Six.....tales

The polite thing to do would be to let her in, a voice spoke inside her head confirming her beliefs that she was in fact insane and this was only the beginning.

Walking over to the window Genny gingerly opened it as the girl rolled inside, her straight chocolate coloured hair swooping behind her.

Her deep set eyes were a very light shade of blue, and her pupils made her look madly intoxicated. At that moment Genny feared she’d let some crazed crack-smoking teenage murder into her house with no-one home " and then she spotted it, on her left shoulder was a black sun.

Her mind whizzed back to the day she could only describe as an awful memory and knew it was the same black sun that had been on the girl that fell on her, only this time it was glowing and she was alive.

“It’s you!” she said in ultimate shock, stunned the girl she firmly believed to be dead was standing before her.

The other girl’s brow furrowed in confusion.

“You are going to answer all of my questions right now, and if you don’t want to then you should just leave my house and my life and never show up again,” Genny said assertively.

She opened her mouth as though to say something but her jaw shut as evidently no words came.

“Okay one day you fall out of a random window, die in my arms and somehow live? How is that possible?” Genny began, the other girl’s face seemed to process it, “Why are you here now? How did you get to my window? And above all, who are you?”

“Let me get this straight,” she said, Genny hearing her voice for the first time, she sounded a lot older than she looked, “You’re the girl I fell on when- I mean, that day?”

“Yeah, hasn’t that got something to do with why you’re here?”

“Well no, but yes, not really, but kinda, to put it plainly yes and no,” she replied.

Genny pushed up her spectacles, raised an eyebrow and sat on her bed; so far nothing convinced her she wasn’t hallucinating.

“This is going to be hard,” she said, putting her hand to her forehead, “do you mind if my friend comes up here, I think I’m going to need his help,”

“Can he defy death too?” she asked sarcastically, flopping backwards on the bed.

“No more than I can,” she said matter-of-factly.

“So he can then,” Genny said to no-one in particular as the other girl went to the window.

“Cris, can you come up here?” she spoke into the air.

“Problems already Ive’?” he replied, though Genny could barely here a whisper, the lithe bodied mysterious girl seemed to hear him fine.

“I’m not having problems Cris,” she said defensively before carefully choosing her next words, “I’ve encountered a complication which I’m not entirely prepared to handle alone,”

Within seconds a golden coloured boy in a tank and sweats swung through the window. His shiny brown curls bounced on the top of his head.

“I would’ve let you in the front door if you had knocked you know?”

He smiled and waved, and at the side of his neck was the same sinister sun tattoo the girl sported. It was then Genny recognised him, the frantic boy who ran away with the dead girl, what a happy reunion, she thought. Maybe they were in some sort of cult where they can revive the dead, maybe they saw her as the next chosen one, maybe Genny would consider joining, if life would begin to make more sense.

“I’m Crizanto,” he said, his accent American but with some kind of twist.

“Call him Cris though, and I’m Ivory. Cris remember that morning on 79^th street when I was staying at Idina’s apartment, and I had to make a run and jump for it,” she explained as he nodded, “Well this is the girl I fell on,”

Crizanto scrutinized her. “Well what a small world, I guess I see your complication. Argent- that is what they call you isn’t it?”

“No, it’s not,” Genny said remembering her initial frustration with the situation, “Everybody knows me as Genny, barely anyone knows what it’s short for. Why do you know my name?” she turned to Ivory, “Why did you have it in your hand when you fell on me?”

The two glanced at each other. “Genny many things need explaining and,” he hesitated, “that day is just another one of those things, but we’re all better off if things are explained in order. So can we just leave that subject for another day?”

“Another day? You mean you’re going to be around for a while, this whole situation isn’t just going to go away is it?”

“We’ll be here as long as we need to be,” Crizanto said turning to Ivory.

“So let’s start with you explaining to me why you’re here, and convincing me I’m not in some sort of lucid dream or coma,” she told them, already exasperated.

Ivory looked as Cris and he nodded. “As you’ve probably noticed weird things have been happening to you, your body is changing and it’s all part of what you are-”

“Why does this sound like a puberty talk?”

Ivory cracked a smile. “Okay this is very hard to do, even harder to explain and almost impossible to believe, but if there’s one thing we have in common is that we are both American teenage girls, and I’m just going to explain to you everything you need to know and you get to choose whether you believe it or not,”

“It’s not that simple,” the other boy interjected, “we are going to try our hardest to make you believe, then you choose whether or not you want to keep on believing or pretend you’ve never met us and let your life go back to normal,”

“Now you’ve lost me,” Genny said glancing from the boy to the girl.

