by Ryan Johnson
A small strange sound came from Valverno feet; the claws of his feet struck something buried in the sand.
Alfhild and Halvdan blinked at the strange sound the seemed to have heard as well. “What was that?” asked Alfhild.
Valverno looked down and lifted his feet. He saw a small sparkle coming from the ground. He began to proceed to use the dragon foot that stepped on the strange object and move the wet sand to see what lied buried below the sand’s surface. “Do your people hide jewelry on the beach?” asked Valverno, turning to see Alfhild and Halvdan.
“Not that I know of,” answered Alfhild.
“Absolutely not,” answered Halvdan.
Valverno looked back to the spot he saw the object just covered up in wet, soggy sand. It was difficult as to what Valverno stepped on. Then he knelt down and used his hands to dig up the object. But instead of digging, he sank the entire length of both his hands into the sand and picked up the object.
The objected jingled as Valverno picked it up from the sand. He brushed some wet sand from the material but there was still much sand and mud on the object itself. He did find a small blue coloring a small circle object.
“What is it?” asked Alfhild.
“It looks like a large bracelet or a crown of jewels,” answered Valverno. “And with all this sand it is hard to tell what is on it yet alone what it really is. This sand is all muddy and wet I’m going have to use the water to wash the sand away.” Valverno walked toward the water’s tide swirling to him. He walked in deep enough to where his legs were buried under water to his knee joints.
Then he knelt down and had the rest of his legs buried in the water and his waist below the water surface, wetting the bottom half his kimono. He placed the object into the water and moved his hands side-to-side to make the sand wash off from the object and become loose in the water.
He spent a minute washing the object in the water until he saw there was no more sand on the object. “I think that will do it,” he said. “Now let’s see what this thing is.” Valverno stood back up and let water drip down from his legs and the object, of which he gasped loudly at it: a neckless of sapphires.
He turned around and walked from the water and back on the ground of muddy sand. “I can’t believe this,” he gasped again. His eyes were widened by the shock of the sight by the neckless: the he gave to Marina. What he tossed away was back in his hands.
“From the look on your face,” said Alfhild. “You’ve seen it before.”
“Indeed I have seen it before. It was a proposal gift. I gave it to the woman I love the night I proposed to her to marry me. This is a neckless of sapphires I found in a large treasury of gold, and this is the only earthly treasure I found appealing to me. The last I remember, I took this from her neck and tossed down far off into the sea. And now, it is back in my hands.”
Alfhild and Halvdan remained silent. They didn’t know what to say for the hybrid that found a neckless of sapphires by the shore.
“These events may not be coincidentally. I find myself alive in the midst of Pangaeans. I find the neckless my wife. I am starting to see a bright light flickering within my confused mind. I think it is fate that has brought me here, and it is the power of fate that I need to regain the knowledge of what it means to be a Pangaean. I can see it was no mistake for me to have been brought to this region where Pangaeans live. I can see it as a power great power now showing me the way.”
“Yeah, whatever,” said Halvdan. Halvdan turned and walked away from Alfhild and Valverno. “I still don’t see how you will be able to activate your divine power if you only walk among us.”
Alfhild shook her head and looked at Valverno. “That appears to be a good sign. You are starting regain a spiritual insight.”
“It’s a small start, but I need to take time to what it means to be a Pangaean again. If I only start being around a civilization that’s been lost, then maybe there will be a way I can activate my divine power without switching to or balancing out with a magic or mortal power. And I’ll be able to save my people from Lusìvar’s wrath.”
Valverno smiled and looked back to Alfhild. “I need to spend more time with the Pangaeans now more than ever. You’re right; I have forgotten what it means to be a Pangaean.” Valverno turned his eyes back to the sea. “If I could only remember what it was like to walk among an ancient civilization, then maybe I still save the future without the use of magic. All I need is to have faith in myself and others around me.”
“Now, you’re starting to sound and act as a part of that ancient civilization,” said Alfhild. “Living among us is going to be easy, but your faith will be tested and only you will have the knowledge of how to unleash your divine, godly power like how I am still learning knowledge of how to use healing magic. We mortals have a lot to learn about life itself and how it can evolve.
“Now, if you excuse me, I have to go back to tend to my plants. They won’t crush themselves unless if I am there doing the crushing.”
Valverno heard Alfhild’s footsteps walking away, and he was felt alone. He gazed out on the distant horizon and saw a barely lit horizon filtering the sky with blank blue clouds. The sun was barely up yet there was a strange ray of different colors on the horizon like a fading rainbow in the blue sky.
Valverno could not help himself but to make a soft hum through a soft wind blowing in his face. A rhythm of how of the wind blew and a wave of the water would up rolling to the shores. He looked at the neckless he held in his hands and wrapped it around the wrist of his right hand.
Then, as he was humming, Valverno grabbed a rock and threw it out into the ocean. And with more light from the sky than darkness, the rock flogged over the sea’s surface and Valverno watch it jump over the water many times before it disappeared from his eyes.
