Every time I thought he was going to leave, he didn't. I woke up the next morning and my bed was empty, but when I went downstairs he was sitting with Elena, giving her pointers on a poultice she was making. I didn't know how to feel. I didn't understand how I felt. Happy was so foreign to me I thought something was very wrong. Content was one thing. So was being comfortable with how things were. But happy I just couldn't fathom. I went to the kitchen and found food laid out for me. I was surprised. Maybe Elena had done that for me, but somehow I knew it had been him.

I still didn't know his name, nor had I asked either. I knew I should, but I felt that if I asked, he would disappear again. And I didn't want that. I wanted him to stay. I wanted to have him around.

Days went by, and at times he did leave the house, but he always came back. Sometimes he brought food, sometimes he brought me the rare herbs that Elena couldn't find, he brought pottery and tapestries for my house, clothes for me even. I couldn't believe it. And he never asked a copper from me either.

And every night, as I had never done before, I had someone to sleep beside after he made me practically scream in pleasure. Days turned into weeks, weeks became months. Eventually, I told Elena that she had learned everything I could teach her, and I was proud that she had been my apprentice. And now she could open her own shop if she wished, or she could stay and do as she had been. And even if she went her own way she and her family were always welcome and always would be. She chose to open her own shop to be able to help more people, and she was getting married as well, and was moving to another part of the city.

After Elena married and left to heal others in her own shop, it was just the two of us. I had plenty of work to do, as people came to see me daily and I was often busy. But he would help me and work with me. The months went into years and before I had known it it had been ten years since he had arrived to sweep me off my feet. Neither of us aged. I had watched Elena grow up, get married, have her own children. Indigo died of old age, and one day while I was working I heard my name called.

I went outside, and my Indigo eyed lover had brought me a horse identical to Indigo, with a temperament sweet as could be, and I realized it was my birthday. How this man knew I don't know, I had never celebrated my birthday, and I don't believe I had ever told him. But here he was, on the twenty-first of October, with a jet black stallion for me.

To learn of kindness, after so much unkindness was monumental for me. My demeanor changed, I smiled more, I even laughed. I hadn't even known how to laugh until it happened randomly when my lover had said something. I thought something was wrong with me, but there wasn't. For once, there wasn't anything wrong with me. I was twenty-six hundred years old, and I finally had a good life. I enjoyed Greece. We went to the festivals that I hadn't gone to before. Parties that I had not accepted invitations to before I went to now with him.

We spent centuries living like this in Athens. Eventually, the human customs changed, and while I still owned the house in Athens, I had to move on then, because I didn't want to have what happened before happen again. I didn't want to be hunted. When things changed in Greece, my lover and I ended up going our own ways. I traveled by horse drawn wagon to another country. I ended up in what is now Romania, and I could not tell you what happened to him or where he went.

I was sad to lose him, but I was glad of the change. I felt ready for a fresh start. Things were different, and now there were new religions, and I had stopped healing by magic a long time before in order to protect myself. I was an herbalist, though that often now was also considered magic, but it wasn't hunted or outlawed. I was three thousand years old just about. I ended up in a city called Tomis, now known as Constanta. Another coastal town, which seemed to be my preference.

The city was old by human standards at four hundred years old, but it was new and young compared to some places I had been. I found myself a house, and like last time I took the time to get myself set up and in working order. I brought many of my things from Greece. Things that I deemed irreplaceable. The tapestries, gifts my lover had given me, my mother's jewelry, which I still wore often. People thought I was royalty, but I tried to keep more to myself in new places.

I got my shop open within a week, secretly using my abilities to make things go more quickly. I set things in motion the same way I had in Athens. And after a few years in Tomis, I was working steadily. I didn't expect to see my indigo eyed lover again, and decided that waiting for something that might never come was a waste of my life. I didn't go looking purposefully, but I wasn't closed off to it anymore either. But it would come to be that nothing lasting would happen.

I worked tirelessly, now and then having free time, and because I wasn't working magic, I closed my shop a half day of the week. It was on a day, a holiday for the people, when all shops were closed for the entire day, that I ran into someone unusual.

I took a walk in the morning out to the coast with the kitten I had recently been given by a child who had been so happy that I had flowers in one spot in my house. I had let the girl take them, and the next day she had returned and given me this fluffy little ball that liked to sit on my shoulder. The kitten was all grey, and I took her everywhere. And this day was no different. I went to the shores just outside of the main town, and I sat on a grassy sand dune and watched and listened to the waves. I saw someone down the shore walking in my direction, and somehow I got the feeling this person was there to see me

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My little kitten was purring in my ear while she burrowed in my hair. I stayed sitting on the dune where I was, and as the figure came closer I saw that it was a white haired, but young looking woman. There was no doubt now that she was there to find me, but I wondered why for a moment. But I had a feeling in the depths of my belly that whoever this woman was, she was the person I had been waiting on for five centuries.

I waited without moving as the young looking woman with silver hair came up and stopped a few feet away from me. The kitten on my shoulder was sniffing excited in the woman's direction, and I wondered if I should say something or not, but I didn't have to wait long for the answer.

'Are you ready to train? You may bring the kitten.'

