I know this is a bit of a long post and that you all have busy lives to live, but I really wanted to introduce you to one of my favourite characters! In Gods of the Broken Realm Sky really takes a leading role. Shes from the Ungifted Realm, one of those with latent Magical Gift who has been preyed upon by one who would steal her abilities for himself. Sky is forthright, modern.....and far more Gifted than even the God Odin realised! I am not mad, Sky told herself as she sat unseeing in front of the television. The last few days had been a whirlwind of discovery and exploration, leaving Sky’s senses overloaded. Her head, and her heart, needed a break. Hence the night in front of the television when her entire being screamed at her that she should be spending this time with Odin, her love. It was this screaming insistence within her that helped her to make up her mind; that her feelings controlled her so fully and after so very little time meant that she needed some time to think. Yet her mind was not really co-operating with this plan, flitting, instead, between scenes that the two of them had enacted over the last days and nights. With thoughts like that in her head, there was no way that Sky was going to be able to buy herself any distance. Turning off the television, she wandered restlessly around her apartment. The journey did not take long. It was yet another crappy apartment that she had rented with the intention of moving on once she discovered that this job, this place, were not right for her. That she would come to this conclusion, she had no doubt. It was the pattern that she had fallen into over the last ten years or so, of her life. This inability to settle, to make something of her life could all, according to Odin, be traced back to the unspoken yearning that she felt within her. She was not merely directionless; her Gift had been stolen from her. Placing a hand upon her chest, she unconsciously rubbed the place above her heart. There. That was where the emptiness lived. Sky was so quick to accept the truth behind Odin’s explanation because what he said matched what she felt inside of her. But she had never before given expression to these feelings or attempted to determine their cause. You are one of The Untethered, Odin told her, and we came here to find those like you. And what then? Sky had tentatively asked, what will you do? I will heal you, he said, and make you whole again. And she believed him. This was what created her great need to reassess her thinking. She was not a person who gave her trust lightly. In fact, she could not think of anyone currently in her life that she could say that she trusted. Once, she would have said without hesitation that there was one person, but that individual was long gone. Now, none got close enough, knew her well enough, and she was always moving on. This was how Sky protected herself. But Odin had seen through her exterior and was working on peeling back the layers of the façade that she lived behind. When she set her foot across the threshold of the doorway to his office, it had begun. People often claim, after an event, that they had no idea that something so momentous was occurring. Yet Sky knew, somehow, that if she walked into that office and sat in the chair opposite the striking-looking man, that she would have to change. The dreams had been her night visitor again and she had found that their remnants were seeping into her day, making it more difficult for her to carry on her ‘normal’ life. The dreams had been there, waiting for her to close her eyes, for as long as she could remember, yet they had never been this frequent. Or this violent. Lack of restful sleep and distress caused by what she saw meant that food nauseated her and a lot of her working day was spent with her head hung over a basin. Her colleagues were starting to notice. Just last week, a fellow secretary at the legal offices had clumsily broached the subject of eating disorders by showing her an article in a magazine. Sky knew that this was a well-meant attempt to reach out to her, to help. How could she tell this woman that she was not bulimic, but merely sickened from dreams that showed her silver running with blood and pallid flesh growing within a tree? Always the smell accompanied her dreams, its taint so pervasive that she awoke each morning with the taste of old iron in her mouth. It was the smell of blood, she had determined from the iron tang, but there was a rottenness to it that caused bile to gather in the back of her throat. So she had done the only thing that she could; Sky signed up for counselling and spoke loudly in the office when she asked to have Tuesday afternoons off work in order to keep this regular appointment. They could hardly refuse to give her the time off, but Sky found that the whispers did not stop. She did not know why she had chosen this practice, in particular, except that it was situated quite closely to a park that she liked to visit. She could leave the stuffy little offices of her employer and walk to her appointment, stopping along the way to eat her sandwich on a bench in the park. In a life as devoid of colour as hers was, this was an opportunity to be valued. It also meant that, as she stood in the doorway to Odin’s office on that first Tuesday afternoon, she smelled of a combination of lilacs and lily of the valley. The monkshood will be in flower, also, Odin told himself, casting a quick glance towards the window, though it showed him nothing more than the retaining wall of another building. I feel so isolated here, he thought, so shut off from the presence of Mother Nature. And so it was that her freshness was even more precious to him as he acknowledged just how stifled these few weeks in the Ungifted Realm had already made him feel. Watching her trip slightly as she crossed the threshold, Odin knew that this feeling of stultifying, of all being static, was about to disappear. His Fate was making its way towards him. Odin loved her directness, the way in which she did not pretend not to notice