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| Time is powerful, but true love always wins. |
His name is Nathan Vach, and he's having terrifying dreams. Left alone after his father and brothers die in the Second Ogres war, and after his mother perishes from illness, he retreats into his family's big home far from anywhere. But the dreams continue to plague him, so he decides to visit a metaphysician in Munchkinland. There he learns startling news: that he has a gift for someone--a Soul Gift. It's a Gift that will be a great blessing to he or she destined to receive it. Walking home, he has no idea just how powerful that Gift is--or the individual who, unbeknownst to him, will soon try to claim it. Read on!
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Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven
~~*~~
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven
~~*~~
N.V.
~~*~~
THE YELLOW POTION
THE YELLOW POTION
----
“I was getting worried! I couldn’t even use the crystal ball
to watch you!”
I heard her voice
before I saw her. The green-white smoke was still clearing. She rushed into my
arms. I held her and wished there was no such thing as death.
I released her and
held up her pendant.
“Thank you,” she
breathed. “Thank you so much, Nathan.”
I went behind her
and clasped it around her neck. Too tempting. I bent and softly kissed where
gold touched skin. She leaned against me, closed her eyes, and sighed.
I wrapped my arms
around her as our mouths met and the smoke surrounded us. Moments later we were
in my bedroom.
We made love with the other’s heart beating madly in our
chests. I will take it to my grave as the single most intense and erotic
experience of my life. I could feel her in a way that transcended the very
notion of intimacy, and she me. I could feel what she wanted and passionately
gave it to her, and she reciprocated in turn. We became in those almost
unbearable moments a single living organism with two hearts working in perfect
concert. As lust pushed me beyond all self-control, I flipped her onto her back
and worked furiously over and inside her, kissing her like a man dying of
thirst. We came together with only the noise of our mouths and flesh furiously meeting;
and it was at that very moment that I felt something leave me. Something poignant
and breathtakingly beautiful. My Soul Gift.
What was it? I was
never sure. I only learned of one of its consequences that moment, which was that
it would gift her someday with the tremendous strength necessary to make a momentous
decision that would help her overcome a terrible obstacle. (Kill the Evil
Queen, perhaps? It seemed likely; but then I simply didn’t know.) I believe it
was only by virtue of her heart beating in my chest that I learned even that
much. It felt like I had by way of her ingenuity gotten a glimpse behind the
curtains, so to speak, one that in any other circumstance would never have
happened.
At that moment it
did not matter. At that moment we had each other. That moment ... which bounded
ever closer to when we wouldn’t have each other, and for a very long time. I
knew that, too. Just a few hours away.
Holding each other
in the bittersweet silence afterward, she whispered, “I love you.”
“I love you, my
wicked one.”
Using magic, I made her a late-night dinner fit for a queen.
It was well after midnight, so it was more like a sumptuous early breakfast. We
drank brandy. We clinked glasses, sipped, then kissed. The liquor on her lips
tasted heavenly. We kissed again. She laid her head on my shoulder and breathed
deeply.
“I felt it.”
“I did too.”
“I’m so scared,
Nathan.”
“I’m scared too.” I
pulled back and looked into her glistening eyes. “Do you feel anything new?
Anything at all?”
She nodded as I
waited expectantly. I’d wondered so much what this Soul Gift I “grew” inside my
spirit was all about that I couldn’t help but be acutely interested.
She closed her eyes
instead, dropped her head against my shoulder once more, and began sobbing in
earnest.
I didn’t know what
to say. There truly was nothing to
say.
“I can feel it,
Nathan. I can feel your loss ... your mom, your dad, Jesse, Dasciv ... Oh,
Nathan ... how can you stand this? How do you live with it? You are so strong ... I’ve been with this with less
than a day and it’s already enough to make me want to jump off that troll
bridge! How can you stand this?”
“Look what it made
of me,” I answered quietly. “A shut-in. A recluse. Until you, I had no friends.
I taught myself. I fended for myself. Until you, I was just as much a casualty
as they were. I could ask the same question of you, my love. I can feel the
pain of abandonment in you. I can feel anger burning in the bottom of your
heart for Regina ,
and for your mother. The envy. The rage. I have never felt anything like it. I
have never felt such pain. How can you
stand it?”
She stroked my
cheek. I lifted her chin and kissed those amazing lips. They tasted not like brandy
now, but salt.
“I ... I must leave
you,” she wept. “I ... it’s part of the Gift. I’ve long suspected I must—a feeling,
an instinct—ever since we met, but now ... now I know it. I must abandon you,
my sweet Nathan. I must abandon you! You!”
My own eyes burned.
“I know.”
I glanced at the
clock on the hearth. It was just after four-thirty. We still had five hours.
Even in this state,
her face red with tears, her hair mussed from passion, she was the most
beautiful sight I had ever beheld. She was clad only in one of my quilts. Her
perfume, mixed with her own scent, made concentrating almost impossible. But I
had to.
“I have an idea.”
She waited for me
to go on. “What? What’s your idea?”
