The Seed Of Raphael

part four(A FATHER FIGURE )

A FATHER FIGURE

The talk had left something heavy behind it.

Maren's head had started to ache partway through the conversation, she noticed a dull press behind her eyes that hadn't been there before the tears, then she went to lie down not long after, murmuring that she just needed a little rest.

The stranger stepped outside. He found Raphael where he'd left him, back against the wall, his knees pulled up, staring at nothing in particular out past the treeline.

"What are you doing, little man?"

"Just here." Raphael didn't look over right away. "Still staring at the trees."

The man lowered himself down nearby, not too close. "Have you awakened your power yet?"

Raphael's stomach dropped. He felt the cold come up through him the way it always did when someone asked that, quick and familiar, like stepping into water he already knew was freezing.

He almost lied. He was so tired of the question he almost said yes, of course, last spring just to make it stop landing on him. But something about the way the man asked it, plain, without the smirk that usually came attached, made him tell the truth instead.

"No." His voice came out smaller than he wanted. "I've tried. Every time I try harder it just…. it hurts. My whole body hurts, and nothing comes. I feel like something's wrong with me. Everyone else my age already has theirs. They call me trash for it." He picked at a thread on his sleeve, not looking up. "I'm tired. I don't know what's wrong with me. Maybe I'm just….."

"No."

The word cut clean through him before he could finish it.

"You're not weak," the man said. "And you're not broken. It's not yet time for you. That's all this is." He shifted so he was looking at Raphael straight on. "Trust me on this. A power that takes longer to wake than the others isn't a smaller power. Sometimes it's the opposite. We've got a lot of work ahead of us, you and I."

Raphael turned that over slowly, half-afraid to let himself believe it, the way he'd learned to be afraid of anything that sounded too much like hope.

"Hey, stranger," he said instead, because he didn't trust himself to answer the other part yet. "You still haven't told me your name."

My name? Call me "Morris." He said, it simply, like handing something over. "We've got a lot to catch up on, you and me."

They sat there a while after that, talking about nothing important, the woods, the cold, small things, until the fire burned low and it was time to sleep. Raphael lay down that night with something unfamiliar sitting warm in his chest, something he hadn't let himself feel in so long, he almost didn't recognize it at first.

It took him a long time, staring up at the dark, to put a name to it. It was the feeling of having a father again.

He fell asleep still smiling faintly, not knowing yet what the coming days would take from him, or give him, or ask of him.

Maren woke to an empty shelter.

No Raphael. No Morris. Just the cold ash of last night's fire and the grey light coming in through the gaps in the walls.

She told herself they were nearby. Talking, maybe, or Raphael off relieving himself somewhere close. She sat up and waited for the sound of either of them and got nothing back but the wind moving through the trees outside.

The thought came in sideways, the way the worst thoughts always did. Morris would have taken him. She didn't want it. It arrived anyway, uninvited, and once it was in her chest it wouldn't leave. A stranger she'd known less than a full day. A son who trusted too easily because he'd spent his whole life starving for someone to trust.

"Raphael!" Her voice cracked on it, too loud for the quiet morning. Nothing answered. "Raphael!"

She was on her feet before her ankle had any business holding her, sharp pain shooting up through it, and she didn't care. She was already picturing the worst of it, Morris and her son gone, vanished into those same trees that had taken her husband from her in pieces over two years, when two shapes came out of the treeline at a jog.

"Mom? You're awake?"

The relief hit her so hard her knees nearly went out from under her a second time, this time from something other than the ankle.

"Where have you been?" It came out sharper than she meant it to, fear still shaking loose out of her voice.

"I went hunting. With Morris." Raphael was breathless, grinning in a way she hadn't seen on him in longer than she wanted to think about. "Mom it was fun. I learned a lot."

She pulled him aside anyway, close, her hand gripping his arm harder than necessary. "Listen to me. It's not safe out there. You don't just go off with someone I've known for one night, do you understand? You don't know him. Not really."

"You've got me right?" His eyes searched hers, earnest, a little wounded that she'd doubt it. "Mom, I was careful. I'm fine. He makes me feel…" he paused, like the word cost him something to say out loud, "comfortable. He's a good guy."

"I'm just saying." She let go of his arm, some of the fight going out of her, because she could see there was no arguing with the look on his face. Not that morning.

They walked back to where Morris waited, near the fire.

"Morris," she said, testing the name in her mouth like she hadn't quite believed it the first time. "That's really your name?"

"Yes, Maren." He didn't quite meet her eyes when he said it. "I just….. I feel low, every time someone asks me my name. That's why I didn't offer it straightaway. I'm sorry for that."

She let it go with a small smile, and the three of them went inside, she put together a quick meal from what little they had between them, and they ate it together like it was nothing unusual at all.

They stayed on after that. Days folded into weeks, and somewhere in the folding, Morris stopped being a stranger they'd met by chance and started being someone who was simply there, at the fire in the evenings, at the door in the mornings, a fixture in a life that had been missing one for years.

The scars on Morris's arms and back told half of what training with him actually meant, and Raphael found that out the hard way in the first weeks, the drills harder than anything he'd done hauling water or dragging deadwood, his body giving out long before his will did. He'd pictured himself picking it up fast, some hidden talent finally allowed to surface now that someone was willing to teach him. Instead he failed. Over and over. Two months of failing, and none of it was because his body wasn't capable.

It was because he was angry, and the anger kept getting there first.

Every drill turned, somewhere in the middle of it, into Corin's face. Into three years of powerless and trash and the sound of his own knuckles splitting on one useless punch. He'd swing too hard, too wild, chasing something that wasn't in front of him at all, and Morris would have to pull him back, again and again, telling him the same thing in different words each time: you're not fighting them right now, you're fighting me, and I'm not your enemy.

Raphael heard it. He didn't yet know how to listen to it.

Eventually Morris moved their training up into the mountains, away from the village, away from anything that could remind Raphael of a name he'd been called too many times to count. There, with nothing around them but rock and wind and each other, something in Raphael's training finally began to change.