Rising Shards

A lot of images flashed in my head of who would answer the door. Maybe a disgruntled visitor of this Spero place’s hotel who didn’t want to be disturbed and immediately tries to beat me up. Or a politician in the middle of a big affair that I would end up being the whistleblower for due to their careless door opening. Or a killer robot guy that kills people who open his hotel doors.

For some reason, what I was least prepared for was who really opened the door. Despite the whole point of this, I guess I expected disappointment here. But when a middle-aged man opened the door, I knew in my heart instantly who it was.

Arctus Kathron looked older than the retention sprite. He had the same hair style, brown hair that went about to his jawline. He wore a green jacket that looked similar to the style the sprite wore. As is tradition, I held my hand out without thinking as we both looked at each other in stunned silence. In a way, it was our first time meeting, so I subconsciously decided Stella’s handshake rule applied here.

“I maybe just noticed that I’m wearing weird clothes for this,” I started saying whatever came to mind because this couldn’t be real. I was going to wake up any second. “I’m in my school uniform, but that’s normal there, it’s not weird at the school…and…”

“Is it really you?” Arctus asked, tears streaking down his face. “Zeta?”

I nodded. He missed my handshake attempt, which I forgave because this was obviously a lot for him. Instead, he cradled my face in his hands as he went through a lot of emotions at once. He laughed, cried, looked ready to scream, all of it, and I matched it. After a minute of tearfully babbling hellos at each other, we finally regained some composure.

“So I’m thinking there’s a lot I have to say, but I also think I should maybe say that I met your retention sprite at my school and then again in the void, and I guess we’re in the void now, but just so I can confirm some factoids and such. Um.” I shut my eyes, feeling my own tears squeezed out like my eyelids were a juicer. “Are you really my dad?”

Arctus laughed. “Yes, Zeta. Now come inside, please.” I followed him into the spacious hotel room, which looked a bit bigger than the apartment Stella and I lived in in LE. It had old, yellowing wallpaper with a weird pattern on it that I looked at because my brain was barely functioning because my real father was right next to me for the first time I could ever remember. “Octa! She’s here!”

While with Dad, I had the retention sprite to give me a mental image. But I didn’t have that with Mom. So I almost wasn’t sure what to expect as someone approached from a room further back. It was clear quickly Stella and I had taken more after our mother, who shared our blonde hair and blue eyes. She bit her lips with her fangs as she approached me cautiously. She had shorter hair than Stella and I did, and a steel in her eyes even through her own tears. She knelt before me, and it felt like she looked into my soul with that steel. I held my hand out to her as well, but she just hugged me.

“It’s really you,” Mom said. She laughed in disbelief before looking me up and down. “You’re so grown up…and you have a tail!”

“Yeah,” I laughed. “It’s kind of a pain.”

“What’s your gift?” She asked.

“Oh! It’s weather!” I said.

There was a bright moment of bubbly, babbling laughter and talk between all three of us where we didn’t really say any words, but somehow conveyed all the time lost between us and its apparent recovery with our reunion. My whole life I’d wondered what they’d be like. Longed for this moment. Just a few hours prior, I didn’t think it would ever happen.

“You guys aren’t memory sprites too, right?” I asked once I could form complete sentences again.

“Nope, real flesh and blood here. Oh, I have a thing that can prove it too.” My mother said. She darted off to a drawer nearby.

“I’m so glad you found us when you did,” Dad said. “We weren’t planning on staying here long. You can thank your mother for making that retention sprite as well as she did that it could keep up with where we are, though.”

I could only smile, it was all so overwhelming. Mom came back with a remote like device with prongs on it that reminded me of a tool Dr. Diast used on me to see what my Cani power was when my fangs came in. They tried it on me first, and it blinked green, which they said showed I was a non-memory sprite or void vision-y type thing. Then they used it on their own palms, and it was green as well. That was when it hit me the hardest. But I didn’t cry. I just kept smiling.

“You must be starving,” Mom said. “I’ll get something ready.”

“I have so much I want to say,” I said. “There’s so much…I even rehearsed it. And now I can’t think of any of it!”

“There’s plenty of time,” Dad said. He patted my shoulders. “I’m so glad you made it.”

I tried to get all my thoughts together as they brought me to their hotel room’s dinner table. I dreamed for so long about just sharing a meal with my family like this. Mom got a casserole ready.

“While that’s heating up,” Mom sighed, shutting the oven door. “I have some show and tell for you!”

Mom left into one of the other rooms and came back with a thick book.

