Little Cherine Book 02 - BPost005
Gradually I ‘awoke’ to the sensation of travelling at impossible speed. I saw the light of humanity rushing to us. I wondered why they were travelling to me. Then I sank into a deep long sleep once again.
741
742
I was being shaken violently. “Robbie wake up. Wake up. Cherine is gone.”
I thought it was a continuation, I knew she was gone, then realised it was Claudia screaming at me.
But one thing had not changed; the link was broken, just a faint echo of what it had been. I grabbed Claudia and shook her, then reaching for Dommi I shook her as hard as I could.
“Do not let them die. The two of you, fight it.” I yelled at them until I saw I was getting through to both. I picked up Samantha by the legs and started spanking her bottom. Claudia attacked Wendy while Dommi did the same to Diana. I grabbed her face and screamed at her, “Don’t you dare die, it will kill the twins. I can’t bring them back. Fight damn you, fight!!”
743
“Girls, keep on fighting. Do not despair, I am going after her. I will bring her back.”
I took one last look at her poor body, feeling my healer fighting in her to prevent any decay. It was losing the battle. I jumped at the side table and smashed the glass. Taking a piece I cut deeply into her chest, grabbed Dommi and slashing her arm I placed it wound to wound. The healer quickly joined the vessels and helped her heart pump for both bodies.
I lay back and flew to the void.
A Sparkler was waiting for me!
The green cloud was so close it covered half of the void. I was convinced it had taken my Cherine and I flew into the heart of it to find Solomon. I vowed I would kill every last one of them if they did not return her. The cloud opened for me and the greenness within me began to buzz till the sound became the echo of waves breaking upon a shore. I sped there.
“We arrived at an opportune time Robert. We recognised your dance partner, found it in distress, the void consuming it. We argued you sent it to the void, you wanted the void to consume it. We argued we have been wrong before, we could be wrong now. We have captured the dancer. Have you come to collect the soul? We feel strong emotions.”
“Solomon, you have her?”
“It is a female of your species? Yes, we have her. She has been fighting us, wanting the void.”
“How can I speak to her. She thinks I am dead, lost. She is trying to find me.”
A green Sparkler appeared, landing on him. As it touched him it flared and the tattered remains of my Cherine floated between us.
"Cherine. I am alive. It was a nightmare we had. Dommi is with us." I kept on repeating myself, also using the voice I have in this strange Sparkler World.
"Robert? What’s wrong? You woke me…where are we? I don’t feel well, I feel weak."
“We had a joint nightmare love. As in the dream, you abandoned your body and me, to search the void. Even in dreams you are my foolish brave heart. The void was consuming you, but luckily Solomon had returned and recognised you. They saved you for us. Come to me my love, let my love strengthen you.”
She flowed into me and I felt the link grow within us, strong and vibrant again. Without needing a word she sent it out to the others.
“Solomon, I am in your debt. Should you need anything...”
“We need to know why you summonsed us to return.”
“I will answer, I had a good reason, but will you give me time to first return my love to her body before it is too late? I will return soon.”
“We can wait.”
I opened my eyes to see Dommi removing her arm from Cherine. I waited until she opened her eyes and then kissed her lightly.
“You nearly got away. Surely you did not think it would be that easy?” She grinned at me and whispered, “silly”.
Alki leaned over and asked, “She is recovering? She will be well?”
“Aye captain, she will. Our prisoner tried to escape, but our allies, the Sparklers caught her and kept her prisoner for us.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
744
“Just feeling delirious Alki. Just a little crazy at the thought that I nearly lost her.” The shakes hit me then and my teeth were chattering in some horrible language I do not understand. Sorry, I do, they were speaking of my terror at nearly losing forever my first true love.
Alki held me and I wondered, was I shaking so hard or was he shaking too?
My fingers would not let me part them from the skin of my beloved. They lightly touched the fading wound on her chest and searched her cheeks as the blood returned to flush them. Her face was nothing anyway, but two huge dark eyes that stared into mine. There was a feverish glow to them that held me.
“I thought the dream was real. I thought it was real.”