His eyes looked to the sky and saw a large could look so faded and faint it reminded him of Marina’s death in his arms. Then let his mouth open and sang:
For all my life I have ever dreamed
Was to be of member of a great society
Where no one would see me without anxiety
There, they would greet me with the greatest propriety
In a land where I won’t feel disgrace
Where people would cry with grace
Of when they see my hybrid face
And I have found where I would belong
I can still be a part of a great society
If I can only look at my path ahead
I could succeed without it being said
And I would see my fame would spread
Every step that I take
Every choice that I make
Will be a step forward
That will not be ignored
I will my place in life
Even if I have feel the strife
And on the tip of the knife
I will keep moving forward
And just like a shooting star
I can I find my way forward
And I will be able to travel afar
If I step in the right direction
And when I reach my journey’s end
I will feel the life I always dreamed of
I will finally feel the greatest love
And stay there until the day that I die
Valverno softly calmed the tune of his voice to where it was completely silent. He watched more light was shedding in the morning sky. The sun was rising over the peaks of the mountains behind him. The blue hazy that filled the air turned into a yellow haze.
The dawn was gleaming with a lively light that shined over the western horizon. Clouds soared through the sky like a fog engulfing a valley of flowers. The brightness of the day lightly sparkled across the sea’s surface. The color of the water turned into a tropical blueness. A soft wind gushed through Valverno’s face, and he inhaled it.
If there was a spark of light within shining dimly, he can barely see it. For the moment, he was thinking of the future would hold for him.
“This is the start of trying to find a path forward, and I must reach its end. Otherwise, I won’t be able to look in the eyes of anyone again. And if that happens, I won’t be able to look at Marina’s eyes in the next world.” Valverno sighed and he walked away from the shores. He walked over the sand and back to the terrain of sandstone mountains.
Valverno got back to the encampment, and he found it to be livelier than ever. Everyone was up and walking through the encampment. And much to his surprise, the tents were being brought down. About the majority of tents were already taken down, and a few still remained standing.
Valverno was confused as to why the tents were being brought down instead of staying up. The tents served as shelters for the Pangaeans. And he wondered why they were taking them down.
Valverno walked through the crowd, and he pushed himself through the crowd. With his memory, he remembered where the tent he slept in through the maze of tents was set up. Now, with all the tents being taken down, he wasn’t going to find the tent with ease. All the tents looked the same, but he remembered how the one tent was set up; it was the only tent that had walls and open gaps like doorways.
It took him half an hour to find the one tent, and he saw it wasn’t torn down. It still stood and everywhere around him people walked and crowed each other like the capital city of Shimabellia.
Valverno didn’t want to get caught in the mad rush and went into the tent, so he wouldn’t be pushed and shoved through a crowd of an ancient people. Inside, the tent was clear and wasn’t rundown with rushing people. And inside, he saw Okinawan and Freyya placing little white flags on the tent’s ceilings.
“What’s going around here, Okinawan?” asked Valverno.
“Oh, hybrid. You don’t know this, but we are getting ready for the festival: the Spring Equinox.”
“The Spring Equinox?” asked Valverno. “Have I really been asleep for that long? For a whole year?”
“Hard to say,” said Okinawan. “You were asleep here for five months, for the entire length of this passed winter. What goes before you were found is entirely unknown to us.”
“But according to Halvdan’s sense of smell,” said Freyya, attaching a string of flags over an entrance standing on a chair. “He’s been soaking underwater for seven months. No one and nothing could survive that long underwater.”
“Unless the no one and nothing has lungs that can hold its breath underwater for that long,” said Okinawan.
“Or maybe being protected by the gods to stay alive until the divine duty has been completed,” Valverno added in.
“So, you believe the power of the gods saved you from dying?” asked Okinawan.
“More or less,” answered Valverno, with a vague tone walking to the entrance. “I somehow managed to stay alive this long. I guess I will keep on surviving until I have fulfilled my duty that has been given to me. And I since I’m since half god, there is a guarantee my divine personification could have prevented my mortal body from dying but I can’t figure out…” Valverno paused laid his eyes on a human woman. She was a dark tanned, brown skinned person with long black brown hair and wearing a lot of bare skin with a skirt strapped around her waist to covering her legs and a little strap around her chest. “An Amazon? They are alive as well?”
“Oh, yes,” said Okinawan. “The Amazons. The race of female warriors. They are quite the fighters. Compared to the skill of Elves and Dwarves, the Amazoness can easily take down quite a few Elves and Dwarves. Not even a Tokagehebi could withstand an Amazoness.
“At times, I do forget they still exist,” said Okinawan. “But how would I know? They aren’t that many left. A few dozen I think. Maybe twenty of them. I don’t know. They all walk around the remaining one thousand Pangaeans; it is hard to tell how many of them there are.
“But, despite their low numbers, they are fierce fighters. Probably the only fighters around this settlement. And don’t get me wrong, hybrid, the Tokagehebi are fierce fighters, too. And if you put all the Tokagehebi and Amazons together, then that is one army strong as a hundred thousand human warriors.”
