Chapter 1 Thirical My father was one of the last of his kind, my mother was the other. Both were, and still are great figures in their time, and mine. They led our people into the present, well what is my, our present. You see life for my family is much different than that of a normal family. On the outside when we’re visiting some foreign country we’re normal looking. But back at home, back in our small corner of the world we’re much more different from everyone else. I grew up in a home where my mother and father taught my twin sister and me the old ways; where we had mastered the sword by age five. Yep, sounds like something some psycho parents would do huh? No, not our parents, they were far from it. You see my sister and I aren’t even like some of the people here in our part of the world. We’re special. Heck we aren’t even humans, eighty percent of the population here isn’t either. Are we aliens then? Nope. Then what? Well you know that whole myth about a creature called a phoenix? How a bird of fire lives for hundreds of years then consumes itself in its own fire and a new one rises from the ashes to live on? Sorry to burst your bubble on that tid-bit of knowledge but it’s far from the truth. Actually in the very beginning it was partly true but that was long before humans were around. Humans weren’t the only thing to evolve. Phoenixes do too, only we do it much faster then any other species. How much faster? Let’s just say if a phoenix was killed by a bullet than once that phoenix rose again from its ashes, this is what we call a rebirthing, it wouldn’t be able to be killed by a bullet again no matter how many times it was shot.
~1~
With each rebirthing our new bodies have an adaptation, an evolution to them different from the previous one. After about twenty rebirths, over a span of three thousand years, done by our greatest ancestors our bodies took on the more ‘humanoid’ appearance we have now a days. One of the things unchanged by all that evolving and adapting was that we kept our wings. If you want to get an idea of what we look like, and don’t mention to my father that I made this comparison because he hates it, we look like the humans idea of an angel. Angels and phoenixes? Yes most of us look like angels just most with different colored wings and few with actual white ones. We don’t wear white gowns or have halos or play harps all the time while singing choir music in the clouds. We’re so not angels, not that we're devils either. It’s hard to describe what we are and what we can do; it’s more like you just have to be around us to get a better idea of what we are. Another thing wrong about that myth about phoenixes is that it says only one is alive at a time. That is a large lie right there. It’s so big and so insanely stupid that I really don’t want to go further into how wrong it is. But it’s like saying there’s only one rosebush alive at a time. That’s how incredibly stupid of a notion it is. And the last thing that really is fiction about this myth is how long they, we, live for. Some books say five hundred years, others say one thousand years. Both are incorrect. We live until our bodies need to go through a rebirthing or until we are killed by something or someone and have to rebirth, so our ages vary. You know how I said that you had to be around us to know what all we can do? Well that really doesn’t apply to my family. I’m only seventeen years old and my father still does things that I didn’t know were possible in any sense or term. My mother is the same only she does some of them with more grace and sophistication then my father. My family is even different from the other phoenixes that live here. We’re the only ones with four wings while the others only have two. See my sister, mother, and father along with myself are the only ones of our kind on this world. Yes we’re still phoenixes, just a different kind. Our types' name is Meraphorn, while the others are called Secnals. Meraphorns are a stronger, more elite taxon; its roots trace back to the original aviary phoenixes. We are the product of the rebirth that took them from looking like a bird to a more humanoid appearance. And it’s because of this that’s got my sister and I worried so much. ~2~
Every species has its own fear to another part of itself, whether it’s because of different colors, bone structure, or food chain status. Every species has its own fears toward the ones slightly different from the majority. Phoenixes are no different. You see Secnals ended up driving off all the other Meraphorns away from Earth and killing the two that remained behind. Those two were my parents. See there are mixed feelings between my parents and the others here because of the history, but my father tries to find good in everyone. Since my parents where killed by the Secnals long ago you would think they wouldn’t be able to be killed like they were again. Normally this would be true. However due to the nature of how they were killed, it left that stage of the evolution out of the rebirthing. My father will stand staring out the windows in our den on clear starry nights looking up into the night sky. I asked my mother why he doesn’t just go flying and that’s when she sat me down and told me how they were killed. During the times of knights, kings, and queens, on a calm autumn night with a wide open clear sky my parents were riding back home in their carriage from a ball at a fellow lord’s castle. Their journey home stopped not that long after entering a wooded area when they were ambushed. Knocked unconscious, bound and dragged outside, they were