Early, Wednesday morning
3am. A time for silence and peaceful rest. Neither of which are to be had any longer, not by the Nephilim penning a hasty missive to a Fallen whose whereabouts she did not know. It could be earlier, wherever he was. It could be later. He could be indisposed, or at rest. For all she knew, he could be in the throes of a task that required stealth and discretion, and had little room for a burning fireball of Parisian stationary, a spray of watercolored lavender sprouting from the page's bottom right corner renders it deceptively feminine for the battle scarred hand it comes from.
Amaranthe Ashwood does not care.
Punctuating the note with a heavily blotted period, she slams down her fountain pen and trades it for a stele. The sheet of paper, its ink still wet, goes up in flames. Her hand free of it, she sits back against the white wooden slats of her seat, and waits.
When it finds its mark, burning in reverse, the lone, sloppy sentence reads:
You told us he was dead.
The sun was setting, melting into the horizon. Bleeding colors painted snow covered mountains in red. He was somewhere, that was for sure. Arms folded across his chest, Theron stared out the window adrift in his thoughts. Adrift until a tiny pouffe of flame reminded him that he should be in the present.
Reading the words, he closed his eyes and let his chin fall. A selfish moment, truth be told but he has been taking them more recently. For his own and none other. Hands to his face, he scrubbed what weary away. Two days growth scratched his palms rough.
His phone was on the edge of the desk behind him. Turning, he reached for it.
-ringringring, Amaranthe-
Neither Nephilim had taken to the technological revolution. The powder white, spiral corded phone jangles on the wall behind her. She jumps, leaping from her seat and makes it there before her husband can say a word to stay her. The phone does not get to its second ring. She puts it to her ear, hisses through teeth that touch at their smooth edges. "Explain yourself."
"Amaranthe." It was a greeting, a hymn, an apology that was not his own to make. "Where would you like me to start?"
Breathing. Thin, at first, then it gets heavier. Quicker. Until a feminine bark prefaces the solid thunk of a fist against the wall. "The beginning! You told us he was dead, you came------you came to my home...... You said that my son was dead. Why is it, then, that I hear his voice, alive and well? What cruelty have you brought down upon us....?"
"He was, and now he is not." There was the silence of a pause, nothing in the background. Not a thing. The entire world fell away. "The cruelty lies within the truth of how I can say that I understand how you feel."
"So we come full circle, then, Theron. Explain yourself. How did you come to know this? How did you know at the start?" a question she'd asked him plenty of times already.
Bells, faintly. Could she hear them in the wind? "Leena."
An exhale, followed by a muffled, "Angel above......." Then, more evenly, "So she's.....?"
Thirteen beats later, the strength of Amaranthe?s lilting voice dims under a patina of disbelief. , "No. No. No, that can't be. That can't be. How do you know, Theron, how do you know that it is her? How do you know that it is him? How do you know!?"
"I've seen her with my own eyes. I've spoken with her. I've touched her." He paused. "I have done the same with Crispin."
"Looks can be deceiving, Theron,? Silence. The phone clicks in a too tight grip, but the voice that comes, crystal clear and temperate as a deep lake, no longer shakes. "Where have you seen them? How long ago?"
"Leena has been with Crispin for years." Years as small as the number was. Time was precious. "She left me this morning. She spoke with him just weeks ago. As we live and breathe, I saw him last winter doing none other than the same."
Silence, though it carries weight, even over a telephone line. The kind of quiet that pads unspoken communication, done through expression, facial ticks and the rare, mouthed word. "I cannot help but notice that you have yet to answer one question. Where, Theron? Where did you see them?"
Silence was met with the silence of nothing. Weightless was to the weight that reached through the phone and settled around the Fallen's already heavy heart. "I can not tell you that. I will tell you that your son is as alive as my daughter. Whatever choices they made bear weight on their souls. They wear them as we do ours."
All it does is make their journey a step or two longer, perhaps a bit more complicated, but Amaranthe does not care about the challenge. Nor, in this moment, does she care about the Clave. They have one lead yet open to them, and given the Fallen's unwillingness to cooperate, it is a lead he does not need to know about. "Fine. But know this, Theron, this matter is far.....far from finished. You may have had the benefit of looking upon them with your own eyes, but the eyes can be tricked. Looks can be deceiving," she repeats. "Your Father knew that. We will not make the same mistake."
She does not wait for a reply, slamming the receiver down.
The line goes dead.
(Thank you, Wild Card!)
