"You want her to do what, and I need to just trust her!?" I asked for the third time. I just couldn't believe what he was saying.
Santana slept in the bed feet from the table me Neeva and I were sitting. Every once in a while, she stirred in her sleep, and I tried to lower my voice so as not to wake her. Not because I didn't want to wake her, but because I liked her better when she was sleeping.
We had decided to move our conversation into Neeva's tent again. The same place we had been sitting when he had been discussing the other side of the veil, and where we had been then interrupted by griffons attacking our camp. I prayed that our conversation wouldn't be interrupted by something like that again or by something worse.
"You want me to repeat what I had just said for the third time?" Neeva said, giving me a perplexed look like he couldn't understand why I couldn't seem to wrap my head around the insane thing he wanted me to do.
"Yes, say it again," I said and began to chew on my lip. Just thinking about his insane plan made me nervous, like stomach-squeezed-so-tights-not-even-a-boy-scott-could-untie-it kind of nervous.
Neeva scratched his head, "Your mother informed me that school was not your strength, but my poor daughter, I didn't know you were this incapable of the thought process."
"Wait, what!? I got all Bs and Cs, and sometimes I got As! Who are you calling a bad student, Mr. crazy-weird-ridiculous-totally-not-doing-it-plan!?" I said angrily and blew a stray piece of black hair out of my face.
My father cleared his throat, and I could've sworn he looked embarrassed. "Your mother once told me how she would go to your school with a low-cut shirt and go discuss your grades" with your teachers. Notice how only female teachers gave you Cs?"
My mouth popped open, "No, she didn't!" I said, wondering how I never noticed before that I only got bad grades when my teachers were girls, "But speaking of which, have you told my mother what you're planning to do?" I asked, "Wait, I'm sure you didn't because there's no way she would go for it ever!"
I was about to say a thousand years, but then I realized Neeva had been alive more than a thousand years, "More than all the years you've been alive!" I said instead.
"I have not approached your mother on this fragile subject because I just realized that we have no choice but to do it until just a few moments ago," Neeva said, "It is something I would rather not have happened."
"If you would rather it not happen, then why are you having your only daughter go and do it!? Oh, wait, it's okay because she has the replacement child, but what you might not know is you never needed to have it in the first place!" I raved and slammed my hand hard on the table and stood up from my chair. The table shook a bit, and Santana shifted in her bed and mumbled something in her sleep.
"What do you mean?" Neeva asked, lowering his voice to a whisper, probably in consideration for Santana, who was still sleeping.
"You don't need a powerful Halfling to seal the vortex in the sky, you just need to cut off the power source that is fueling them, which is this weird orange globe thing connected to all those... these Halfling kids," I said," I just figured it out. So you brought another Fifth Element user into this world for no good reason at all! So why should I listen to your stupid plan!" I said, and let out a series of nervous laughs. I covered my mouth, but they just kept coming. I guess the stress was getting to me finally. I was one more crazy thing happening away from breaking down completely.
All of a sudden, a tall, shadowy figure with glowing white eyes appeared beside my father and started to lean towards his ear, but my father held out a hand, and the shadow leaned away from him. My father looked at me and smiled, "Are you perhaps jealous of your youngest sister, eldest daughter?"
I forced myself to stop laughing like a crazy person and eyed the shadow creature standing beside my father. They still creeped me out, but not as much as they used to anymore, "No," I said, but turned my head so I didn't have to look him in the eye, "How could I be jealous of something I haven't even seen yet?" I asked.
"How could you be scared of my plan of action, even though I have lived thousands of years, daughter, and know what I am doing by this time period? It's because you're a flawed being with flawed emotions. We are all. You're jealous because you're used to being the sole receiver of your mother's unconditional love, but that's not the case anymore. You're scared of my plans because you can only see the risks happening to you, instead of it going perfectly like I see it going, and saving the world from Greta. You're also afraid of the pain and loneliness that comes with what I ask you. I understand that, daughter. I'm old, too old, but I still understand human emotions."
"As for your sister, her birth was necessary for your absence. We still needed a powerful Halfling to help seal the portal; cutting off their power source will not cause them to close. It'll just prevent more from being opened. Believe it all not, something like this happened in the past, so I am very knowledgeable on this subject.
I was silent for a moment and slowly sank into my chair, "I can't tell Mom, can I? She wouldn't let me do it, no matter what, would she?" I asked, my voice now low and soft and full of fear because I knew that I was going to do it.
Neeva stood up and came around to my side of the table. He placed a gentle hand on my shoulder, "It's taking everything in my power to even tell you to do it, I can't imagine the moment when I let you do it."
"How am I going to keep myself sane?" I asked, "All alone in purgatory?"
"Your dragon that your mother gifted you, you will take it with you. Dragons are the only beings that can survive there besides spirits and beings like us. They can sustain themselves from the energy in the air, as you can too for a time."
