Unaware chapter 3 - Tsuma
More Unaware. Here we get the explanation for what they're gonna do to Rin! The story of things between the Cellens and the Nelenes. ^_^; Oh, and some wings. (Because, really, what good are pretty boys if there are no wings involved???)
...And, on a bit of behind the scenes info, this chapter has gotten more of an overhaul than the others so far. ^_^;; This is because it's kinda heavy on the the mythology, and I wasn't really thinking about the same universe when I originally wrote it as it now takes place in. I took out some stuff, changed a bunch, and added a few lines here and there. (And got rid of some time references, since it's been a bit longer since certain things happened than I originally said. ^_^;; ) Not that Willian's about to tell that to his son.
And while I'm at it, might I add that I'm wavering between two different ideas for my summer NaNo. One is set in this universe, though in pretty much the current day (meaning 2011), so past compared to this story. It's an urban fantasy type story, about a collection of law enforcement-like people withing the magical community. Jay's actually in this story, though it's a younger, more suicidal Jay. ^_^;; And some of the other characters are going to make appearances later, during Unstable (part II). ^_^
The other idea is a sci-fi, kinda m/m romance-ish but not quite, one. It's loosely a reboot of another story (that I posted part of in this post), but only from the human's point of view, and heavily changed. Very heavily changed.
But I can't make up my mind which I want to play with first... Grrr.
Anyway, I'll shut up now. Hit the cut for more Unaware.
Chapter 3
Tsuma* (*Tsuma = wife, again in Japanese. I honestly do not speak any Japanese, but you'd be surprised how much vocabulary you can pick up just being around people who love a language with a passion. (Of course, I went and asked how to say wife in Japanese this time... and you would be surprised how many different things I got told...))
I stared at Dad with what I assume was a look of complete and utter shock painted across my face. He had said that he was going to start with the "shocking" part so I could get it through my head by the time he was done talking. But no matter how much he might have said to prepare me for something like that, it wouldn't have been enough. And that was not considering the fact that he was telling me, his son, that I was going to be given away as a wife...
"What?" I spent a rather lengthy pause desperately trying to get my brain working again. I think it had shut down when the meaning of Dad's words finally worked its way through, unable to cope with the idea represented within. So had I been forced to shake it back to life, though I'm not sure quite how I did that when it was my brain not working in the first place. We'll just leave that particular mystery unsolved and move onward instead...
"I promise I will explain as much as I can later. But for now I'd like to start with a brief history and explanation of the world that this situation arose in. I'm hoping that will help you understand the agreement that our Cellen family has with the Nelenes."
"This is a family thing?" My voice squeaked as I forced out the question through a haze of disbelief.
"Of course it is. I would never dream of forcing you into something like this if it weren't. Especially since I almost got forced into the same situation. Kallen is two years older, but otherwise it would have been the same as what you will be doing."
"You almost married him?" He nodded, a slightly sad smile on his face. "But... aren't you straight? I mean... you married Mom and all... and I know Karen and I wouldn't be here if..."
"Straight? So is spaghetti, until you get it hot enough."
I stared at him some more, again a look of disbelief plastered across my face. I realized after a moment or two that it was supposed to be a joke. At least, I hoped it was supposed to be a joke... But whether it was or not, that was still not something that I wanted to hear coming out of my father's mouth, if only because it just didn't sound like him. It sounded more like it fit with the him I had seen that first day at the Academy, and I still had a hard time thinking of that man as the same Dad that I had known my entire life.
He grimaced. "That was what Kallen told me back then... When I asked him if he really didn't mind me, a guy... being the one that he would have to take. I grew up with him, but I always thought he liked women. And when I asked him, he smiled at me and told me that. I guess it just doesn't work coming from me, does it?"
"Not really..." He nodded in agreement.
"But anyway... No, I'm not straight. I'm bisexual, as are many of the others in our family. I think they actually tried to breed for that at one point in the past. It makes things so much easier when these times come around."
"Tried to breed for bisexuality?"
"It makes us sound like a bunch of animals, doesn't it?" He gave me an uncomfortable, strained smile. "It was a while ago that that happened, though. It used to be that pretty much any marriages in the family were arranged by the family, no matter what those involved had to say. It's not like that anymore, except when it comes to the Nelene family and our agreement with them."
"What agreement?" He had mentioned an agreement more than once now, but he still hadn't explained what it was.
"I'll get to that in a bit. Let me start at the beginning... But let's talk while we walk. We shouldn't have too much of a problem with others hearing us if they only catch a small bit, and I would like to go see the birds."
I didn't want to go see the birds. I had purposefully tried to avoid ending up by them before. I had never liked being around anything with wings. I wasn't sure what it was, but there was something about flying things - well, flying living things - that bothered me. They made me feel weird, and I couldn't explain what sort of weird it was... just... weird I guess. It had been like that as long as I could remember, not that I had ever talked about it, with anyone. Most of the time it wasn't a problem, even when there were birds flying around outside. But that didn't mean that I wanted to go look at them with Dad.
Still, I wanted my explanation, and if that meant that we went to see the birds while he talked, then we went to see the birds while he talked. So I got up and followed him when he started in the direction of the birds.
"You said that you had figured out that the Academy is Weird, didn't you?" It seemed to be a rhetorical question, since he started talking again right away. "I guess if you don't know anything, it would seem weird. Actually, the vast majority of the students and teachers at the Academy aren't human. I think the Nelene family might be one of the few pure human families there, and sometimes I have my doubts about them, no matter how much Kallen swears that they're pure."
"Not human?"
"Most are part human, but also part something else. Elves, fairies, and certain types of nature spirits seem to be the most popular hybrids, though they're fairly uncommon outside of the Academy. Most of the pure non-humans prefer not to give their children up to Nelene control and end up at other schools, but the part human families are quite fond of the way the Nelenes run things.
