Chapter Twenty-One
CHARLIE
I wasn’t sure what was happening. Things seemed to be getting better between Ava and I, and it had come out of nowhere. What exactly had changed?
I couldn’t work out the solution. I tried, but didn’t get anywhere.
We were back to sharing a bed at night, although she stayed on her side, and I remained on mine.
I avoided brushing against her or touching her in any way, because I didn’t want her to feel pressured into anything.
Worse, I worried she might feel trapped, so even though we were back to living together, I did what I could to give her as much space as possible.
She would come to me, and whatever she needed, I’d give to the best of my ability.
Even so, our relationship was at a standstill.
Ava and I lived like quiet ghosts passing each other in the night.
We shared a room and a bed, but we didn’t do anything.
There was no touching, no conversation. We laid beside each other at night, pretending the other wasn’t there, getting ready silently in the mornings before we went to our separate lives, then headed back to bed just as wordlessly at night.
The counseling sessions had helped us to be cordial, but I didn’t feel close to her just yet.
We never talked unless we had to— I continued to teach her how to fight, but it was only when Chancey or Danny were there with us.
Otherwise, I left the rest of her training up to Liam, while I avoided teaching her one-on-one.
We were making progress, but it was slowly. Ava cast out shitty comments made all in good fun, and sometimes, I’d take the bait, biting back a sentence or two.
But we never argued for long, and I missed it. I was afraid to play our games again because I worried it’d hurt us in the long run, instead of turning out to be the innocent fun I wanted it to be.
I think she was afraid, too. We were both being extra cautious because we didn’t want to hurt each other again.
I was praying I wasn’t misreading her signals.
I wanted to talk to her about it, but I worried about reopening old wounds, so I kept crossing my fingers and hoping one of us would be brave enough to bring it up without the other exploding.
We sometimes talked about Casey, but it was small things.
I told her whenever the baby made progress, like when the doctor was able to take out Casey’s feeding tube.
He was able to exist outside of the incubator for hours at a time now instead of short periods.
The stiff dialogue was awkward and painful, but not as devastating as being apart had been.
We still hadn’t visited Casey together. I went by myself every day, staying in the NICU for hours while Ava busied myself with training. She popped in every now and then to see Casey, but it was only every few days, and she never stayed long.
Even with the progress we were making, our relationship still felt up in the air. I figured if she was taking the lead on this one, I had to follow her wherever it led.
I was with the baby in the NICU one April morning when I heard the door open. Casey was resting in the incubator, and I’d found myself dozing off in the medical recliner next to him while Oberi snored at my feet. I was so tired these days.
“Time to talk, kid.” Liam’s voice was gruff. “You’ve got another session to get to.”
Liam and Sophia never scheduled these counseling sessions. They just sprung it on us, like they were trying to teach us we had to be prepared for anything.
“Could you keep it down?” I complained. “You’re going to wake the baby.”
“Bullshit. That baby takes after Ez. He could sleep through a hurricane and so can that infant. Now let’s go.”
Well, that much was true. Casey was a pretty good sleeper. I got up, rubbing my eyes of exhaustion, and dragged myself after Liam as Oberi hopped onto his paws and trotted after us.
“What’s next on the torture list? Gonna throw me in a pool of lava? Drop me off a cliff? Dump me on some deserted island and ask me to fend for myself?” I threw all the sarcasm I had into my tone.
“Now you’re getting it. Took you long enough,” Liam stated. I grunted in response.
The stone underneath my shoes transitioned into grass, and I felt the sunshine span across my skin as we entered the gardens. Oberi sprinted to sniff the flowers, while Ava’s voice rolled across the area.
“We’re making progress,” I heard her say. “We can be in the same room without wanting to kill each other anymore. I think that’s huge.”
My heart still lifted every time I heard her speak. I wanted to snip its wings and tell it to quiet down, yet still, it soared.
“That’s good news, but only the first step,” Sophia replied. “Do you think you two are willing to let your guard down and rely on each other?”
I paused, hanging on her answer. I wasn’t sure how I would respond, myself.
“I don’t know,” Ava mused. “Maybe.”
“You’re gonna find out today,” Liam said, and we came to a stop beside them. “Take a seat.”