“We don’t bring everything with us on our traveling, but this always comes with,” Mom said.

“Awwww,” I said, barely able to form even that sound.

It was a photo album. One thing I always wondered about growing up was why there were only pictures of Stella and I around our apartment, and none of our parents. I paged through, seeing pictures of Stella and I at ages I’d never seen before. Stella was a teenager when I was born, so she looked a lot like I did in the ones where I was a baby. It felt like missing puzzle pieces to finally see pictures of our parents with us. There was one that stuck out to me that didn’t have them in it though. It was a picture of me with a really dopey look on my face when I was a bit older than full baby mode. Stella was on the ground laughing as I looked in dopey amazement at a big plate of spaghetti that was also smeared all over my face.

“You were making this excited little noise,” Dad said. “It was like a duck trying to whisper a quack. That’s also why Stella’s doubled over there.”

“Can I keep this one?” I asked.

“Sure!” Mom said.

After I took the picture out of its plastic, I put it in one of my pockets. I kept paging through, not finding anything of note (though still emotionally so satisfying even if it wasn’t anything super interesting) until I saw one of Stella sitting on what looked like some kind of royal chair. It had a gold back and arm rests and pink cushions on it.

“What’s this one?” I asked.

“Oh,” Dad said, laughing. “Family heirloom. Stella called it the princess throne since it looks so fancy.”

“She used to love the princess throne,” Mom said. “But then when she grew out of it our true little princess declared it her own.”

Dad ruffled my hair. I really liked how true little princess sounded.

But wait...how would they know about... It was just a glimmer of a thought, the smallest whisper in the back of my mind, but the small thought blared loud for just a moment. I threw it away immediately and locked away deep in the recesses of my mind. Surely they'd know. They were my parents, they knew. They had to. I didn't know how, but it was a parent thing to know everything about their kids, right? There wasn't anything to worry about there. They called me their true princess, and I really liked how that sounded. 

“It may sound a bit silly, but we bring that with us, too.” Dad said. “Want to see it?”

“Sure!” I said.

Now it was Dad’s turn for show and tell. Sure enough, he wasn’t kidding about bringing the chair with them. The pink cushions had faded, but the rest still shimmered in a bright gold.

“Oh, wow,” I said.

“Do you remember it?” Mom asked.

“I don’t…” I said.

“You want to scoot over to it anyways?” Dad asked as he placed the chair at the head of the table. “For old time’s sake?”

I didn’t see why not. It clearly meant a lot to them that they’d bring it along traveling. And apparently meant a lot to Stella and I when we were younger. And I did want to feel like a princess, so I rushed over to the chair, immediately feeling like royalty. Despite its age, the cushions were still very comfy. As I looked over my new kingdom, Mom finished dinner and scooped some onto a plate for me.

“Bear with me, it’s leftovers,” Mom said.

I stabbed my fork in and got a big bite. I adored the taste immediately, savoring the cheesy green beans and meat that made this random hotel in this random place in the void feel like home. “Mmmm,” I said. “It’s great!”

“Why thank you,” Mom said. “Good manners on this one.”

“Wonder where she gets that from?” Dad asked.

I gathered my thoughts more as we ate, finally working up some of the things I’d been wondering about for practically my whole life.

“I guess…I’ll start with,” I said. “What happened? Why’d you…why are you here?”

“I did tell you I’d explain everything to you soon.” Dad said. “Or we had my sprite tell you that.”

“There was a storm.” Mom said. “A rare kind of storm that affects those born in the void the most. Your father and I were born here, so we were more susceptible to getting swept up.”

“Not here here,” Dad said. He bowed his head. “Our…our original home is long gone now.”

“Oh. Is it…gone? Your node?” I asked.

My father nodded sadly. I remembered the first retention sprite of my father telling me he had gotten into some trouble in his old home. I thought about asking about that, but I didn’t want to just jump into something that clearly weighed heavily on him. 

“Why didn’t you try to come find us?” I asked.

“We did,” Mom said. “We spent the last decade trying to find you.”

 “It was a miracle Octa and I stayed in the same place after the storm, but…”

“Sadly, it meant that we had to be separated for that painful time.” Mom said. “But now that time has passed, and you’re finally here.”

“So now what?” I asked. “You can just come home now that I found you, right?”

“It’s a bit more complicated than that,” Dad said. “Because of the storm…there’s energy from it that blocks us from going to your home.”

“Oh…” I said.

“Here, we’ll show you,” Dad said.

“You really want to show her it?” Mom asked.

“Show me what?” I asked.