"And because human hybrids tend to be quite strong with magic, it's no surprise that the Academy boasts one of the best magical instruction programs in the world. Though it may be diminished, since I hear that one of the best instructors - the man who taught me the basics of control in fact - retired just last year. He must be nearing two hundred years old by now, and for his particular mixture of races that's quite old."
I stared at him, feeling completely and utterly lost, again. This time it was multiple things that had overloaded my brain, and I wasn't quite sure where to start asking questions to get it back together again. Though somewhere deep inside of me, a small voice was whispering, "Ask about him and magic!" After all, what he had said seemed to indicate that he had studied magic. But since my brain wasn't quite working enough to form a sentence, he ended up continuing without giving me a chance to ask.
"You should be taking some of those classes, eventually. Once we've managed to get you awakened, of course. Unfortunately, that may take a while. We've been trying to repress your abilities all this time, just in case something happened like last time. Once we get the blocks down, you'll be taking some of the classes at the Academy, but it will mostly be one on one training from someone with similar abilities. I'm not sure what sort of abilities you'll manifest, so I can't tell you yet who you'll be studying with, but I'm sure it will be a nice person."
"My abilities?" I managed to squeak out a question this time. "I don't have any magic or anything like that... You know that!"
"You don't right now. But later, once you've awakened, you will. I was the same way once. I was younger when I awakened, but I still spent the first thirteen or fourteen years of my life without any sort of powers. And now I've been asked to try and forget that I have them as much as possible, so it's much like it was before."
"Why?"
We arrived in front of the first bird cages at that moment. I stared at the birds inside as he paused a few moments to gather his thoughts. The birds inside stared back at me, and I swear they were glaring at me, though that idea was absurd and I immediately dismissed it as nonsense. Of course, that didn't stop the chill that traveled up my spine as the birds continued to stare at me.
"I mentioned that I almost married Kallen, right? That was because of the agreement that our family has with the Nelene family. The Nelene family is in charge of the entire society that the Academy is part of. Our family, as in you, me, Mom, and Karen, isn't quite part of that society anymore, but they still pull strings whenever they feel like it. And the Cellen family is bound by an oath to support of the Nelene family in a very specific way, but only for a Nelene who takes on the high seat.
"There hasn't been a change in the high seat for some two or three hundred years. The current Nelene in the high seat is Lord Gastar Nelene, who I believe is brother to Kallen's many-times great grandmother. He is childless, as are all who take the high seat, and his wife is Lady Marguerite Cellen. She is more or less the same relation to me that Lord Gastar is to Kallen. The tales of her beauty are actually quite impressive, even for one of us. But Lord Gastar is starting to fail, as all Nelenes eventually do, so they are looking to have a new Nelene and a new Cellen take the high seat so they can retire.
"Kallen was supposed to take the seat. His parents had made the arrangements. He had done everything that he had to do, except actually take the seat and take me in marriage once and for all. I was trained the way they wanted me trained, prepared for his eighteenth birthday when he would take the high seat and I would join him. But the day before his birthday he decided to step down and leave the seat for his son, though he had no clue that he would have a son in the future at that point.
"Our family was livid when this news came. I had been awakened in preparation for my part when Kallen took the high seat. Usually we Cellens are not allowed to be awakened, because of the unique nature of our abilities. So when the family suddenly found itself with a fully trained, fully awakened member, in the form of myself, they were not happy, and the declared that we would not be training any more members of the family until it was actually sure that the Nelene family would need one of us.
"That's why you haven't been trained, or even told about this, until just recently. I wasn't allowed to teach you anything of what I knew, no matter how much better it would make your life. You were to stay ignorant until we were sure that the young Master Nelene would do what he needs to do."
"So..." I wasn't really sure what to say, except that. So... something. "So... does that mean that we aren't fully human either? Or are we one of the exceptions too?"
"No, we aren't." He actually sounded sad. "The nature of the blood that runs through Cellen veins is... unique. Our blood is "heavy," like some other non-human species. We have no need to intermarry to keep the blood pure, because each Cellen child carries Cellen blood, undiluted, a sign of the magic that flows through our veins. But an unawakened Cellen child is no different from a human. It's only those of us who get awakened, like myself, and eventually you as well, who ever show anything other than human."
"Then what are we?" I continued to stare at the birds in the cage, though I could swear that they were starting to laugh at me, instead of just glaring. Again, I chalked it all up to my imagination.
"That's a matter of debate, actually. Some say we are descended from angels, some say from something far less "pure." I heard one of our distant relatives once claiming that we were descended from the Japanese tengu, the crow spirits. And some think we're descended from some sort of wind god.
"Or, you could be like me, and say that maybe we're a sort of fallen angel." Once again he gave me that same sad smile. "After all, the vast majority of the magics that run in our blood are powers that no respectable angel would touch with a ten foot pole. Sex magic. Gathering of power for status and material gain. A little bit of blood magic every now and then. Those of us with power are, almost always, puppets to the Nelene family, and no one has ever likened the Nelene family to angels, or even good. They are neutral at best, but far more often they stray to the side of evil rather than walking the line."
"Fallen angels..." I turned the thought over in my head. I had never been religious, for the most part. Mom was an expert on religious studies, and I had grown up reading her books, even though the majority of them were far beyond what any normal child would ever be able to understand. I had formed my own ideas of the truth rather early, and I had never found anything that made me feel compelled to adjust my way of thinking, not in all the almost twenty years that I had lived at that point. I believed in God - in a way - though it was a loose concept that could almost not be counted as God anymore. I didn't believe in heaven, or hell, or angels and demons, or any of those other mythological figures that came wrapped up in the packaging of some systems of belief, including Christianity.
