Stark's Diary 13:  Revelation

I wandered around that large impersonal house frustrated.  Lucas' books and personal effects did little to answer the questions that had been multiplying like e. coli since I had met up with these people.  I had thought it might be a fun little adventure, when I first hooked up with them months ago.  Even after my cousins had been killed, I did not stop to think about what I was really getting into.  Now we quested after some amorphous place, in a land that I didn't even know existed.   Some of the answers had become apparent.  Yes, there were others like me.   My unnatural strength and healing abilities, something Reichert didn't have, were surely a gift of my unknown father.  I think that is where my shared commonalties ended. 

Fletcher, a soldier of some war, with the most ridiculous accent. He's a puzzle.   He would have us belief that all he cared about was himself, but he honestly seemed bothered by the fact that Dragos had duped me.  Bothered, hell he'd seem rather outraged when I looked back on it. 

Then there's the Dragos conundrum.  A puzzle that can't be solved by any textbooks, and now I can't solve it with the help of his "brother".  Illie, must be frustrated by his assignment of babysitting.  He apparently does not think very highly of me.  He only sees that I ran off from his liege lord, without a second glance.  He was angered when I tried to ask him more of Dragos.  Told me I should have stayed behind if I'd wanted to know.  Little did he know that I was running away from Dragos and what he had asked as much as running towards trying to find this Amber place and more about my birth.

If Dragos had taken the time to know me, then things might have been different.    He didn't know how it had felt to lie there in the sun, cramps causing me to scream in agony.  Scream for Aidan, scream for my Mother until my voice shattered and my throat was raw.  Scream as I felt the warm rich life torn away from me, ripped out, to bleed down across my legs.  There was so much blood.  Somehow I made it back down the rocks to the camp, a trail of red marking my passing.   Reichert found me collapsed and unconscious.

For weeks, I was inconsolable.  Lake, who had been angered by the pregnancy, was my partner.  She too had lost someone dear to her and we grieved together.    Years later in vet school, I understood that something had just gone wrong and these things happen, but then viewed it as the loss of all that I was, and all that I had been given by Aidan.  And the loss of something, that I could have loved.

Reichert, was amazingly cool during that time.  Poor kid.  He brought me the gift that helped snap me out of it.  Lake was considering leaving her job to take care of me full time.  Reichert was the one who found the wounded Marmabee at the side of the road.  Little four desert colored spotted legged, cat like carnivore.   It had been hit by a car.  Wouldn't let anybody touch it, except for me once it woke up.  We kind of nurtured each other back.  Used to go hunting out in the forests together.  Helped inspire my interest in animals, they're a lot safer than people.  It was then I realized I could my hands on an animal and tell what was wrong with it.  Learned I could kind of read their nature and figure out if they were going to run or bite.  Kicked all sorts of ass on the standardized tests and went off to college.  Did some pretty serious partying and still will on occasion.  The rest is a story for another day.

I think that that sense is part of this magic that Fletcher and Griffin have been trying to teach me about.  Seems like the magic is there, or the power, or the life force or whatever you call it.  Different people seem to have different ideas about how to access it.  I've been trying to figure out how to see it.  I like having something tangible to work with. 

This Ygg place, seems to be the place where I'm going to try to tap that, whatever it is.  The place is the most beautiful desolate thing I've ever seen.  The tree, is amazing.  Even lying dead, it is an amazing haven for life.  Small creatures borrow in holes they've carved out for themselves and the young trees in the circle are so alive.  I just want to sit and think and breathe and see it all.