Chapter Eighteen #6
My mind began flipping through the countless amount of people as I repeated the words in my head.
I will always be able to speak to water.
My mind went to Asha the moment I saw her face floating on the surface of the water in my mind.
Isis’s and her Aunt showed me how to draw water to me.
The sun will always guide me. If it wasn’t for Ayira being with me…
I wasn’t sure if I would have gotten this far.
Earth…the most grounded, most poised person I know being Souxie but could switch to show an array of emotions.
No, that can’t be right. The moon…A man that turned into a beast afflicted by the moon.
Flashes of Namir went through my mind like a picture book as his eyes showed the crescent moon, and his teeth snarled at me…
Turning me over on my stomach, violently pinning me to the ground with his teeth showing and my fangs drawn…
He was the beast. He was the man she met many moons and suns ago.
She met a werewolf and drained his blood!
I looked at Gaia who slowly nodded, seeing I was coming to the realization.
“Did…did you and this man. This… werewolf, love each other at some point?” I asked with a deep swallow, almost afraid of the answer.
Gaia simply smiled. She wasn’t going to answer that, but something tells me it didn’t end on a good note.
So Namir was the moon this entire time, not me.
I started to speak, wanting to ask more questions but stopped when I noticed the water dry up as the grass reappeared.
Gaia took my hands to flip over as the rain continued to come down in light but steady drops and studied the lines in my palms. When her thumb slid down onto the damp pale skin of my palms, I could see her eyeing the blue vein that trailed dark lines.
She suddenly turned my hands over and laid hers out as they looked identical.
Almost to the point where they could have easily been swapped down to each line, wrinkle of the knuckles and exact nail shape.
Gaia was mimicking her body to be exactly like mine in real time.
“If I am reliving a life, I’ve…already lived…what is wrong with me?” I asked, trying not to sound too emotional. Her eyes softened ever so slightly as I sniffed. “Why am I not like you?”
“Because your eyes are open, but you are not awake. You hear everything but you are not listening. You are Gaia but you only focus on the moon when you are much more…You are this… Maggie Grey woman, but you are vampire,” she dragged with a dark whispery tone.
“You are hungry but do not eat. You aren’t nourishing the very essence of you…
You only know part of yourself because the other, you ignore.
Why? Why do you deny the very thing you are?
You will never be whole until you do. You will always walk this earth unbalanced, unhappy, and unsure because you choose to ignore what you are meant to be, and what you already are.
So human of you…no magic…” she said as she looked me over and read me like the worst book she’s ever picked up.
“No sense of spiritual connection…You can’t even recognize me even when I present as you.
You’re looking at yourself and asking why, are you not like that? What happened to you, Gaia?”
I blinked and found myself staring directly into my own eyes, looking at my own complexion, my features, and the same expression she mimicked.
“I…I don’t know what to say,” I admitted, feeling so defeated.
My body suddenly tilted with that woosh of unbalance that I felt like I would tip over at her words.
“How can I become what you are? What I’m supposed to be?
” I snapped. I didn’t want to sound impatient, but I’ve heard enough.
She simply smiled as if she was waiting on me to say those exact words.
She squeezed my hands, but her gaze felt distant, and her smile began to fade.
“You are mother to all…Prey to none…” she whispered to herself, lost in her own thoughts. It was as if she was trying to remember something from long ago, but I feel like I’ve heard of that before.
“I think…” I started as I looked up at the rain coming down. “I’ve heard of that before.”
She didn’t respond but I kept looking up. Searching for the words in the rain when a rain droplet stopped just above my face. The rain came to a standstill in midair as my eyes closed.
“Mother to all… Prey to none,” I repeated.
Opening my eyes, the sudden night sky was staring back at me with the moon hovering directly above.
Smiling, I almost took comfort at the sight with my mind immediately going to Namir.
I always teased him about being able to see the moon in his eyes when he looked at me.
Now it was slowly starting to make sense.
Closing my eyes again, I inhaled and exhaled before opening them to see the sun and white clouds.
“Chosen by earth,” we both said at the same time.
The rain slowly drew back in reverse as my heart began to skip.
Her thumb pressed into my palms where she was attempting to make my veins visible.
My hair was beginning to levitate, lifting around my shoulders as the sun rays began to hit our skin, giving us that golden deep brown glow.
“Beneath…the sun,” she finished.
“I’ve never felt like this before,” I said in awe as I looked up again, feeling like I could conquer the world.
I wanted to kick off the ground and fly or at least drop down to listen to the heartbeat of the ground.
Everything around me felt like it was responding only to me, even if it might have been her, it felt like me.
I hadn’t realized Gaia brought her wrist towards her with her eyes darkening to a velvet red.
She silently plunged her fangs into her skin for a bite like it was a mere apple.
I turned to look at her. Whatever high I felt intensified as a throbbing pain in my gums began to pulsate throughout my mouth.
From the corner of my eyes, I could see the sky shift from day to night.
Clouds replaced stars; the sun rotated around like we were in a dome that was spinning the same looping picture around us.
Birds came and went, trees grew, and plants wilted, and the grass grew as tall as my knee before shriveling back down as the sun dried it out.
“Wake the life,” Gaia continued as blood trickled down her chin, staining her skin. Her arm was leaking where the two punctured holes were slowly healing back. “That’s hiding in me…Blood of the moon…”
I looked at her, seeing the bloodlust in her eyes as I shook my head, but her lips puckered around the blood-soaked fangs as she quietly shhh’d me.
When I felt her other hand reach for the back of my head, she tilted her head up, mouth open with anticipation as she let her fangs hang like it was her that was about to drink.
Without warning, she brought her wrist to my mouth, muffling my screams until I caught her eyes.
She looked just like me. I was feeding on myself from the white hair, the startled expression, and jacked brows that needed to be brushed down.
Yet I felt it… I felt her heartbeat, my heartbeat on my tongue…
thumping in my mouth against her skin like a tiny speaker with a little bass.
I could hear each swallow, and the wetness of saliva squishing around.
I could hear the plants inside the house moving around as the vines stretched and slithered.
The wind chimes, the creaky screen door, even the sound of clouds hovering over the sky, they had their own noise.
I could hear and feel everything. I could even hear the hymn repeating in her head, my head, our heads…
Mother to all. Prey to none.
Chosen by earth. Beneath the sun.
Wake the life that’s fast asleep.
Blood of the moon.
“My soul to keep,” she concluded. “Do not ignore what you are…or you will forever be lost and unbalanced…Maggie…Grey.”
With an affectionate smile from her final words, her face began to curl and wrinkle as the wind gently blew against our bodies.
She began to slowly disappear, breaking into pieces that drifted with the current.
I shook my head, fangs hanging with blood still dripping on them as I reached for her.
She pointed to her chest as her eyes began to turn cloudy white until she was no longer there.
I looked up at the morning sky before turning to see the house was fading with her like a memory or dream.
“No, no no no no no!” I screamed. Not again. “GAIA?! GAAAAIA?!”
I rushed towards the back sliding door of the two-story home and fumbled around with the lock. Blood smeared over the glass where my hands were drenched from my very first feed until I slid it back and showed my body in the thick mass of darkness.