29
Farlen
C onnor and Rhi walk out of Rhi’s room. They both smile at me and I run over to them and give them a big hug. They both laugh and hug me back. I don’t know why I feel like this today, but I don’t feel like the world is pressing down on me. I feel lighter today. They both take turns touching that spot on my back where I can feel them, then walk into the kitchen together.
I really hope Rhi is making bacon again. There is a knock on the outside door. I don’t know what to do. Connor comes out of the kitchen and looks at the door, then at me.
“Instructor Payne was supposed to come by sometime this morning. Cover your eyes while I open the door sweetheart, I will let you know when you can open them.”
I turn around and cover my face with my hands. Connor opens the door and then swears. I hear fast movement behind me and arms pick me up. I hear someone breathe in through their nose.
“Mmmm, Scary Lady, I missed you. Did you miss me too?” Only one person has ever called me a scary lady. It’s Boyle man. I hear more heavy footsteps coming closer. And Connor shuts the outside door.
“Alright sweetheart, you can uncover your eyes now. The door is closed.” I take my hands off my face, and Boyle is standing right in front of me. His brown eyes just staring at me. Someone makes a sound behind me and I turn around fast. Standing there is the big man. They were both in my dreams last night, Boyle now with brown eyes, and the big man, the one with the orange eyes.
“My soulmate?” I ask Connor, who is standing behind the two new guys.
“Yeah Farlen, you heard the message, so to help you with their names, the one with the brown eyes is Xander Boyle. He’s the wolf shifter the message told you about. The one with the orange eyes is the dragon shifter Vashu Dracokennedy.”
I look at my soulmate with brown eyes. “Xander.”
Then I look at my orange-eyed soulmate. His name sounds harder, and I try to say it in my head right, but Connor is here. He’ll help me if I say it wrong. “Vachoo” doesn’t sound like what Connor says. I don’t like not being able to get my mouth to say the words right. Xander grabs my chin and makes me look up at them. He looks back at Connor and back at me. “Try it this way scary lady, va-shoe, think like the shoes you wear.” I try again “Vashu.” That sounded right.
Connor gives me a big smile. Vashu and Xander look at each other than look back at Connor and I see they can do the eyebrow raise thing. Why can everyone else do it? I can make my face do it when I push them up with my fingers, but I can’t get them to do it when I try to make the muscles move on their own.
Rhi comes out of the kitchen with bacon! I walk over to the big table and sit down. He also has a yellow thing on the plate with it. He is just looking at Xander and Vashu.
“Connor, why don’t you take Farlen back to her room so she can eat, and I will talk with these two? Enjoy your omelet and bacon gorgeous. I will see you in a few minutes. Maybe have Connor show you some more music?”
I nod at him and smile. I like music and would like to hear more of it. Connor comes over, grabs my plate, and then walks with me to my bedroom. He sits my plate down on the small table where he keeps the book he reads to me. I sit down in the chair he sits in to read and eat my bacon. Connor pulls out his phone and starts playing some more music. This one sounds a lot different from the others they have played for me. I eat and listen to the music. I think I hear Rhi talking to Vashu and Xander occasionally, but I can’t hear what they are saying.
I try a bite of the omelet that Rhi made. It has egg and cheese in it. I try another bite, and bacon! Another song comes on and I close my eyes and chew my food. There’s another knock, far away, and Connor goes to my door and looks out it. He comes back over and stops his music. He grabs my plate. “Come on, I think Instructor Payne is here to talk with us for a little, but you have to eat while he talks, so you’re not late for class.” I follow him as he takes my bacon and bacon egg cheese thing. I need to ask Rhi what it was again because it was good.
Connor sets my plate down at the big table again. Rhi, Vashu and Xander are all sitting around the table. Vashu and Xander look at me funny, but Rhi just smiles at me. Instructor Payne comes over and sits down.