“It seems we three shared it. Take a look at your pappou, how shaken he is.”
Lovingly she ran her fingers up his hairy arm while I checked out everyone else.
“Dommi love, come here please, let one of the others hold our babies. We need you here.”
She sat by Cherine and looked at us, waiting to hear what is on our mind. We, all three stared back with eyes full of love. She grew uneasy.
“What is this about?”
“Remember that afternoon in Ydra, when I told you to decide and you went upstairs and packed your suitcase and I thought you were leaving us?” She nodded. “Cherine, Alki and I, we had a dream about that day. I would like you to come into my mind and see it.”
When it was over we sat holding her, letting her weep.
“Cherine was sleepwalking. She went to the void, could not find me and tried to join me by letting the void consume her. Thank god Claudia was strong enough to realise Cherine and all of you needed help and she woke me. We owe her our lives. By the way, sorry I had to slash your arm. It must have hurt a lot.”
“I knew what you were doing, but I was so terrified that we were losing Cherine I did not notice the pain.”
“Well Alki? Who started the dream?”
“I do not know. It was the most real dream I have ever had.”
“I’m not surprised. It had three people in it and all three of those people were linked to the dream. That explains what happened to Cherine. She could sense both of us so that made the dream a reality for her. That is why, when she left us in the dream to search for parts of me, she actually did so in real life.”
“I hope this is the ‘real life’ Robbie.”
“This is not the time for that kind of comment Meli. Sorry love, I’m edgy. Still shaking at the thought of losing you all again.”
Cherine said, her voice filled with love, “It showed us something very important Robert. Sometimes we make Dommi think we have forgotten how important she is to us. Now she has seen. Without her so many things would have gone wrong. You were right, she is the one who makes us a family.”
“Pappou?”
Alki was caught by surprise. He stared at Claudia and I know she saw his response. Softly he answered, “Nai kori mou?”
“You should have seen Robert. You would have been so proud! When he saw Cherine was dead and the link fading, he did not get all depressed and want to die. He fought with all of us. He hit Samantha, kept smacking her little bottom. He shook Dommi so hard her teeth must have been smashing into each other. When he smashed the glass and took a piece and sliced open the chest of Cherine I thought he had gone crazy, but then he cut Dommi badly, so that blood was spurting out of her arm. He put her arm to Cherine’s chest and I remembered that was how he saved Cherine when she was shot. Pappou, he says he cannot hurt us, but he hurt so many without crying or hurting. It was like he was in a battle…”
745
“I was love. The most important one, the battle to save all those I love.”
“Was it the protector in you Robbie?”
“Wendy love, I had not thought of that. No, it was not. It was just your Robbie.”
She threw her arms around me. “I’m so glad!” How it thrilled me to have my little Wendy proud of me.
The bed was a mess, blood all over and someone had thrown up. I left the others to comfort each other and discuss this weird interruption of our happiness and got clean bedding, shooing them as I changed and made the bed. I looked around for Meli.
“Come here, love.”
“It’s not my turn to make the bed. Anyway, I only slept here as a baby.” As she spoke she came to help.
“Not the bed love. The Sparklers are here. I need to bring Solomon to your world. Will you allow Sparklers in - their soul only, not the part that stings.”
“Robbie, you should never ask me. It is your world, I am only looking after it for you.”
“No love. Not mine. Even if I should choose to live there someday, I need your permission.”
I bet there will be some cynics out there who say to themselves, he only talks like that because he knows it will make them love him even more. They are of course forgetting that the girls live within me too, as I do in them. One false note and they would know immediately. Of course it makes me happy when I say the right thing and I feel the swell of love in their hearts for me. But then, unfortunately, I so often also say the wrong thing. Let them try and explain (the cynics) why it is that at such moments their hearts flood me with love so often. My words are only an indication of how I perceive our relationship. Respect for each other is the key to love lasting for the length of time we hope to live.
I explained to everyone of my promise to Solomon and that I have to return and try and take him to Meli's world. I could not resist pulling Samantha's leg a little.