placed in the back of an old wooden cart. My father came-to to the sounds of my mother screaming out in pain and agony. They were stripped of their fine clothes and dressed in rags. My father hung from an old maple tree by his chained hands as he watched their attackers used a rune blade encrusted with rare gems and jewels, slash and cut at my mothers flesh as she struggled against her own chains that bound her to rune covered boulders. The moon reflected bright red from the pools of blood that formed as she bled out. My father had not learned many of the skills he knows today and was forced to watch my mother die in front of him, unable to break free of the chains that bound him. As she lay motionless in front of him he soon realized that she wasn’t going to be able to rebirth from the trauma and spells their attackers used. He hung his head, his spirit and heart broken when they finally planted a similar rune gem encrusted ax in the middle of his back. Once they were convinced he was dead and wasn’t going to rebirth they cut him down and left his body to rot away into nothing. As my father lay cold on the ground, my mother’s blood slowly flowed from its pools and touched his skin. As soon as it did a great blaze erupted from my father's body that lit up the still woods. The fire burned long and hard as his body was consumed by its flames. ~3~
When there was nothing left of his body but ashes the fire died back down into nothing. A strong wind picked up, and swirled the ashes into the air creating a vortex. The swirling ashes spun viciously causing a second fire to ignite within. My father’s body regrew from the fire and ashes within the vortex and soon he stood there renewed the wind dying back down. Due to the state of his rebirth his mind was lost and broken. He didn't understand what was happening to him, so he ran out of fear through the woods. It wasn’t until a few hundred years later that did he find her again only she wasn’t complete. She looked more like a Secnal then her former Meraphorn self. He could feel it was her though and it wasn’t until his blood was taken by The Council, and then analyzed by Aunt Ali. She’s the one that found the missing DNA of my mother hidden with in the DNA of my father. They both went through a rebirthing together and when it was over both my father and mother were complete again. She had all his memories and skills he had acquired from his years without her. It was because of that night that my father stares out on clear nights. Because in his mind he’s reliving that night. My mother doesn’t let him dwell on it though, as soon as she sees him doing that she’ll come up behind him and place her arms around him so that he feels her breathing against his back. This usually breaks him out of his tragic memory and he’s back to his regular self. Yes my sister and I were taught the old ways as we grew up, but it was for our own protection; protection from those that might lash out their fears upon us when our parents aren’t there to protect us. By age five I knew how to wield a sword, my sister by age six. At age seven we both were manifesting small objects from fire. When we turned ten we had mastered the art to changing our hair, skin, eye, and wing colors. When I turned fourteen I taught my sister how to read minds. What I didn’t know was how well mom and dad could. We got into so much trouble, but it wasn’t a bad thing, they were helping us learn how to mask our thoughts so others that could read minds couldn’t read ours. Some times I lay awake at night wondering what kind of people could have my parents so worried for my sister’s life and my own. Are there beings out there that are stronger then us? I asked my mother that one day and she rubbed my arm and with a small smile she just told me they were teaching us what they learned how to do over thousands of years so we could be ready for anything. I smiled back to her and was satisfied with her answer. My sister and I were literally getting the wisdom of lives thousands of years old as we grew ~4~
up. I predict that by the time we’re twenty we will have learned everything our parents know. Just the thought of that can be kind of scary for some people. You’re probably thinking that it was nothing but lessons and training day in and day out. But it wasn’t. Our lessons and training ended up being games when we were young. For example, one was hide n’ seek. Sounds simple right? Wrong, you try finding a person invisible to the normal light spectrum. That’s how we learned how to shift our vision to see the other spectrums of light for seeking. It also taught us how we can shift our own appearance into other light spectrums for hiding. We learned two talents that took our parents years to learn just from playing a simple game. Marco Polo was another fun game. We played it in a really big room that had patches of light and patches of shadow. The person that was it was blind folded and had to try and find the others from listening to their movements. That taught us how to move about in the shadows and how to stop sound from traveling from our bodies. It’s really hard to try and find someone when you can’t hear them moving about. For a long car trip, that is when we drove instead of flew, we’d sing songs that would teach us about our history and where we came from. Some songs weren’t even in English but in a completely different language. My sister and I are bilingual because of some of those songs. But I think that’s about enough of my past that I’m comfortable with revealing. Where things really start to get interesting is the present.
