There is too much a sense of innocent joy in Meli for anyone to be hurt by anything she says. I knew she was just pulling my leg so I tried to hide the way I felt. But I was at a vulnerable moment when a joke like this was bound to backfire and hurt me. It is amazing how finely tuned to me Claudia has become. I saw in her eyes that she had picked up my feelings. Not only the lowering of my self-esteem, but also my need that my Meli not be hurt. The sparks in her eyes faded and gently she asked Meli to leave her questions for later - and to make sure no one else comes either. Meli had been back home for minutes before she became aware of the possibility of the damage she may have caused, so well had Claudia handled it.

Previous Post 162

618

We wandered amongst the Sunday crowd at the old port and finally chose a place that seemed to be the meeting place for the young of Paphos. Just as I love the presence of children, so do I enjoy being surrounded by young people, though many of them, even at sixteen, seem to be more cynical than I recall being. I ordered a cappuccino while Claudia had an artificial and watery strawberry milkshake.

“I think you made a mistake bringing me into your group or circle. Robbie, you already have too many females. You really can’t handle that many can you? I mean the teasing part, they all love teasing you. I’m surprised you haven’t had enough by now.”

“You have it the wrong way sweetheart, I can’t have enough. If even one of them said something so as to hurt me, without love, I do not know if I could handle it. But sharing a link as we all do and feeling the love...”

I stopped as a young girl paused by our table. I half remembered seeing her at some time when we were wandering around town, coming out of a school with a friend of hers. I had noticed her for not only was she pretty, but she seemed to give off a feeling of being a person who light-heartedly enjoyed her youth and good looks. It saddened me to see how she has mutilated herself, her lovely body, with a number of piercings. Curious at her obvious wish to speak to me, I looked at her with a smile.

“Can I help you?”

“Are you Robert?”

Now I was truly mystified. How did she know my name. She was obviously a Cypriot and her English was fairly heavily accented. For a moment I wondered whether she had seen me in Athens, but I sensed she has not met me before.

“Yes.”

“Is this Cherine?”

“No. Where do you know of me from? I do not recall ever meeting you.”

She was delighted. “Oh I know about you. And about Cherine and Dominique. This one I do not know. She must be one of your other girls - is she the one from Sweden?”

It was difficult to take offence or get frightened. She was almost hugging herself with the joy of her secret. Without wishing to, I smiled back at her. I could sense she does not have any gifts. “Go on, tell us, how do you know about us?”

“Maybe I too have a secret eh? I know you through somebody else, but I am not allowed to say his name. He told me you rented a flat here, but he told me it is a secret. I promise I won’t tell anyone…you are not going to write about meeting me in your diary, are you?…It doesn’t really matter, I suppose.”

“What is your name?” I was trying to pick up from her thoughts some information, but it was impossible. Her mind was jumping too fast from this to that and all I could catch were disjointed glimpses and sense her amusement at her success in causing me discomfort, at being a woman of mystery.

“If I tell you, will you keep it a secret too?”

Before I could reply, a young man, obviously in the army, called out to her, “Estella, ella tora. Prepei na figo se ligo (come, I have to leave soon)”

“I guess your name is not a secret after all. Your boyfriend?”

“Yes. I must go.” As the girl was about to leave with her boyfriend she stooped and whispered in Claudia’s ear and left. Before I could ask anymore questions, she was gone without a goodbye.

619

“Robert, what are you going to do? How does she know about you?”

“For some reason I’m not worried love. She seems a little bit flighty, you know, scatterbrained, but I sense no evil in her. She will not be a threat, though I am very curious about how she knows about us. I could not pick up any sense of her sharing our gifts. What did she tell you, did she give you any clues?” It was a puzzle, but I wanted to shelve it, determined to solve it later. Claudia was disturbed however and could not relax.

“She told me not to worry, she will not even tell her boyfriend about us. She wants me to say hello to Cherine for her.”

“There is a certain sense of familiarity in that. Damn! I really have to find out now.” A thought struck me. “I wonder. Could it have been Andrea? Or Britta.”

“No.” She answered flatly. “They would not betray you. They both think of you as some sort of god. Especially after you brought all the girls back to life.” She laughed. “They certainly would not betray you to a girl like her, I don’t see how anyone could trust her with a secret.”

“Mankind has never hesitated to betray their gods. But you are right, it was not them. Estella my girl, I am going to find out what your secret is.” I was more worried about who this person who has told her about us is - he must have gifts of his own. It does not automatically mean he must be categorised as a danger, just that he is a person of interest.

Dommi was convinced I was not worried because Estella is a young and pretty girl. She claimed I was thinking with my balls instead of my brains. I was very surprised when Cherine took my side. She told us that the girl means no harm, that I am right, she is ‘nice’. I thought to myself, with amusement, ‘well Estella, whoever you are, you have just been given the “kiss of death”, you have been called “nice”.’ I had a feeling she would not like being called ‘nice’, that her self image is more along the lines of ‘femme fatale’. Cherine however is always right. She is nice, with the innocent heart of a child.

It had been an interesting diversion, helping me regain some of my equilibrium, but I still felt ‘down’. The knowledge that I had acted so stupidly, nearly costing us my Wendy, was tearing away at my self-confidence. I suppose I had thought I am incapable of doing anything to harm my girls, I had begun to think of myself as infallible - which is always a dangerous state of mind to be in.

I am conditioned to react to anything of this sort by trying to withdraw, but I have learnt the folly of that and was trying to find a more balanced way of handling my failure, even though the steel band I spoke of earlier was slowly, bit by bit, unravelling. Under these conditions I was not in a very amorous mood. Claudia did not sulk, it was more as if she were studying me, waiting to see how I will react, how I will solve my problem.