But that didn't mean anything. I might be right, or I might be wrong. Or maybe the angels that Dad was talking about were quite a bit different from the traditional idea of them. Maybe, like the non-humans Dad was talking about, the angels were just another species with different characteristics and abilities than humans.
"I'll show you my wings when we get home," he added, which caught me off guard for a moment. Yeah, we were talking about angels, and angels usually had wings, but I didn't honestly think that he was talking about wings on us when he was talking about what the Cellen family was. I don't know why... there was just something about it that hadn't clicked in my head the first time. "I'm supposed to be trying to deny the fact that I ever had them in the first place, but I think for the sake of your education it can be excused. After all, I had more than enough experience with what was in store for me when they were training me. Lady Marguerite was, after all, one of the ones who trained me. If she were not trying to support Lord Gastar at the moment, I would ask to have her train you as well, but he has been failing more recently, keeping her quite busy. I may be able to get her to come visit and at least talk with you, though, if you like."
"You have wings?" He nodded, looking slightly guilty, so I decided not to go any further with the idea. Instead, I started on something else that had been bugging me most of the time we had been talking. "Does Mom know about all of this? About the family... and about what you want me to do?"
"I told her when I proposed. It only seemed fair for her to know exactly what she would be getting into. She knows more than you do, actually."
"Why does Mom get to know more about it than I do?"
"There are things that the family won't allow anyone to tell you until a certain time. But if you figure them out and ask for confirmation we can tell you whether you're right or not. Actually, for some of these things they made me do it too, and most of the things that you don't know right now are things that I grew up knowing. But I wanted you and Karen to have the most normal lives you could if I wasn't allowed to teach you anything until something was definite."
His mention of Karen brought another thought to the front of my mind. I scowled at him. "Come to think of it... Why is it me that you're forcing to marry another guy, and not Karen? At least she's a girl!"
"Besides the fact that she's only twelve and will still only be fourteen come the time when young Master Nelene takes his bride?" I winced, but just a little. He had a point - Karen was far too young to be marrying anyone - but it still bothered me quite a bit that instead they were making me do it. Besides, I don't know any guys who would like being referred to as a bride, even if there was a good reason for it. "Karen isn't the heir. The power chooses the one who will inherit it. It's not always the first child, but in this case, it chose you. She wouldn't awaken, even if we tried it, and an unawakened Cellen is useless to the Nelenes."
"What do they need us for anyway?"
"Three things. First is a matter of ritual, status, and power. That is technically what the "marriage" is for. It shows the people of our society that the two are truly bound together, as well as providing the full non-humans of our world with a guarantee that the power is not fully in human hands, even if the Nelene is the one in charge.
"Second is a magical matter. One of our particular abilities is to gather and refine power in ways that almost no other human or humanoid can, and this is why we are the family that the Nelenes chose to take as their own.
"As for the third... that is mostly a matter of convenience for the Nelenes..." He trailed off then, seeming reluctant to tell me what the third thing they wanted us for was.
"What?" I asked. "What's the third thing?"
"...You'll figure that one out given some time. I'm sure you will, and I would rather you come to that knowledge on your own. I just can't bring myself to say it."
He left it at that, refusing to say anything else. And not just about the third thing that the Nelenes wanted out of our family. He refused to answer any more questions that I had for him from that point on, and that annoyed me to no end. Finally, it annoyed me to the point where I told him flat out that I was going home, and that if he wanted a ride, he would have to come with me. I nearly had to pry him away from the caged macaw that he was staring at, but we ended up in the car not too long after that. The ride home was more than a little tense, of course, mostly because I wasn't about to forgive him for not telling me the things that I wanted to know.
But when we got home, he reminded me that he had said he would show me his wings. I was tempted to say no at first, just to be difficult, but just as I was about to say it and storm off to my room, I realized that I would regret that. Even if it wasn't what I really wanted out of him at that moment, at least being able to see something like that would be a little more than what I had known before then, and I could use all the more information that I could get.
We ended up in my room, not that I was sure why. Mom was locked in her study, working, and wouldn't have emerged for the end of the world. We would have been just as safe in Mom and Dad's room as we were in mine. Probably even more so, considering that they at least had a lock on their door, and I didn't. Of course, considering that Mom was the only other person at home, because Karen was participating in some summer camp for scarily smart preteens, it wouldn't have mattered anyway. Besides, I wasn't sure why we needed to go in a room in the first place. It wasn't like we were outside or anything.
It was when Dad started taking off his shirt that it started to feel awkward for me. I don't think I had ever seen Dad less than fully clothed in at least a t-shirt and shorts (and even that was rare, considering that he usually had on full length pants and long sleeves), and that includes the time that he helped chaperone the school trip to the water park when I was in elementary school. He slept in full pajamas every night, and besides the fact that I knew he had to change clothing every now and then, it was still hard to think of Dad without certain pieces of clothing. That just wasn't him.
"I could just manifest them with my shirt on," he said when I protested the shirt coming off. His voice was muffled, since he had already pulled his head through the top hole, but I could still understand him. "The magic actually arranges things the way they need to be in that case. But there's something else I want to show you while I'm at it."
"As long as it doesn't involve you any more naked than shirtless. Even that is getting weird."
"I used to go shirtless more often." He actually sounded a little sad about that, even as he pulled the shirt off the rest of the way. He looked up at me, smiling. "But I got tired of people commenting on my "tattoo" and how not me it was."
"Tattoo?"
