Chapter 75 - The Vast and Endless Sky
“Kass, are you drooling on my arm again?”
A flurry of movement immediately followed this casual question. Spots of pink quickly bloomed in Kassandra’s high cheekbones as she sprang to her feet.
“Liar! How dare you?” Kass cried out, frantically wiping away at Skyle’s sleeve. “You big, blind bully, there’s nothing there!”
“Oh, my mistake then,” Skyle smiled fondly at his sister, which only made her stamp her feet in frustration.
She turned around with a huff, heading toward the door.
“Kass, could you tell da and ma I need to speak to them? Tell them it’s.. Important,” he finished lamely.
Kass paused briefly with her back to him, half-turning her head around. “Is everything alright?”
“I hope so,” Skyle whispered. “I really do.”
Kass frowned for a moment, but caught the earnest tone her brother seldom used. It told her it was important, and so she nodded without further words and quickly left the room.
Once Kass shut the door behind herself, Skyle was finally left to simmer in his own thoughts. He had tried to put up a careless, joyful front, but there was just too much going on in his life right now. It was almost too much for any one person to bear by himself, let alone a child as young as Skyle was.
Not for the first time, he wondered why he was so different, so special. He might have dreamed of such back in his more naive and innocent days, but no longer. Special was bad, he had learned. Special got you and the people around you killed.
Now, he yearned for that normal childhood most kids his own age had, quietly raising their farm animals and playing silly games with other children. Instead of learning how to dislocate a man’s shoulder, they learned how to build a pretend fort. Rather than practicing the best angle to drive an arrow past reinforced armor, they splashed about the local swimming hole and competed on who could hold their breath the longest. They played with wooden swords and pretended to slay a dragon, while Skyle had to pit his life against an army of giant spiders with the help of an ancient crystal phoenix. Children simply tapped their friends to bring them back to life after their mock battles were done, while Skyle had spilled innocent blood just so that his own might be spared.
It nearly broke his heart right then and there, to think back on Fierro Latimus’ last words to him, selflessly guiding the boy so that he might return home while the old warrior spilled the last of his blood on that foreign world so far from his own.
The look on Leena’s eyes after she saw the hail of stone and doom wailing for her death still awoke him with hot tears flooding in his eyes in the middle of the night. No words had been needed to learn of her pain and anguish. To see such a noble spirit embrace death as though it were a release, an undeserved mercy granted by a benevolent god, it truly shook Skyle to his core. Leena had been a good person, no matter what Leon said. This, Skyle had come to understand beyond all doubt in that one split second when he had looked into Leena’s eyes and seen not only the silent apology, but the gratitude that she would not have to bear Skyle’s death upon her soul.
“Skyle? Son, are you.. We should speak, but-” Kendric paused at the door, a rare look of indecision gnawing at his face.
“No, it is time. We can delay no further, Kennar. We must talk,” Adrienne said solemnly, and walked past her husband to enter the room.
Skyle felt tears rolling down his cheeks, but he did not care. This Adrienne Farrow, it was the new person he had glimpsed only briefly before. Now, she was here in truth and in full force. There was no longer any pretense, only raw, naked truth.
This woman, whom Skyle had mistaken for his mother, was a whole different creature altogether. She was cold and fearless, her stride purposeful and determined. Each step told of the countless enemies which had paved her way, until a bloody trail stretched far in the stranger’s wake.
Her shoulders were set high and wide, filled with a solemn pride that was so deeply rooted in power that it was no longer a vice, but rather became a virtue. The coldness in her eyes told Skyle of her life, and the desolate landscape which adorned it. She was the queen of everything, yet nothing at all.
Skyle shook his head, and bit his lips until he tasted coppery blood in his throat. The pain was a hateful reminder that this was no nightmare, but an inescapable reality become hell.
It was at this moment that a flash of pain cracked the surface of this icy mask. It was only then that Skyle realized his mother was still there, only buried deep inside. Now he had to wonder, just who was the true Adrienne Farrow? Or had there ever been an Adrienne at all?
His mother caught his look, but she did not avoid his gaze. She bowed her head in quiet acceptance, as though this were a price she had already been prepared to pay. Skyle could see from the tight lines of her face and the way her hands gripped the edges of her skirt that it was far from easy, but there was no hesitation in the way she stepped forward and refused to avoid her son’s searching gaze.
“Ma? What’s going on?” Skyle murmured, feeling both confused and lost. There was a more painful knife stabbing his heart, but he simply could not afford to turn his attention to that deeper wound just now. There was enough chaos in his mind without adding foul betrayal to the twisting maelstrom of his soul.