By the sound of rushing water, we were somewhere near the fountains. I sat down in the grass beside Ava’s chair, and Sophia and Liam sat across from me. Oberi’s goofy ass romped across the gardens and plopped into my lap. I let out an oof as he knocked the wind out of me.
“First things first. You two are out of balance,” Liam said. “If we fix that first, we can start working on all these other problems.”
“Wow, we didn’t figure that out before,” Ava mumbled. “What a revelation.”
“Cut your smart mouth, peanut,” Liam said. “You already know these lessons, but it looks like you’ve forgotten them, and Charlie’s never learned, so we’re going to have to start at the beginning.”
I’d missed so much of my culture. I was glad to be getting these lessons now, but I sometimes wondered if I’d known all this Hawkei wisdom before, we could’ve avoided the situation we were in.
Maybe not, though, because Ava had this knowledge, and we’d still ended up in the same place.
“How do we get back into balance?” I asked. Being married was like a balancing act itself, and we’d stumbled and dropped everything we’d been holding up. Our love, each other’s feelings, our emotional well-being, our life together. I didn’t want to watch it fall out of my hands again.
“As Elementai, we work with the spirits of the Earth, and the different energies that live inside of us. We are not separate from this land, but a part of it, a reflection of nature and the spirit realm itself,” Sophia said. “That means uniting the masculine and feminine within.”
“What does that mean?” Did they want me to be more manly, and Ava more lady-like? Sorry to say, I was probably too aggressive in that department already, and as far as Ava went, that wasn’t happening.
“These are not the traditional embodiments modern society would have you think they are.
These are practices rooted in ancient tradition,” Sophia explained.
“Feminine energy is creative. It embodies compassion, growth, and patience. It is sensitive and graceful, in touch with sexuality, with nurturing oneself. It relies on intuition, on the energy of trust. It is, above all, the energy of creation itself, of giving life.”
“And masculine energy is protection of that life,” Liam clarified. “Masculine energy focuses on providing and safeguarding. It’s action-forward and logical. It summons strength, confidence, and is set on finding purpose. It centers itself on the external, on caring for others.”
“In our tribe, marriage is meant to be a union of these two energies as one,” Sophia said. “The feminine is meant to receive, while the masculine is meant to give. The masculine grounds, while the feminine takes flight. They complement each other while co-existing in the same space.”
“And no one is completely feminine nor completely masculine,” Liam added.
“There are traits of both in all people. Some people are more feminine than they are masculine, and vice versa, but for a person to truly thrive, both sides have to be in balance. When these two sides are out of alignment, whether in a person or in a marriage, it can cause problems. Too much masculinity can cause a person to become aggressive and egotistical. A person with wounded masculine energy will shut down their emotions, become defensive, and seek to control whatever they can to avoid feeling vulnerable.”
I winced. That was definitely me. I was certainly out of balance.
“And too much femininity will lead to a lack of boundaries,” Sophia clarified.
“Love and empathy can feel overwhelming to the wounded feminine. Someone with too much feminine energy will be in emotional chaos, unable to control their feelings or the consequences of them. The wounded feminine will try to manipulate situations or reject the idea of being gentle or soft, for fear they’ll be taken advantage of.
The wounded feminine side does not operate out of trust, but fear. ”
“We get it. You basically read off a laundry list of everything that’s wrong with me,” Ava said grumpily.
“There are things wrong with both of us,” I said, to try and help her feel better. “You’re not the only one in the wrong.”
“No one is wrong, here,” Sophia clarified.
“It’s not unusual to be out of alignment from time to time if you’re not paying attention, simply due to the difficult circumstances everyone goes through in life.
And masculine and feminine energy don’t mean male and female.
No one person is meant to serve as the sole masculine or the sole feminine.
Different couples can serve different roles.
Sometimes, the situation reverses, like you’ve seen with your friends Marcus and Kallie. ”
I smirked. That was a perfect example. Marcus definitely embodied more feminine traits, while Kallie seemed to thrive in masculine energy.
“That makes sense. Ivy was assigned male at birth, but they have an abundance of feminine energy, while Chancey embodies the masculine,” Ava said.