Brian was hyperventilating. Watching him, AJ wondered if he should step forward and do something. His instinct told him no. Most likely, the last thing Brian wanted was for AJ to touch him. That hurt, but it was no more than to be expected. To give him time to breathe, AJ turned and replanted the lily.
“How…how did you do that?”
The fact that Brian was still standing there, asking a question like that, must be good. At least he hadn’t run away screaming, right? Still, AJ realized that he was nervous as he turned around to face him. “That’s a long story, honey.” He started to rub his arms, trying to bring warmth back into them.
Ever the gentleman, Brian shook his head to clear his thoughts and then stepped back from the door to gesture AJ past. “Well, get in here, then. You’re soaked through.” He said, a little of the color coming back to his face.
AJ scurried inside, still rubbing at his arms. He may not be able to get sick, or really that hurt either, but being in tune with the elements around him meant that he had to be able to feel them. Oh, he could shut it off. A mind over matter thing that his magic allowed. But he had just finished powerful magic, and the aftershocks would leave him feeling off for a little bit.
They went upstairs together, AJ thinking of nothing but getting dry clothes on. He could hear Brian dressing behind him, but he allowed his partner the silence in which to gather his thoughts. Once he had comfortable clothes on, though, he moved to the window seat and curled up, looking at the now star strewn sky. He knew Brian was waiting for him to talk. But how did he start this? “What do you want to know, exactly?”
“What are you? You, you made a storm stop and a plant grow in front of my eyes. You claim your older than a few millennia. Who is the man I’ve been with? Who the hell are you?”
AJ couldn’t help but wince at Brian’s tone. God, he was pissed. It took a lot to get Brian to the pissed point, but when he did, you were smart to watch out. Why oh why did he have to fumble so much at the time when words were so important?
“You might as well sit down. My story isn’t exactly short. It would take way too long to tell you everything I’ve ever done, but I can tell you how it all started for me. Please understand, though, that some of it I honestly can’t remember. Sometimes it feels like my life started when I met Howi.” The way he pronounced that had Brian quirking an eyebrow at him. AJ had to marvel at how cool his boyfriend was staying. If the roles had been reversed, AJ felt for sure that he would have been flipping.
“Howie’s name is really Howi. He got real inventive when he changed it, didn’t he? But, anyways. I met him when I was, oh God, twenty three? God, I can’t believe how hard it is to remember. Both of my parents died in a raid when I was barely a year old, so I was raised by my village. My home what you all refer to now as ancient Greece. Like I’ve said, I don’t know the exact timeframe of my life, cause when you live in a small village, you judge the flow of time by the movement of the sun, not the days on a chart. I know that the Trojan war happened in my lifetime, not long after I was made immortal. But, I keep sidetracking myself.
“I knew from early on that there was something different about me. Those in my village understood more than I did, and they helped me keep it quiet. As a kid, I could do weird things. If something upset me, the sky would fill, and rain would come. When I was happy, the sun was usually out and shining. Little things like that. Back then, we took that kind of stuff seriously. Some feared it, which is why we were so hard on outsiders coming in for fear they’d see me. But others, like those that I considered family, well, they thought it was a gift from the Gods, and they respected me for it.
“So I grew up always knowing that I had this ability in me, and that above all else, I had to keep it quiet. There was nothing more important than that. Still, I was happy. A loud kid, average for any at that age group. As I grew, it changed. I lost the need to be the center of attention, and I found the pride most men do. I trained to be a warrior, to keep my village safe. I was good, too.
“But one day, someone showed up at the village. I went with the other warriors to greet him, and send him on his way. We wanted no one to disturb our little home. God, we were foolish. We didn’t stand a chance against him.”
Here AJ paused. He was surprised to find that, even after all this time, the pain was still there. It was something he thought he’d lost a long time ago. He turned his head toward the window, soothed by the view of the sky and the stars.
“We informed him that our village was closed to outsiders, but offered to bring him supplies if he needed some. There was something off about the man on the horse, but I didn’t know what it was, then. I didn’t know I was standing in front of evil. There wasn’t any warning from. One second he was smiling at us, and the next something was wrapping us up in invisible bonds. We were lifted into the air, and carried back in front of him all the way to the center of our village.
“The man called everyone out into the village center, lighting fires to place that he thought weren’t moving fast enough. Once all of us were there, he used air to keep us in a tight knot together. Only then did he speak to us. ‘I am Rothalo, and I come seeking the one with the mind of the goddess. I seek the one who makes the rain come, and the earth tremble.’ Well of course they all knew who he was talking about. The only question was, why on earth did he want me? I remember the inn keeper leaning over to whisper to me that I should keep my mouth shut.
“Rothalo decided we needed some incentive, and without so much as a blink, he used air to bring a section of the village forward, all oldsters. ‘Tell me where this one I seek is at.’ He asked us again. Still no one spoke. But we all cried out when the group he had pulled out suddenly burst into flames.”
A single tear rolled down AJ’s cheek. He didn’t bother to wipe it away. The people who had died to protect him deserved his grief.
“Well, as you can imagine, I shouted at him that I was who he wanted. Even though the others around me tried to hush me, I let him know who I was. He used his magic to pull me forward so that I was floating in midair directly in front of him. ‘So you are the boy of which they speak?’ he asked me. I told him that I was. ‘But you’re just a little thing! Look at you? Still a child!’
“That pissed me off. By village standards, I’d been a man for a while now. But I didn’t have time to worry about it. Suddenly I was slammed down to the ground. I can’t give you the details for what came next. Some I can’t remember, some I refuse to speak. Suffice it to say, he beat me within an inch of my life, and left me lying there in the dirt. While I was too weak to do anything, he slaughtered the rest of my village, and left it burning.
“Who knows how long I lay there, dying in the dirt. Rain was pouring over me, but I didn’t care. All I wanted was to die, knowing that I was the reason my whole village had died. The screams of the women and children were still echoing in my ears. I felt the rain stop hitting my face suddenly, and I remember looking up. Howi was standing there, though I didn’t know who he was at the time.
“’Please tell me I’m not too late.’ I heard him whisper. There were hands at my throat, checking for my heartbeat. He cried out, happy to find I was still alive. Then he did something that I didn’t understand. He put his hands over my head and my stomach, and his eyes rolled back in his head. Then something warm filled me, until I felt like my veins were on fire. On and on it went, burning everything inside of my body. Then, just as suddenly, it stopped.
“The first thing I noticed was that the pain was gone. I sat up, and looked down at my body, and there wasn’t a scratch or a bruise in sight. Howi didn’t give me time to adjust, though. ‘Come on!’ he shouted at me. ‘We have to leave before he gets back. He meant to kill you, boy! Your half trained magic won’t work on him!’
“So I ran with Howi, not sure who I was following or where I was going. But from then on, Howi and I were a pair. It wasn’t until days later that he finally told me what he’d done. How he’d woven the element of spirit inside of my body, and infused it together with my body and soul, to grant me immortality. It was another few days before I discovered that my magic had stayed with me, and, indeed, it was infinitely stronger. This is exactly why Roth wanted me dead. He knew that one day I’d be a threat to him.”