~5~
Chapter 2 Melissa My sister and I were the outcast at school. We didn’t have many friends, nor did we have any enemies. We were feared. Why? Because of who our parents are. Our father had once decimated an entire city at one point. He felt it was the only way to extinguish the corruption, and make way for a new way void of envy or ill will. In fact that’s what he named our country, Absitinvidia. Its Latin meaning, let there be no envy or ill will towards one another. It wasn’t a country at first, it was barely a small town to begin with, but he and my mother and their friends worked hard together to make it what it is today. Our country is the top leader in technology, and food production in the world; along with having a crime rate hardly visible on any chart or graph. You would think that with parents so accomplished that we wouldn’t have been outcast. Even if nobody knew them they should at least like my sister and me. I’m not one to gloat about looks, but our mother’s genes are strong with us and several human boys have let us know how attractive we are. Yes my father’s genes did have their role with my sister and me, but in a good way. If you really want to get an idea of what my sister and I look like let me give you a description. I’m about five foot six inches with deep ruby red hair to my shoulders. My eyes are a dark gray with a light reddish ring around the iris. I have four wings with black feathers that have a red dot on their tips. I have a slender build but not scare crow slender. My arm and leg muscles are very feminine in size and shape but far from that in strength (thanks dad). Now my sister she’s different from me in many ways even though we’re twins, but oddly still has a lot of mom's characteristics. ~6~
She’s five foot eight inches with long wavy reddish brown hair (from dad) that becomes black when wet. Her eyes are dark brown with swirls of red in them. She has four wings with dark blood red feathers. She’s more of an average build then me but has about the same feminine muscle structure as myself; also like me her strength is far from being normal. We spent a lot of our childhood playing with each other since nobody wanted to play with us in fear of our father. He and our mother asked us if it bothered us that we were so different and special from everyone else, but we had so much fun playing with each other that it didn’t matter to us. Most of the other kids would have had problems keeping up with us with some of the games we’d play. It wasn’t until we were getting ready to go to high school that it started to bother us. We weren’t invited to go anywhere and all the boys were too scared to ask us out because they knew they would have to meet our dad. Please don’t start to think of my dad is some evil demon spawn that rules with an iron fist. He’s far from it. He may be over eight thousand years old but he can act like a kid when he wants to. He was always building and inventing new things for my sister and me. My dad and mom taught us too, things you wouldn’t learn in any school or book. The fear that surrounded our parents was because they were so powerful and strong. It was a fear of the unknown mixed with jealousy that people had. It got so bad that a few times we moved out of the country for a bit to try and live normal lives in a normal school but eventually we were found out. The last time was because some stupid guy made a move on me that I didn’t like and my dad found out about it. Needless to say the he won’t be feeling up any other girl anymore or least not until they find out how to re-grow arms for him. However my father did feel bad after-wards and paid for the guys medical, therapy, and replacement robotic arms. My Aunt Ali still won’t give up her secrets on creating organic replacements. She says that the technology to do that is far to complex to understand. I don’t really understand her though, because she herself started out life as a computer's a.i. and now she’s a real live breathing organic being just like the rest of us. But I suppose she has her reasons. She was more of a bigger sister to my sister and me then an aunt which is cool all in itself. She’s always giving my dad a hard time over one thing or another, but when it’s business she’s really serious. She’s not really related to us in the sense that she came from the same family tree, but she is because my dad created her a.i. and she used ~7~
bits of his DNA to create her own organic body. So she’s related to us by blood from his DNA, and like a bigger sister since she was “created” first. But we’ve always called her Aunt Ali and she seems just fine with that. She has wings like the rest of us too, just two and not four though. I asked her why that was one Thanksgiving and she just made a face and started mumbling angrily to herself. My dad pulled me aside later and told me it was because that part of his DNA was so complex for her she couldn’t understand how to get four wings from it so she just settled on two natural wings and altering her appearance to create two unnatural wings.
~8~
Chapter 3 Going Home. Phoenix stared out of his hospital room's window at the birds flying by. A nurse entered his room carrying his chart and chewing on the end of her pen. “How are you feeling today Mr. Amercob?” “Just fine.” “Feeling any pain?” “No. Just the same as the day before.” “I still have to ask. Is it alright if I take a look at your stitches?” “*sighing* If you must.” Phoenix turned over onto his left side as the nurse pulled his blanket down and lifted his gown up. “Your stitches are looking extremely well. You're an unusual patient Mr. Amercob. You have a high pain tolerance, and you're healing faster then anyone else with injuries as you have.” Anastasia walked into the room. Her gaze looking up from her phone, and landed on the nurse still holding Phoenix's gown up. “*clearing her throat* Is there a problem.” The nurse turned, she was now aware of Anastasia in the room. “No Mrs. Amercob, I’m just checking on his stitches.” She then turned back to face Phoenix. “Well you keep resting Mr. Amercob, and I’ll check back in on you in a few hours. If you need anything don't feel shy about pressing the call button.” Phoenix nodded as he turned onto his back while pulling his blanket up. The nurse gave Anastasia a polite smile as she passed her on the way out of the room. ~9~
“I really wish your accident didn't have so many witnesses.” “Me too. Having to pose as human can be annoying at times.” “I don't like that nurse looking at you like that.” Anastasia walked to the side of Phoenix's bed resting her hand on his arm. “She's only doing her job.” “You didn't see how far open she had your gown. Your stitches aren't that far down on your back.” “Do you know how many more days they want me in here for?” “No.” Sighing, Phoenix laid his head back staring up at the ceiling. Anastasia sat her purse and cell phone down on the nightstand next to his bed before crawling in under the sheets with him and cuddling into his arms. “Thirical really misses you. Melissa sends her love as well.” “I've been missing them likewise. This whole ordeal is rather weariness for me.” “So why do you keep doing it?” “*sighing* Can you pass me your cell phone?” “Sure.” Anastasia reached over picking her phone up, she then placed it in his hand. A few dialed numbers later and he was on the line with Mai. “Mai how are things going in Absitinvidia?” “Everything is fine here. Is there something I can help you with father?” “Yes, I'm a patient in St. Thomas' Hospital in London. Could you tell me when they have me set to be released?” “Are you using an alias?” “Yes, the name I’m listed under is Amercob.” “They have you down to be released in two weeks.” “What!?” Phoenix shifted his attention from his call to Anastasia. “They have me to be released in two weeks. Two more weeks here.” She sighed heavily shaking her head in frustration. “Mai, I want to be released in two days instead of two weeks.” “Understood father, the change has been made to your file.” “One more thing Mai.” “Yes.”