“We are not human, and neither are you,” Ivory said as Genny raised her eyebrow preparing something sarcastic to say before she continued, “We’re here to let you know what you are and to give you a choice, your choice is to be one of us or if it’s too much for you to handle you have the freedom to not become one of us and live on as human,”

“But what are you exactly?” she replied, hardly believing she was playing along.

The boy called Crizanto took a deep breath and Ivory flew down gracefully on the bed. “Aphotians,” he said, “We’re Aphotians,”

“What is that? Like a cult or something,” she tried, hoping not to offend the nutcases.

“No it’s nothing religious technically,” Ivory said, “We’re just enhanced humans, like a mutation with angels blood running through our veins,”

Though Natalia had raised her Catholic, Genny still wasn’t quite sure about the material concept of angels. Her forehead creased and without anything else to do she pushed her glasses up again, regarding them. She wanted to believe that all she saw were two teenagers not unlike herself, but there was something ethereal about them when they moved, and when they didn’t they looked like perfectly carved statues " not perfect in 21^st century terms of features, but like an ancient Greek workmanship type of flawless. Also they’d climbed into her bedroom wearing next to nothing in below freezing temperatures, Genny remembered.

“So riddle me this, I have two human parents, but you’re telling me I’m not human,”

“Because that’s how it works sometimes,” Ivory said, “Both mine and Cris’s parents are human, but we were chosen to become Aphotian,”

“Why? Who chose? What does being an Aphotian even entail? How do you know you’ve got the right girl?” Genny said, not able to stop firing questions.

“I was told Argent Norwood of Humboldt Park, Chicago, that’s you right?” Ivory said.

“I might not be the only one,” she replied, hearing how unrealistic it sounded as she said it.

“You’ve been getting hallucinations right?” Ivory said as Genny nodded, her hand landing absent-mindedly on her teardrop pendant, “Light headedness, fainting spells, maybe a seizure or two or what seems like a heart-attack,”

“No I don’t recall seizures or heart-attacks,” she replied.

“It’s usually either-or and don’t worry when it comes, it feels like you’re dying but trust me you’re not. How about extreme bouts of anger?” Ivory continued to diagnose.

Genny continued to nod. “It means you’re turning,” Crizanto said.

“But how?” she continued to herself in disbelief, “This just doesn’t make sense, this can’t just happen to people,”

“Well it does,” Ivory said, “And if you keep an open mind we can tell you how,”

Cris finally sat down next to Ivory on the bed.

“Fine,” she said, “I like to think of myself as an open-minded person, make me believe I’m not human, or whatever,”

“There are three known circles of angels, the heavenly counsellors, the heavenly governors and the heavenly messengers, but there has always been a fourth forgotten to human memory, the heavenly lights or stars, known to us as Estrellens. God permitted those Estrellens who wanted to to walk the Earth with humans and the Fair People " another creation of God,” she explained, Genny knew that Fair people included fairies and elves and she believed them to be no more real than the stories written about them were, “War broke out, humans grew jealous of Estrellen powers and some satanical and luciferian cults wanted to find ways of gaining their power. Other humans began to believe the Fair people were a creation of the devil, because they were neither angel nor human, nor animal.

“The fighting broke out with too many sides, so more died than necessary. But there were still those who loved Estrellens and became their followers, and even though Estrellans fought the groups who were fighting with them, they asked their followers to remain as pacifists, as God did not want them fighting and dying,”

Genny tried her hardest to pay attention to what she was saying, but it was difficult to listen to as if it were the truth, it was too much like a bedtime story.

“A group of power hungry humans captured an Estrellan, her name was Astral, and they spilt her blood into a Fey created orb, and used immense amounts of new magic to alter themselves, down to the DNA. And we were born, the Aphotians. The gene gets passed on to our descendents, we call them Borns, but our type are Chosens,”

She opened her mouth to speak but Ivory cut her off. “I know, how are we chosen right?” she said, “When an Estrellan dies another dimension forms " it’s called a meta-realm " so hundreds, maybe thousands of meta-realms were formed during that time. Please don’t ask about the science behind it, you’d need a scholar to help you,” she added, shaking her head, “Anyway we are forever a part of Astral, our blood is from her, when we run a certain speed, a bit slower than the speed of light, we enter the realm. It’s like a small world, the size of a city like Chicago,”

“We can run at the speed of light!?” Genny exclaimed, before realising she’d used the inclusive word ‘we’.