How she knew I had been waiting to train I still don't know to this day. I wonder if Horus had given her a vision as he had to me to bring me to Philae. I nodded. I stood up from the dune and walked down to stand near her. She was around my height as well, which was more equal in combat training that it would have been if Horus was doing it since he was more than two feet taller than me. But that didn't mean it wouldn't be as grueling, or I hoped it wouldn't mean it would be less grueling. No one could say I didn't work hard, no one could say I slacked off.

I nodded, yes I was ready. I had been waiting centuries since Isis had taught me all she knew and told me that I should look for the one who would train me in magic and combat. I asked where we were going, what I should call her, and told her that I would be happy to let her stay in one of the spare rooms in my house. She said I should call her Storm, which seemed a little strange to me but I could understand the need for privacy. She also said that we would be training there on the beach and she would accept a room in my house. I told her that I was happy to share anything I had.

I asked her when we could start, that I would like to begin right then if I could. She smiled at me and said I had initiative. Yes we would start then. I should take my kitten and hand her over for the moment. She wanted to see what I could do before we began. I handed over my little ball of fluff and Storm held her just as tenderly as I had been, stroking her tiny head. I asked what she wanted to see and she told me everything.

I ran through my entire repertoire of abilities, which took quite some time considering. The only thing I could not show her was my healing, as I was not about to harm something, just to heal it, I found that cruel. But I needn't have shown her that anyhow, because my reputation far preceded me. She sat on the dune I had sat on, holding and stroking my kitten's fur while she watched me, taking in all the information being given her.

Finally, I was through, and stood before her with my toes in the sand. I hadn't even broken a sweat. I said nothing, waiting for my new teacher's assessment of my abilities. I wondered how far she would push me, how much I would improve, how much I would learn. I looked forward to it. She was looking at my little kitten and I could feel her thinking, though I wasn't so rude as to look and see just what it was specifically.

Finally she looked up at me and spoke. 'Not bad. You're obviously not new, but you could stand to learn a bit more.'

'I'd like to know whatever you will teach me. I've been waiting more than five hundred years for this.'

She smiled at me, and I instantly knew that this woman would be a wonderful teacher, and become a great friend, and it made me smile in return. I had not felt such warmth from another person since Ahnesh. Elena was warm, but she had worshiped the ground I had walked on. This was different.

I asked what I should do first, and Storm set me to sitting back down on the dune facing her. We both closed our eyes, and she told me to listen to the ocean and the wind around us. To connect to it, to everything I could sense with my enhanced senses. I opened my mind, taking the time to open myself to anything. I felt a brush and slight mix with her energy, and was shocked. Phoenicians had been an interest of mine in the Archives as a child. Now my long awaited teacher happened to be one? I didn't believe in coincidence.

My body jolted with the knowledge. I could hear her mind, and it was clearer than mine, listening as I was supposed to be. I focused and opened myself the rest of the way. I could hear and feel the ocean and those that lived in it, the insects and critters that lived in the sand. I could feel their lives, I could feel heartbeats, almost see them behind my eyes. I could smell the salt in the air so keenly. I could feel the ebb and pull of the ocean tides and the waves driving them. I could feel the clouds above, and could smell the coming rain. I could hear the wisps of grass and weeds rustling in the wind, I could hear the sand blowing around.

I felt my heartbeat slow and seemed to sync with Storm's, my breathing deep and even. I forgot my body and felt as if I were just a mind in tune with the rest of the world. I had never felt such a thing in my life. I could tell in town who was suffering and who was happy. I could feel their souls as they went about their days. Outside of town it was quiet, as peaceful as the beach was aside from a few older children playing.

'Good,' came the voice of my new teacher, from her mind to mine. I smiled. I was a quick study. 'Feel the ebb and flow of the world around you. Really feel it, like you never have before. Feel the sun and the energy it brings. Feel the ocean and the life it holds and creates, feel the tides and the waves. Feel the animals and insects, feel their movements as they go about their lives. Connect with them. You can draw energy from anywhere. Choosing not to is what defines us.'

I listened to her voice in my mind, and she knew I was capable of doing anything she might want me to do. My mind opened wider than I had ever tried to open it before. I had an inkling of the old fear of being found, but the only things I felt were non human beings. Storm. Me. Insects and animals. The humans in town who could not know that I was listening to and feeling them. The ocean seemed to have a voice of her own that was so soothing I knew in that moment I could listen to her for hours on end and not be bored. Listening to the ocean brought me a peace I have never known in any other situation in my life.

I could hear Storm talking quietly to me mentally as I listened, saying that awareness was everything, and if I was aware, that there wasn't anything I could fail at. Especially if I were as calm as I was right then. I think she could tell that it was the effect of the ocean on me that made me so calm. She didn't know me, but I was never tranquil, even if I seemed so. But there was no hiding from a teacher. You can't teach if you don't know everything. I listened to the ocean, and she sifted through my mind and memories, pulling them up in my mind while I tried my best to be aware of it and not at the same time since she was pulling up pain and hardship.

We spent hours on the beach that first day with her learning about me at her leisure while I absorbed all of the world around me without sifting through her mind in return. Somehow I knew it would have been a very bad idea, and I wanted her to teach me.

It was dark before she told me that that had been enough for the day, and I came back to myself. I was disoriented at first, having felt as though I was outside of myself for most of the day. My limbs were heavy, and I felt a fatigue I had not felt in centuries. Storm told me that I should eat heartily, and then sleep, and to meet her back at the same spot in the morning during high tide.