Remembrance
I remember the first time I met my father.
My true father, that is, the one whose blood I share, not the one I've lived with my entire life. My mother had always told me that the man I looked to every day was my step-father, and that my real father was out there, too busy and (she would say with a sigh) too forgetful to remember that he had a child, more often than not.
My step-father, upon my asking, would ruffle my hair and say, "Your father is a man of quality, in his own way. It's not his fault he is what he is."
I know they'd both try to convince my blood-father to come out to visit us every Christmas (a situation I thought of as perfectly normal, until I learned otherwise in high school), and every second year they'd barrage my blood-father with requests to come out for my birthday.
"Your father is very forgetful," my mother would sigh, as we three sat together for another Christmas dinner without my blood-father. "Time has no meaning to him."
"It's not his fault." My step-father would add, shaking his head. "Maybe next year."
And next year would come, and next year would go with neither hide nor tail of him. Sometimes I'd get neatly written notes, apologizing for missing another year, along with some strange, fantastical toy the likes of which I'd only dreamed of.
I always had the latest gadgets and toys, things I wanted desperately but our little family could never afford. It was like my blood-father was trying to apologize the only way he knew how, by giving me things that had my classmates drooling in envy. It was nice, but every year I found myself praying for only one thing: to meet my blood-father.
I finally got my wish the Christmas of my junior year in high school.
A Memory
I woke up to snow. White, everywhere was white, the sun shining off the mounds in gleaming, glittering splinters that pierced the eye and made looking outside difficult. Even the reflection off the wall in my room was enough to make my eyes water.
I stretched and rose, shuffling to my closet and throwing on clothes, with barely a glance at what I was grabbing. It didn't particularly matter, in my opinion -- the only ones who were going to see me today were my mother, my step-father, and my two close friends. I'd been living with Selas and Asari since the beginning of the semester, when their families had both decided to pick up and resume their wandering, and both of them decided that they wanted to stay and finish their schooling here.
"Raiii-yyyaaaannn!"
Right on cue, Asari's voice cut through my thoughts, as she knocked on my door.
"Raiyan, wake up, lazy-bones!" Selas added her own two cents. "We'll eat withooouuuttt you!"
"Hrmph," I pulled the door open sharply, stepping hastily aside as Asari fell through the doorway to land on the floor of my bedroom with a thump. "I'm up, I'm up."
Selas laughed, "Good! Come on, I want some of your mom's pancakes."
Asari pulled herself up using my leg, sticking her tongue out at me as she skipped out the door and down the steps, leaving the slower Selas and myself to take up the rear.
When we got down to the dining room, my mother and step-father were sitting at the table, a great stack of my mother's pancakes sitting on a large serving platter in the middle of the table. Asari was already helping herself to a plate of them, and Selas and I settled into our places with nods of greeting to my parents.
The meal went well, as any time my mother made pancakes for us did. All three of us children were glancing over our shoulders, trying to see the tree and the presents sure to be under it. That was another ritual in our house, and I'd warned Selas and Asari about it. We didn't begin opening presents until everyone had had a full breakfast (including a long cup of coffee for my parents).
We were nearly finished, and getting antsy to get to our presents, when a knock came at the door. My parents exchanged a puzzled look.
"I'll get it," my step-father rose from the table and into the next room over to the front door. Selas shifted anxiously in her seat, and I could see Asari slowly edging towards the family room, though she was still sitting in her seat.
"Oh! Kyran! You made it this year!" I could hear my step-father's voice flutter in surprise, and cast a curious gaze at my mother, who had a small, feline smile on her lips.
"Come in, come in." My step-father continued, "We haven't begun with the presents yet. I think there are even some of Hali's pancakes left."
"Thank you, Gale. I think I'll take you up on that offer."
I exchanged glances with my friends, our anxiousness for our presents currently overridden by our curiosity of this stranger.
The man who strode into the room made my step-father, Gale (not a short man by any stretch of the imagination - six feet tall if I wanted to underestimate), look short. His entire body was knife-slender, his facial features sharply defined, dangerous even. Wavy black hair fell unrestrained to his shoulders, his pale blue eyes rimmed with a frosty silver.
He reminded me of a wolf. A very dangerous, deadly wolf, accustomed to relying only on himself.
