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The lights glow brighter against the light walls of our living room as her anger heats up. “You had one job today, one job and you messed it up!”
“I didn’t mess anything up. The parents’ negligence nearly killed their child.” I narrow my eyes as I spit the words at her. How dare she accuse me!
“When will you learn being a realm walker is about more than solving riddles? It’s about empathy and keeping peace. Your attitude will cause tension and strife. You will bring back the wars!”
Is that what it is? The wars, the great war. It’s not fear, it’s control. They fear realm walkers because we are powerful. I shrug and lean my back against the wall. “When will you learn that, being realm walkers, we have great strength? If Merla didn’t mean for us to use our power for something more then why did she give it to us?” Merla was the great sea fae who made realm walkers. In all my scavenging I’d never found her realm grimoire containing the spell that created us.
Frustration racks her as she paces, one hand on a hip, the other raking her short hair. She stops and spins on her heels. “One day you will take over this realm. It will be yours until you have children. Until then you will do what is expected of a realm walker,” she says, her words firm and forceful. She strides closer. “Do you understand?” Her long, thin finger pointed at me.
This would be a great time to vanish into my inbetween world, but my mom has the ability to enter it, not that I think she understands that. However, it isn’t wise to take the chance. “I’ll understand when I no longer have to share a home with you!” I saunter past her, careful not to brush her shoulder as I march down the hallway to my room.
There isn’t any love lost between us. The only reason she had a child was to carry on the realm walker curse. The eldest born to a realm walker will be a realm walker. My parents never had another child, proving I was born of necessity. I don’t keep much in my room. Its blank walls stare at me from the bed where I lie tossing a ball into the air and catching it. The power behind my throw so powerful it hits the ceiling.
Homes in Thraves are carved into the mountains, or wooden structures on the mountains. Ours is inside the mountain. We have homes above us, beside us, and below us. Surrounded. We don’t even have a window. My anger boils every time I think about it. We are of so little consequence we don’t even get a window and a midland view. This can’t possibly be the vision for beings as powerful as we. There has to be more.
Each realm gave up a sacrifice and a hybrid. I suspect there wasn’t much pity for the hybrids, but no doubt many tears were shed over the pureblood sacrifice. The hybrids became the original seven realm walkers and it is that oppression I believe still exists inside realm walkers as they bow to the leaders of each realm and are dutiful little minions.
My senses keener when my anger flares. The curtain between my room and the hallway slides open. Rolling my head to the side, my father enters. His goatee swallows his chin and brushes against his chest. He joins me, sitting in the chair a few feet from where I lie in my bed.
“She talked to you, didn’t she?” I ask, already knowing the answer.
He nods. “She did. Your mom can be hard, but you’re not a child anymore. It’s time for you to take your destiny seriously.”
Destiny? My chains. That is destiny for me. “What if I want to choose my destiny, not have it chosen for me?”
His face pinches. “I have days when I wish I was something else, or at least not the harvester in charge of sending souls to Drakonia to choose their second life. Once the decision is offered and made, the vampires portal to Lols and collect the bodies. I thought I’d like seeing life renew, but drinking blood... What kind of life is that?”
I chuckle. I guess there could be things worse than my plot in life. My father has a way of making me smile and opening up. “But we can do more. We can mold and shape. What if the plan is for us to redesign the realms or open the curtains and drop the veils permanently?”
His cheeks lift as he smiles. “One day, son, one day when your generation is the generation.”
Your generation. Those words become a mantra to me as I hold onto them.