Chapter 28: I Confess part 1

As I lay, spread eagle under Nimrod, I look up into his eyes and see his love and concern for me. I can't help but think, this man deserves to know. He has opened his home and his heart to me. He has made a stand for me. The least I can do is tell him why. Why I am like this.

"Alright," I say quietly. "I will tell you."

"Thank you," he says just as quietly.

How to start, I think to myself. Why not just start at the beginning. The time before my world went mad. So I say. "I was just some kid. I did not know any of these things growing up."

"What-?" Nimrod starts to ask, I shush him.

"I need to tell this my way," I stop for moment, I haven't thought about the past. I had been hiding behind the now. Nimrod can see through all that.

I take deep breath and continue. "I was blown up. Well not into little pieces or I would not be here. I was at the center of one of the bombs that you folks call the big blast."

"That- is not possible," Nimrod breaks in again.

"Please, Nim there is more to this than you can possible understand," I chide him. Then continue on. "It was around a hundred years ago. I was just a kid. No more than Maggie's age. I did not know what was going on. I doubt I even cared. All I remember is this giant flash and the shock wave moving toward me. Then nothing. I woke up on the other side of the galaxies some 10 or 20 centuries in the future."

I pause, remembering those first moment in a new unfamiliar place and the face that changed my life.

"How? What?" Nimrod is bewildered by my story so far. I can understand that. I was just as bewildered at the time.

"That is what comes next, dear Nimrod."

"It was how I met my master, Vash'de Nar. He was the scariest person I had ever seen but, I do not know, maybe I have some of the same sense that you do. Your empathic touch. Vashe' was in pain. It was like he needed the worlds biggest hug, but there was no way I could do that. So I did the next best thing."

"You ran away?" Nimrod asks lightly. His eyes twinkling with humor.

"No," I smile back at him grateful at his levity. "I pledged myself to him. I know it was crazy but I felt, underneath all of his actions Vashe' did not want to be doing what he was doing. He was trapped. A good man made to be cruel. He hated himself. I could feel all those things. I could not express any of this, so I pledged to him. He in return took me as an apprentice, in defiance of all his peers." I find that I can smile at that memory. Yes it is good to tell all this, to get it out and shared.

"I started training. It was hellish. The worst was the initiation," I shudder at the memory.

"It's alright love," Nimrod says and releases my left wrist so he can stroke my cheek. "I'm here, you are safe."

With a sigh I relax into Nimrod's tender touch. I am not sure about anything but now that I have started I need to go on.

"I think I can continue," I say with bravery I am not feeling. "The initiation for the Mahy is ... Well I woke in a hospital with Vashe' standing over me telling me that I was going to make it. They had removed my arm and my eyes and replaced them with prosthetics. But not the type you would think of as prosthetics. These are light years ahead of anything seen on Earth. Augments of those parts."

"Why? what happened, were you hurt?"

"No, not hurt," I smile briefly as I remember Gwen saying ( asking) the same thing. "The Mahy order has a quirk or two. They were meant to be improvements," I find, even after all this time I am still angered by the presumption that Vashe made. "Once I was able to control the replacements it became clear, I had picked the wrong order."