Weight of Penumbra Ch. 01

"That's my boy," Cato slapped the table in uncharacteristic pride. "There is more to this human girl and I would like to meet her and then we will decide if you should go through and end her."

I decidedly ignored my father's last remark because the idea seeing Kiowa so soon again was making my heart race. I was going to have her near me again. My heart swelled until it made my heartache.

O•❥❧ ~Kiowa~ ❧•❥Oº

Pion was right. I needed to keep a strong front but as soon as I saw my mom, I crumbled into a teary weeping pile. I passed it off that I had missed her and once we returned to our small apartment I was back into the swing of things. I pulled the device out of my bag that Samson had given me and quickly put it under my side of the mattress.

I didn't want to think about Y'vroi or Samson, or Gaelen, or school or anything but home. I slipped out of my shoes before climbing barefoot onto the bed to kiss the sole picture of my father.

"I'm back Daddy," I whispered. I was finally able to take a cleansing deep breath of air and pulled my shoulders back. I was home, safety was always an illusion albeit at the university or here in the colony.

It is better to spend it with those you love.

"Kiowa?!" My mom entered our small room. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing Mom?" I quickly hopped off the bed and shuffled into my slippers before padding my way to the main room.

I smelt beans on the hot plate cooking out of a can. It was my favorite dish, my mom always found the best herbs to make it special.

"You've lost so much weight. Are you eating at school?"

"Some mom. I am still getting used to their cuisine. It is very different from ours."

"Well you need to make sure you eat more than your fill and I don't want to hear any lip otherwise."

"Mommy, I'll try."

"Kiowa, I am serious. I don't want you going back there just to come home sick because you aren't eating enough nourishment."

"Mom, I'm not sure I am going back. It was an experiment to see if I could blend in. I couldn't."

"Kiowa. No excuses. They would have said something if they don't want you back."

"That or they will pretend I am going back to school but they are really just going to turn me into a killing field." At that moment, the shell covered ground was best described as a killing field. So many perished on a field with no way to protect themselves or the civilians in wake of the Y'vroi's destructive path.

My mom rapidly blinked her eyes and I watched as she wrung her hands tightly together. She was quickly crumbling before my eyes.

"Mom, I have something to show you, but you have to keep it secret," I don't know why, but I whispered it into her ear and then enveloped my arms around her in a tight hug. "I met someone and he gave me something that can come in handy should we need any help. I don't know how it works but it's under my side of the bed. It will stay here with you.

"Don't let anyone find it," I whispered again and I felt her body calm in my arms.

So many times my mom had been the one to calm me in a warm embrace when I was little, it was so odd how the role was reversed.

"Come eat Kiowa. All of it. I am not hungry."

"Ok, Mom." I wrapped my arms around her again. I knew when not to argue. "I love you."

"And when you are done eating, go visit your friend

Matthias. He was worried about you. I ran into him a few days ago?"

Back to the swing of things indeed. I felt a burn in my chest that I couldn't quite understand if it were sadness or anger. He married someone else and led me on for so many years. Why would he care about me, he only cared for himself. It dawned on me that it was not only Matthias that created this dueling tension deep within me, it was Gaelen.

"What did he say?" I crossed my arms over my chest to press down against the burn of tormenting emotions.

"He wondered why he hasn't seen you around and he asked me how your work assignment was going?"

"What did you tell him?!"

"Kiowa! I'm not your messenger. Why didn't you tell him? He's your best friend."

"I was told not to tell anyone."

"So you expect me to break the mandates for you?!" Her voiced hitched in that motherly-fashion that used to annoy me so much but now I just miss it so much.

***

When I sufficiently finished my dinner to my mother's satisfaction, I shrugged on my oversized brown coat that fell on my body heavy like an old battered rug and walked to Matthias' apartment.

I really didn't want to see Matthias, I think two heart breaks within nine months and one nearly killing you is enough for me to run from love for a very long time. I wasn't really sure why my mom was so insistent that I go, but she always had her reasons that I was sure to soon find out.