“No because we enter a different realm whenever we come close, but it’s still pretty damn fast,” she said, “and a hell of an effort, not your everyday jogging speed,”

“But the realm isn’t just a realm, it has this lake-” Cris said.

“Lake Astral,” Ivory cut it, Cris gave her a look, “Sorry, thought she might like to know the name,”

“Lake Astral,” he repeated, “and it’s its own entity, it’s alive almost, but it’s not something you can kill. And it seems to watch over us, when we lay in it, we can’t drown, it heals us. It also seems to choose the next Aphotian. I lay in it and one day it showed me Ivory, her name her location, and that meant it was my duty to inform her of what she is, a Chosen, and her kids will be Borns,”

“Then just as I was getting used to this life, it showed me you, Argent Norwood, Humboldt Park, Chicago,” Ivory said to her.

“The group that turned themselves into Aphotians, they weren’t just in England, they were a huge order, with members from Singapore to Argentina, the Order of the Reaj, and an ancient flower was their symbol,”

“Also as we were created through the death of angel, we’re forever linked to death, we can feel it. As a kid I could feel it in the air, feel death around me, in places where people had died, the more deaths the stronger the feeling. Once I went to where the battle of Gettysburg had happened, it was a school trip, and I couldn’t take how suffocating it was, I stayed in the bus,” Ivory explained.

She thought back to her experiences with hospitals, how she couldn’t breathe, how many people must’ve died in them... “I, I get that,” she said, unbelieving, “All my life, in hospitals and stuff. I once went to a nursing home with my middle school choir, and I fainted while we were singing, I just couldn’t breathe,”

“We all get it,” Cris said, “That’s how we know you’re one of us, you passed the test,”

“What if I hadn’t?” she asked, nose wrinkling.

“We’d have put you to sleep with some cool magic you’ll love when you learn it, then you’d wake up thinking you dreamt it all,” Ivory smiled.

“You’ll learn it if you become one of us,” Cris said to her.

“And I have a choice?” she asked.

“Borns don’t,” Cris began, “bur Chosens do, to undergo complete transformation, your blood needs to change, that happens during a ceremony, and that’s when you tell us your final decision. If you decide you don’t want to be like us, then after a while your symptoms go away and the memory of us will fade to what seems like a memory of a dream, till it’s gone,”

“That requires magic too,” Ivory said, cheerily.

“If you want us to leave your life and never come back, you have the choice, but though it may seem hard to believe, you can be like us,” Crizanto explained.

“But what does mean? And why was I chosen?” Genny replied, barely believing that she was beginning to accept what they were telling her.

The two Aphotians glanced at each other, silent communication passing. “What does it mean to be human?” Ivory spoke, “It’s not a job, it’s a state of being. And we don’t know why we’re chosen, Lake Astral does the things it does to protect us, so I guess we need you. But Aphotians are strong, fast and powerful, with techniques in the magic arts. We’re superhuman,”

“Why do I feel like there’s a downside? This is all too perfect in a way,” she hated the sound of her scepticism, but couldn’t help continuing to voice her doubt.

“We’re only truly superhuman at night; our strength comes after sundown. Also there is one other thing, but that requires a lot of explanation, I can’t overload you with information before this sinks in,” Ivory said.

“At least tell me what this ‘other thing’ is, do we die young or something?” Genny didn’t know why but she knew she wanted to know a great deal.

Scratching her arm Ivory glanced at the boy again. “We spend a lot of time, not all our time, but a lot of time fighting those who want us dead,”

Genny gulped. “Wow, when do you plan on explaining that one?”

“Whenever you want, I’m now your defender so you’re my top priority. If you let us charm something of yours, you’ll be able to reach us at any point,” Ivory replied

“How?” she asked before instantly regretting the question, it would be a long time before she got a good clarification as to how magic works.

“Do you have something for us to charm?” Ivory said, “Something you’ll be able to carry with you at all times,”

Quick thinking, her right hand fell to the bracelet on her left, a wooden beaded thing she’d had for years. Taking it off she handed it to Ivory who stood up, Crizanto after her. He put his hands on it so both of them were holding it between them. Ivory worded ‘brace yourself’ to Genny. She couldn’t get any further away from them so she just held on tighter to the emerald pendant as they began mouthing words. The colour left both of their eyes and a blackness took over, spreading from the centre out, like paint in water. It looked as though their skin had been poisoned as it began to tint black from their fingertips, up their arms and covering their whole bodies. The words they mouthed were like a soft barely audible whisper. Within moments they were done and the blackness faded from their skin and eyes without a trace, leaving her once brown bracelet a matt black colour.

