17] Looking for Group?

I'm not going to tell you where they met, other than it was in the basement of a repurposed church.

I’m not going to give you their real names, although you can probably find out Neal’s real name. He only recently got the amulet that lets him look human again, but after he made his way home he left his house a few times and the police detained him.

The local news covered it, but so many things like that are happening these days that it didn't make the national news. Either that or most people don't want to hear it so they can pretend things are still normal.

Things were never normal, it’s just now that it’s more obvious.

The group met on the Brody Foundation forums, and when they found out Brother Jude was in the same area as several of them, or at least close enough to get there by one way or another, they decided to meet up.

Jude was the one who suggested inviting me. Not only because Imogene could drop me off so I didn’t have to pay for a ticket, but because he thought others could be inspired to start groups like this themselves.

A Returned Support Group.

I protested that, “I’m not a Returnee.”

Brother Jude sighed at me over the phone, "You lost your Mom, and gained a sister. It's close enough, besides, I think it would help if people heard our stories, and it might help us to tell them."

I reached the address I was given and made my way downstairs. Jude told me there would be donuts and coffee, but I brought a jug of cider to share since I found out I didn't actually like coffee once I stopped putting in eight pumps of flavored creamer.

Who knew?

I nodded at the kid carefully eating a powdered jelly as his eyes lit up on seeing me set the cider on the table and poured some into his hastily grabbed mug.

Then Jude called us over to start the meeting. I snagged one of those donuts they cover with nuts.

It turned out to be maple flavored, and it had been a long time since I allowed myself anything that nice. All by itself it made the trip worth it.

The kid’s folding chair gave out a metallic complaint as he carefully sat down. Even with him leaning forward to keep some of his weight on his feet.

Jude looked around the room with a beaming smile. He was a middle aged man and was actually wearing a dark brown monk’s robe with a light brown hooded mantle. It was belted with a braided green and white belt knotted around a large brass loop rather than a rope, and he had a full head of hair instead of the shaved bald spot.

"We have a few new faces here today, including Jim Brenner of The Last Goodbye blog. He won't be taking anyone's picture or using anyone's real name, so there is no need for anyone to worry."

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"My name, for those who don't know is, Jude, which makes me wonder now what name Jim will use for me."

Jude. Patron saint of lost causes. But I was thinking more of the Jude from the Beatles song, it seemed like a good name for a therapist. Mom was a fan so I grew up listening to them.

There was a murmur of several Hi Judes, and a few looks, some of them unhappy, shot my way.

“I got pulled to another world because a member of a group of adventures wished out loud they had a priest who could save their own healer who was injured badly enough to have knocked her unconscious.”

“They didn’t know a ring they had found had a Djinn in it waiting for a chance to grant a wish to free itself, and that for some reason it decided to reach all the way to Earth to offer a lay brother with Paramedic training a chance to save someone’s life.”

Jude looked down at the floor for a moment before giving out a short laugh. “I had been questioning my calling, wondering if I was just trying to hide away from the world.”

“When I got the offer, I realized I didn’t want to hide away, I wanted to help others. That it was being in the service of others that I needed, not hiding away behind prayers."

Leaning forward, he clasped his hands together. “I saved Emilia with the healing powers being taken to that world gave me, and I saved many others over the years I was there. All twenty of them. But then someone in authority caught up with Jazeel, the Djinn who had brought me there and she was forced to send me back, a mere two years later, Earth time.”

He shook his head. "I don't know if I would have chosen to come back if given the choice. I had a life there. I had more to do." He grinned a little. "But even on this world, I can still help others. I just have to be sneaky about it since magical healing is only legal until it interferes with someone's profits and they do something about that."

Looking around at the group, he asked. “So who would like to go next.”

The boy hesitated, then pulled out a pendant on a thick silver colored chain from under his shirt. As he lifted it over his head he had to pull it to one side and then the other to clear the horns that became visible as he transformed from a young Hispanic man in jeans and a powdered sugar dusted hoodie, into a huge Minotaur.

Bull’s head, hooves, fur, the whole bit.

His voice was deep enough that it was no wonder he hadn't said anything to me earlier, the pendant must not hide his voice.

“My name is Neal, and I died.”

I winced and said “Hi Neal” like a few of the others.

"I ended up in the body of a Taurick named Klerin after his soul got eaten by something unnatural. Whatever it was, it couldn't touch my soul for some reason. Esben, a Kitsune sorcerer tried to explain it once, but I was freaking out too much still to pay attention.”

He shrugged, and his chair groaned. "I finished Klerin's mission and asked to go home as my reward. I was told I couldn't go back to my body, so I had to take this one back with me, or jump into someone else's."

Clenching his hand together, and gritting his teeth, he continued. "It didn't seem right to steal someone else body. I had met Klerin's parents and they tried to convince me I was still him but possessed or confused. I didn’t want to do that to someone else’s graving family, and this body would have just dropped dead.”

“My little sister is still too scared of me to even come close. But my Dad was happy to get me back no matter what. My Mom… she keeps telling me I should have come back as a human, like somehow if she keeps saying it I can go back and time and do it that way.”

He shook his head. “I just don’t understand her.”

No one else felt like telling their stories, instead, they talked about how no one who hadn't been taken could understand what it was like to spend years, even a lifetime somewhere else, as someone else, and then try to fit back into their old lives.

Or worse, try to start a new life because the people from their old life were gone or didn't want them, while people back where they had been taken would have been glad if they stayed.

I could feel the hostility since I was taking in all their stories, and not giving anything back.

So, “My name is Jim. My mother was taken, and I’m terrified that I will be too.”

I got my own Hi Jims.

“At first I was afraid because I didn’t think I was prepared, and being taken would just lead to me suffering and dying. Then as I got myself more and more ready, ready enough I was almost looking forward to it. To go somewhere, to have a chance to have something I didn't think this world had for me anymore. A life, a future, maybe someday a family.

“Then, Imogene, my sister showed up.”

“And suddenly I realized I had something to lose and I’m terrified again.”

They didn't have anything to say to help me. But saying it, putting it into words, and sharing, it helped somehow.

Maybe that’s why Mom started this blog. Maybe that’s why I continued it.

Addendum:

Imogene reinforced the Short Cut she had made for me to go there, making it more or less permanent.

This week I’m bringing the apple cider jug filled up with sugar free lemonade. Cider and a doughnut is too much sugar for me in one evening if I want to keep the pounds off, even if Neal finished off the entire jug of cider before I got a second glass.