Chapter 17

A familiar figure approached Jennifer from out of the darkness, a hooded man with a large sack of weapons heaved over his shoulder. Something about the man seemed different, Jennifer, from this distance, couldn’t quite put her finger on exactly what gave her that impression, but the closer he came the more obvious it became. The man’s face held no scars. Slade didn’t smile when he saw her, but he gave a begrudging nod in her direction, in order to say, yes I do know you and I suppose I’d be willing to speak with you, the friendliest response Jennifer expected she’d get from him.

“Squawk took off.” The statement had an undertone of blame. Jennifer didn’t know what to say to that,

“Uh yeah… Sorry about that, we had a bit of a fight and-” Slade’s eyes made it clear he didn’t care, “but yeah… what are you doing out here”? The question hung there for a moment, Slade giving no indication if he’d heard it or if he’d be willing to answer it. Just as Jennifer decided to give up and make a swift exit, Slade spoke, montone and emotionless,

“You spoke to me about choice, about how the people who abused my weapons to hurt others did so on their own accord and that I was not to blame.” He stopped there, ten or so seconds went by before Jennifer realized he wanted some form of confirmation from her,

“Yep! Yes, I did say that.” He nodded and continued,

“But what you failed to mention is the choice I held, that I had an authority over those weapons and that I could choose to do with them what I please.” He stopped again and this time Jennifer nodded quickly, “The choices I make, the results that follow, I bear that burden. I may give my weapons out freely, knowing that some may die and some may live because of it. I may withhold my weapons and know that some may live and some may die because of it. And, in between those options there are numerous paths I could take.” He paused, Jennifer nodded with uncertainty, “The choices I make define me and they will define many lives around me, no man or woman lives in a vacuum, our actions have numerous consequences.” Jennifer wanted to make a rebuttal, but she couldn’t find the words. “I feel no shame in the past, I do not blame myself for the mistakes of man, but I will hold myself responsible for all actions I take from this point forward, I will choose my own destiny, acknowledging that, in doing so, I have played a role in the destiny of others.” Jennifer wanted to tell him he was wrong, she wanted to find something wrong in what he’d said, but she couldn’t, all she could do was think back to her home, to James… Destiny, whoever the hell he was, and to the Forms hiding away; none of them had ever given a damn about her, she was a burden, a tool, a means to an end, why should she have to care about any of them! This ran through her head, but none of it left her lips, the emotional ties weren’t grounded on any sort of logic, and she imagined the man before her had little patience for that sort of thing. “Jennifer, all of this being said, I wish to give you this.” He stretched out his hand to reveal a small leather sheath, large enough for a small dagger or knife. “You helped me to see the truth of my own existence, I wish to return the favor to you. If you are ever in need speak my name and I will appear. But I would ask that, before you speak my name, you are certain of what it is you desire. My time is quite valuable.” His face had remained unchanged, his tone had not shifted, but Jennifer couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d just made a joke.

He nodded in her direction and then walked away back into the night, leaving Jennifer alone with the sheath. With trembling hands she tied the sheath around her waist, her frozen fingers struggling with the knots, until it rested lazily against her hip. She peered into her bag and saw the two knives, identical save for the fact that one held all the power of Death within it, on this knife she’d tied a white piece of cloth from her sleeve around the handle, ensuring there wouldn’t be any unfortunate mishaps. She lifted the knife with the white cloth round the handle from her bag and sheathed it, feeling both terrified and empowered by its weight against her side, the power to kill Destiny.

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A few miles away, Slade’s words still nesting in her conscious, she began to loosen her hands from around her arms, her teeth slowly stopped chattering and a bead of sweat dripped lazily off her chin. At her feet lay browned and hardened grass, garnering her attention by the crunching sound made with every collision made with her boot. Finding this quite odd, yet still quite welcome, she proceeded cautiously until the dead grass ended and a familiar road began. The road, entirely thawed, offered Jennifer a nice, fairly even path to walk and a consistent direction to follow.

After walking the road for a while, Jennifer began to find the heat, once welcome and inviting, now unbearable and getting worse by the second, yet something about it felt strangely familiar. Sitting on the side of the road, staring off into the distance with a wistful smile, was a large broad shouldered man in fine physical condition and clearly unbothered by the heat. In fact, his ebony skin seemed to radiate heat, giving Jennifer all the info she needed.