He bowed to my mother, an ancient tribute that somehow fit him, despite how he barely looked to be older than twenty five, thirty at the oldest. (But he had to be older, I realized while looking at him. I was seventeen myself, so unless he had met my mother when he was ten, there was no chance he could be my father. And who else would show up this day of days?)
"Hali, will you forgive me for being a forgetful old fool?"
My mother laughed, gesturing for him to sit, "Only if you sit and eat. You still look half starved."
He laughed as well, settling himself gracefully in the open chair and helping himself to the pancakes left on the plate.
"Raiyan, this is your blood-father, Kyran Rasur." My mother turned to look at me, "I don't ask that you treat him like you treat Gale, but please, be polite to him."
Asari gaped at my mother, then at Kyran, "Kyran Rasur? You mean the Mr. Rasur, one of the Fallen credited with the creation of the Celestial Covenant? You're Raiyan's father?"
"Which makes you the Gale who assisted him, doesn't it?" Selas cast a questioning look at my step-father, who merely nodded.
I was speechless. I'd always worshipped Kyran Rasur and his three companions; Eli, Luna, and Gale. While I knew my step-father's name, and also knew that he was a Fallen, I'd never actually connected his name with the name in the histories. That, and there were no images of the four in the histories and very few descriptions of any of them, which (I now realized) were all skewed.
That, and my mother was a Pure Lost. I had thought my father was a human or an Original Lost, a Pure Lost at best.
Not a Fallen. Not one of the first.
My mother made a shooing motion towards Kyran, "Continue eating, dear, I'll take care of these questions." She smiled warmly at him, then turned to us, "Yes. This is that Kyran Rasur, though he prefers to leave that behind him..."
"To dwell in the past is to lose sight of the future," Selas quoted the Covenant, interrupting my mother.
She nodded, "Indeed. As I was saying, Kyran did indeed initiate the creation of the Celestial Covenant, and he is indeed your father. We did genetic tests to prove it, even though I'd never been with another man but Kyran before."
I cleared my throat, finally able to gather my thoughts enough to ask, "I thought Fallen were infertile, especially with their own and with Pure Lost. I thought that was why you and father couldn't have another child."
"That," Kyran set his fork down on the edge of his plate, "was what we thought as well. But, it seems, fate decided to laugh at us. Gale and your mother kept me informed about you, and I am sorry that I never made it out here before, but..."
"At least I know why mom and dad kept saying you couldn't help being who you are," I couldn't help the small chuckle. Even in the histories, Kyran had been portrayed as a forgetful sort, more inclined to remember things that were supposed to happen decades from now than what was supposed to happen two minutes from now.
He smiled faintly, "Indeed. It's always been a failing of mine, I fear. I would have made a very air headed, useless man if I hadn't been born into a form that could permit me to take the long view more often than not." He fiddled with his fork a bit, then pierced me with a gaze from his silver edged eyes. "Show me your Blood Rose."
I took a breath, "Show me yours."
Kyran met me gaze for gaze for long moments, as the rest went silent around us. I had responded as was proper for a follower of the Celestial Covenant, but just as much a Kyran was known for being one of the creators of the Covenant, he was also known for his disregard for Lost who claimed to follow it. Whether that would apply to me, I was not sure. Tracing all the histories and lineages, there was no precedent of him having children anywhere in the past, and the Lost were fairly thoroughly documented in the first three centuries.
Finally, Kyran stood and pulled off his jacket, revealing the large bloom that spread across his entire lower left arm, from wrist to elbow.
Now it was my turn, and I rose with a reluctant sigh. In my heart I'd hoped that he would refuse the challenge, so that I didn't have to show mine off. Not around my friends, at least -- they were Pure Lost, true, but low tier ones, with small blooms that were barely above Original Lost.
I pulled my loose shirt off, turning my back to him. Like my mother, my Blood Rose bloom had appeared on my back, stretching across my shoulder blades and down onto my lower back, a respectable eight inches from edge to edge.
"Hmm. I see. Impressive. You may sit."
I pulled my shirt back on, settling myself back in my chair, to see that he had already done similarly.
He smiled faintly, stretching his arms above his head. "Well, shall we begin with the presents?"