I assumed he was still living with his family. Unlike many kids my age in the colony, Matthias was one of the few that still had a living mother and father. Most newlyweds still lived with their parents until the powers that be recognized their marriage and assigned them living quarters which would be their home until they died. I most likely would be a squalor apartment with one room that whoever lived in it would attempt to make it as homey as possible. If a couple decided to create a family the amount of space in the apartment would truly accommodate a growing family so many stopped having children and those that did only had one and others made the best with two growing children.

"Kiowa! " He looked so genuinely happy to see me, perhaps for the first time. Matthias' expression caused me so much anguish in that single moment. He had the same body language that I had missed for womanhood years believing that he might like me too. "Where were you. People here saying that Pion took you to the Y'vroi for execution. "

"I was allowed to go to. University."

"Where? Why didn't you tell me? "

I opened my mouth to explain but the feeling of screaming came into my mind. I was going to tell him. He was actually the first person I was going to tell before I even told my mom, but he was so busy that day marrying someone else.

"How is your wife? "

"You are allowed to go to university. I didn't eve know the colony had a university?!" He was so excited by the news just as I knew he would have been months ago when I wanted to tell him.

"I am going to a Realm university."

"With the aliens?!!" His voice hitched an octave and his eyebrows shot up with his voice hitching an octave. "That's not safe Kiowa."

"How is your wife," I. Asked again.

"You tell me you're allowed to enter the realm and go to school with Y'vroi and you keep asking about my wife? Kiowa this is such exciting news. What are you studying? "

"I don't even know if I will go back. I don't want to talk about school." Because his reaction was exhilarating as I knew it would be. This was a conversation that should have happened but didn't and I life that I had hoped to live with him but would never have, it made my stomach turn sour and ache like it had in Pion's car.

"I know it was terrible how you found out. I wanted to tell you sooner but... I don't know why I didn't tell you. I think about it all the time when I thought you were killed. Actually, I lie, I do know why I didn't tell you-"

"Because you know I loved you."

"Yes, but I loved you too."

I could no longer look at him in the face. "Not enough to want me."

"No, not enough."

"You weren't attracted to me."

"Kiowa," Matthias leaned in and tried to comfort me. "I love everything about you. You are an amazing girl. You are everything that I wanted in a wife."

"But you weren't attracted to me," I pushed my chin into the air to make myself be ok with where this conversation was going but I wanted to crumble and double over my aching stomach.

"No. I wasn't. I am sorry Kiowa."

I tried to shrug it off by I ended up wincing as if someone had kicked me in the stomach, the sharp pain was awful and I slouched a bit too lean again the brick wall of his building.

"How is Natalia?" I asked a third and final time, I had nothing else to talk to him about. I just wanted him to fill the time talking about anything but what would cause me to focus on the reality of my horrible life. I begged him to answer the question, just to fill the space of time with nothing important.

Matthias' face ashen as he bit the inside of his bottom lip and looked a the ground. "It's not good, Kiowa. Natalia is pregnant."

I knew immediately what that meant. It was a scary idea that I had always pushed to the back of my mind growing up and falling in love with Matthias. Giving birth in the colony where we didn't have doctors, or equipment or facilitates was just as scary as growing old or becoming sick with a serious illness. The colony was a place for the human race to die off in a slow, painful manner. Not just survive and eventually grow. It was like a zoo with endangered species that were unable to have enough offspring to repopulate the planet and graduate from the endangered list. It rarely happens before Eclipse and now we were the species whose existence on this planet will eventually cease to exist.

"Lots of people are able to have babies," It was a lie. I knew it was. He did too. So many babies had died or their mothers died during childbirth.

"She's had a very complicated first trimester. Old Mrs. Peterson, remember her."

"I only left four months ago, Matthias, I remember Mrs. Peterson."

"She was a midwife before Eclipse. She has been helping us."

"Mrs. Peterson? She can barely hold her head up and walk to her front door."

Matthias and I would often play a game guessing how old our neighbors were because Eclipse had aged so many people with stress and sorrow well beyond their years. Mrs. Peterson moved, walked and talked like an 80-year-old invalid. I assumed she couldn't have been much older than my mother so I guess in her 50's or 60's but I could be wrong.

