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1069 Words
Spreading his awareness out, he felt the buildings drawing in what little ambient mana the passersby leaked from their full mana pools like starving men fighting for every scrap.
From what he could feel, everything was spatially expanded to a crazy degree. The closest building was a skyscraper taking up half the city block but, as his spiritual sense pierced the outer layer, he found dozens of businesses inside the small fraction of space he could feel.
His investigation was cut off by the overwhelming feeling of a presence locking on to them as Liz said, “Here we go.”
Following the pressure, Matt saw two familiar-looking people watching from the end of the street.
Before seeing them, Matt had thought the saying that people vibrated from repressed energy was mostly a metaphor. But seeing the two royals, he had to reconsider his position.
The duo was literally vibrating at a speed which made their edges transparent.
Matt felt Liz crunch her essence cores down and step into Tier 10 and, at the same instant, the two vanished and reappeared to embrace their daughter in a group hug.
Mara reached Liz first and picked up her daughter in a massive embrace, in which her hair feathers stood straight out and quivered, while Leon picked them up and bounced from foot to foot.
“Oh, babycakes, it’s so good to see you. It’s been too long! Oh, how we’ve missed you.” Mara’s voice came out muffled from where she had been smothered by Leon’s larger frame.
Liz’s father didn’t miss out on the reunion, and he said, “Oh, you’ve gotten so big. It feels like it was yesterday when you were just learning to walk.”
Liz was trying to say something, but her voice wasn’t able to make it past the couple’s ramblings.
Matt felt glad for Liz to have such loving parents but felt a bit like an outsider as he watched from the edge with Aster in his arms.
As if sensing his feelings, Leon and Mara finally let go of Liz, who took a dramatic, deep breath while the overjoyed parents turned to Matt.
With expressions of glee, they looked from him, to each other, and then back to Matt. He froze with Aster like a rabbit spotting the shadow of a hawk.
Their eyes literally gleamed with a light as they looked at the two of them, and every primate-brained instinct, battle-honed and not, screamed that he should run. Run harder than he had ever run in his life.
Leon squealed while pulling Matt into a hug, with Mara only a fraction of a second behind her husband.
“Oh, we’re so glad to finally meet you properly!” Mara babbled as they bounced around from the couple’s irreversible excitement.
Leon said something as well, but Matt didn’t hear it. He was lost in the hug.
The couple was warm.
It wasn’t the heat of the fire that he knew Mara could unleash, but a feeling of comfort and acceptance.
It spoke of somewhere that he could shelter from the turbulent winds of the greater world, that would always welcome his return no matter what. Somewhere that only wanted to prop him up when he got tired. Somewhere he was accepted for being himself, by people who wouldn’t ask him to change. Somewhere that didn’t expect anything from him but would support him in every desire he had.
Somewhere that he could call home.
That feeling broke something in him that he hadn’t even known he had been missing and, with seemingly no thought, Matt reviewed the information packet about his parents that he had been avoiding for so long.
For the first time since the rift breaks, Matt saw his parents’ faces.
Young and alive.
It startled him to realize that they had been younger than he was now when they had him despite looking older.
He saw his first birthday, and the little cake he ruined, to only his parents’ smiles.
There was a video of his first steps and his dad doing a little dance with him in celebration.
As he got older in the pictures, he started to remember bits and pieces of the images until, near the end. There, the memories became clear as he recalled the incidents.
Pictures of their life scrolled by in a loop. It was everything the city had been able to find from nonlocal servers, and Matt wondered why he had waited so long to view it.
They were full of sad memories, but happy ones as well. Photos of memories that he should have looked at the day he got them instead of letting them fade.
He felt ashamed at that, but the feeling only lasted a moment.
As the pictures and video flickered past his eyes, he felt the warmth of the duo still holding him. While he knew that they weren’t trying to replace his own parents, he let himself imagine they were his parents for a moment and sunk into the embrace.
It felt like an eternity but, finally, he pulled back slightly, and the duo let him go as he blinked away tears.
A subtle [Water Manipulation] removed the lingering effects of his tears that threatened to fall, and he saw understanding smiles on Mara and Leon’s faces.
Liz noticed the change and, having been together so long, knowingly beamed at him.
Like a switch was thrown, once they saw that he had centered himself, Mara squealed while grabbing Aster from his arms and pulling her into an identical hug.
“We finally have a grandchild!” Leon was so excited that little lightning bolts started to shoot from his hair, and Mara’s mane of feathers started to glow.
Mara mirrored him and cheered, “We finally have a grandchild!”
Knowing the joke, Matt shattered their illusions. “Aster is more like a little sister than a child.”
Three faces turned to him. All three were pleading, but for different reasons.
Aster wanted him to save her from the insane duo, while Mara and Leon looked heartbroken at the revelation.
Mara, with a quavering lip, asked, “But you raised her…and Liz helped…that makes you parents, right?”
Going along with the routine, Matt shook his head. “No, Aster has only been like a sibling to me.”
That confirmation shattered the duo’s world.
- Writer
