Neeva was just one plain, strange dude. From the way he talked to the way he dressed, to pretty much every other thing he did, was odd. I got to say, though, this was one of the strangest things, and hopefully it would remain one of the strangest things I've ever seen the man do.
Running through the night wearing nothing but a flimsy hospital dress, while waving a dismembered arm in the wind, was a strangeness no regular person could hope to inspire.
Probably the strangest thing a normal person would do in their entire life would be something like walking around their house naked while eating a sandwich. But not my long-lost father. I guess then it made me strange, not the fact that I was willing, although reluctantly, following right behind him, but because of how fast I had come to accept this as just another daily occurrence in the day and the life of Violet Ellen Silver. I mean, how odd a life I had to be living for me to be like that?
We came to the edge of the woods that bordered the camp, and my father held up his hand for me to stop. "We wait here, daughter," Neeva said. "Do you still have the necklace in your possession?" he asked.
"Yes, I do," I said, and unclenched my hand that had been protectively wrapped around it. My eyes traveled down to the palm of my hand and to the smooth and round blue and gold stone pendant attached to a golden chain. I looked back at Neeva, whose eyes were glued to the starry sky hanging over my head. I secured my hand around the pendant again.
My eyes traveled to where he was so intently staring, and they locked onto a shape that was slowly descending from the heavens in a graceful spiral. As it got closer, I saw that it was a small blue dragon. And as it got ready to land a few yards away from where Neeva stood, I recognized just what small blue dragon it was.
"Nessie!" I said happily and ran towards the dragon without thinking, but stopped in my tracks when a figure separated from Nessie and landed on the grass with a muffled thud.
I watched in a confessed daze as that figure then charged at me and slammed into me at full force. In the blink of an eye, I was on my belly with a knee firmly planted between my shoulder blades, and my arm bent behind my back at an uncomfortable angle."
"OW! OW! OW!" I yelled as the person pulled my arm back over my head at a painful angle.
"Identify yourself! Why aren't you in your assigned area at this time of night!? This area is restricted until sunrise!" a familiar female voice barked into my ear.
"Amber, it's me!" I gasped, and I instantly felt Henry's sister, Amber's weight being lifted off me.
"Violet!?!" she gasped, sounding equal parts stunned. She looped her arms under my armpit and gently helped me up to a sitting position. Once I was in one, she walked around to my front and squatted down in front of me. Her brown eyes looked into my face, and she grabbed my head on both sides and tilted it back and forth. She let her hands slide down my cheeks and off my face. I saw that she was wearing a pair of black boots, a black shirt, and a pair of black leather pants. Her long, straight brown hair had been neatly pulled up into a neat ponytail that hung down her back.
In the meantime, Nessie had stalked over from the spot in the empty field on the edge of the camp that Amber had landed her at, to me. She inhaled my scent deeply before she nudged me gently with her pointy snout. I reached over and rubbed small circles on her scaly nose. Nessie began to purr loudly and let her scaly blue body sink onto the grass. I may not like dragons a lot, but she meant a lot to Henry, and Henry meant a lot to me, so, therefore, Nessie was now something I cared about.
"If you're here..." she said more to herself than me and reached out and gently poked me before bringing my hands back to rube at her chin absently. "Could that possibly mean that my brother is also here!?" she asked eagerly and looked me directly in the eye.
I took the moment to look away from her, and I wrapped my arms around myself. I didn't want to be the one to break the bad news to her. Heck, I didn't want to say it out loud, because then I had to acknowledge the grim reality of Henry's situation.
"He's here," I said reluctantly.
"Amber Hemlock?" my father's voice floated up from the darkness of the forest that lined the camp and the clearing in which Amber and I now stood, or rather where I sat and she crouched.
Nessie narrowed her cat-like yellow eyes, raised her head from my side, and let out a startled hiss. Amber quickly rose to a standing position, raised her arm, and brought it down quickly. A small lightning bolt struck right in front of my father, illuminating him temporarily. Amber gasped at the spooky, glowing image of a pale, one-armed Neeva, holding a severed arm in the hand that remained.
Amber placed her hand above her heart. "Neeva, you really know how to startle someone, you know that right?" Amber said.
"I am currently missing an arm," Neeva told her point-blank, while Amber looked at him with an expression that was a mixture of fear and confusion.
"Yes, I saw..." she said calmly and trailed off, "Um, is that your arm that you're holding?"
