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atozphantomsquadron · 1 year

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XXIII - Reconciliation

Those first few days back at home were spent reacquainting with my mother, telling her about what I had done, and her telling me of the local gossip. Many of my mother’s trading partners in the canyon had passed away, but their sons and daughters remained, to tend the farms and trade with her. The farms themselves had been starting to lose yield, and the pickings were slim, but somehow my mother had still been able to maintain a living. Thankfully, one of the old partners that remained was Aunt Irene, who had one of the more successful farms.

Aunt Irene came to visit on our second morning there, unaware that I had returned. The reunion with her was a special occasion: the minute she came in the door she spotted me across the room, sitting on my mother’s couch next to Cole.

“Shanee …” she started, shifting her focus between my mother and me, “… is that who I think it is?”

My mother smiled and patted Aunt Irene’s shoulder. “It is. Little Ariel’s returned to us.”

She sprinted across the room … quite an accomplishment for a 73-year-old Navajo woman … and tackled me into one of her trademark all-encompassing bear hugs. “Oh little Ariel, we’ve missed you so much, how are you?”

I laughed and hugged her back. “I’ve been very busy, Aunt Irene. Busy, but now I’m home.” I nearly cried, being hugged by the closest to extended family I knew, short of Ken.

At some point she released me when she noticed Cole, much like my mother had. “And who is this, my girl?”

Cole stood up as I introduced him. It took a while for me to explain the relationship I had with Aunt Irene, but eventually she embraced Cole just as warmly when I told her we would be getting married. She wound up spending the entire day with us, reminiscing, catching me up on all of the local gossip, and eventually helping my mother put together a couple of meals. While they cooked, I took Cole out to see the canyon.

He looked over the edge, where it dropped from the border of our back yard, and whistled. “That’s quite a drop. What kind of a woman must Irene be?”

I smiled back at him. “Surprising, isn’t it? Living with this canyon makes us a bit hardier than what you’d expect. It’s all part of the culture of living on the rez.”

He nodded and put an arm around my shoulders. “I admire that, actually. It’s a whole different way of life, I can tell.”

“Want to see the bottom?”

He looked back at the house, then at me again. “Are you sure we have time to go down to the bottom? Isn’t dinner going to be ready soon?”

I winked at my fiancé and unfurled my wings, grabbing him under his armpits. Within moments, we were sailing down to the bottom of the canyon using my wings as a parachute. I watched his face as we continued our slow descent, and felt more love for him as I saw the rapt wonder in his eyes, marveling at the spectacle that nature had produced for my people. Once we touched the bottom, he spent a few minutes walking around the canyon floor and viewing the long lines of farms before I collected him and flapped my way back up to the canyon’s mouth again.

Unfortunately, it was Aunt Irene who would greet us when we arrived at the top. Her eyes were wide with surprise as I came face to face with her.

“What is this? Ariel, what’s going on here?” She looked panicked.

“Please, let me explain, Aunt Irene … there’s been some changes. You remember my dream, the one I told you about a long time ago?”

She wiped sweat from her forehead. “I remember, you told me about flying atop a great eagle, above the canyon.”

I looked behind me, to where my wings protruded from the HoSIP camouflage. I waggled them slightly. “This is what it meant. It’s not just that I’m meant to fly … I am the eagle.” I clutched Cole tighter.

“But that makes no sense, little Ariel … what made this happen? How can you still be alive … still be human and yet do this?”

I motioned to try to keep Aunt Irene’s voice from rising loud enough for my mother to hear. “It’s because I’m not exactly entirely human anymore. And I need to be the one to tell mom about it … so please don’t tell my mother yet.”

Aunt Irene nodded, slowly and skeptically. “I understand, but I don’t think you should hold this back from your mother much longer. She should know.” She turned to Cole. “Did you know about this?”

He smiled and chuckled. “I met her because of that, actually. That and my father, it’s a really long story and maybe we’ll be able to tell you the whole thing sometime.”

Aunt Irene simply fanned herself, as I retracted my wings back into my body. She shook her head slightly. “Well, in any case, dinner’s ready. I won’t tell your secret to your mother yet. But you need to, and soon.”

We agreed all around to fill my mother in on the situation during the visit, before returning to the house for dinner. Aunt Irene’s concern made me even more nervous about telling my mother about my changes, though, and that night I talked it over with Cole as we lay in bed.

“How do I even do it? I can’t just drop the HoSIP and tell her ‘meet the new me,’ you know?”

He sighed and nodded. “This is going to take some thinking, Ariel. We need to be subtle about it, but we need to let her know the full truth.”

I sighed and snuggled closer to him, my nose taking his scent in deeply. “It’s got to be tomorrow, Cole. One way or another.”

He took my hand in his and held it gently as we both drifted to sleep. The next morning, to my surprise I awoke alone in the bed, but his warmth and his scent still lingered. I took a nearby blanket and wrapped myself in it, stepping out into the living room and noticing that the back door was open. Through the closed screen I could see Cole, sitting in a meditative pose on another blanket, near the edge of the canyon. My mind still raced with the conflict of how to tell my mother about the dragon, about 37A and my experiences with Cole and Ken and the others, but in that moment I felt a need I hadn’t known in a long time: to commune with the desert once again.

