Peace Offerings and Promises
It didn’t take long for the newspapers to start running with the story of what came to be known as the “Rose Street Fire.” And who could blame them? From an objective point of view, it was a fascinating bit of news. A church torched to the ground on Easter Sunday. An entire congregation that claimed to have seen grand, mythical beasts. A man taken into custody for suspicion of arson. A female suspect still at large.
I don’t know where the cult theory first started, but once it took hold, it was everywhere. After all, it was much juicier to believe that the members of the fanatical Resurrection Day Cult— as it came to be known— had willingly drugged themselves and then burned down their own building in a chemically-induced fit. Theories about why they had done this and what they had hoped to accomplish were numerous and varied. I deliberately avoided reading about them.
I considered dropping out of school for the rest of the semester and making up my classes over the summer, but I decided rather quickly that likely the best thing for me was to get back to the things that had always made me happy. And, nerd that I was, school had always been one of those things. It was difficult to leave my parents and Pierce, in particular, but once I got back to campus, it finally felt like I could breathe again. I could walk down the street without getting suspicious glances or fingers pointed at me. Rumors of the Resurrection Day Cult did eventually reach us, even so far away from where it happened, but by then, my name had mostly vanished from the coverage. Thank God.
I did not forgive Lily right away. Not even close. In fact, if the matter had been left entirely up to me, I probably never would have. For a long time, just the thought of her made me angry enough to smash things. Thankfully, I rarely did.
I didn’t see her through the rest of that spring semester or the summer. I had no idea where she was, nor did I care. I effectively shut down the emotional part of me— except anger. Not healthy, I know. But it was so much easier for me to fall back into detached intellectualism than to risk experiencing all of that horror and grief and heartache again. I convinced myself that the joy I’d found was not nearly worth the pain that came after.
It was about two weeks into the fall semester of my sophomore year when I returned to my dorm and found a small package wrapped in brown paper sitting on my desk.
“What’s this?” I asked Jake. We’d requested to be roommates again and had been granted permission.
“I found it outside of our door,” he explained. “It has your name on it.”
I hadn’t noticed that. I picked up the bundle and flipped it over. Indeed, there was writing on it. Diminutive and barely readable writing. I brought it closer and squinted.
Grant-Man.
I put the package back down on the desk.
“Aren’t you going to open it?” Jake wondered.
“Not right now. Maybe later.” That was a big maybe. And if I did decide to open it, I’d make sure I was alone when I did.
That little brown parcel sat on my desk for nearly a week. Finally, my stubbornness lost out to my desire to just open it and get it over with. Because as long as it was sitting there unopened, it would be stuck in my brain. I wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about it. And I really wanted to stop thinking about it.
I waited until Jake was at football practice before I tore open the paper. Whatever was in it was rolled up in more paper inside, so I flipped it over a few times before something finally fell out into my hand. And that something was an opal.
Well, not really an opal. Once I got over the shock of seeing it, I realized that what I was holding was, in actuality, a piece of a dragon egg. It looked to be from the same egg Lily and I had watched hatch together. It’s bright red surface had been polished smooth, and then the entire piece had been set with a bail and given a chain so that it could be worn as a pendant.
There was a note in the package, as well, written in the same tiny hand.
A peace offering, it said. I love you, Grant-Man. I am so very sorry. And that was it.
And that was all it needed.
Memories came flooding back. The peace offering of chocolate I had given her way back at the very beginning. The day and night on the hill, anxiously waiting for the baby dragon to join us. Her unspeakable beauty on the day she’d first transformed for me. All the many nights we spent tangled in each other’s embrace.
Was I really willing to give all of that up over something that was in the past and could not be changed? Had I become so cold that I could not offer her another chance?
Walnut, Grant. You’ve been a walnut.
I wouldn’t feel guilty for what I’d felt since Easter, though. I didn’t believe I was wrong to be angry. What had happened had been very real and very terrifying, and I’d be expecting too much of myself if I thought I should have just gone back to normal like nothing had changed. But I made the decision right then that it was time to let all of it go. I didn’t want to be irritable and miserable for the rest of my life. I didn’t want to be without Lily, either.
I hooked the necklace around my neck and opened the window over my desk. I didn’t know where Lily was, but I bet I knew of someone who did. “Fairy,” I called out of my window. “Flower fairy! I know at least one of you is down there. May I speak to you, please?”
It took a minute, but eventually a little pink fairy poked her head out of the flowers in the bed under my window and looked up at me. She hesitated a moment and then flew up to see me. “What did you wish to speak about, Grant-Man?”
I probably shouldn’t have been surprised that she knew my name, but I was. Regardless, I soldiered on. “Do you know where Moonlily is?”
“Yes.”
I hadn’t felt my heart leap in excitement like that for a very long time. “Will you give her a message for me?”
“Of course.”
“Please tell her that her peace offering was received. And accepted.”
“I will tell her.”
“Thank you.”
The hours I spent waiting to see if she’d come were some of the longest of my life. But come, she did. She burst through the window as soon as I opened it for her and crashed into my neck, her arms as wide as they would go. I cupped my hand over her, and the two of us held each other as well as we could for a very, very long time. Words felt trite just then, so we didn’t speak. We grew familiar once again to each other’s presence and basked in our togetherness.
“I’m so sorry,” Lily eventually whispered. The hitch in her voice gave away the fact that she was crying. I wasn’t far from it, myself.
“It’s done, Lily,” I told her. “It’s forgiven. We don’t ever have to talk about it again. We have a brand-new beginning, yes?”
She fluttered up to look me at me face to face. “Thank you,” she sniffled. “I was so afraid I’d never get the chance to spend time with you again. I love you too much, Grant-Man. I couldn’t stand being apart. I had to at least try.”
“I’m glad you did. You are stronger than I am, Lily. Thank you for trying for both of us.”
Gently, I took hold of her with both hands and gave her a kiss that not only covered all of her cheek but the entire side of her head. “I love you, Moonlily,” I whispered. “More than you love chocolate.”
She elbowed her way out of my hands. She looked me dead in the eye with an impish glint as she flew up and nipped the end of my nose with her sharp little teeth.
“Walnut,” she declared.