the fact that his two eyes were of different colours. In his own realm, this would have marked him as the God Odin, immediately. In this realm, it seemed to him that anything different made people uncomfortable. But not Sky. “What happened to your eye?” she blurted out. Odin smiled, reflecting upon the fact that the only beings he had encountered in this realm that showed as much honesty as this had been the children. The young children. Not the beings they called ‘teenagers’, as they seemed to be disinclined to talk to anyone. In this woman, the one that Amberlaine had shown him a vision of before he left the Gifted Realm, he saw purity and integrity. He also saw the Gift. Knowing that Amberlaine had shown him this moment, this woman, for a reason, he knew that he needed to pique the interest of this stranger. In his heart, Odin knew that she would not remain a stranger for very long. “I traded it for all that I know,” Odin said calmly. It seemed that his tactics had worked; the woman appeared to be mesmerised, unable to look away. But not for the reason that most would assume. Yes, the man’s eyes were odd, but this was not a bad thing. One eye was grey, but not the boring shade that people usually associate with the term ‘grey’. Instead, this eye was the definition of mystery and the colour of the clouds when a storm hit the land. As a child, Sky had grown up on the coast and only there had she seen storm clouds that did justice to the comparison with this man’s left eye. The other, the right eye, was equally eye-catching. It, too, had something of the storm about it. This orb was milky and white, suggesting that it was defective or unseeing. But Sky knew instinctively that there was little that this man did not see. Sky felt the intensity of the man’s gaze as a palpable thing. Already she guessed that he knew everything about her that there was to know. His gaze had taken her apart as she stood in the doorway. It took all of Sky’s effort to scramble herself back together. Following the routine that she knew from experience that these sessions took, Sky seated herself in the chair placed on the side of the desk reserved for clients. She started looking through the enormous carpet bag that she lugged around with her, buying her a little more time. She knew that she had to say something, but did not know which words to pick. Somehow, she felt that her choice would play a pivotal part in the development of their relationship. That they would have a relationship, Sky was already convinced of. Exactly what form it would assume was yet to be determined. So she told herself not to blow this. “Well, I hope that you know a lot, then, or the trade wasn’t worth it.” She looked up at the man after setting her bag down on the floor beside her seat. It happened again as her eyes met his; the night sky stretched before her and the stars interrupted this velvety blackness with their silver twinkle. Startled, she made to rise from her seat. She could not do this. She was not ready to talk to this man, or to anyone. She had been doing okay, holding things together. She would not be able to cope with the affect that this stranger had upon her. She had to leave. In his gaze was something of the colour of her dreams. “Don’t!” he called out, sounding almost as distressed as she felt, “Please don’t leave! You don’t have to go! I really do understand what is happening to you!” If he had said anything else, Sky would already have been out of the door. But his words made her pause. After all, he had not said the usual ‘I can help!’ Maybe he would not be like the others. She remained in her seat. She would at least hear what he had to say. After all, she had been raised to know what courtesy was. “I really do know what is happening to you. I wasn’t just saying that to get you to stay, although I am very eager to keep you in the room.” She felt her heart race as he spoke, knowing that she, too, was eager to stay where she was. But she also knew that he was probably talking on a professional level, thinking of billable hours and that she should not read too much into this and open herself to the pain of rejection. Or of intense embarrassment. “Okay,” Sky said slowly, “you do know that that sounded a little creepy, don’t you?” The man laughed, “Yes, I suppose it did! I forget that honesty is not always well received. It can seem a little too, forthcoming, shall we say? I am a bit out of practice with this.” “With what?” Sky challenged, “I would have thought that you dealt with people all of the time. It is your job, after all! You can’t be a councellor without having contact with people! You should be good at this, polished, smooth, like all of the others. Always knowing what to say and when to listen.” His voice was as steady as his gaze when he answered her. “Ah, but that did not work for you, did it? I can hear the mocking tone in your voice! And we both know that that was not what I meant. You are not like the others; someone to be given encouragement and perhaps advice. You are different. This is different.” Odin waited to see if she would acknowledge that she understood what he meant, or to see if she would play the games that humans seemed to love. It tried his patience immensely to watch them pretending ignorance, as if all that mattered were the things they could see and anything else that their senses told them was to be ignored. He desperately hoped that she was not one of those; deliberately playing at being obtuse would be a waste of the talent that he could already feel emanating from her. She looked at him, her eyes solemn and unsmiling. She would match him in his honesty. “Yes, I know.” With those few words, the heart of Odin began to sing. Truly, Amberlaine had the Gift of Farsight, as she had Seen this meeting, across Time and across the Realms. Her powers increased, just as the child within her grew. He would seek not to rush Sky, but Odin knew that neither would he let her go. Not ever!
Posted on: Fri, 18 Jul 2014 09:14:43 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015