile, her over protectiveness that chokes me sometimes I can never live without her. How can I live without her hugs, her caressing touches, and the way she makes everything right for me when nothing is. I can never make it. I can’t live with that taken away from me. I would feel like I was completely alone, empty, cold, I couldn’t imagine it and to have her say she doesn’t want me anymore…. I can never believe how that can be. Thank god for my mom. I know I don’t really show it but I would prefer that she embarrasses me every day than say that she doesn’t care, that she doesn’t want me, doesn’t love me, god be with her”.

Grace remembered the day her mom told her about her wishes with a shudder. Deep pain soured through her body while she remembered that evening. She just got back from school went to her bedroom to change and solve her homework. They were allowed to home early this afternoon something about a teacher that was missing for four days now. Mr. Mathew grace remembered principle skinner was finally able to reach him today finding out that he had some kind of problem going on with his personal life something about his wife leaving him as grace heard the principle’s secretary Natalie say in a whisper in her cell while she passed in the hallway. Mr. Alaric couldn’t cover up for Mr. Mathew’s any more so they were allowed to go home early.

Grace remembered how she shut the door behind her shoulders slaking with the relaxing feeling that she was home, that she could have a little time to rest today after spending a lot of time thinking about Mr. Mathew. She forced the thoughts out of her mind and prepared herself for a day for herself with a relaxing bath to help calm her nerves. She couldn’t help though but to check up on her mom asking herself if she could ever leave them like her teacher’s wife did. She imagined her mom every inch of her. No, she would never do that. She would never leave us but she was wrong.

Grace called her mother’s name explaining why she was home early. She found her mother’s reply in a hushed tone she was getting used to hearing her use those days; she always sounded tired, exousted, like she had mountains resting on her shoulders, her hair rested on her shoulders in a tangles mess. Her once beautiful hair now rested lifeless on her shoulders. Grace found her mother packing her bags in her room. Her heart sank and she kept denying it in her head no, no, no, I am just paranoid. She is just going in a business trip. Just a few days and she would be back but the tears on her mother’s face said it all. Her head reeled with dread and she seemed dizzy and her legs shook under her.

Her eyes looked haunted by a deep shadow that seemed to descend upon them. Her mother’s arms were clumsily closing her suitcase. She stared at her stunned daughter for a second them she started to hurry and gather the rest of her stuff quickly like she couldn’t take it to breathe the air in this room any more. She couldn't look in her eyes and face her. She couldn't face what she knew she was going to find in there.

Grace remembered every single word she said like it was burned in her brain.  She said she had to leave. That she had no choice but to leave that she isn’t just a slave with no life. She said that with such force it shocked her. Was she really that unhappy? Did she really feel she that bad she needed to go away? Were she and her father that loved his wife so mush be killing her soul like she claimed they were?  She hated spending her life taking care of grace and her dad. Grace wanted to yell at her, to scream at the top of her lungs, to shake some sense into her.

. Grace somehow couldn't fathom how this was even possible. Grace can never forgive her. That day she took something away that grace can never get back. Every word stabbed her like knives cutting every piece of her into shreds. Her legs trembled and her head waved. Grace couldn’t believe this was happening. This is not real this is just a bad dream, really bad dream. A night mare that was going to end soon.

Tears were spilling from her eyes like never before. She never felt so hollow, so numb, so betrayed. She took hold of herself and refused to cry refused to show her mom or everybody else that what she heard shook her that much, hurt her that much, all she wanted to do was to be alone and drown in her misery and cry grace really wanted to cry with all her heart . She forced herself to get a grip. She was strong she is not weak, she is not weak. The pain in her chest became worse and worse. She was suffocating. She was dead quit. A mask seemed to be concealing her inner turmoil that cracked a little while after she heard the front door slam shut.

Walls were forever built between her and her mom. Things between them are never going to be the same again. She felt something inside her break something inside her that can’t be fixed no matter what something that hurt badly and made her sway slightly when she hears her mother’s voice something that will always keep reminding her of what she did. She felt everything she ever want to tell her, to scream at her pile inside her until her encounters with her mother were robotic.

 Nobody understands what it is really like. Every time grace talked to her mom she felt empty, drained and sad. Sometimes she wanted to scream at her, to shout and tell her everything she wanted to say for far too long. On the rare occasions her mom was forced to come and pay her a visit by her aunt grace was quiet, very quit. She feared that if she even opened her mouth at some point that she is going to blurt it all out. That she wouldn't be able to control herself. There was no reason to care about somebody that didn’t care for her. No reason to miss somebody who never missed her, never called, never sounded like they were excited to talk to her.

 Her voice was always drained of every emotion. Grace hated the fact that she was the one who always called, always sent cards. She didn’t do it with her free will. Somehow her aunt insisted she has some sort of connection with her mother but grace knew this will never be possible except when she gets everything out of her but she knew she probably never will. and every time she got no replay, every time she missed her birth day or even answered her with her ice cold voice a little piece of hope shattered inside her until there was no hope at all. Still this didn’t prevent her from having dreams about her mom, dreams that seemed so vividly disturbing to her, dreams that shook her and made her dizzy…….

Those dreams always haunted her, mocked her, scared her, shocked her to the core and reminded her that no matter how she acted she still cared about her mom, still cared if she saw her cut into tiny little pieces that are scattered everywhere, still cared if her mom had a car accident after coming home drunk from a bar after work.

Usually she could get those dreams out of her mind. She could put them all easily in a box in her head and seal it closed and forget it was even there but lately those dreams became more and more often. Grace got used to waking up screaming or with hot tears she wasn’t used to shedding running down her pillow and staining her face. It was getting harder and harder pretending that she wasn’t afraid of sleeping because of those nightmares that are getting worse and worse. They are becoming more and more vivid, scarier and more consistent.

 Today she didn’t only see her mother in tiny little microscopic pieces, she saw her suffer while every little piece of her body was torn by a sharp kitchen knife that was covered in her mother’s flowing blood, she heard her deafening screams and she felt her pain. Huge waves of pain radiated of her paralyzing grace in her spot. Every single muscle was trembling with the screaming voice inside her head that screamed at her to move to get herself out of here out of this nightmare but she couldn’t.

 Every single detail was etched in her mind. The way the blade of the knife glinted with fresh blood before striking again, the way her mother’s breath kept getting shallower and shallower, the way she uselessly tried to avoid the strikes every time weaker and weaker until there is no resistance, no fight then her shallow breaths become a voice so low no human ear can no more distinguish it as a breath then even that Is gone like her, like how she is no longer there. The finality and cruelty of the situation cutting grace herself to the core. Her hand slums off to the ground and grace have to be there until every piece of her is scattered across the room.

Grace couldn’t take it anymore. A heavy air of sadness invaded her eyes and waited her down. She felt tired, used up, she was fed up with this torture but she didn’t know what to do she had nobody to give her any advice now that the only person that could was away from her. She felt lost and alone. She felt like she was exposed for the first time. Her soul earned for the peace she didn’t have. She felt restless, on edge and ready to explode any second because in that moment grace wasn't the powerful descendant of the queen of gods and goddesses, she wasn't a girl that had ancient pure magic flowing through her, she was just a girl, a broken and shattered girl.

…… -~(*)~-……

 guys, please comment and tell me if you like it and please rate too, comments and reviews won't hurt ;p