Instead of answering me, he turned around and showed me his back. There was a tracery of black lines there, looking exactly like an enormous pair of feathered wings folded against his back. I almost reached out to touch them, thinking I would encounter feathers, but I stopped my hand just before coming in contact. It was the thought that I would be touching Dad's back if there weren't really wings there that stopped me.
"If you step back a bit I'll show you what they look like for real." He looked back over his shoulder, still smiling. "I'm told the effect is rather interesting if you can see the markings as I manifest the real things. I've never been able to confirm it, of course, since it's my back we're talking about. As it is, I've only seen pictures of the markings before."
I stepped back, as he had told me to, and waited. I'm not sure what I was expecting then, maybe some sort of indication that he was doing something. Whatever I was expecting, it didn't happen. What did happen was that all of a sudden the markings on his back turned fully black and started to unfold. It was all very quick, and before I knew it, Dad was standing in front of me, still facing away, with a pair of very large black feathered wings stretching out from his back.
He stood there for a moment, completely still, and then folded the wings against his back and turned to face me again. They didn't fold back completely now, unlike how the markings had looked, and I could still see them quite clearly even though I could no longer see his back. Even as he started talking, I caught my gaze going back to the black feathered things behind him every time my attention started to wander.
"I haven't done this in..." He paused to think. "...A very long time... The last time was when I told your mother the truth. She refused to accept my proposal until I showed her, so I did. I got a lecture from your grandfather afterward, but I still hold to the fact that it was worth it. Aside from that, the last time I had them out with permission from the family was before Kallen stepped down."
"I..." My brain couldn't quite form the words I wanted it to. "Am... am I gonna have wings like that too?"
"Maybe not quite like these. From what I've been told, we all have slightly different wings when awakened. I've only ever met one other, Lady Marguerite, because all of the others are dead. Her wings are actually dark gray, not black, and bigger compared to her body. But yes, you will have wings once awakened. And learning how to deal with them will be one of your easiest lessons, since it's almost completely instinctual."
"Somehow I don't think I'm going to be able to really believe this until it happens. I mean... it's not that I don't believe it..."
"But even so it's hard to actually get your brain around the fact that it will be you eventually."
"Yeah."
"I felt the same when I was in high school. I grew up knowing that I was being trained for Kallen, and I had seen Lady Marguerite and what she did for Lord Gastar since I was a child. But still, the fact that I was going to be doing the same things. That I was going to have the wings as well... That didn't quite stick until they forced my awakening. I'm sure you will be able to accept it all eventually, Rin. For now, why don't you just take it a day at a time?"
"I guess I can do that." I actually felt a little smile form on my face, though I'm sure it looked just as pathetic as it felt.
"Anyway, you have your class again tonight. And I'm sure that you have other things that you want to do before then, so I'll let you get to them..."
I nodded, and he bent down to pick up the shirt that he had dropped on the floor. He didn't put it back on, nor did he make the wings disappear. Instead, he opened up my door and started walking down the hall just like that, shirt in hand and feathered wings rustling a little from the movement. This made me shake my head, wondering why in the world he had fussed so much earlier about possibly being seen if he was just going to wander around the house like that afterward.
And, as it happened, Mom had just left her study to take a break as he left the room. I heard her gasp at seeing Dad like that just as I was about to close my door and make a call to Mark. By that point I couldn't help but want to listen to what was said before I went any farther, knowing that Mom knew more about the situation than I did.
"What in the world are you doing wandering around like that?" She was using her "Mom" voice, though I couldn't remember ever hearing her use with Dad before, no matter how much he had his head in the clouds.
"I was just showing Rin, that's all..."
"So you told him? Explained everything to him?"
"Most of it. What I could. What I could bring myself to tell him. Enough that Michal won't kill me when I send him to his class again tonight."
"How'd he take it?"
"Better than I thought he would. I don't think he's quite done processing it all, though. I have the distinct feeling that in a week or so he will be more than pissed off with all of us."
By about then I got tired of listening to them talk about me. Mostly because I was afraid that he would say something else that I didn't really want to hear. I think somewhere inside I had realized that the things he wasn't telling me were pretty much all things that I didn't want to hear, and that I would not be a happy camper once I finally found them out. But I was still clinging to the hope that I had heard the worst when he said that I would have to marry Nelene's son. That was bad enough, and I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do about it, so something worse was not what I wanted to hear at that point.
So instead I closed my door and fished my phone out of my pocket. It had crashed... again, and the power was off. I turned it on, waiting for it to boot (which took forever and a day, as usual... stupid obsolete piece of crap), and then made a call to Mark. I had time before my class, and I needed to do something that didn't involve Dad or classes for a bit before I went.
We ended up at Perkins (even though I've never been a huge fan of Perkins) in the end. It was Mark's choice, mostly because he wasn't in the mood for anything that required thought or massive amounts of money. He had had to work all day - I had to pick him up from work in order for us to have enough time to eat before my class without rushing - and as usual, he was wiped. But that never stopped him from helping me unwind, which was what I needed more than anything at that moment.
I didn't tell him why I was all worked up, of course. I couldn't bring myself to do it, and not just because I got the feeling that many of the things Dad had told me were supposed to be secrets from the "normal" people. Actually, I didn't want to tell him because I was way too embarrassed to tell anyone that Dad wanted me to be a "bride" for some guy about four years younger than I was. And I was sure that if I started talking about the rest of it, I would eventually end up letting that part slip, so I just told him that it was something that I didn't want to talk about when he asked me what was wrong.
Mark is a great guy. He's been in my life since we were little, and I don't think I could ever imagine trying to get along without him there to back me up. It's not anything weird, for the most part (while we're both sober, but that's a part of our lives that is over and done with), just a really close friendship. But he's the one person who I can tell almost everything to without worrying about stupid things. He's also the only person who will accept things I don't want to talk about as just that, not an attempt to "hide" information, even if that was the original intent of my refusal to speak.