“Sam, I hope you are not going to claim I’m contaminated again.” Even though I grinned I sensed the hurt in her so I made an instant decision. “The reason I ask you is because I want you to come with me. After all, I think we need to have an alien expert and you are our best choice” She rewarded me instantly with a hug and the pride that shone in her. I remembered my promise.
“Wendy love, I may need a translator again. Be on standby. Can you prepare something for our friend Solomon, I did promise him you would sing for him again.” I decided if I started kissing anyone goodbye I’d be here another hour, so I just waved goodbye to them all and lay down, Sam in my arms.
“Your female is recovered?”
“Solomon, I do not know what you think of, the image you have, but Cherine is not just my female. She is the softest most wonderful female, but she is also fiercer than any warrior should I be in danger. I have an important question to ask you. Is it possible for you to come with me, in spirit form, to a strange world that does not exist yet.”
“Your question by its form is impossible.”
“If I can go there, can you follow? I think you would have no problem. This meeting place, to me it looks like a shore with waves murmuring as they break upon the sand. What is this world?”
“It is a world we created in our imagination, taken from scenes you sent us. We wanted you to not fear.”
“This world I speak of, it is a world that was created in the mind of my wife. Once there it may be necessary for you to take a form, as you have here, so that you may interact with those of that world and learn something very important. You know that my name for your race, because of the visual appearance in our minds, is Sparklers. A Sparkler could not enter such a world as the world is in a mind and that mind is the mind of an infant.”
746
“Such as this one who stands by you?”
“Yes.”
A tendril, insubstantial but glowing reached from him and touched her. She did not flinch but reciprocated, sending her own motes to him. She let me know that she did not send motes of love. She sent those of her curiosity, the need to learn and grow. His had been of a cold clinical examination.
“I think what my daughter sent you was of far more value to the future of our relationship than what you sent her. What she sent you Solomon was an act of a friend, her wish to get to know you. Yours was impersonal and without betraying what kind of mind you have. Are you afraid of her?”
Sam gasped with dismay in my mind. Solomon became a cauldron of swirling motes. I sent him a laugh. “I upset you Solomon? That is good, for I hope you know me well enough now, to know I never speak to offend. But I have noticed that each time I upset you, it causes you to think, or re-think.”
“I was not upset, you miscalculate. I was amused. We have existed from the time before your sun was formed, before the cloud of it was a cloud. Yet here we stand, the ancient and the new and the ancient is learning. I wonder Robert, will the new be equally open to learning from us?”
“We thirst for knowledge. It has been the driving force of our race.”
“I will attempt to crossover to this strange world with you.”
“One thing more. My original description was correct. It is a world in her mind that will exist in reality someday, already sending their own souls to the void.”
“If this is true, then time has spun full wheel and a new time has been born. That would make it easier for us to understand these sudden changes.”
I thought to myself, if that is what it takes to open your mind, you are welcome to the theory. Sam giggled at me. *You really are impossible! I love having you for a dad.* *Just you wait until I get old and eccentric.*
We arrived at the field that seems to have become our entry point. Sam was delayed, but not by long. Her friend Ordinx arriving with her.
“Solomon and Ordinx, it is time you meet each other. Solomon, our friend is also of an ancient race, he is of those Worlds you saw beyond us. They have spent most of their existence fleeing you, sacrificing a few of their Worlds each time so that the majority could escape. I do not introduce you so as to reproach you. That would be presumptuous of me.
Recently we brought Ordinx here as a guest at the celebration of the birth of a wife of mine. He learnt something that I suspect will change their future. Since you are in the same process, why not join forces in your learning and perhaps also grow to understand each other. Where there is true understanding, I suspect hate has a difficult time growing.”
“As your guests then.”
“I agree.”
“Father. He means you are guaranteeing peace between them.”
“Neither of them would insult me by breaching my guarantee, love. If you wish to grow beyond the boundaries of your own mind, do not fear to enter the strange lands of strange minds.”
“I see your presence upon this world has been established.”
“You mean me Solomon? In what way.”
“I see they have a plant named seed of prince Robert. Is that not in your honour?”
“I’ll kill that girl.” I softly muttered to myself.
747
“Whatever for my love?”
