Griffin's Salvation

chapter 8:Kian

The 25th of August marked the first day of my senior year, so I went to my classes going about my day as usual. I’d timed my classes so my lunchtime fell at the same time as Ju-ri's. I wanted to see her in the daytime, even though we didn't do lunch together every day, but I liked having the option, for when we were both available. She was a doctor at a small private practice back in Pittsburgh, she had yet to agree to a lunch date and so far I kind of just showed up when I knew she was free. Teleporting the the back alley behind her practice, because it didn’t have any cameras since Ju-ri had made sure of it. I walked around to the front door just in time to hear her tell the front desk lady that she was going out for lunch

-what a coincidence, I was just coming here to see if you were free for lunch. I said with feigned innocence

-How… Ju-ri sighed walking through the door I held open. You’ve gotten better at shielding your thoughts from me.

-That and you don’t really pay attention.

- Do you have somewhere you want to eat at? she asked unwilling to step on that mindfield.

- Nope, you pick.

- We can just go next door then.

It was a small restaurant we liked, I’ve eaten there before and the food was amazing. I dragged her to the booth at the furthest corner of the restaurant where there were fewer people around, most of the customers were clustered around the front center of the restaurant. After we’d placed our orders I leaned forward toward Ju-ri placed my elbows on the table and rested my face on the palm of my left hand.

- So, freak out over?

- I don’t want to talk about it

- Fine, I’ve noticed that I don’t know much about you or your family. Never even met them.

- You’ve actually seen most of my family, you’ve just never been introduced to them. She snorted. They like dropping in on you sometimes so they have ammunition to mock me with

-What does that mean?

-My brothers and sisters, I have six, found it funny to shove it in my face that my mate was an infant even in the human sense of the word

-Did it work?

-No that’s why they keep showing up to find what will. How young you are never bothered me I was just thankful we met and I wouldn’t die anymore.

-Why weren’t you bothered by my age?

-I’ve been alive three thousand years and there used to be fewer people walking the earth, and I’ve met all the gods, anyone that turned out to be my mate would have always been younger than me by a few thousand years.

- Wait gods?

- Hum! You didn’t know they existed?

- Are they real?

- Yeah

- Era?

- Very real and still running after her cheating husband, she’s obsessive in her love

- Wow! I said astounded, our food came and we dug in. This was brand new information and I had so many questions. Are they all the same gods and some cultures call them different names or the pantheons are really different?

- Not the same ones, in the old days they had divided up the earth and each pantheon ruled over their corner of the world and if there was any sort of cross-over. War erupted.

-Did your people participate in those wars?

-Hell no! Gods are just supernatural creatures who decided to rule over impressionable humans by showing off. They stopped doing that when humans started killing them off in their search for eternal youth.

- Wow, are any of them still active?

- Cupid is, since he works with the fates, he still runs around shooting people with love arrows

- So falling in love is always from an arrow?

- The real kind is not, Cupid arrows are just a first step, very temporary and more lust than love. It is done especially if two souls who are meant to be together start up on the wrong foot. Humans can’t recognize their other half as easily as we can so a little help is needed, hence Cupid’s arrows.

- Oh that’s nice of him.

- Do not give him too much credit, he and his cronies often shoot people who are wrong for each other just to see the fireworks.

We stayed on the subject of gods for the rest of our meal, and damn did I learn so much. Apparently, we as humans knew so much of the gods history because they were vain and afraid of being forgotten, so they would usually kidnap a human philosopher back to Olympus or whichever other tall mountain they decided to call home, so they could record their life. they'd hoped people would be so impressed that they would never lose their popularity. but grew to regret that decision when people used those memoirs to find ways to kill them. I paid for our meal and walked her to the door of her practice.

- kiss goodbye? I asked holding the door

-Just go Kian! She hurried in and I heard her have a mini panic. Well, today was not the day apparently, we can try again tomorrow.

I kept asking her to sleep over for a whole month some days she did and some she didn’t. I noticed she would say no on the days I asked her for a kiss, so I stopped doing that. She wasn’t ready for that yet. We talked a lot about her family she told me how her brother Jun tried to steal her treasure from her hidden cave when he learned she wasn’t dying anymore. He’d been all broken up about his favorite older sister dying and then relieved after he learned she’d found her mate that it took him a year to finally remember that he knew where her secret stach was and tried to steal her gold. I was having so much fun getting to know her.