“Humans, eh? How many humans of today’s generation have come to see this settlement?” asked Valverno.
“It is a rare thing for humans to find us,” said Freyya, getting down from the chair. “Ever since we’ve settled here, a few hundred humans or less have been spotted. And we don’t want our presence to go notice to the mortals of the Third Generation, so we did what we can to erase their memories.”
“That’s kind of harsh,” said Valverno, turning to Freyya and Okinawan. “
“We are the last of a once thriving civilization,” said Okinawan. “Billions of Pangaeans down to one thousand. Do the thinking there. We’ve slowly and steadily been keeping our members to a bare minimum. Pangaea and the Second Generation are things of the past, and now the Third Generation is in motion. And at one point in the future, the last one thousand will go extinct.”
“It sounds like you have chosen your fate,” said Valverno.
“Our fate was chosen for us,” said Freyya. “After all, you’re the one who destroy the land of the Titans, and Lusìvar did the same thing. Our fate was chosen long ago.”
“Then maybe I can reverse your fate,” said Valverno.
“Reverse fate?” said Okinawan. “How can you make that happen? Is it possible for you to do that? But if you mean to undo the past, it is impossible. You can only change the future.”
“That’s what I mean,” said Valverno. “Instead of going extinct, the Mortal Realm is the place where all mortals live. Why else would it be called the Mortal Realm? And I am a demigod, after all.
“And I just may have mysterious power that even the gods themselves don’t have. If I can only discover the secret of unleashing it and beat the Shadow King, the Pangaeans and humans and other creatures can share all the land. No Pangaean would have to hide in the shadows of anyone.”
“Easier said than done,” said Freyya. “Just how you, a broken powerless hybrid, can the course of the future and history? You’re a mortal.”
“As mortal as I am, I also am half god.” Valverno raised his hand and to show the two people the dragon scales that grew on his arms. Surpassingly, there was a small red glow brightening his scales.
The eyes of Okinawan and Freyya blinked when Valverno’s faded red scales suddenly brightened. “I can tell one thing: that is not magic,” said Okinawan.
“Then, it seems I’m not a step forward to discover of how to I can unleash my divine power: my personality. That is the key, and I was asked to be a demigod in the age of Pangaea. If I can rediscover what it means to be a Pangaean, then that will be the key to unleashing my divine power. It’s a plan by the longshot, but it’s the only one I’ve got.”
Okinawan and Freyya smiled.
Valverno smiled back and looked out the entrance. “Well, I guess I may make the discovery and learn everything there is to see but first.” Valverno’s wing suddenly popped out from his kimono robe.
When his wing ripped through the robe, it didn’t tear through the entire back; it tore a small section of the robe. It was on the spot where the wing stood attached to his shoulder’s back. The weight of the wing made him feel tipping to his right side, but Valverno maintained his weight of his legs and his tail slivering on the ground beneath the robe.
“I need to learn to maintain my balance on my body’s weight between my legs and my last wing. And balance is the most important thing I am learning it came to being a ruler of Shimabellia. Now I need to turn the tide of balance between good and evil like day and night. And it starts today.” Valverno step a step forward and left.
Valverno trailed through the entire settlement, and he couldn’t possible think of joining them
in their festivities. So much people were already tearing the tents and placing tall pillars in place of the torn-down tents.
The crowd was too much of Geraldus’s village and the town squares of Shimabellia’s capital city. Valverno just couldn’t place himself in a large crowd, but unlike the large crowds in a village or a castle fortress, the people around him were giving every person a lot of personal space. Instead of crowding around and walking through a person’s shoulder like bees in a beehive, every person gave the other person a lot of personal space.
If there was one thing Valverno liked about living in Pangaea, everyone gave each other some room to maneuver and make it easier for every to move around. Everyone had personal space to move and never bump into somebody’s shoulder on accident.
Valverno once saw such mannerism in his old home country, and he can see it again here. He could easily move and maneuver around different people he didn’t have to bump into or have people bump into him.
But for him, he still couldn’t get used to big crowds, so he moved away from the crowd and walked away from the encampment. He didn’t know the Pangaean traditions when it came to the Spring Equinox. If there was, he’d never heard of it. The hybrid has never heard of any festivals celebrated the Spring Equinox when he was as a kid in Pangaea.
Perhaps this was a new type of tradition these current Pangaeans made up after the destruction of their homeland. Valverno didn’t have the curiosity to ask as to why a celebration to take place on the first day of spring.
Valverno only walked away from the busy Pangaeans and walked toward the outskirts of the settlement. He wouldn’t walk too far from it. He doubted there was any help he could do; he still only saw himself as a stranger he thought was a culture, thinking he and Sora were the last Pangaeans.
The hybrid walked to where he saw a valley of gardens. A few demihumans with strange long bunny ears were trimming and planting like gardeners. Bunny demihumans plowed through a field of beautiful flowers and roses and plants of rice and wheat flowers. They all were dressed in the passion of emerald and yellow colors.