~10~
“Inform Ali, that we'll be coming home in two days as well. She can remain the monarch of Absitinvidia's capital. We're simply coming home.” “She has been sent an e-mail with your message.” “You should have been a little more personal with giving her the message. But thank you nevertheless. I’ll see you in two days Mai.” “Goodbye father.” Phoenix hung up the phone, handing it back to Anastasia. “They were really planing on keeping you here another two weeks?” “Keyword being; were.” Anastasia cuddled into Phoenix's arm resting her head on his chest. It was just starting to become dark outside when Phoenix's nurse returned to his room with his chart. She stopped in mid-stride when she noticed Anastasia asleep in bed with him. The nurse placed her hand on Anastasia's right shoulder. Her eyes snapped open as her hand quickly moved taking hold of the nurses wrist. “Mrs., Mrs. Amercob, it's me, your husbands nurse.” Her voiced trembled with both fear and confusion, causing her to stammer her statement. Anastasia's grip lessened. “What do you want?” “I'm, I’m just here to take his vitals for the night.” “He's asleep.” “Yes I know, this will only take a moment.” “Didn't you say he needed to rest.” “Yes I did, but, I need to take his vitals.” Phoenix spoke, his voice sounding tired and groggy. “It's fine sweety, she's only doing her job.” Anastasia slid out from his blanket and sat in the chair next to the nightstand beside his bed. Her legs and arms both crossed. The nurse turned on the lights just above the bed as Phoenix sat up. As the nurse finished taking his blood pressure and temperature she turned to Anastasia. “I have to check his stitches now. Is that ok?” “Is it required?” Her reply was very harsh. “I, I have to check to make sure they're not getting infected. And, it's, my job.” Anastasia's gaze shifted to Phoenix who had his face resting in his left hand's palm. “*sighing* I'm going to step out into the hall then.” ~11~
She looked back at the nurse. “Do your job, nothing more.” “Mrs. Amercob, one last thing.” “Yes.” “It's not hospital policy that our patients have, guest, in their bed with them.” Phoenix lifted his head up quickly from his palm just as Anastasia's wings began to manifest out of anger. “Ect-ta-mor·!” The hospital room fractured out from around Phoenix and Anastasia. “Sweety, take a few deep breaths.” “How can you be so calm about all of this!?” “We've both been away from home for far to long. The stresses of playing human are wearing hard on all of us. That's why I told Mai that we're coming home in two days. I know it's difficult having to keep your powers restrained in order to pass off as human. But please don't take your frustrations out on this nurse.” Phoenix got out of his bed walking over to Anastasia. His arms reached down pulling her towards his body. She fought his pull. Tears had started to run down her cheeks. “Why did you have to get into an accident with so many witnesses?” Pulling her stronger, she stopped fighting him collapsing into his arms and crying on his shoulder. “Why must we pretend to be human? Why did we have to leave Absitinvidia? And, and why does your nurse have to keep looking at your butt when your stitches are just below your right shoulder blade?!” She continued to cry on his shoulder as he quietly held her in his arms. As her tears grew fewer and fewer she lifted her face up looking into his eyes. “Why did you fracture time that way this time?” “So long as I’m in a human form, I’m limited as to what I normally can do. I had to speak the phoenician phrase to fracture time. A simple thought wouldn't have done it.” “Oh. I’m a bit calmer now. Would you like me to unfracture time for you?”
·
Ect-Ta-Mor: ek-taa-mor Note:Phoenician words are very hard to translate into English as they are mostly based on feeling instead of meaning.
~12~
“Wait for me to get back in bed. And remember, the last thing my nurse saw of you, was a very angry look. If that changed all of a sudden it would be very confusing.” “Alright.” As Phoenix made his way back into bed, Anastasia took out a tissue and wiped her tears and blew her nose. “Alright, I’m ready.”
~13~