Despite only wearing a blanket, I stepped out into the brisk morning, toward where Cole sat shirtless and cross-legged. He seemed to sense my presence before I reached him, and turned around to look up at me.

He smiled. “You look beautiful this morning, Ariel.”

I sat down next to him, wrapping my blanket around the both of us. “You look beautiful too.” I rested my head on his shoulder as he wrapped his arm around me.

“So today’s the day, huh? We tell her today.”

I sighed and nodded. “I’ve been putting it off long enough, I suppose. She needs to know, that I got for sure from Aunt Irene’s talk. She needs to know her daughter’s changed.”

A beeping distracted us from our conversation. I realized suddenly that it was coming from the HoSIP, which was made to look like a women’s watch on my camouflage body. Hoping that it wasn’t losing battery power, I shut it down, only to discover that there was a message coming through.

“Something’s going on,” Cole asserted as I pushed the button. The image of Gabe Francis was suddenly projected in front of us, which raised an eyebrow.

“Am I interrupting something?”

We looked at each other, then I covered my chest with the blanket. “Sorry. What’s going on?”

“Guys, we’re getting some weird readings from WYRMWOOD and they seem to be centered on where you are.”

Cole rolled his eyes. “Crap. Why now?”

“Don’t look at me, Sharpe. It might have something to do with some of the weirdness going on elsewhere.”

This time I raised an eyebrow. “What ‘weirdness?’”

“Have you guys been completely cut off from the world?” He paused. “Wait, don’t answer that, I think I know what’s been distracting you two. Things are going wonky all around the world. We’re talking end-times stuff here, lakes turning to blood and undead soldiers launching attacks from major bodies of water. Jordan’s on the brink of collapse because of it.”

My breathing came quicker. “What should we do?”

“Just stay there. It all seems to be originating from the Four Corners region, and since you two are already on top of it by accident, I’m simply going to send Cyrus and Kitty your …”

His image was cut off abruptly. Quickly I re-engaged the camouflage body and clung tighter to Cole. “What do we do?”

“I don’t know, Ariel. We just have to trust the others. Meantime, we have other pressing matters.” He motioned behind us as the door opened and my mother stepped outside. I turned and looked at her.

She sighed. “You always like coming out here where it’s dangerous, little Ariel. Come back in, breakfast is nearly ready.”

I looked at Cole. His eyes virtually screamed, better tell her now.

“Mom, I’ve got a bit of a confession to make. There’s been some … changes that have happened to me, and I think it’s time I told you about them.”

Her eyes looked confused. “What changes? Ariel, what are you talking about?”

I stood up and allowed the blanket to drop around me, lifting my wrist and deactivating my HoSIP. As the camouflage body disappeared and revealed the real me … dragon-skinned, finned, green me … my mother gasped.

“Good God and all that’s holy, what’s happened to you?” She put her hand up to her mouth, like she tried to suppress a scream.

“I’m still me, mom. It’s a very long story, but I’ve had some major changes happen. I’ve been turned into this, but on the positive side …”

I unfurled my wings. She squeaked with fear.

“Mom, please don’t be afraid, I’m still me. I want to share this with you because you have a right to know. You’re my mom, after all, and I still love you.”

Cole stood up. Mom’s eyes shifted to him. “You knew about this? You let this happen?”

He cleared his throat. “Actually, this happened before I had the chance to meet Ariel. But I fell in love with your daughter because of who she is … a strong woman, a loving, caring woman who I believe has the best aspects of her mother.”

My mother slowly approached me, a hand outstretched. She touched my face, looked into my one red eye. She brushed my hair aside and found my still-human eye underneath my bangs.

“My little Ariel … so different and yet still the same … this is still your father’s eye …”

She pulled me gently into her arms. I wrapped both my arms and my wings around her, clutching tightly to her. “I still love you very much, mom. I’ll always love you.”

When my mom looked up at me, there were fresh tears in her eyes. “And I’ll always love you, my little Ariel.”

She clutched me tightly for a while longer, before I whispered, “let’s fly, mom.”

I collected her into my arms, taking a running start for the canyon’s edge and launching myself into the air. My wings immediately caught an updraft and pulled me high above the earth, nearly into the clouds. My mother shrieked and tried to say something, but her words were eventually lost, first by the wind and then by the enthusiastic laughter as she realized she was safe in my arms and yet so far above the desert. At the time, neither of us knew, nor would we have cared, about the disasters taking place far below, or the forces so close to us which would soon threaten all life on earth.

(Transcriber’s note: The incidents which Francis mentions to Cole and Ariel were briefly reported in the tabloid media but quickly hushed up as “fictional.” One of these events around this time could not be hushed up, and that was the mass-sickening of half the population of St. Louis when a nuclear-powered satellite dropped into the Mississippi River at rush hour. After doing some research and twisting some arms, I’ve learned that the WYRMWOOD satellite which Ariel mentions is indeed the satellite that crashed into the river. The more Ariel told of her story, the more I was convinced her team had something to do with preventing even more calamity from occurring at that time.—DAM)

#phantom squadron #dinetah dragon

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