Mrs. Peterson, lost everyone she knew in Eclipse. She had three sons who she always talked about as if they were just down the street getting coffee and the newspaper. They were a set of twins and the youngest son, all who went to great private colleges and started a family business together selling eco-friendly homes that were equipped with solar panels and tapped into a co-op wind power community. Her sons, their wives and the youngest had a newborn all perished in Eclipse. She was thankful, that the days leading up to Eclipse her husband died from cancer never to know that aliens that had been living among us were poised to destroy humanity in a few days.

"I'm sorry to hear that. I am sure Mrs. Peterson can help you if she was a midwife before Eclipse."

"Things need to change around here, Kiowa and I don't mean us pretending what the world would be like; like we did when we were kids. If I want my child to live, my wife to live,". He choked on "wife" and paused to regain his thoughts. "Things must change around here and now, maybe with you going to the alien university, you can bring us the change we must have. "

Now I understood why my mother insisted I see Matthias even when it interrupted our reconnecting time. I shook my head. "I don't know if I will be able to go back and I am pretty sure I don't want to go back. "

"Kiowa it is a chance of a lifetime that no one here will ever get. You must go back no matter how difficult it is. "

"You have no idea how much trouble I face going back. Everyone knew there was a human being on campus but they didn't know it was me until today and all hell broke loose in a few hours of the discovery of what I really am."

"What you go through today could me a wider sky for our future, our children's future. Listen just because I am married doesn't mean we can't be friends still. If you need a human to talk to or a virtual shoulder to cry on I am here. We can write each other. "

He was being the Matthias I had loved, generous, kind, thoughtful and proactive for my sake. I wasn't surprised when he reached for me and pulled me to him for a big warm hug. In his arms why did it feel so normal, so at home?

✯✮✰~Gaelen~ ✰❂✬

I had seen enough.

My brother, Taxa and I snuck into the colony unseen and after asking a few passerbyers for the Walker residence I was quite shocked at the deplorable conditions Mouse was now living in. I scaled the scaffolding of her apartment building and climbed up the fire escape to sneak into her bedroom, instead I found her standing on a bed no bigger than my dorm room bed kissing a faded paper picture of her real father. Mouse's father definitely wasn't Y'vroi but he was military. I could tell because of the way his hair was cut short and a medal hung from the frame. Mouse's dad was dead.

We followed behind Mouse, until she stiffened as a man nearly knocked her over coming out of the building she was going into. Her face lite up with my favorite blush and I knew immediately who the man was. I was angry at that moment, she said she loved me and then she runs to the other man she said she loves in the same day. My fingers twitch with my power flowing to them like a waterfall.

Thankfully, I was too curious to zap the humans into a new eclipse, I noticed that Kiowa was nervous in a way that wasn't because she liked him. Her hands were clenched at her sides although she tried to be nonchalant. My little mouse was terrible at playing a sly cat like me. She seemed nervous and very very sad.

She was wrapped in a blanket of sorrow on her countenance the moment her eyes fell on Matthias.

I listened and often felt my fingers vibrate with my power, especially when he told her that she was the whole package but essentially wasn't beautiful enough. I wanted to zap him and tell him she was indeed the whole package and her beauty surpassed all her wonderful traits.

I took a deep pained breath again as she said that she was essentially afraid of going back to school. I couldn't help but cheer for Matthias' smart words to encourage her to keep going to school. But the bastard used it as a way to keep her close again without being what she needed and desired- to be loved and cherished and chosen. The asshole was playing with her and pulled her into his arms. He even kissed my spot on the crown of her head. He didn't want her; I wanted her. He was just using her.

"Let's go." I barked at my brother and Taxa.

Taxa jogged to catch up to me. "I'm not leaving without seeing you do something to this humans. Let them know who's boss. Who is king of the world."

"I'm not in the mood Taxa."

"You didn't drag me all the way out here from my family and our dinner plans for you to play Harriet the Spy on some stupid human chick."

"Taxa relax, we all know you were playing video games the moment you got home from school." My brother teased and then gave me a serious face. "Gaelen you've got to at least talk to her. I didn't come out here for nothing to happen, either. You want peace of mind. Go talk to her now."

"I nearly blasted her to death," I whispered because I had been screaming it all day in my head. "Fine, let's go. we'll go to her house and I'll talk to her."