“Son, listen first. You must not-” Kendric began with an uncharacteristic tremor in his voice.
“No, he must hear it from me, Kennar.” Adrienne held up her hand, but was still unable drop the iron veil covering her eyes. She must know that each second she refused to drop this hideous mask to truly look at her son was another dagger driven into his heart, but still she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Only a stranger dwelled within those cold depths, and the unfamiliarity was squeezing the breath from Skyle.
“ Just what is she hiding from me?”
“Ma? Mother?” Skyle called out, and for once he did not mind how lost and small he sounded.
“Sky, my little Sky,” Adrienne began, her cornflower blue eyes slowly leaking tears that trailed down her cheeks. Each drop seemed to take with it another layer from that stranger’s mask. With every sentence, another tear would fall and another mask collapse. “True love is as vast and endless as the skies above. It is where your name comes from, you know? Love that cannot be contained. Love that knows no bounds, no limits. It is ever-present, all-conquering, and everlasting. This love, it is what defines you, my dear son. It was my hope that such love would never be lost or forgotten, and so I named you Skyle - my little piece of love that is as vast and endless as the sky.”
Skyle had never known this. His mother’s words produced a loud thump within his chest as hope was rekindled. This was his mother, and she was no stranger at all.
“I know, ma. I know how deep your love is, how enduring your kindness has been, how you will always love each one of us-” Skyle began, feeling ashamed of having doubted his own mother, even if for a single instant.
Adrienne suddenly let out a soft cry, like a wounded songbird who gifts one final note to the uncaring sky before taking a plunge from which there is no return. She threw her arms around Skyle and hugged him with all the desperation of a drowning woman barely keeping herself afloat. Her breath came in sobbing gasps as hot tears splashed his cheeks from above. Through his mother’s chest, Skyle could feel the unfettered stampeding of her heart madly escaping from a tenebrous past, toward the dark precipice of an unbearable future.
“I’m sorry, my little Sky. My baby, I am so sorry,” his mother kept repeating, and he could hear years of pent up guilt and tears in each hitch of her voice and gasp in her breath.
“Ma, it’s alright. It’s okay, I know you love me,” Skyle murmured, too confused by his mother’s unexpected breakdown to say anything else. If his father could be said to be the mountain he strove to climb each and every day, Skyle’s mother had been the air he breathed, the light that banished the dark, and the warmth that kept him going in the cold of night. “You have shown me what love really means. I get it, and I will remember it.”
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“Oh, my little Sky. You don’t understand. It is not my love which I wished to remind you of.” Skyle’s mother cupped his face between her trembling hands and gently drew his gaze up to meet her reddened, tear-streaked eyes. They flared into life even as her eyebrows trembled in the face of an unshakable truth.
“It is your love, my dear son, which I wished to remind myself of every morning. It was your warmth which I sought to imitate and reflect with each passing day. The love which you had so unselfishly shared with me, teaching me the true meaning of forgiveness and the value of redemption, where I had once believed myself hopelessly lost.”
Like a precious flower which blooms only under the dying trail of a falling star, the naked truth in his mother’s eyes unfolded in full bloom and drew a breathless gasp from Skyle’s pale lips.
“If I have loved you, my little Sky, it is only because you taught me how, and loved me first,” Adrienne whispered.
Skyle tried to shake his head, still unable to understand his mother’s words. His body was unable to hear his commands, frozen stiff except for the hot tears which spilled from his eyes and rolled down his face. His mind was asking why, yet his heart was saying that it was time.
At long last, it was time.
Skyle looked up into his mother’s eyes one last time. She nodded imperceptibly, but it was enough. There, past her tears, beyond the guilt and the fear, and cradled within the enduring fire of her love and faith for him, he found the answer he needed. There, he found the courage to face his past, the strength to open its doors, and the hope to arm himself against whatever lay beyond.
“Go. Fly far, far away, my little Sky, but always remember to come back home,” Adrienne whispered, taking out a small object from within the folds of her clothes.
She gently opened Skyle’s fingers, and laid it on the palm of his hand.
Skyle looked down, though he already knew what he would find.
It was the silver disk he had found in Sanctuary, shining brightly under the candle’s flickering light. On the corner, he caught the small shadow of a familiar shape. When he focused his full attention upon it, it unfolded like the gaze of the sun, bursting with starlight and flooding the entire room.
There, within its bosom, Skyle discovered the rune of the Goddess, blinding in its glory and bewitching in its charm.
