The Story Begins (6 page)

His visits always meant a lot of fun, which usually meant trips to anywhere, or anything else her mind could conceive. However, unlike Rya and Jaden, he was never seen by anyone other than her, and the worlds they visited for the most part were inhabited by animals that belonged in the wild, not to any one dominant species such as man on earth.

*

BACK
TO THE PRESENT: Today there was but the two of them at home. Neither her parents nor Cassandra, her neighbor, who was more like a sister, were home. Lydia’s parents not being home meant that she didn’t have to worry about them interrupting her playtime. She needn’t worry about discretion as she didn’t want them believing that, at almost thirteen years of age, she still had an ‘imaginary’ friend. Though he was very real and there was absolutely nothing imaginary about him, she never tried talking to her parents about him for one reason; she’d seen enough movies in which the grown-ups never believed the children, even though they told the truth about such matters.

“Why do you kind of look like all the boys that I know?” Lydia asked for the very first time as they floated aimlessly about her room, albeit she had wondered this for a very long time. “And are you ever going to be like a real person that everybody can see?”

“I don’t know. I never thought about such things. Maybe that’s just how my father wants it.” He thought a while then continued. “If I had to guess, I’d say maybe because I don’t particularly care for discretion, and the things that I do when I am with you would probably cause concern among people should they see me is why my father would rather I remain unseen… and if that’s not why, I’m sure he has his reasons,” Shia explained. “As far as looking like all the boys that you know, I don’t even have a guess for that but I’m sure that there is a reason for that as well.”

Lydia knew Shia and his power and might well enough to agree that he was probably right, which was probably one of the reasons they mostly visited planets with entirely wildlife.

*

The
older Jaden and Lydia smiled; having already lived those days and now revisiting them in their old age, the answer as to why they had both looked like everyone was such a simple one.

*

“You
are so completely mysterious,” Lydia stated.

“Yeah… I guess,” he acknowledged, his voice inflected as though he was realizing this for the very first time. Then he changed the subject. “Being home from school must be fun, huh?”

“I don’t like to go to school anymore,” she said, looking upset all of a sudden.

“No! Why not? You’ve always liked it. What’s wrong?” he asked, very concerned about her. He hated to see her unhappy. He did not want her going through any more pain than she was already suffering by living in the dysfunctional family that was hers. He always wished that he could rescue her from her unhappy parents but as powerful as he was, that was something he was not allowed to do.

“Some of the girls at school tease me, and yesterday one of them shoved me,” she told him.

After hearing that Shia abruptly stopped his idle floating and became still. He now hovered with his feet just above the floor and his eyes intently focused on Lydia and narrowed to the point of appearing to be shut.

Beneath his glowing diaphanous silvery and grayish form, Lydia could see a bluish flame blaze throughout his being and a menacing grimace cross his face. His wrath was only too obvious.

“Do not be frightened,” he said. He hovered in place for a few seconds longer before calming down and bringing the blaze within him to an end; once again his face looked the calm, serene and happy way that it always did. “Who shoved you and why?” he asked calmly.

“Tiffany did because Cassandra and I wouldn’t get up from where we were sitting. It’s not like we did anything to her. We were sitting there first. She used to be my friend but not anymore, not after what she did,” Lydia cried. “She’s mad at me for some reason, and she’s making all the girls tease me too.”

“If she’s angry with you for no reason, it sounds like she’s a bully. How long has she been troubling you?”

“A few weeks. If I did do anything to her, I really don’t know what it is.”

“Not always do bullies have a reason for that which they do. Some people are just mean without reason,” Shia explained to her. “Have you told your mother and father, or any of your teachers about this?”

“No. Only Cassandra knows. Tiffany picks on her too. Cassandra says that it’s because Tiffany is jealous that everybody likes me a lot,” Lydia told him.

Shia smiled warmly. “How can anyone dislike you? You’re a nice person. Tiffany, though, is not a nice person and if she carries on as such, sooner or later no one is going to like her at all. You can always make new friends. You don’t need bad people to be your friends. I’m sure that there are a lot of other girls at school who would like to become your friend.”