“Holy frick,” was all she could manage saying.

Ivory handed it back to her as she pushed up her glasses. “Call our names when ready, but the charm only works once. Also if it seems like anything is after you, which is unlikely to happen if you keep Aphotian existence a secret, but if you feel you’re in danger, call us,”

She slipped the alien object onto her wrist and put her hand to her head, doubtful thoughts creeping up again. “So I’m to believe that you are not human? That I am not human?” she asked again.

Ivory wore a perplexed look on her face. “You are beyond human whether you believe it or not Argent. Eight months ago I was in your position, Crizanto showed up out of no-where and told a bunch of very had to follow stories and I didn’t really believe it all, but the proof was there. I had breathing difficulties, fainting spells, heart attacks, hallucinations. The last part of it was the sleepless nights; I went a whole fortnight without needing any sleep, and even if I tried I couldn’t. Then I started to believe I didn’t want any part in it, but when I realized I was needed and that this is who I am, I stayed,”

“You went a fortnight without sleeping?” she asked, her eyes going wide behind her frames.

“Sleepless nights; it’s simply not needing sleep, it’s a good indication of when you’re ready for the ceremony. Mine lasted five days, I was awake for 120 hours straight, but Ivory’s was abnormally long,” Cris explained, “You’ll have to make the final decision when the Lake calls you,”

“Calls me?” Genny was beginning to get irritated with the way everything she said ended with a question mark.

“The Lake will call you to it, and you won’t be able to resist it’s tug, eventually you’ll just go, and it will call me too as you’re my charge, and I’m your defender,” Ivory said, resting a hand on Genny’s shoulder.

Her forehead creased at the word defender, it sounded as though she was in ‘danger’, and maybe she was.

“We better leave you now to absorb this,” Cris said, turning towards the window.

“Hold on, you haven’t answered all of my questions,”

“What were they exactly?” Cris asked

She thought back and it came to her in one surprising instant, “you fell twelve stories, how is that possible? Living through that I mean,”

“I ran Ivory to Astral, the Lake can heal an Aphotian of anything, barring death,”

“But Ivory was dead,” she replied.

“That’s a complicated question-” Ivory started.

“Not that’s a simple statement,” Genny argued.

“Well the explanation is complicated, and we can’t overload you first hand,”

She tilted her head to the left slightly. “Don’t patronise me, even if I don’t believe what you say I can still understand it,”

“No, you can’t,” Crizanto began, “Our world is just that, a whole world, we can’t explain to you the law and history and science of our world in one night, and the more we tell, the less believable it is, it would harder to absorb masses of information. If we do this wrong then we’ll lose you, part of Ivory’s job as a defender is to be a teacher, but the ones who are taught wrong often choose to be human, we don’t want that,”

Ivory just looked at Cris, as if she was tired, Genny thought they were probably thinking along the same wavelength. “Is he always so intense?”

“Nahh he can be cool,” she said, sitting back down on the bed.

He ignored her. “We can’t explain how Ivory wasn’t dead right now,”

Genny nodded, going over her list on initial questions. “So I’ll just go ahead and guess you got into my room using some Aphotian magic power,”

“Power is correct,” Ivory smile, “It’s one of the best thing s about being us, climbing a 3 story building is like being on a jungle gym, and our speed is unrivalled,”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Cris added. Why not? Genny wondered.

“I guess that’s it,” she said, feeling another dizzy spell coming on, “Except to say that that facebook message was terrifying,”

Crizanto looked at Ivory. “Sorry,” she said, “I thought it might be, but at least you knew what to expect, I had a much worse reaction when Cris showed up for me, I didn’t want to listen, I just wanted him to stop stalking me,”

“It’s okay,” Genny bit down on her lip, remembering who she blamed it on and what she did, and how insane people think she is because of it, a possibility she hadn’t yet ruled out, “I’ll um, call you,” she said, looking again at the bracelet.

Crizanto re-opened the window before backing up a bit and hurling himself out of it; Genny shot up, stunned, forgetting for a moment that he wouldn’t die.

“Bye Argent,” Ivory said before elegantly rolling out after him.

“It’s Genny,” she said, not sure they could even hear her.

This night resembled too much her night with Bergeot the Nix, the pregnant fairy thing she dreamed about. She lay her head down on the pillow, and in the middle of wondering about bits and pieces of an impossible situation " angels walking the earth, multiple dimensions, superhumans " without really choosing to Argent drifted off to sleep.

Author's Note

Too much info, should I have been more subtle, do you have any questions (the right type that keep you reading a book), I hope so