“Alright, so to give you a brief rundown on what happened yesterday. Farlens beast is the most dominant at the school right now, even more dominant than mine, and could withstand my alpha command when some students decided to try to get close to her. She then gave everyone an alpha command to submit, and everyone, including myself, were forced to follow her command. She released me from the hold right after my submission, and I helped her to release everyone else. I got everyone started on a partial shift, but I wanted Farlen to go meditate, in part because it will help her communicate with her beast better, especially with how much power it holds. Then the girls came out of the trees while I’m assuming Farlen was in a deep meditative state and ripped the glasses from her head. The entire class ran towards her as she tried to scream. Uh, we weren’t able to see who the girls were. Xander got Farlen into the shade as fast as he could. I told Daniel about what happened and he is expecting to see Farlen tonight. He wants to see how bad it affected her eyes. That’s pretty much all I got for you all. Though I am wondering how the hell you two got here.” He looks over at Xander and Vashu .
“She’s ours,” Vashu says. His voice is rumbly and sounds so much different from anyone else. It makes my stomach feel tight down low again. I look down at it and tell it NO SEX with my head. Connor laughs and laughs. He holds his stomach again while laughing. I look around, wondering if I missed something while I was talking to my stomach. Instructor Payne has his face in his hands, Rhi is smiling at me, and the dark parts of his eyes are very swirly right now. Xander and Vashu are both looking at me funny, and the dark part of their eyes is really big right now.
“Sweet girl, why don’t you go brush your teeth? I’m sure Zachariah would like to get to class soon.” I get up and go to my bathroom. As I brush my teeth, I hear Instructor Payne say quietly, “I’m going to assume her eyes are okay, she’s not wearing her sunglasses, and when I was here yesterday, they were on in the house.” Connor says, “We will talk about it tonight with the healer. You might as well be there too, seeing as you’re teaching her a lot of her subjects right now.” I don’t know why they are talking so quietly. I finish brushing my teeth and make sure I have my pants on right. As I leave my room, Rhi stands up from the table and grabs my bag and sunglasses. “Alright gorgeous, let’s go teach you some shit.”
Rhi grabs my hand and takes me outside. These sunglasses are dark. I can still see, but I liked it better with the other sunglasses. They were not as dark, and I could see more colors of the surrounding things. It’s nice walking with Rhi. He is just as warm as Connor, but I can hide behind him easier when people stare at me. He takes me to the classroom and grabs a desk and puts it down next to his. I sit down and start to take my recording thing out of my bag.
He sits down, grabs some papers and looks at them, his eyes moving back and forth. I close my eyes and think about how much my life has changed. I never thought I would ever get out of the darkness. I thought I was going to die soon. My body felt so tired all the time, and it was harder and harder to wake up after sleeping. But because of Connor and Rhi, now I have the sun in my life. I have men who are nice to me, not men who want to hurt me. And I have bacon.
“Oh man, I thought she died.” I hear someone say. I look around the room and Rhi is standing up. His hands are opening and closing a lot. There is the nice-looking girl standing in the room surrounded by a lot of guys. These aren’t the same as the other ones. I look back to Rhi again, and he looks mad, but he isn’t looking at me at all. He’s looking at the nice girl. I don’t want him to hurt her, so I walk over and give his hand a hand hug. Rhi looks down at me and he blows out a lot of air on my face and it makes me laugh. He smiles at me and gives my hand a hug back, then sits down. He looks better, so I go sit back down. It was nice to feel like I could make them feel better. They do so much for me. I’m glad that I could do something for them.
More and more people come into the room. Rhi looks around at everyone and then uses a pencil on one of his papers, then stands up. He goes to the wall and grabs the white stick again. I press the record button on my recorder. He watches me, then starts to write on the board.
“Alright, so last class, we covered the main branches of magic. There are healers, potion masters, elementalists, druids, demonic magic, necromancy, and those of the body. Today we are going to focus on the Healers. There are different types of healing magic. Some Healers can heal bodies, others can heal the earth, there are those who can only heal themselves, and some who can heal anyone from the brink of death, but can never heal themselves. There has never been a healer known in our histories who could do all of them. This is because it would take too much magic to be held within us to perform those acts.” He says each word as he writes it down on the wall. His letters look so much better than mine.