Memory flooded back in a glorious flash. He cried out with joy as color, song and the kiss of a rose sundered the gates within his mind apart.
" Ria!"
Skyle's chest ached as he clutched the drop of liquid starlight with both hands to his heart. Blue-white lightning escaped from the cracks between his fingers, bathing the entire room in an ethereal light.
“ Go,” His mother mouthed to him, and Skyle found himself nodding.
It was time.
“ Ria, I’m coming,” Skyle whispered, then he was lost within the storm of starlight which enfolded him in its embrace.
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“Kennar, my little baby is gone,” Adrienne sobbed disconsolately from where she lay nestled within her husband’s embrace.
Knowing full well that no words could comfort her in this black moment which they had known would one day come, Kendric could only hug his wife tighter and speak with his heart the words his mouth could not find.
“Why, Kennar? Why did it have to be my baby? Why so soon? How could fate be so cruel to so gentle a soul?” Adrienne cried out, her voice breaking just as her heart had.
“We knew this day would come, Arianne. We knew, so why ask now?” Kendric said bitterly, his own voice cracking under the weight of years of pent up guilt towards loved ones, and fury at unkind fate.
“Don’t cry, Arianne. Why does the flower bloom when it knows winter will come? Because only from its withered petals can a new seedling grow. Why does the sun shine brightest right before night arrives? Because in its final farewell, it wants to burn its warmth deep in our hearts before we must face the cold of night.”
“Skyle, he’s hope. He blazes bright and hot in this one moment, so that a whole world of children may one day remember him for his sacrifice,” Kendric finished, speaking the words yet unable to bring himself to truly believe in them.
Remember his sacrifice? He would spill the blood of continents if it would sate fate’s cruel thirst. Other children? He would burn the world to save his own.
Adrienne could only shake her head, not trusting herself to speak without condemning the black fate which had befallen her most beloved child. In her grief, Adrienne began to drown in the pitch black depths of despair.
Grasping for anything that might keep her afloat, she turned first to faith. It was shallow and flawed, and therefore could not support her weight. Instead, it weighed her down and she sank faster still.
Her hand found hope, yet it too lay deeply wounded. Scarlet blood flowed from terrible wounds, and as her eyes found its gaze, it too breathed its last and surrendered to the dark tide.
Adrienne sank deeper.
Finally, she dug down deep within her own soul, and found a dazzling brilliance emanating from her boundless love for her family. Upon these firm foundations, had she built the fortress of her life. Now, when she most needed its strength, she found a sucking void where her deepest, most cherished love should always abide.
It finally broke her, and in her dark despair, she sank and did not float back up.
Adrienne died then, and she was brought back to life.
Kendric suddenly felt his wife grow still as a grave and cold as the moon. He shuddered then, for he knew this woman, and she was not his wife.
Kendric had once been a soldier, proud and strong. The very best of the best, undaunted by any danger, fearless in the face of any foe - that is, until he met her.
This woman, she had broken him as thoroughly as any man could be broken. First, she had torn down his strength. After that, she had shattered his confidence. Only then, had she finally broken his spirit.
It was in this dark abyss of despair that Kennar had first known the meaning of the word defeat. This was not loss in the face of battle, nor the burnt flag after a failed war.
Defeat was the void left by the true absence of hope. It was the death of purpose, and the burying of the present after the senseless murder of the future.
Now, she was back, and the world would tremble, then breathe its last.
“Baby, don’t,” Kendric whispered, his face ashen and his grief flaring anew.
“I will kill them,” she said with the cold finality which spoke, not of a threat, but a future fact.
“No, you must not,” Kendric begged, afraid and unashamed of it.
“They must pay,” she said, and it did not matter that the whole world was them, and only four people were not.
“Listen to me, please. Skyle-” Kendric began, but a wave of frost exploded within his arms and froze the words in his mouth.
“Sky, my little Sky ,” she cried, and only then did Kendric realize that even she had come to learn of love.
“Yes, Skyle will come back to us. He will come home,” Kendric whispered, more of a prayer than a promise.
“Sky, you must come home, my little Sky,” she whispered, then finally, mercifully, she closed her eyes and fell asleep.
Kendric breathed a sigh, though in truth he did not know whether it was one of relief, or disappointment.
For moments ago, back when the fate of the world had hung in the balance, just for one moment, he too had wished to wash the world in fiery lightning and watch as it rained down around him in ashes.
Just for a moment, for he too was a different man.
After all, he too had come to learn of love.