“You must leave me.
But not my heart. Let me use your magic to give you half of my heart. I will
take half of yours. We will always
have each other. You will have my light. I will have your darkness. We will
learn from each other forever. We
will struggle and fight with those halves, and because of that we will grow in
strength and love for each other and for those around us, and for those we have
yet to meet. Together we will become powerful and wicked, and good and true, no matter how far apart we may be. Maybe the
Soul Gift needs half of my heart in
your chest in order for it to gift itself to you fully. Like you, I have a
feeling, an instinct, that it does. I really do.”
As she stared, I
suddenly figured out what that yellow potion was back in the castle in the Emerald City
Tears streaming
down her cheeks, she kissed me.
I heard the
now-familiar sound. She moaned in my mouth and thrust her tongue more deeply inside
it. I broke the kiss and pulled back.
In her hand was my
heart.
I brought her mouth
back to mine. With my free hand I reached inside my chest and pulled out her
heart. We parted so that she could look at it.
“I want you to have
it. All of it, Nathan. I don’t care anymore about magic. I don’t want it
anymore! Magic always comes with a price, and I have paid it all my life!”
I held her and let
her cry, our hearts held closely together between us.
“You do care, my wicked one. If magic always
comes with a price, then let me pay it with you. Let it be something else we
can share. You need your magic for what’s coming. You know it, and with your
heart in my chest I know it, too. Even with only half your heart, you will
still be very powerful. Maybe even more so. Let the outrage you feel over my
sad little life and losing my family darken my half. It will be very powerful
fuel, even if ...” I thought of the yellow potion again “... even if you don’t
know what that outrage is about. You know it will be.”
She sniffled. “What
about you, my love?”
I kissed her and
smiled. “If I want to be truly good, I’ve gotta be a little bad.”
She sniffled again and
laughed.
We held each other
as the moment bounded for the vast desert of our separation.
We stood at the potion table back in the castle. The yellow
potion waited.
She was dressed in
a purple gown. Her pendant was off. There are moments in life that etch
themselves forever upon one’s heart. For me, the vivid spectacle of her beauty
just then was one of them. I knew that etching would stay with me even though
it was her heart in my chest. It was then, with great sadness, that I
understood just how much greater the human soul was than the mere shell of a
human body.
At the same time,
we reached inside our chests one more time and pulled the other’s heart out.
“Are you ready?”
she asked, her voice breaking.
A tear streaked
down my cheek. “I am.”
“We must do this
together, at the same time. On three. One ... two ... three.”
Together, with the
other’s heart in our hands, we gently twisted the hearts. At the same time, they
split in two. It hurt. But most of the pain was simple sorrow. I stared at my
heart in her hands, broken in two. Hers waited in the same state in mine.
We put a half on
the table. She handed me the other half of mine. I took it and with the half of
her heart still in my grip brought the two together. As we both watched, the
heart-halves melded into a single whole. The new heart glowed on one half, and
was dark on the other.
Zelena blinked more
tears out of her eyes. “It still feels broken.”
I nodded. I could
scarcely see anything through my own watery vision. I handed her the newly
formed heart. She took it and thrust it into her chest.
“Oh, Nathan ...”
she wept.
I took the halves
on the table next to the yellow potion and brought them together, then put the
new heart, which looked just like the other one, into my chest.
Heartbreak.
Abandonment. Loss. Rage. Anger. Envy.
But also: Passion. Joy. Connection. Hope.
And—dare I say it? The chance for redemption. Our happy endings. Even if it
meant we would have to wait years for it.
That was what the
yellow potion was for.
It was time. We were
just ahead of the clock. Our new hearts would protect us from any ill effects
from the magic used to exchange them. Our souls were safe. Safer, in fact, than
they had ever been. They were healing each other, each half to and with the
other.
She took the beaker
with the yellow liquid and poured it into two glasses. It was a very powerful
forgetting potion. She handed me a glass.
I studied the
liquid. These unforgettable months would soon be utterly and completely forgotten.
In that liquid a new story would insinuate itself in place of my true memories.
She did not rescue me, no. Somehow I rescued myself. Or someone else rescued
me. I regained my health. The magic would fill in the details and plot holes
perfectly. I knew that. Zelena was a first-rate sorceress. She’d leave nothing
to chance, including my Cruxx, still free from my person, still waiting for me
to find and reclaim it. With half of her heart in my chest, I didn’t need her
to be with me once I did.
All that passion
and love. Her kisses. Her body. Her wit and intelligence. Her radiance. Her
wickedness and darkness, both infinitely more precious to me now than my light.
The feel of her. Her scent.
I took a deep
breath and readied myself. “Okay. I’m ready.”
She took the single
step that separated us and kissed me one last time.
Etched. Forever.
Her lips pulled
free.
The horizon was years
and years away.
One more look into
those sapphire eyes.
“I love you.”
Before she could
respond, I closed my eyes, lifted the glass, and downed the forgetting potion
in two gulps. I felt motion upward, and lost consciousness.
~~*~~