“Enoch!” She shouted. Enoch looked up, a smile breaking out across his now rather mature face, and his arms opening wide to take Jennifer in. The two embraced, Jennifer feeling the full warmth of his body against hers, while it should have been scalding, it felt more like hugging a blanket fresh out of the dryer.

“You got so short!” Enoch commented as they stepped back to eye each other.

“Umm… nope, you just got really freaking tall.” Jennifer still had trouble believing this was the same frightened little skinny kid she had to coerce out of a cage.

“Hunh... “? Enoch considered that for a moment, “I suppose that explains why I keep getting vertigo.” He laughed, a deep rich sound that made Jennifer smile. “So where’s James”? The question was quite casual, there was no way he could’ve known how painful a question it was…

“Yeah… About that… He… He found his brother!” Enoch’s eyes lit up.

“No fooling?!”

“Yep! And they went back home which is what I’m doing now.” Her smile began to crack, she hoped Enoch wouldn’t notice, but of course he did.

“Where is he really Jennifer”?

“What do you mean he’s-”

“I’m not an idiot, what’s going on”? His eyes were so earnest, Jennifer couldn’t look at them for more than a second without being overwhelmed with guilt.

“I… I learned something about him that… that broke my trust.” Enoch sat back down on the side of the road and motioned for her to sit next to him.

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“Start from the beginning, I’ll listen for as long as you want to talk.” So Jennifer told him the whole story, starting with meeting Slade after they parted ways, to finding the Forms in the hideout, to her parting ways with James, to her regretting the decision, to finding the remains of the floating city, and finally her conversation with Death. She decided to leave out the parts about the weapon and Death’s offer. When she finished Enoch was staring off in the distance, his brow furrowed and clearly deep in thought. Jennifer shuffled around anxiously, waiting to hear his take on all of this.

“I lived in a cage Jennifer,” his breaking of the silence snapped her back to full attention, “a cage I could have left at anytime. I refused to leave because someone managed to convince me that the pain I’d feel if I left was infinitely greater than any pain I’d experience inside. Even after leaving the cage I still felt trapped, trapped by the fear of what I might do if I lost control, afraid to simply be… well to be me. But that cage had no lock either, and it took me months to fully realize that the only lock on that cage was the one I put there. I had no idea what would happen if I left that cage, if I allowed myself to be me again, and all the stories I made up in my head about what would happen somehow became so real to me, despite the fact that I’d just made them all up. I could blame other people, I could pin this all on the shady fellow who tricked me into that cage in the first place, but that’d be dishonest… You taught me that. The only way out of that cage, the only way I could ever dispel all of those stories I’d made in my head, the only way to undo all the lies I’d been told, was to open the door and find out. And Jennifer, when I opened that door again, I discovered that I had terrible control over my fire! I mean absolutely abysmal control! It’s a good thing y’all had left by that point because you both would’ve been incinerated for sure!” He laughed, Jennifer schooched away slightly, “But I also discovered that, through a little work everyday, I could gain more control and more control and more control. And, after practicing everyday for months, I realized that I’d finally gained enough control to feel comfortable being me again. But if I had listened to those stories, to those lies and let them define my perspective, I’d never have gotten to where I am today, able to hug someone without turning them to ash!”

“Why are you telling me all this”?

“Because Jennifer, you have these stories about who James is and what he’s after, but right now that’s all they are, stories. And I know it might feel safer to just believe them, never confirm them and never confront James about it, but that’s a lie. The only way out of this Jennifer, the only way out of this cage you’re in, is to find out what’s really on the other side of that door and face it head on. Maybe Death was lying, maybe he wasn’t, but you’ll never know until you face James in person. I’m not saying it’ll be easy, but, just like you told me, the first day of the rest of your life doesn’t start until you get out of that cage.” He put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her close, Jennifer leaned her head against his shoulder.

“Do you mind if I stay here and put off starting my new life for a bit”? Enoch smiled and the two sat together, staring off into the night sky, garnering the courage to open the door and see what lies on the other side.