"And then I come back and..."
"Yes, but you won't be the same, daughter. I wasn't the time I went away and came back from there too."
The shadow leaned close to Neeva's ear and hissed something into in. It stepped away, and Neeva nodded his head, and the shadow disappeared from sight.
Neeva fixed his dark purple eyes on us, "Come, daughter, we must move before the sun rises," he said, and I took his hand and stood. Once standing, I let go of my father's hand and watched him walk over to Santana. He placed a hand on her shoulder and gently shook her awake. Santana opened her blue eyes and looked up at us.
"It's time to go. This is part of your half of our bargain," he said.
"I know," she yawned and stretched her arms over her head. Whatever weird powers I have, I'll let you use them to your heart's content, that is, if you help me get Savannah back."
"Come with us then, daughter of the sixth element," he said, and Santana sat up slowly. She swung one foot over the side and then the other. She stood up. Her head turned with my father's moments across the tent until he reached the tent's exit. He reached it and turned back to us.
"The two of you change your clothing, you cannot step out into the cold weather wearing something thin like those gowns of the sick they had us dressed in," he said and pointed to a chest at the side of the bed I hadn't noticed before, "Violet, I believe that your mother kept some of your possessions in case you returned. She's staying the night in the children's tent with Lilly, where there are nurses to help her all night, so she shouldn't come back here ..."
My father stopped talking when he noticed my face, "My sister's name is Lilly," I said while tears began to well up in my eyes.
My father smiled at me, "Your mother likes the idea of naming her children after flowers. She's beautiful, Violet, too bad you can't see her before you go."
I bobbed my head, "I will when I get back," I said, but my voice did not sound confident at all.
My father nodded, "Yes, you will, daughter. I'll meet you at the stables. There is something that I must now retrieve." And with that, he left us with a swipe of the flap and a glimpse of the nighttime sky.
Once he was gone, I hurried over to the chest my father had indicated and opened it. When I saw that it was spelled by space magic, when I couldn't see a bottom, and the hooks of a ladder could be seen poking over its top. I stepped onto the first rung of the ladder and began to climb down it into the expansive cavity of the chest."
I heard Santana yell in surprise, probably because I had just climbed into the trunk and disappeared, which didn't exactly happen in her world. Actually, little magic existed in her world, so it probably never happened at all.
But actually, this magic was rare in mine too. Probably because the old government kept its people from learning it.
I reached the bottom, "Elum," I said, and a bulb of light materialized into existence. The walls of the chest were lined with shelves that contained my clothes. The space inside the chest itself went about nine feet down, and I wondered how anyone was supposed to reach those clothes on the top shelves. My silent question was answered when I pulled sideways on the ladder, and it rolled to the sides on the wheels connected to its bottom.
I selected a dark blue long-sleeved shirt and a pair of leggings for Santana, and a pair of black flats for me, a pair of tan pants that were tight around my ankles and a long-sleeved black button-down shirt, and a pair of black boots. On one of the lower shelves, I found a basket of hair ties. I grabbed one and pulled my hair into a messy ponytail. I also slipped on my bra and a pair of my underwear. I put on my black shirt and my tan pants and slipped a boot onto both of my feet.
I briefly considered grabbing Santana one, but decided that would be a little too weird for me, before ascending the latter with the clothes tucked under my arms.
I threw the clothes I had picked out to her, once I reached the top rung, which she took her eyes off the chest for ten seconds to catch before she continued to stare at the chest in wide-eyed wonder. I climbed the rest of the way out of the chest before I once again had my feet planted on the dirt floor and had extinguished my ball of light.
Without a word, I turned away from Santana and allowed her some privacy while she changed into the clothes I had provided for her. I couldn't see her, but I could see her shadow, while she changes, which moved on the tent's wall beside me in the bobbing lights of the glass orbs, which floated above our heads. After what I judged to be enough time for someone to change into a complete outfit, I turned to find that she was looking at me with a pair of tired blue eyes.
"Tell me," she said, "Is your father someone who keeps his word?
"I think so," I said, "I haven't known him a long time; he's been gone most of my life, but I trust him completely. Why do you ask?"
"He promised me a lot," she answered.
"Like the safe return of your sister?"
"Well, not a safe return," she said, and a shadow of fear streaked across her face, "Your father said he can't guarantee her life, but I'm kind of desperate here, and he did say he would return her to me, dead or alive,"′ Santana let out a long sigh.
"Hey, he'll do his best to get her back unharmed! I'm sure of it! He's just really old and doesn't have a lot of optimism...I guess."
"Really old?" Santana repeated, sounding perplexed. He can't be more than thirty or maybe forty.
I smiled and shook my head at her, "Oh Santana, he's thousands of years old," I said, and walked out of the tent and under the rapidly lightening sky. I let my eyes linger on the bright yellows, pinks, oranges, and blues. It would be a while until I saw something this beautiful again.