“Meli! You are here. Solomon, this is my wife Meli, the infant I spoke of.”
“Robert, are you certain your present appearances reflect your true shape?”
“Yes.”
“It is curious. Ordinx, have you encountered any other species where their infants are so large, in comparison to the size of the parent?”
“My apologies. I was talking about the general shape. You wish to see them as infants. Girls, please?”
He stared at the babies. This in turn made me stare at him. I had not noticed that he had taken on a definite form, no longer misty and vague as at the shore. He was far taller than I, but with a frail look to him. I decided he is a damn good psychologist. Since they have no such form as a race, this was chosen to be commanding of respect yet not threatening.
Without hesitation Solomon picked up Meli and brought her face close to his. She stared into his eyes and put her finger to his forehead.
“Please take her.” I jumped and grabbed her as he collapsed to his knees. Shit but I was scared. What had Meli done to him!
He waved his hand at me, “Please, it is my fault. I asked her.” The girls resumed their ten year old forms and put their clothes on again.
“Are you certain? How can there be so many worlds?”
“Is there a limit to the imagination Solomon?”
“No lady Melina. It would seem not, for you!”
“Solomon, they are arriving.”
“They are of the people of Ordinx.”
“Yes and no. I would prefer they tell you and let you see within their minds.”
The introductions made, I left them to it. I took Meli aside. “You are making me the laughing stock of every bloody world. Get rid of those flowers, or at least change their name.”
“You are always telling us to tease you. I see you are not so tolerant after all.” That stumped me. I considered and decided I better ask her to forgive me for demanding, but she interrupted me. “I take pity on you my prince. The embarrassment was caused by your own misunderstanding. The flowers, the seed of prince Robert, represent your daughters. That is why they are as pure white stars.”
“Meli, I suspect it is bullshit, but you have humbled me. What you said is truly beautiful.”
“Dad, are you sure you are teaching me well? You invite two guests more important than any king or president on Earth, but then you place them in the middle of a field to sit on grass and wander off, chatting with two little girls, as if they are of no importance. You would not treat an ignorant village idiot like this.”
“Would not dream of it! How could you even imagine I would? I suppose it is time to let the cat out of the bag - to tell you the truth. Samantha, I confess, politics bores me. If I try to play at it, I will be the loser. Can’t be a loser chatting with two people I love.”
“Right! You’ve had your fun. Now please explain.”
“Meli, your wife to be is a real persistent little blighter.” I whirled back to her. “You want to learn you said? What did you think learning is? Getting everything handed to you on a platter? What happens when you are left facing a new situation, one you cannot look up in that little book of rules for?” I took her arm. “Come on my love? You asked some questions. How about you answer them for me?”
748
She sat on the grass, chin cupped in her hands and stared at the aliens. I strolled around with Meli, tasted a few raspberries and did the best I could to unwind the knot in my stomach, while keeping Sam always within sight.
When I saw her nod her head in answer to herself we strolled back to her.
“You have something?”
“I was thinking, on Earth, leaders follow certain protocols. You are breaking all of them. I soon worked out the answer to that one.”
“Yeah?”
“We are not on Earth. These are not leaders. They are representatives of their races, literally, at least one of them having within them all of their people.”
“Your thinking is improving, but those are not the reasons. Ask yourself your first question. Why no posh palace, we have a complete city available to us. Why here on the grass?”
Meli bit her lip. I glanced at her sternly and she kept quiet.
Sam beamed at me. “I’ve got it. Because neither of them have grass. What I mean is, they do not live on planets, they only exist in the void and you want to remind them of the earth and the plants. The smells and the colours.”
“That is presuming they have the organs to enjoy them with. They might even find the colours unpleasant, the scents that intoxicate us, disgusting. But they, mostly Ordinx, will be reminded, through association, of their own worlds, of what they lost. Good Sam. Next question. Why did I leave them alone to talk. Why am I not there to influence the way the discussion goes and the decisions. Tell me love, which decision could they agree on that would not be acceptable to us?”
“There is none!! Nothing reasonable that is.”
