Quiet Mind (Ambrose)

The following fictitious events take place in Reality K

The world had a heartbeat that could be tapped into if you were completely still and silent. For Pixies, Ambrose bet it was easy: Everything was tuned to that beat. Life itself. Pixies could hear life in their minds. Ambrose could not. He was a Wiccan, a standalone.

All of the Pixies his age had started to build treehouses together. For their race, coupling came young: You heard of affections in the mind of the one you wanted, and somehow that became an engagement, a treehouse, a marriage.

Ambrose had worked on his own treehouse, but he had no way of hearing what was inside the minds of potential mates. He only had himself, his own mind, his solitude.

Ambrose sat on the edge of his treehouse. The floor was set, and the walls were there, but he hadn’t done any design work, he’d added no furniture. It felt futile: who would he share his treehouse with? Why have a home, without someone else to fill it with?

The truth was Ambrose knew something was missing. Maybe not a spouse, but someone. A something.

He sat there wondering if a spouse defined him, or if something else could bring meaning to his life. A pet, maybe. Most Pixies had pets, or animal companions that came and went. 

Ambrose should have had a familiar, but his Wicca had been all but erased from his being. It was to protect him, to keep him hidden. As Konrad’s son, he could pass as a human Selkie male.

If not a spouse, if not a familiar, what was missing?

Ambrose swung his legs over the edge of the deck.

He wasn’t alone long before his dad came and sat beside him.

He fit in. He had wings. If Ambrose married a Pixie, he could get wings, except none of them had stuck.

“Hello,” Ambrose begrudgingly greeted his dad, Konrad. In the Pixie camp, alone was an illusion. They could all hear his mind.

“I despised being this age,” his dad said. “Something about the restlessness and the loneliness made it unbearable.”

“You felt lonely?” Ambrose asked.

“Often. Daily, nightly, as the sun rose and as it set. As I watched the stars, and the endless universe passing me by.”

“Did you have to leave home to stop?”

“No. I found a soul I could rest in.”

“How?” Ambrose asked. 

“Chance. Patience, though I can’t claim that as a virtue of mine prior to meeting him.”

Ambrose glanced up at the trees. He didn’t have much patience either.

“Everyone is finding someone to be with. Moving out into their own treehouses. They can hear each other and they know.” He took a short breath. “Everyone can hear me. They know I can’t hear them, but no one does anything. No one…” He hesitated, swallowed. “No one wants me.”

His dad leaned back, hands under his head, and looked up at the sky between the trees.

Ambrose lay back too. For his whole life, all he had was the sky above them. His name had come from a man who had taught Konrad the sky, had spent hundreds of years explaining the constellations and the stories they believed. The stars were their place, the two of them.

Konrad had saved him. Raised him. He’d been born a Wiccan named Zane Lavesque. That life was gone; erased.

“I think the young are afraid of intimacy with someone who doesn’t yet know how to control his thoughts. That’s been on more than one mind.”

Ambrose sat up. “What’s wrong with my thoughts?”

“Absolutely nothing. You have intense, devoted thoughts.”

You mean I think because I only have myself.

Konrad chuckled.

“But compared to others, they’re uncontrolled?”

“Yes. But you’ve been working on that. And you’ve done well.”

Had he? He hadn’t tried to work on it. He hadn’t managed to accomplish enough. 

He tapped his hands on the wood boards.

Was he an annoyance to the Pixies? A frustrating being that made life harder?

“For instance,” Konrad said, interrupting the thoughts. “When couples are intimate, others know to leave the area. You do not. And though you cannot hear anything, the others are embarrassed for you. Short of marriage to a Pixie, I have no idea how to mitigate that.”

“If I knew they were…wanting to be alone. I would go. If I can’t hear it, I can’t know. They don’t.” His nails scraped against the wood. He balled his hands into fists. “I don’t belong here.”

“Would you like to travel together? I could do with a visit from places I’ve long not seen.”

Ambrose lit up, not literally with magic, but inside. Maybe the answer was to leave.

But. Ambrose stuck out and Konrad didn’t.

“But you belong here,” Ambrose said.

“There was a time when I did not, when I felt your same discomfort,” he reminded Ambrose. “The…unity and common understanding of the community can be disarming and isolating.”

“How do I fix it?” Are you saying I have to leave? “How do I belong? If no one wants to give me Pixie, how do I become Pixie enough to belong here? I’ve been here my whole life.” Will I ever be able to come back?

“There are girls willing enough. But you can’t hear their willingness, and culturally they would never share it aloud. You’re bats passing in a storm.”

Willing enough wasn’t enough for Ambrose. 

“But they know I can’t hear them,” he complained. 

“Yes, intellectually.”

Ambrose looked at the treehouse. It was a shell, like Ambrose. It looked like it fit in, and maybe it fit in better than Ambrose. Maybe it was the only way he fit in: He could make a treehouse.

They weren’t the same. The treehouse would make a good home for a family.

Ambrose bit back the feelings. “What if I went to see the world. Like you did.” His hands shook.

“I asked if I might accompany you.”

“I don’t want to take you from your home, but if you want to come I won’t stop you.”

He tried his best to hide the mixture of wanting his dad with him and guilt that he might take his dad from his home.

“I should have done this more often when you were younger, so that you could see the vastness of the world which you are from.”

Ambrose nodded. “Can the treehouse stay, in case I want to come back?”

“We are your family, and this is your home. If there were a way to give you Pixie without marriage, I would have done it long ago.”

It added to the feeling that there wasn’t a marriage for him there.

“When can we go?” If they went sooner, then Ambrose would be less likely to change his mind.

“I’ll speak to the others,” he said — meaning Ambrose’s A) other dad, Nell, and mom, Rylena. “If we set out at sunset, we can find accommodations elsewhere and see dawn in a new place.”

“I’ll pack,” Ambrose said. He stood, and when Konrad stood he hugged him. “Thank you, Dad.’

Konrad hugged him back. “Thank you for sharing. I would not have you suffer, ever. Know that we will find a place for your heart and soul to rest.”

Ambrose glanced out at the Pixie camp. Somewhere.