So I was in a much better mood by the time class time came around...
...And, on a bit of behind the scenes info, this chapter has gotten more of an overhaul than the others so far. ^_^;; This is because it's kinda heavy on the the mythology, and I wasn't really thinking about the same universe when I originally wrote it as it now takes place in. I took out some stuff, changed a bunch, and added a few lines here and there. (And got rid of some time references, since it's been a bit longer since certain things happened than I originally said. ^_^;; ) Not that Willian's about to tell that to his son.
And while I'm at it, might I add that I'm wavering between two different ideas for my summer NaNo. One is set in this universe, though in pretty much the current day (meaning 2011), so past compared to this story. It's an urban fantasy type story, about a collection of law enforcement-like people withing the magical community. Jay's actually in this story, though it's a younger, more suicidal Jay. ^_^;; And some of the other characters are going to make appearances later, during Unstable (part II). ^_^
The other idea is a sci-fi, kinda m/m romance-ish but not quite, one. It's loosely a reboot of another story (that I posted part of in this post), but only from the human's point of view, and heavily changed. Very heavily changed.
But I can't make up my mind which I want to play with first... Grrr.
Anyway, I'll shut up now. Hit the cut for more Unaware.
Chapter 3
Tsuma* (*Tsuma = wife, again in Japanese. I honestly do not speak any Japanese, but you'd be surprised how much vocabulary you can pick up just being around people who love a language with a passion. (Of course, I went and asked how to say wife in Japanese this time... and you would be surprised how many different things I got told...))
I stared at Dad with what I assume was a look of complete and utter shock painted across my face. He had said that he was going to start with the "shocking" part so I could get it through my head by the time he was done talking. But no matter how much he might have said to prepare me for something like that, it wouldn't have been enough. And that was not considering the fact that he was telling me, his son, that I was going to be given away as a wife...
"What?" I spent a rather lengthy pause desperately trying to get my brain working again. I think it had shut down when the meaning of Dad's words finally worked its way through, unable to cope with the idea represented within. So had I been forced to shake it back to life, though I'm not sure quite how I did that when it was my brain not working in the first place. We'll just leave that particular mystery unsolved and move onward instead...
"I promise I will explain as much as I can later. But for now I'd like to start with a brief history and explanation of the world that this situation arose in. I'm hoping that will help you understand the agreement that our Cellen family has with the Nelenes."
"This is a family thing?" My voice squeaked as I forced out the question through a haze of disbelief.
"Of course it is. I would never dream of forcing you into something like this if it weren't. Especially since I almost got forced into the same situation. Kallen is two years older, but otherwise it would have been the same as what you will be doing."
"You almost married him?" He nodded, a slightly sad smile on his face. "But... aren't you straight? I mean... you married Mom and all... and I know Karen and I wouldn't be here if..."
"Straight? So is spaghetti, until you get it hot enough."
I stared at him some more, again a look of disbelief plastered across my face. I realized after a moment or two that it was supposed to be a joke. At least, I hoped it was supposed to be a joke... But whether it was or not, that was still not something that I wanted to hear coming out of my father's mouth, if only because it just didn't sound like him. It sounded more like it fit with the him I had seen that first day at the Academy, and I still had a hard time thinking of that man as the same Dad that I had known my entire life.
He grimaced. "That was what Kallen told me back then... When I asked him if he really didn't mind me, a guy... being the one that he would have to take. I grew up with him, but I always thought he liked women. And when I asked him, he smiled at me and told me that. I guess it just doesn't work coming from me, does it?"
"Not really..." He nodded in agreement.
"But anyway... No, I'm not straight. I'm bisexual, as are many of the others in our family. I think they actually tried to breed for that at one point in the past. It makes things so much easier when these times come around."
"Tried to breed for bisexuality?"
"It makes us sound like a bunch of animals, doesn't it?" He gave me an uncomfortable, strained smile. "It was a while ago that that happened, though. It used to be that pretty much any marriages in the family were arranged by the family, no matter what those involved had to say. It's not like that anymore, except when it comes to the Nelene family and our agreement with them."
"What agreement?" He had mentioned an agreement more than once now, but he still hadn't explained what it was.
"I'll get to that in a bit. Let me start at the beginning... But let's talk while we walk. We shouldn't have too much of a problem with others hearing us if they only catch a small bit, and I would like to go see the birds."
I didn't want to go see the birds. I had purposefully tried to avoid ending up by them before. I had never liked being around anything with wings. I wasn't sure what it was, but there was something about flying things - well, flying living things - that bothered me. They made me feel weird, and I couldn't explain what sort of weird it was... just... weird I guess. It had been like that as long as I could remember, not that I had ever talked about it, with anyone. Most of the time it wasn't a problem, even when there were birds flying around outside. But that didn't mean that I wanted to go look at them with Dad.
Still, I wanted my explanation, and if that meant that we went to see the birds while he talked, then we went to see the birds while he talked. So I got up and followed him when he started in the direction of the birds.
"You said that you had figured out that the Academy is Weird, didn't you?" It seemed to be a rhetorical question, since he started talking again right away. "I guess if you don't know anything, it would seem weird. Actually, the vast majority of the students and teachers at the Academy aren't human. I think the Nelene family might be one of the few pure human families there, and sometimes I have my doubts about them, no matter how much Kallen swears that they're pure."
"Not human?"
"Most are part human, but also part something else. Elves, fairies, and certain types of nature spirits seem to be the most popular hybrids, though they're fairly uncommon outside of the Academy. Most of the pure non-humans prefer not to give their children up to Nelene control and end up at other schools, but the part human families are quite fond of the way the Nelenes run things.