“If they did agree to something crazy, do you think my being there would influence them?”
“Maybe.”
“Think love. If they are both so alien to us that what they both can agree on is so unreasonable to us...”
“I see! They would not listen, for we would seem unreasonable to them.”
“And bang goes our ability to try to change them. Later, in drips and drabs maybe, we may still change the outcome closer to what we want.”
“You are making me very sad.”
“What have I done now!”
“I loved thinking I had a crazy father and lover. Now I find you are just a calculating politician. You have thought of everything and weighed all the possibilities.”
“Damned if I do and damned if I don’t. Okay. The truth is I’m just using logic after the fact to justify what I’m doing and earn your admiration. What I actually did was think to myself, I brought Solomon here to show him that the void does not destroy. Your friend and the bat people can do that. I want them to get to know each other, to stop being faceless enemies. They can grow to know each other far better without me around. Third, I gave my guarantee. They are both honourable, or so I think, so they are careful not to offend each other, for then they break my guarantee and deeply insult me.
Fourth, it is fourth isn’t it, who cares, fourth then, I enjoy a one on one conversation, but when billions want to talk to billions, I can bet you, the conversation gets boring. Fifth. You came here to assist me, to learn. Why did you walk around with me? Why didn’t you sit with them and learn - maybe even be able to give me some important details later. Are you sure you want me to carry on? Maybe I could come up with something totally different.”
She stood up and bowed to me. “I do not need to sit with them to learn. I need to spend my time with you. If I succeed in learning how to handle you, when you are not being a father or lover, or…friend, then I will be able to handle any situation, however weird it may turn out to be.”
749
“You are supposed to curtsy, men bow.”
“I don’t curtsy to those I honour and respect, only if I want to play at being cute.”
“It will be a very sad day when you have learnt how to handle me, for then you will no longer bow to me.”
Meli piped up, “Robert, I think they want you.” I took a girl by each hand and walked up to them. Solomon stood up and mimicked the bow of Sam.
“I have grown to respect your sneakiness Robert. You knew I was to learn of things that would strike terror amongst us. That I would be faced with guilt that is tearing at our society even now. You stayed away, playing with two innocent infants (you made certain I saw how helpless they are). However, it is now time for you to help us. You made us promise to turn to you should we find we face self-destruction. I do not understand why you should want our lives to be preserved. If that cannot be understood, we cannot listen to you.”
“All this time you talked, even at your most earnest or disturbed, you kept an eye on me and my loves?’’
“Indeed.”
“What did you see Solomon?”
“That is a question?”
“Shall I answer for you? You saw a man who is either a total scoundrel, uses his children and loved ones for his own political ambitions, or else he acknowledges he is no politician, leaves that to the experts, such as both of you; tries to act as a catalyst, he brings you together and then grabs the opportunity to laugh and teach his loved ones.
As a scoundrel I must have some very strange ambitions. I live in the physical world, such as this. Enslave you, take your possessions? What? Ahh, I know, stop you from preying on my people! Solomon, did you not acknowledge last time you had verified that an attack by myself would have probably destroyed you?
I am a simple man, not a leader, not a warrior. I am what we call an artist. I revere beauty and life. I find both in you. As a practical man, I cannot help believing you are a part of the cosmos because there is a part you must play. Perhaps you started off on the right path and strayed, or you never found your path. All I have offered is the chance for us to try together to find that path so the true destiny of your race may be achieved - I think your path is one that will ultimately enrichen all the races of the universe, as you probably dreamt of originally.
To help you, we all must get to know each other, understand what is alien. For instance, I know nothing about your life cycle; the nourishment you need; how you hold and preserve the souls you have.
Once our dream has been achieved and you acknowledge that I have kept my word, I then deeply crave the opportunity to walk away from all this, knowing you will continue to exist, and return to all I hold dear. My family, my art and my dream of changing the way my own people live and die, so that we grow as a race and my children become better people than I am.
There is nothing else I can offer your people Solomon. I am certain amongst you are many of minds far more brilliant than mine, but they have become part of the problem. You need someone to take a fresh look and find strange answers. Can they do so?”