“I wish we had changed you, made you just a bit older. I really would have liked to have you hug me.”

She left her seat and came and sat on my lap, her arms around my neck. “Why are all of you so afraid of showing you love each other? You are worse than the Scandinavians. Nobody will think it strange that I hug you Robbie. Lots of kids love older people; their brothers, parents, uncles…and I love you.”

I squeezed her and kissed her cheek. “I nearly cost you your best friend, but you still love me?”

“Are you feeling sorry for yourself Robbie? I never liked people who feel sorry for themselves.”

“You are going to be worse than Cherine. With you around I am going to be forced to walk the straight and narrow.”

“What is that?”

“Ask the girls.” I tried a change of tack. “How about we get out of here?”

“You still want to visit my sister?”

620

“No, one tactless Swedish girl at a time please.”

She almost reacted to that. I could see her restrain herself, though I knew I might have been better off having her hit me. Like Cherine, I guess she does not forget and forgive easily.

“Claudia, can we return home please? I promise we will return, how about Thursday we come back and stay until Sunday night. Hopefully all will be better by then. Wendy is on my mind, I feel I need to be with her.”

“I was wondering when you would tell me. Thursday?”

“Yes love.”

They were all waiting for us. Claudia disappeared into the mob of girls while I stood, uncertain as to what they were going to do or say. I saw Wendy give Claudia a hug and she came over to me.

“Can we go to my studio?”

“Nobody going to climb into me first? Not even Dommi?”

“Please Robbie?”

We took the old fashioned route. We actually climbed up the stairs. She closed the door behind us. I turned to her just in time for me to be able to put my arms around her as she threw herself at me. I picked her up and she hugged herself to me tightly, a sudden storm of sobbing shaking her.

I had expected accusations; I had expected to be made to feel small and stupid. This however was the worst. I had no words to comfort her. All I could do was hold on while I found myself adopting the motions one makes when comforting a baby. Slowly her sobs ebbed and she clung to me, her face hidden between my shoulder and neck.

“Robbie, can I come into you?”

“You want to come into my mind?”

“Please.”

I made myself as comfortable as I could on her one chair and holding her, opened up to her. I did not know whether I was doing the right thing, letting her see for herself. I felt her as she examined my feelings and memories.

I waited with baited breath as I felt her return to her own mind. She pulled back and looked up at me. Her eyes were two dark pools and her face was solemn. “Your mind is like my songs. It always speaks to me and it is beautiful. How can you love me so much?”

“How can I not? My own little Wendy.”

“You lied to me Robbie. All of you did, especially Cherine.”

“?”

“She told me never to be afraid, that you can never lose. That you will always protect us. You lost the fight with my…dad. He would have killed you if you had not come back.”

It was easy to understand how she had misunderstood. “It is not me who protects, I am not a fighter and I am quite weak. I spent a lifetime of being beaten up at school. It is my protector that watches over you. It refused to help me with your dad.”

“No, I do not like your protector. It did not just refuse to help you, it slowed you down on purpose, to make sure he won. It would have let him kill you. I hate it!!”

621

I recognised the truth in what she said. It had hindered, slowed me down. With my ability to flicker through time and space, I should have killed him, however slow my reactions. Anger flared up in me for a moment. Common sense won.

“Be grateful it did love. I had to learn a lesson. The agony of that knife entering my guts, slicing me up, I promise - it taught me a lot. First of all, it taught me to think first next time. Second, I broke my own most important rule. The first time I killed him, that was bad enough, but at least I did it to protect you and there was justification for my unreasoning anger. This time I went to kill a man for crimes he had not committed yet. That was wrong.”

Suddenly I was back in the lounge facing a sea of extremely angry faces.

“God you can be stupid!!” Dommi shouted at me. I just stared, knocked off balance by the sudden jump and change.

Cherine came up to me. Her face was a tight mask of anger. “How can you be so stupid Robert! If you had killed him you would have saved her mother’s life. How can that be evil? What you did was very wrong - but only because you did not show Wendy the respect of asking her, giving her the choice.”

It was my gentle Meli who came to me, her hand guided me to a seat. She sat by me.

“Robbie mou, we all understand. You are an adult and you are the protector. At times you feel you must make the decisions because we are either children or babies. Robbie, none of us are living the lives of children or babies. When you have to take a decision to protect us, you must do so and if we are angry or hurt that you did not ask us, it is our problem to deal with.

But this time Wendy was not in danger. You lashed out, it was like you needed to erupt out of your skin from the pain and anger and you did, you found a way to travel in time and tried to kill the cause of the pain. You were not protecting, so the protector did not help you. Wendy is right. We are all very angry that it nearly had you killed. But it was also right.”

I was astounded to sense that none of my loves disagreed with her - about my doing what must be done, regardless of their feelings.

Wendy was still sitting on my lap. She suddenly turned and gave them all a huge grin. “Well it worked. He let me into his mind and I saw.” She stared at all the puzzled faces. “I know I am the least pretty of all of you. I could not understand why he would love me when he has you. Claudia, his mind, his heart, it was full of love for me. It was real. His love was so strong he could not bear to see me cry. He fought without his protector, again and again, for me!!”

Next Post 164

^{For those readers who have not understood, when they speak using telepathy, what they say is enclosed within stars, and the thoughts exchanged are in italic.
e.g *Hi, I bet you are wishing you could read thoughts.*?}

I hope you enjoy reading this story of fantasy, adventure and love. Yes, most of all, always of empathy and love.

Αλέξανδρος Ζήνον Ευσταθίου

(Alexander Zenon Eustace)
^{1st July, 2018}
* posted on Steemit 1st July, 2018



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