"And because human hybrids tend to be quite strong with magic, it's no surprise that the Academy boasts one of the best magical instruction programs in the world. Though it may be diminished, since I hear that one of the best instructors - the man who taught me the basics of control in fact - retired just last year. He must be nearing two hundred years old by now, and for his particular mixture of races that's quite old."
I stared at him, feeling completely and utterly lost, again. This time it was multiple things that had overloaded my brain, and I wasn't quite sure where to start asking questions to get it back together again. Though somewhere deep inside of me, a small voice was whispering, "Ask about him and magic!" After all, what he had said seemed to indicate that he had studied magic. But since my brain wasn't quite working enough to form a sentence, he ended up continuing without giving me a chance to ask.
"You should be taking some of those classes, eventually. Once we've managed to get you awakened, of course. Unfortunately, that may take a while. We've been trying to repress your abilities all this time, just in case something happened like last time. Once we get the blocks down, you'll be taking some of the classes at the Academy, but it will mostly be one on one training from someone with similar abilities. I'm not sure what sort of abilities you'll manifest, so I can't tell you yet who you'll be studying with, but I'm sure it will be a nice person."
"My abilities?" I managed to squeak out a question this time. "I don't have any magic or anything like that... You know that!"
"You don't right now. But later, once you've awakened, you will. I was the same way once. I was younger when I awakened, but I still spent the first thirteen or fourteen years of my life without any sort of powers. And now I've been asked to try and forget that I have them as much as possible, so it's much like it was before."
"Why?"
We arrived in front of the first bird cages at that moment. I stared at the birds inside as he paused a few moments to gather his thoughts. The birds inside stared back at me, and I swear they were glaring at me, though that idea was absurd and I immediately dismissed it as nonsense. Of course, that didn't stop the chill that traveled up my spine as the birds continued to stare at me.
"I mentioned that I almost married Kallen, right? That was because of the agreement that our family has with the Nelene family. The Nelene family is in charge of the entire society that the Academy is part of. Our family, as in you, me, Mom, and Karen, isn't quite part of that society anymore, but they still pull strings whenever they feel like it. And the Cellen family is bound by an oath to support of the Nelene family in a very specific way, but only for a Nelene who takes on the high seat.
"There hasn't been a change in the high seat for some two or three hundred years. The current Nelene in the high seat is Lord Gastar Nelene, who I believe is brother to Kallen's many-times great grandmother. He is childless, as are all who take the high seat, and his wife is Lady Marguerite Cellen. She is more or less the same relation to me that Lord Gastar is to Kallen. The tales of her beauty are actually quite impressive, even for one of us. But Lord Gastar is starting to fail, as all Nelenes eventually do, so they are looking to have a new Nelene and a new Cellen take the high seat so they can retire.
"Kallen was supposed to take the seat. His parents had made the arrangements. He had done everything that he had to do, except actually take the seat and take me in marriage once and for all. I was trained the way they wanted me trained, prepared for his eighteenth birthday when he would take the high seat and I would join him. But the day before his birthday he decided to step down and leave the seat for his son, though he had no clue that he would have a son in the future at that point.
"Our family was livid when this news came. I had been awakened in preparation for my part when Kallen took the high seat. Usually we Cellens are not allowed to be awakened, because of the unique nature of our abilities. So when the family suddenly found itself with a fully trained, fully awakened member, in the form of myself, they were not happy, and the declared that we would not be training any more members of the family until it was actually sure that the Nelene family would need one of us.
"That's why you haven't been trained, or even told about this, until just recently. I wasn't allowed to teach you anything of what I knew, no matter how much better it would make your life. You were to stay ignorant until we were sure that the young Master Nelene would do what he needs to do."
"So..." I wasn't really sure what to say, except that. So... something. "So... does that mean that we aren't fully human either? Or are we one of the exceptions too?"
"No, we aren't." He actually sounded sad. "The nature of the blood that runs through Cellen veins is... unique. Our blood is "heavy," like some other non-human species. We have no need to intermarry to keep the blood pure, because each Cellen child carries Cellen blood, undiluted, a sign of the magic that flows through our veins. But an unawakened Cellen child is no different from a human. It's only those of us who get awakened, like myself, and eventually you as well, who ever show anything other than human."
"Then what are we?" I continued to stare at the birds in the cage, though I could swear that they were starting to laugh at me, instead of just glaring. Again, I chalked it all up to my imagination.
"That's a matter of debate, actually. Some say we are descended from angels, some say from something far less "pure." I heard one of our distant relatives once claiming that we were descended from the Japanese tengu, the crow spirits. And some think we're descended from some sort of wind god.
"Or, you could be like me, and say that maybe we're a sort of fallen angel." Once again he gave me that same sad smile. "After all, the vast majority of the magics that run in our blood are powers that no respectable angel would touch with a ten foot pole. Sex magic. Gathering of power for status and material gain. A little bit of blood magic every now and then. Those of us with power are, almost always, puppets to the Nelene family, and no one has ever likened the Nelene family to angels, or even good. They are neutral at best, but far more often they stray to the side of evil rather than walking the line."
"Fallen angels..." I turned the thought over in my head. I had never been religious, for the most part. Mom was an expert on religious studies, and I had grown up reading her books, even though the majority of them were far beyond what any normal child would ever be able to understand. I had formed my own ideas of the truth rather early, and I had never found anything that made me feel compelled to adjust my way of thinking, not in all the almost twenty years that I had lived at that point. I believed in God - in a way - though it was a loose concept that could almost not be counted as God anymore. I didn't believe in heaven, or hell, or angels and demons, or any of those other mythological figures that came wrapped up in the packaging of some systems of belief, including Christianity.