There’s a knock on the door. Rhi looks over to it and a very nice-looking lady walks in. She is so tall, her shoes look like they have pointy things on them. She has long black hair, and her boobs don’t look like they are going to make her fall over. Her eyes are not nice though, they are a yellow that reminds me of my pee .
“Sorry for interrupting Zach, but I have a student that I think you may need to come look over. He was supposed to have some small amount of mind magic, but it is looking like that may not be the case.” As she gets to him, she puts his hand on his arm and my stomach starts to make that rumbly noise. Rhi moves away from the lady. He looks around the room and looks at me.
“Alright class, I want each of you to practice feeling for your magic again. Remember, don’t try to push any commands into it, just feel it. What does it feel like? I should be back in a few minutes.”
He walks out of the room, and the lady follows behind him. As soon as the door closes, everyone behind me starts talking. I hear the pretty lady talking to Rhi.
“Really, Zach, that is who you left me for? You’ll be back in a month, tops.”
I don’t know what any of that means, so I focus on trying to feel for my magic. I look within me. I find the warm, rumbly spot that Instructor Payne told me about. It seems like it moves around a lot like my phone does when it gets a message. I try to find somewhere else in me that feels different. The only thing I feel is the rumbly warm spot. I can’t find anything, so I stop looking.
I hear Rhi yelling my name. There are people in the class screaming and yelling. I blink my eyes at him. Why is he yelling my name?
“Are you back?” He asks. His voice sounds funny.
“Back?” What does he mean back? He gives me a big hug. He has his phone on my desk. “Welcome back sweet girl, Healer Daniel is coming to get you. I am waiting for you at the clinic. He wouldn’t let me come with him.”
I look around the room. Where is Connor? I hear him but I don’t see him.
“He is on the phone, gorgeous. I called him as soon as I saw you. He ran to get Healer Daniel.”
Why get Healer Daniel? I look down at my clothes and they seem like they are wet. I try to touch them and Rhi grabs my hands. There’s blood all over my hand. I don’t understand what happened. My heart rate picks up, and the door to the classroom opens fast, hitting the wall and making a loud noise. Healer Daniel comes in and gets over to me fast. He doesn’t look happy. He looks at my face and my hands again.
“Where are her sunglasses? I don’t want to damage her eyes more.” I try to touch my face, my sunglasses are gone again? Rhi stops me from moving my hands again. Healer Daniel takes a big breath in through his nose.
“She smells of mind magic. Has she shown any aptitude for it?”
“Not a single spark,” Connor says from the phone.
Rhi picks me up and hands me to Healer Daniel. He looks at me for a minute. He looks different than he normally does. He moves forward quickly and puts his lips on my mouth. He backs away and looks sad.
“She’s headed your way now, Connor.” He says. He sounds so sad. Why is he sad?
Healer Daniel starts to carry me away from Rhi. I don’t understand. I try to look over his shoulders to see Rhi, but Healer Daniel stops me from moving. I look up at him.
“Why Rhi sad?”
“Why don’t you tell me what you remember and then I will tell you why Zachariah is sad.”
“Pretty lady with not pretty eyes came in, took Rhi to see a student, and told us to try to find our magic. I found a warm, rumbly spot again, but nothing else. When I stop looking, he is yelling my name and won’t let me touch my wet shirt.”
“How long were you looking for your magic?”
“Since the door closed.”
“Alright, well, I have my suspicions about what happened, and they aren’t good, but I want to wait until I get you to Connor before I share them. How much pain are you in? I can stop and do a bit of healing if it is too bad.”
“No pain, don’t understand why Rhi sad.”