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The sound of waves crashing against the shoreline sent Jennifer sprinting from Enoch’s side and off toward the beach. Her feet hit sand and she stumbled slightly before picking up her feet and arriving knee deep in the water, Enoch stayed a fair distance away, he had some bad memories when it came to water. Jennifer stared up at the starry sky, leaned back her head, cupped her hands around her mouth and, at the top of lungs, shouted,

“LADY MEEROUS!” Enoch tilted his head slightly, but Jennifer simply kept shouting. When she’d run out of breath, she placed her hands on her knees and huffed deeply, the burning in her throat nowhere near as disappointing as the missing sea monster. Jennifer placed her hands on her hips and stretched back, and let out a massive shrug, “Maybe this is the wrong ocean…”

Enoch let out a startled yelp as the water a quarter mile from Jennifer began to churn and bubble furiously, mist spraying from geysers in every direction, the display made Jennifer smile. The serpent broke through the waves, water spraying every which way, the small light from Solaris barely able to light more than a tenth of her body at one time. The noble serpent wound round the waters, her body in continual motion as she looped large slews of herself up out of the water, creating the effect of a monumental snake poised and ready to strike. The serpent’s head lifted nearly a hundred feet out of the water, curving at the neck and bringing the head down to look upon Jennifer’s comparatively miniscule frame.

“Duchess Jennifer,” Meerous hummed, enticing an ear to ear grin from Jennifer, “you have returned, I trust you have brought me great tales from your adventures”? Jennifer curtsied low, to happy to complete the task properly and slipping and falling into the water. Lying in the water she burst into laughter, quickly followed by Meerous’ rumbling chuckle.

“I missed you so much!” Jennifer exclaimed, “I have so much to tell ya! Oh, and thanks for all the fish!”

“I’ve missed you too Jennifer, the ocean’s felt lonely since you and James left on your quest. I can only assume that you succeeded, seeing as you’re here and James is not.” Jennifer hung her head low, Meerous sighed, “Start from the beginning.”

So again Jennifer recounted the events of her adventures since leaving Meerous’ oceans, still leaving out her experience on the battlefield, her possession of the weapon and Death’s offer.

“So you get it don’t you? He betrayed me, even if Death lied about some of it I know he didn’t lie about all of it, James isn’t human and he kept that from me, kept that from all of us, who knows what else he kept from us?!” Meerous brought her head down to Jennifer’s level, shrinking as she did so. Once her head sat at Jennifer’s eye level, Meerous softly nuzzled Jennifer, allowing her to collapse onto her snout. Meerous spoke, Jennifer could hear the humming through her scales,

“I’ve done a lot of thinking while you were away Jennifer, about William, about humans, about me and… and who I want to be. And, looking back at my life I… I wouldn’t change a damn thing.” Jennifer looked up in surprise, looked into the great serpent’s eyes to some clarity within them, clarity that was, at one time, simply pain. “Jennifer the life I lead alone in these waters never struck me as lonely until I met William, and that made it all the more painful when I lost him, when I lost everything… But I’d do it all again, I’d face all the pain and heartbreak again, and that all started when I met you.” The two locked eyes and Jennifer began to see tears, “The way you spoke to me, the way you looked at me, it all reminded me of him. If I had been afraid to accept how much I longed to feel that kind of connection again, if I had stubbornly stuck to my belief that I could never trust another human again I… Well I would have missed out on someone as brilliant as you. I’m not saying you should forgive James, I’m not saying you should trust him, but don’t be me, don’t let your life be ruled by regret and anger. If you still care for him, if you still have any love left for him, go and find him, yell at him, shout at him, hit him a few times for good measure, but fight, fight for what you have. And if it all fails, if he’s as bad as Death says, if he fails to see reason, then at least you tried. And, no matter what happens, just know that you’ll always have a home here.” Jennifer, her arms wrapped around the noble serpent’s snout, rested against her smooth, cool scales, and whispered,

“Thank you.”

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When Jennifer awoke she realized that Meerous had moved her onto a patch of soft sand a fair distance from the water, she and Enoch sat a couple yards away chatting, a small fire crackled next to Jennifer, she’d never felt safer… She let out a mighty yawn and stretched her out her arms, gaining the attention of both Meerous and Enoch, who seemed happy to see her finally awake. Jennifer rose slowly to her feet, patting the sand off her legs and stumbling awkwardly over to the pair, her legs not quite as awake as the rest of her.

“So, what’s the plan Jennifer, because I’ve got nothing else to do.” Enoch laughed, just becoming painfully aware how true that was…

“Yes Duchess Jennifer, what new venture is in store for you”? Meerous hummed. Jennifer looked up at the both of them, hands on her hips and a wicked grin on her face,

“Lady Meerous, Enoch, we’re goin after James.”