But that didn't mean anything. I might be right, or I might be wrong. Or maybe the angels that Dad was talking about were quite a bit different from the traditional idea of them. Maybe, like the non-humans Dad was talking about, the angels were just another species with different characteristics and abilities than humans.
"I'll show you my wings when we get home," he added, which caught me off guard for a moment. Yeah, we were talking about angels, and angels usually had wings, but I didn't honestly think that he was talking about wings on us when he was talking about what the Cellen family was. I don't know why... there was just something about it that hadn't clicked in my head the first time. "I'm supposed to be trying to deny the fact that I ever had them in the first place, but I think for the sake of your education it can be excused. After all, I had more than enough experience with what was in store for me when they were training me. Lady Marguerite was, after all, one of the ones who trained me. If she were not trying to support Lord Gastar at the moment, I would ask to have her train you as well, but he has been failing more recently, keeping her quite busy. I may be able to get her to come visit and at least talk with you, though, if you like."
"You have wings?" He nodded, looking slightly guilty, so I decided not to go any further with the idea. Instead, I started on something else that had been bugging me most of the time we had been talking. "Does Mom know about all of this? About the family... and about what you want me to do?"
"I told her when I proposed. It only seemed fair for her to know exactly what she would be getting into. She knows more than you do, actually."
"Why does Mom get to know more about it than I do?"
"There are things that the family won't allow anyone to tell you until a certain time. But if you figure them out and ask for confirmation we can tell you whether you're right or not. Actually, for some of these things they made me do it too, and most of the things that you don't know right now are things that I grew up knowing. But I wanted you and Karen to have the most normal lives you could if I wasn't allowed to teach you anything until something was definite."
His mention of Karen brought another thought to the front of my mind. I scowled at him. "Come to think of it... Why is it me that you're forcing to marry another guy, and not Karen? At least she's a girl!"
"Besides the fact that she's only twelve and will still only be fourteen come the time when young Master Nelene takes his bride?" I winced, but just a little. He had a point - Karen was far too young to be marrying anyone - but it still bothered me quite a bit that instead they were making me do it. Besides, I don't know any guys who would like being referred to as a bride, even if there was a good reason for it. "Karen isn't the heir. The power chooses the one who will inherit it. It's not always the first child, but in this case, it chose you. She wouldn't awaken, even if we tried it, and an unawakened Cellen is useless to the Nelenes."
"What do they need us for anyway?"
"Three things. First is a matter of ritual, status, and power. That is technically what the "marriage" is for. It shows the people of our society that the two are truly bound together, as well as providing the full non-humans of our world with a guarantee that the power is not fully in human hands, even if the Nelene is the one in charge.
"Second is a magical matter. One of our particular abilities is to gather and refine power in ways that almost no other human or humanoid can, and this is why we are the family that the Nelenes chose to take as their own.
"As for the third... that is mostly a matter of convenience for the Nelenes..." He trailed off then, seeming reluctant to tell me what the third thing they wanted us for was.
"What?" I asked. "What's the third thing?"
"...You'll figure that one out given some time. I'm sure you will, and I would rather you come to that knowledge on your own. I just can't bring myself to say it."
He left it at that, refusing to say anything else. And not just about the third thing that the Nelenes wanted out of our family. He refused to answer any more questions that I had for him from that point on, and that annoyed me to no end. Finally, it annoyed me to the point where I told him flat out that I was going home, and that if he wanted a ride, he would have to come with me. I nearly had to pry him away from the caged macaw that he was staring at, but we ended up in the car not too long after that. The ride home was more than a little tense, of course, mostly because I wasn't about to forgive him for not telling me the things that I wanted to know.
But when we got home, he reminded me that he had said he would show me his wings. I was tempted to say no at first, just to be difficult, but just as I was about to say it and storm off to my room, I realized that I would regret that. Even if it wasn't what I really wanted out of him at that moment, at least being able to see something like that would be a little more than what I had known before then, and I could use all the more information that I could get.
We ended up in my room, not that I was sure why. Mom was locked in her study, working, and wouldn't have emerged for the end of the world. We would have been just as safe in Mom and Dad's room as we were in mine. Probably even more so, considering that they at least had a lock on their door, and I didn't. Of course, considering that Mom was the only other person at home, because Karen was participating in some summer camp for scarily smart preteens, it wouldn't have mattered anyway. Besides, I wasn't sure why we needed to go in a room in the first place. It wasn't like we were outside or anything.
It was when Dad started taking off his shirt that it started to feel awkward for me. I don't think I had ever seen Dad less than fully clothed in at least a t-shirt and shorts (and even that was rare, considering that he usually had on full length pants and long sleeves), and that includes the time that he helped chaperone the school trip to the water park when I was in elementary school. He slept in full pajamas every night, and besides the fact that I knew he had to change clothing every now and then, it was still hard to think of Dad without certain pieces of clothing. That just wasn't him.
"I could just manifest them with my shirt on," he said when I protested the shirt coming off. His voice was muffled, since he had already pulled his head through the top hole, but I could still understand him. "The magic actually arranges things the way they need to be in that case. But there's something else I want to show you while I'm at it."
"As long as it doesn't involve you any more naked than shirtless. Even that is getting weird."
"I used to go shirtless more often." He actually sounded a little sad about that, even as he pulled the shirt off the rest of the way. He looked up at me, smiling. "But I got tired of people commenting on my "tattoo" and how not me it was."
"Tattoo?"
Instead of answering me, he turned around and showed me his back. There was a tracery of black lines there, looking exactly like an enormous pair of feathered wings folded against his back. I almost reached out to touch them, thinking I would encounter feathers, but I stopped my hand just before coming in contact. It was the thought that I would be touching Dad's back if there weren't really wings there that stopped me.