“But I don’t want new friends. I don’t want any friends at all. Everybody is mean and I don’t like anyone anymore. I’m not going to go to school anymore. I’ll only play with you and Cassandra and no one else,” lamented the young girl. “The both of you are always nice to me.”

“I’ll stop her from being mean to you. And when she stops, they will all stop,” he said.

“What are you going to do?” Lydia asked, afraid of whatever Shia had in mind. He never interacted with anyone else and how she had just seen him frightened her for the sake of others.

“Punish her!” Shia said solemnly.

“You’re not going to be mean, are you? I don’t like that,” Lydia said.

“She’ll be fine,” he promised her. “I just want her to know that it isn’t nice to be mean,
especially
to you.”

“Can I be there too? I want her to know that you protect me?”

“Of course you can,” he said. “When it is done, never again shall she come near you unless, of course, you so choose.”

“When shall we go see her?”

“I see her as we speak,” he said.

She was baffled. “But you’re here with me?”

He smiled. “I can be in any number of places, or times, as I will.” No sooner had he finished saying that than Lydia found herself back at the precise moment it had started.

*

Lydia
was sitting with Cassandra in the school yard, waiting for the fire drill to come to an end. She looked around but Shia was nowhere to be seen. Then, to her dismay, she saw Tiffany approaching; knowing that which was to be, she panicked. Cassandra had also noticed Tiffany and held Lydia’s hand nervously.

Why Shia was doing this Lydia could not fathom. Both girls became silent upon seeing Tiffany and it all began to happen as Lydia knew it would. Tiffany demanded that Lydia and Cassandra give up their seat. Lydia refused, her reasoning being that she and Cassandra had gotten there first so why should they have to leave. Knowing what would ensue, Lydia couldn’t understand why she had said that instead of simply walking away with Cassandra. She desperately wanted to walk away yet it seemed as though she had no choice but was destined to relive every moment as it had come to pass. Then something did change; just as Tiffany was about to push her off the bench, Lydia, rather than remaining seated and waiting for the push, stood up. Cassandra remained seated, still holding on to Lydia’s hand.

“Leave us alone or you will be sorry!” Lydia cautioned Tiffany sharply.

At that, Tiffany, along with her friends, laughed. “And who’s going to make me?” Tiffany sneered. Tiffany was just about to shove Lydia when she suddenly found herself petrified; her friends, too, stood motionless.

Unseen, Shia assimilated into Lydia’s body and inched towards Tiffany, the nearer Lydia inched towards the bully, the darker everything around them became.

Tiffany’s heart palpitated wildly. She couldn’t understand what was happening. Fear having gripped her, she struggled to close her eyes and pretend that none of whatever was taking place was real. She couldn’t. Her eyes were made to remain open. Her body failed to respond to every signal her brain sent out.

Lydia now stood a hair’s breath away from Tiffany, who had no choice but to peer into her would-be victim’s eyes. And in Lydia’s eyes, Tiffany saw whatever her greatest fears and dreads were, only they were multiplied by infinity and seemed to stretch into eternity. As she had stood there affrighted and utterly dismayed, in Lydia’s eyes she looked upon a glowing grayish mist-like obscurity forming out of the abyss that was the darkness into which she peered. It formed into a being of sorts that glowered with eyes that shimmered different colors. Then its focus turned to her and she felt her soul momentarily, violently, drawn into the void where dwelled all her fears before returning to her body. It then looked at her with sparkling eyes and an intensity that seemed to threaten incinerating her being before fading away back into the void from whence it came.

*

Just
as suddenly as when she had found herself back at that moment in school, both Lydia and Shia were now back in her room.

“What just happened?” she asked, bewildered by the experience.

“We just changed the past so it never happened,” he explained.

“But if it never happened, and somehow I feel that it didn’t, how can I still be aware of it?” she asked, a bit confused.