He looks down at me. “No pain, really, none? ”
I try to focus hard on what I want to say. I hate how I sound when I try to get my mouth to move. It isn’t like what I sound like in my head. I try again slowly.
“I don’t hurt anywhere. The sun hurts a little, but it isn’t as bad as it was.”
It takes me a little while to get all the words out of my mouth the way I want them to sound. But Healer Daniel just nods at me as I say them.
“That was very well said Farlen. We are almost here, I am not as talented as your matches at opening doors while holding someone, I am going to set you on the ground, let me know if you feel like the room starts to spin or if you feel weak, we are going to walk the rest of the way.”
“Okay.”
He sets me on the ground. His hands stay near me and he keeps looking at my face. He opens the door and I walk through it; he stays right behind me as we walk into the small hospital. I don’t remember where we go from here, so I stop. He comes over to me and looks at my face and I smile at him. He gives me a slight smile back and goes to the door near the chairs. I follow behind him and he opens that door, too. As soon as the door opens, a warm, soft big arm picks me up.
“She just got here. I’ll let you know what Healer Daniel says.” I found Connor. He has his phone to his ear and is talking in it. He puts it in his pocket. “Sweet girl, why don’t you tell me what happened? If you don’t think you can put it into words, use your head to tell me.”
Healer Daniel looks at Connor and shakes his head. “She said that there was a pretty lady that came into the classroom and told Zachariah she needed help with another student. He went with her, but before he left, he told everyone to look in themselves for their magic. As soon as the door shut, she started looking, and all she found was her beast. She was searching the entire time he was gone, and you all know when she came out of herself.”
Connor looks at me. His eyes are big. “You said all of that? ”
“She said most of it. I just filled in the rest with what everyone has told me so far. She isn’t in any pain, and she says the sun is only bothering her eyes a little, but not like they were, so I think we can hold off on the sunglasses for a little while, if the pain starts to get bad again let her wear them. Now, the woman Farlen described is a teacher here. She is an instructor in mind magic, and has strong enough mind magic to have caused this, though I don’t understand her motivation behind it if it was her.”
I look up at Connor. “Why is Rhi sad?”
“Because, sweetheart, when he left to go check on the other student, you got hurt. He feels like it is his fault because he wasn’t there to protect you.”
“I’m hurt?” I feel fine. My clothes feel sticky, but I don’t hurt anywhere. He nods his head at me and looks over to Healer Daniel.
“She had said she wasn’t in any pain, and she wasn’t acting like she was hurting so your guess is as good as mine here, it could be the pain receptors in her face are worse than we thought, or she is compartmentalizing the pain right now and will feel it later, unless you want to let me heal her?” He does the eyebrow thing too! How come all the men can do it? I want to be a man so I can do the eyebrow thing. Connor laughs again. He looks down at me and does the eyebrow thing, too! He walks me over to the bed and sets me down on it. I still don’t like this bed, it isn’t as nice as mine. Healer Daniel walks over to me and brings his hands up to my face. They start to glow again and I feel the heat of them.
The rumbly part of me starts to feel really hot. I rub it with one of my hands. I look down at it and see that my hands have lots of blood on them. I don’t understand where all the blood came from. Is that why my clothes are sticky? Healer Daniels hands stop glowing, and the hot spot in my stomach just feels warm again. He does the eyebrow thing to me again.
“What?” Connor says to him.
“I’m not sure. I have a hunch, but it’s not something I am sure of yet, so I am going to wait to share it for now. We are about an hour out from my shift ending now, since you guys are already here. Why don’t I see what I can do about her spleen? Have you guys talked about the student healers yet?”
“We haven’t really had a chance, but we were wondering if you could do another scan on her? There is a spot on her back that used to be covered in scars, but there are no scars there anymore and she can feel it when we touch her there.” Connor says, and he rubs the back of his neck.
I look up at him and remind myself to talk slowly so my mouth can form the words right. “I’m okay with student healers.”