"If you step back a bit I'll show you what they look like for real." He looked back over his shoulder, still smiling. "I'm told the effect is rather interesting if you can see the markings as I manifest the real things. I've never been able to confirm it, of course, since it's my back we're talking about. As it is, I've only seen pictures of the markings before."
I stepped back, as he had told me to, and waited. I'm not sure what I was expecting then, maybe some sort of indication that he was doing something. Whatever I was expecting, it didn't happen. What did happen was that all of a sudden the markings on his back turned fully black and started to unfold. It was all very quick, and before I knew it, Dad was standing in front of me, still facing away, with a pair of very large black feathered wings stretching out from his back.
He stood there for a moment, completely still, and then folded the wings against his back and turned to face me again. They didn't fold back completely now, unlike how the markings had looked, and I could still see them quite clearly even though I could no longer see his back. Even as he started talking, I caught my gaze going back to the black feathered things behind him every time my attention started to wander.
"I haven't done this in..." He paused to think. "...A very long time... The last time was when I told your mother the truth. She refused to accept my proposal until I showed her, so I did. I got a lecture from your grandfather afterward, but I still hold to the fact that it was worth it. Aside from that, the last time I had them out with permission from the family was before Kallen stepped down."
"I..." My brain couldn't quite form the words I wanted it to. "Am... am I gonna have wings like that too?"
"Maybe not quite like these. From what I've been told, we all have slightly different wings when awakened. I've only ever met one other, Lady Marguerite, because all of the others are dead. Her wings are actually dark gray, not black, and bigger compared to her body. But yes, you will have wings once awakened. And learning how to deal with them will be one of your easiest lessons, since it's almost completely instinctual."
"Somehow I don't think I'm going to be able to really believe this until it happens. I mean... it's not that I don't believe it..."
"But even so it's hard to actually get your brain around the fact that it will be you eventually."
"Yeah."
"I felt the same when I was in high school. I grew up knowing that I was being trained for Kallen, and I had seen Lady Marguerite and what she did for Lord Gastar since I was a child. But still, the fact that I was going to be doing the same things. That I was going to have the wings as well... That didn't quite stick until they forced my awakening. I'm sure you will be able to accept it all eventually, Rin. For now, why don't you just take it a day at a time?"
"I guess I can do that." I actually felt a little smile form on my face, though I'm sure it looked just as pathetic as it felt.
"Anyway, you have your class again tonight. And I'm sure that you have other things that you want to do before then, so I'll let you get to them..."
I nodded, and he bent down to pick up the shirt that he had dropped on the floor. He didn't put it back on, nor did he make the wings disappear. Instead, he opened up my door and started walking down the hall just like that, shirt in hand and feathered wings rustling a little from the movement. This made me shake my head, wondering why in the world he had fussed so much earlier about possibly being seen if he was just going to wander around the house like that afterward.
And, as it happened, Mom had just left her study to take a break as he left the room. I heard her gasp at seeing Dad like that just as I was about to close my door and make a call to Mark. By that point I couldn't help but want to listen to what was said before I went any farther, knowing that Mom knew more about the situation than I did.
"What in the world are you doing wandering around like that?" She was using her "Mom" voice, though I couldn't remember ever hearing her use with Dad before, no matter how much he had his head in the clouds.
"I was just showing Rin, that's all..."
"So you told him? Explained everything to him?"
"Most of it. What I could. What I could bring myself to tell him. Enough that Michal won't kill me when I send him to his class again tonight."
"How'd he take it?"
"Better than I thought he would. I don't think he's quite done processing it all, though. I have the distinct feeling that in a week or so he will be more than pissed off with all of us."
By about then I got tired of listening to them talk about me. Mostly because I was afraid that he would say something else that I didn't really want to hear. I think somewhere inside I had realized that the things he wasn't telling me were pretty much all things that I didn't want to hear, and that I would not be a happy camper once I finally found them out. But I was still clinging to the hope that I had heard the worst when he said that I would have to marry Nelene's son. That was bad enough, and I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do about it, so something worse was not what I wanted to hear at that point.
So instead I closed my door and fished my phone out of my pocket. It had crashed... again, and the power was off. I turned it on, waiting for it to boot (which took forever and a day, as usual... stupid obsolete piece of crap), and then made a call to Mark. I had time before my class, and I needed to do something that didn't involve Dad or classes for a bit before I went.
We ended up at Perkins (even though I've never been a huge fan of Perkins) in the end. It was Mark's choice, mostly because he wasn't in the mood for anything that required thought or massive amounts of money. He had had to work all day - I had to pick him up from work in order for us to have enough time to eat before my class without rushing - and as usual, he was wiped. But that never stopped him from helping me unwind, which was what I needed more than anything at that moment.
I didn't tell him why I was all worked up, of course. I couldn't bring myself to do it, and not just because I got the feeling that many of the things Dad had told me were supposed to be secrets from the "normal" people. Actually, I didn't want to tell him because I was way too embarrassed to tell anyone that Dad wanted me to be a "bride" for some guy about four years younger than I was. And I was sure that if I started talking about the rest of it, I would eventually end up letting that part slip, so I just told him that it was something that I didn't want to talk about when he asked me what was wrong.
Mark is a great guy. He's been in my life since we were little, and I don't think I could ever imagine trying to get along without him there to back me up. It's not anything weird, for the most part (while we're both sober, but that's a part of our lives that is over and done with), just a really close friendship. But he's the one person who I can tell almost everything to without worrying about stupid things. He's also the only person who will accept things I don't want to talk about as just that, not an attempt to "hide" information, even if that was the original intent of my refusal to speak.
So I was in a much better mood by the time class time came around...