"No, it is being digested by a griffon even as we speak," he said and stepped out from amongst the trees. It was then I noticed he wasn't alone. A pale figure dressed in a shirt and a pair of pants, both a brown-green color, and a pair of work boots, followed behind him.
I stared at the man trailing behind my father in confusion. I wondered if I should say anything, but then I noticed that where his eyes should have been, there were two gaping holes. I stood once he and the ghost reached us. I reached out and began to rub the long, graceful neck of the blue dragon beside me in an attempt to soothe her. My hand vibrated with the low growling sound she was making. It worked somewhat, but she still continued to growl.
"Do you know each other?" I asked once he had reached us. She had known my father's name.
"Of course," Amber answered, " You forget Violet, you've been gone for one year, a lot of things have changed. People came together that wouldn't have ordinarily come together." She indicated towards him with a quick tilt of her head, "He's the famous legendary wizard that ended up saving Timalia by sacrificing his comrades to the dark powers he possesses. The same wizard who has lived hundreds, if not thousands, of years. And the same wizard that is now using his wisdom he gained from many years of walking the earth to help lead our army against the dictator Greta. And the same wizard who has spooked at least half the camp's occupants."
"Thank you, Miss Hemlock, your introductions are always flattering," my father said in a grateful tone, and wondered if his curtesy was real. I could never tell with him. There was nothing to be grateful with Amber about. That introduction sounded anything but flattering to my ears.
"I'm missing a limb, as you can see," Neeva repeated, "And I need a replacement. The arm you see me holding is that replacement.... Violet gave it to her."
I unclenched my hand once again and picked up the necklace by its delicate chain. In a flash, the ghost that had emerged from the woods with my father was beside me, and I jumped at the sudden proximity. Nessie hissed loudly and backed away from me slightly. It was then I realized that she must be growling at the ghost and Neeva. So dragons could see them too..."
Amber turned her head from my father to me, "Give me what?" she asked.
"This," I said and held out the necklace to her. Its blue pendant at the end sparkled in the moonlight.
She gave the necklace a suspicious look before reaching out and accepting it. From beside me, the ghost sighed happily before it faded away.
My father tilted his head skywards and smiled up into the night, "The soul has crossed into the next plain, this arm is now the property of mine," he glanced at Amber. That was from a man who couldn't tell you his feelings in life with words, so he thought to do it with this piece of jewelry.
Amber knitted her eyebrows together and pulled the necklace close to her chest, "Who was he?" she asked.
My father shrugged, "He never mentioned his name, only what I had to do. He turned away from us and began to walk towards the forest." he turned his head back once he had almost reached it. He looked first at me." Violet, you should probably lead Amber back to her brother. The reunion has been long overdue, just like the reunion with you and your mother was." His gaze then slid from me to Amber.
"The underground settlement is not in that direction, is that correct, Miss Hemlock?" he asked.
"Yes," she answered back.
My father nodded his head. "Good, I wouldn't want to creep out the other half of the camp with what I'm about to do," my father said with a smile and disappeared.
Once he was gone me Amber and I both looked at each other, unsure of what to say to one another.
"Can you help me put this on?" Amber finally asked after a few painful moments of silence and held out the necklace to me.
"Sure," I said and took it, undid the clasp, and stepped towards her. I secured it around her neck. It glimmered beautifully against the soft swells of her breast.
"Henry, you know where he is?" she asked, running her fingers over the stone's smooth surface a couple of times before letting her hand fall to her side.
"Yeah, actually I do," I said reluctantly, "Follow me," I said and motioned her to follow me back towards the camp. She nodded and grabbed onto Nessie's reins.
"How is he?" she asked, while we moved back towards the camp with Nessie in tow.
"You didn't know we were back? How come nobody contacts you?" I asked, hoping to avoid the painful subject for as long as possible.
Amber shook her head; her ponytail swung back and forth slowly. "I couldn't receive information from the outside for the past couple of days, because the mission that I was on was sensitive. I didn't want to risk it," she finished, "How is he?" she repeated.
"He's in the medical tent," I said, and tears began to well in my eyes.
When Amber noticed the tears in my eyes, she gave me a look of terror before thrusting Nessie's reins into my hand, breaking out into a full-out sprint.
"Wait!" I called out and tried to follow quickly behind, but it seemed that I couldn't get Nessie to follow behind me fast enough.
Amber reached the medical tent way before I did, but by the time I reached it, chaos had erupted within its blue canvas walls.