“Why don’t you all have that talk with her about it tonight? She needs to understand the risks of student healers before I am comfortable letting them heal her. If I do the scan, I don’t think I will have enough energy to heal her spleen. I may fully restore function to one of her kidneys with what I will have left.”
“That’s fine. Anything you can do for her is more than we could have ever hoped for, sir.”
Healer Daniel's hands start to glow and he moves them slowly over my body again, but doesn’t touch me with them. When he finishes, he looks over at Connor.
“Her internal damage isn’t as bad as it was on the first scan, but seeing as she is a shifter, that shouldn’t surprise any of us. I think her beast is trying to heal as much of her as it can. Which is why I suspect she doesn’t really need the sunglasses any longer. Her bones are just as bad as they were, but her heart looks like it should for a normal healthy twenty-four-year-old, as do her lungs. I will try to repair the damage to her right kidney. It seems to have the most scar tissue on it. I may not fully heal it, but when you guys return in a few days, I will finish what I cannot now, and will heal her other one then. She is going to have an increase in urine production once this is done.” He looks down at me, “I am going to have to touch your back for this one, so I need you to lay on your stomach.” I turn over like he says. I feel his warm hands touch my back, and my stomach gets hot again.
When he steps back, Connor helps me sit up. I feel very sleepy .
“Well, her class should be done soon. She should be good for her next class, especially because it’s with Payne. Are you both okay with me letting him know what happened?”
“Yes.” Connor and I say at the same time. He smiles down at me.
Connor grabs my hand and takes me outside. He stops and gives me a big hug. He makes sure he touches the spot on my back where I can feel him. Connor goes stiff and sets me down. He turns around, keeping me behind his back. I try to look around Connor to see what he is looking at, but he won’t let me see.
I hear a rumbly voice that sounds like Vashu. “Why did I have to hear about her going to the fucking clinic from fucking Instructor Payne?” Connor stops trying to hide me and lets me come out from behind him.
“It’s not that we wanted to keep it from you or Xander, but all of us guys need to sit down and have a talk. There are things you need to be aware of with Farlen, and before we feel comfortable talking to you about them, we just need to ask you all one question. One question that you will both have to answer before we let you insert yourselves into her life.”
Vashu makes a loud angry noise and I hide behind Connor again. Connor hasn’t said Vashu won’t hurt me.
“FUCK.” He yells. More quietly he says, “I am sorry little one, my dragon doesn’t like this. Payne said to bring her to him, even though her class doesn’t start for another hour. He wants to talk.”
Connor looks down at me. “Alright, but we need to get her something to eat on the way there. She can sit and eat it while he talks to us.”
Vashus eyes do a weird blink. They do the normal blink, but then they do a weird side to side blink. “She’s hungry?”
“Well, she hasn’t said she is hungry, but she was just healed.”
Vashu turns and starts to walk away fast. Connor grabs my hand and follows behind Vashu more slowly, which I am happy for, because I don’t think my legs can move that fast. He stops near one cart and walks back over to us.
“Do you like little burritos, little one?”
“What’s burrito?” He looks at Connor, and Connor just shakes his head. Vashu looks around at all the carts on the path.
“Okay, no burritos. What do you like to eat then, little one?”
Connor puts his hand on his arm. He tried to reach his shoulder, but his arm couldn’t reach. Just like I can’t reach Connor's shoulder. It makes me laugh. They both look at me and Vashu looks at Connor.
“She’s never had a burrito before, you mis-understood both of us. Pick her out something, don’t do anything spicy though, we haven’t tried anything spicy yet.” Vashus eyes do the strange blink again and walks back over to the cart.
Connor bends down to me and whispers in my ear, “You thought that was funny, did you? He is a very big man, sweet girl. I don’t think many people can touch his shoulder.” I look over to where Vashu is getting food. There are people that walk past him, and I can still see his face. None of the people that walk by him even come up to his chin.
Vashu walks back over to us with a bag. I want to see what a burrito is. Connor takes my hand and they lead me to the big grass area.