Taxa rolled his eyes and my brother simply nodded but I could see a hint of a future interrogation on my horizon of what Mouse really meant to me.

Again I spied from her fire escape.

"Baby, it's cold. Put on another layer before you go to bed. They haven't turned on the heat this entire winter so far. I don't want you to get sick." Her mother instructed and Kiowa only replied yes, mom like the good girl I knew she was. Beyond that, I really didn't know who she was.

Mouse pulled on another sweater and I was able to glimpse a sliver of skin on her belly as the bundle of clothing on her small frame already bunched up. By the Earthling Sun, I wanted her right that moment, I'd pulled every blasted layer off in one swoop to see more of her soft skin.

"Mom are you coming to bed," Mouse called from the bed as she snuggled into her side of the bed. They only had one bed?!

"In a minute baby. Go to sleep my darling. You've had a long day. I am going to finish knitting these things before I retire." Her mom called from the other room.

Kiowa was such a good child and student, I was sure she had never caused her mother any heartache. I watched her tuck herself into bed and then her mother came back into the room with a large colorful afghan and dropped it over Kiowa.

"I missed you so much my child, " her mom kissed her cheek and I could hear Kiowa hum with the love and warmth she was receiving from her mother.

"I love you too. " Mouse responded.

"Sleep well, you're home and whatever is plaguing you let it rest for now. I will protect you, baby, even though you are growing up into the most beautiful woman a mother could ever have."

Her mother thankful returned to the other room, if I had to continue to watch this hallmark moment I am sure my twitching hand would have blasted something. I knew I was annoyed only because I was jealous. I miss the human-like love and affection my parents used to lavish on me before Eclipse. But once I was named future King at 5 years old, that all dramatically changed and then changed again when my parents realized I was a defect. I tightened my grip on the rusted fire escape rail, I had a task at hand and look out the past only stopped progress.

"Mouse, Mouse," I whispered loudly and creaked her window open further."Kiowa!"

She looked around the rooms if she had heard a ghost. Was I already a ghost to her?

"Gaelen?"

"Over here by the window?"

Kiowa shuffled out of her bed but hesitated as her eyes focused on the window. She quickly looked over her shoulder at the door leading to the main room of their apartment and then back to me.

"What are you doing here?"

"I..." I hesitated and opened the window more to enter the room.

"What are you doing? My mother is here. Why are you here? What do you want?" she didn't seem afraid. I guess that was progress that was more than I could have hoped for.

"For so many years, I have been taught that humans are horrible and must be killed. It has been so much a part of me that I forget what life was like. Life was like when I was happy. It isn't right but it is what I know." Fuck, I was babbling. She only stood there her arms across her chest not blinking. untrusting...me. Fuck! "I am so sorry, Kiowa. I still choose you. I care about you so much. I reacted out of fear. I have been taught to fear what will happen if I, as the king, were to let humans live. It would mean failure and our own destruction."

"Ok," her simple reply seemed so distant and so frustratingly unreadable. I needed to know if she was ok. She didn't look ok. she had been sent blow after blow today, from me, from that stupid human guy that was stringing her along... She could be waiting to see what would happen with Matthias. I hoped it were true, that dog deserved to like my heel the way he treated Kiowa. I just wanted to wrap her in my arms to let her know that I still loved her.

"Mouse, are you ok?" I dared to reach for her and touch her soft worried cheek.

She stiffened as if a chill passed over her. "I am afraid of you Gaelen."

My heart sank. Just looking in her eyes, they were storied with weary and unease. Mouse looked more human than I ever noticed before and her frailty, her humanity was beautiful, to be cherished. "Oh, god Kiowa that was the single-handedly worst thing I could ever do in my lifetime. I am so sorry, words cannot express how terrible I was."

"I am not afraid that you will kill me. I am afraid that you will break me, Gaelen."

"I love you Kiowa." I finally said it and it felt so good, so strong. it wasn't cheap, I am falling for you. It was safe, it was not showing what really was going on inside of me, it wasn't allowing myself to admit it. I loved Moyse and I loved her as a human. Because she had always been human. Throughout everything that we dealt with and talked about, she was heartbreakingly human. I had to say it again, it was just bursting out of me. "I love you, Kiowa. I love you."