“Well, it’s like this; you’re aware of it not because it’s a memory of what has already been, rather you are aware of what would have been had the past not been altered. It’s like if a psychic were to tell you that something bad was going to happen but then advised you that if you were to follow the psychic’s advice, you’d have the ability to prevent the unfortunate occurrence from ever being. Naturally, one would seek out the advice, as by doing so one could change or prevent what otherwise would have been,” he continued to expound; “meaning that even though it does not happen, you still would know what would have been,” he finished. “Does that make sense?” he asked, hoping that he hadn’t confused her.

She wasn’t sure. “I guess it does,” she said, frowning over the somewhat convoluted explanation.

“Good. So let’s pretend that I’m that psychic, only I can do more than a psychic can… a lot more,” he said.

“Whatever it was that you did to Tiffany, I hope you weren’t too mean,” said a concerned and nervous Lydia, fearful that Shia might have punished Tiffany a little too harshly.

“I was just mean enough,” Shia said solemnly, “to keep her flame alight. I saw her tomorrow and it was devoid of light; now no longer are her days yet to come consumed by darkness.”

Lydia wasn’t quite sure that she understood what he meant but didn’t ask for clarification. Then a thought struck her. “Can you change all the sad things that have happened in my life?” she asked sadly, thinking of the turbulent relationship between her parents and all the heartache created because of it.

Shia’s heart broke. “I could but even I have rules by which I need abide. Do not think of your past but know that your future is a happy one,” he consoled.

“You promise?” she asked, trying not to cry.

“Yes. I promise,” he pledged. “Are you ready?” he then asked her but before she could answer, they were already gone. Gone to a world nowhere near the known universe, and there, in wild gardens, beautiful flowers and creatures the human imagination would have a hard time grasping, awaited her.

*

“So
what are we playing today? Basketball, football, volleyball? What’s the game going to-?” Marcus didn’t get to finish his question as Captain Ronan, one of their professors of Military Science, stormed into the armory. This was not unusual; however, when he started barking orders for all the sissies and little girls to fall into their assigned ranks, it was obvious that somebody had failed in some task.

The captain was an infantryman through and through. He had been from day one of his career and vowed he’d remain so until the inevitable day the Army would force him to retire. In their worst nightmares, none of the cadets could have ever dreamt that they’d encounter the brute animal this guy was. A couple of the lower classmen dreaded him so much that they had tried to negotiate out of their scholarship contracts. But, alas, Uncle Sam would not let them go.

Firstly, Captain Ronan detested the fact that there wasn’t an ongoing war somewhere in which he could have either led soldiers to a glorious victory or a heroic death. Rather, he was bound he felt, as though by chains, to mentor cadets, not even privates, whom he considered uppity postulants at a school that lacked the proper facilities to truly mold the neophytes into even halfway decent troops. His comparisons were unfair for he always compared the school to army installations, constantly reminding the cadets that on real military installations, there were all kinds of deadly obstacle courses real soldiers could easily maneuver through, day in and day out, blindfolded.

Whenever he went into such tirades Jaden was always tempted to shut him up by reminding the captain that maybe, just maybe, when the institution was but a concept, it was one created upon the premise of establishing an academic institution and not a place for crawling in mud beneath barbed wires while bullets flew overhead. But, of course, Jaden was well aware that it was best that his fantasies remained just that.

Secondly, having been previously enlisted before joining the Officer Corps, Captain Ronan couldn’t stand the fact that those he considered snotty-nosed cadets were actually going to be commissioned into the army as lieutenants with absolutely no experience–through no fault of their own–to boss over good enlisted men who had been in a lot longer than any of the whelps, as he sometimes referred to them.

And lastly, having grown up in the old army, he abhorred the new politically correct institution the army had become. “What the hell kind of an army has this become?” he’d often yell when a weaker cadet could not keep up with the captain’s murderous workout regimen and was allowed to rest.

Well aware of all of the captain’s quirks, the cadets knew that there’d be hell to pay if someone stepped out of line in any way, shape, or form; so when the captain from hell burst in barking and commanding that all sissies and little girls fall into ranks, pain was certainly coming their way.