“You have spoken as an immature mind does - from the depths of all you believe in, regardless of facts. We have decided Robert. We will remain if you so wish and await your visits so that we learn even as you learn. There is a deep despair amongst us, so all there is left to us is to look to you for reasons for us to live on.”
Ordinx stood and bowed. “We insulted you at our first meeting, treating you as immature and not worthy of the trouble you would cause us. Yet, when we faced what we thought was extinction, you stood as our shield. This causes us distress for we cannot understand you. Samantha called us friend from before her birth and does so without truly knowing us, but by doing so has made us into her friends. You are strange people Robert and you try us in our old age. We accepted you as leader and have not taken back that promise. It stands.”
750
My mind turned to a question which has tortured me for some time, “I need to ask for some information. When those of my world die and they are consumed by the void, they suffer a terrible pain, I have felt it a number of times. Do all the people of all the worlds suffer the same way?”
Ordinx replied, “From the time when our people met the same fate it was said they felt an intoxicating joy, there was no pain.”
“That might help explain something that puzzled me.”
Solomon said, “I cannot answer for the souls we collected, but I have a question of my own. The first time you came to us and released your communication, showing history of yourself and other things too alien for us to understand, we have found one communication that has caused us distress and great puzzlement.”
“That was?”
“You pursued a soul from your world into the void. You did not try to save it. You did two things. First you made yourself into the void, a part of it, and used it. A great distress to us was your use of it. It is the first time we have ever seen any energy form totally destroy another form.”
“You are right. I had forgotten about becoming the void. I do not know how I did it and had almost convinced myself that I’d only hallucinated that part of my experience. It may be of value to try it again. As to your distress, my distress is just as great. I killed, destroyed that soul out of hatred. You have children, offspring?”
“We do.”
“I cannot know yet if your offspring evoke the same emotions in you. In us it is a strong need to protect and nurture such offspring with the emotion we call love. Our interpreter Wendy is the daughter of the soul I destroyed. Solomon, there is too much to explain for you to understand, I had reasons, which you may or may not find justified me. When I come to learn from you may I then explain? Our time here is limited.”
“Accepted. We put our trust in you, but it is good that you are also willing to explain yourself.”
“You both lay too much trust in me. I fear I may fail you, for as you have seen, logic does not always rule me, sometimes my loved ones despair, thinking it never does. But there is one important trait I have. I always try to keep my promises. Solomon, do you wish to hear our Wendy sing for you?”
“I would be honoured.”
A heavy mercurial silvery cloud formed above us. It rumbled as if ready to explode. Before anyone could begin to worry it began to rain, golden drops that coalesced (συγχωνεύτηκαν) into the form of my Wendy. Neither the two girls nor I can describe the sounds we heard. Wendy somehow had created music for our visitors. When the music ended she appeared as the tiny adored love of mine and rushed into my arms. Her face was a delight as Solomon bowed to her.
“You have taken our music and transformed it into something new. It is fitting at this time of changes. Robert, is she now daughter of yours?”
“No and yes. She holds the place of daughter within the love I have for her as my wife - mate.”
“But she is smaller than - I am sorry, do your race come in many sizes?”
“On my world it is not legal for a male of my age to be mated to a child of her age. I found her in great distress and healed the evil that had been done to her. I wished to take her as my daughter, but I needed to secure her soul after her death. Bringing her to the void and dancing with her bound us as mates. It is part of the process that we cannot avoid.”
“You are a criminal on your world!?” Ordinx sounded upset.
I was careful not to grin. “Does it distress you to find you gave your vow to a criminal? You may cancel it if you wish. Our group, which is growing all the time, does not obey all the laws of our race, we cannot. We are too different. Someday the laws will change to reflect the changes we bring. We do obey the laws that do not allow us to harm another. It is complicated, needing time to explain and we need to return, unlike you, we need to return to our bodies, especially the infants.”
Αλέξανδρος Ζήνον Ευσταθίου
(Alexander Zenon Eustace)26th April, 2019
* posted on Steemit: 26th April, 2019
@nikosnitza
If you wish to have your name added above, I would be honoured.
