Alex loves to eat (nanwu) wrote in st_margarets, @ 2015-04-15 20:39:00 |
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Alex was in such deep shit. So deep he wasn't sure if he'd be at the school for much longer. Ms. Menides hadn't said he was given the boot, but his grandpa was here and Alex figured that his grandpa was here to take him back. Alex felt he had a solid defense. He didn't know it would do this. He intended to give Ashton a cold. That's all. Make him whine and groan for a few days and he'd fight it off. Not almost kill him. But things were bad. Bad enough that Alex was sitting in the room next to his grandfather who had incense burning in preparation for what they were going to do. His grandfather said they were going to take care of the problem and assured Ms. Menides and Mr. Hartley (both of whom were giving Alex death glares that made the young shaman feel really uncomfortable) that he could fix this problem. It wasn't too late. Ashton would be fine and all would be set right. Slipping into the trance, once it was time, came easily. In the spirit world, everything looked different there and his grandfather now stood looking at something. Alex shifted uncomfortably and stared at the ground until his grandfather directed, "Look." Alex's eyes lifted to see the dragon, covered in a spirit that had started off so small. The size of a sesame seed. No, smaller than that. Now it was this thing that was covering Ashton. It was leeching off of him, connected to the dragon's brain and his heart and everything. It was like it was siphoning whatever it could from the dragon. A giant leech. Alex swallowed hard. "It wasn't this big," Alex said and his grandfather turned to him, "No, it was not. It was much smaller before and meant to stay that way. You put it somewhere it didn't belong. It transformed itself to fit that. Now it is killing him. No medicine or magic will fix this. This is your fault." "How was I supposed to know that—" Alex started and his grandfather cut him off, "You didn't know! You didn't think! I have told you over and over that the spirit world is a place where you do not play games. It is not a place for pranks or jokes. There is a balance there and a balance you have upset. We will take this thing off and set the balance back. We will return order where you created disorder." "How the fu—How are we supposed to do that? It's huge. I can't do that," Alex protested and his grandfather said, "You're right. You're weak and stupid. You know nothing. I will fix this but this will be the last time I fix this sort of mistake. From now on, you will have to fix your mistakes. Because they are yours. Look at yourself now. Look down at your hands. Your chest. What do you see?" Alex did look down. His spirit form wasn't white, not really, but a grayish green color. But when he looked down there was a black splotch across his chest and staining his hands. He rubbed at it but it didn't go away. It didn't spread either. It was there. A stain that Alex had no clue what it meant. He frowned, "What is this?" "The consequences of your actions," his grandfather walked to him, "There is a balance here, like I said. What you do here will reflect on your spirit. You've done wrong. You've hurt others. You hurt spirits. It shows now. You have been marked and set apart. Spirits will see what you've done. You wear it and cannot cover it like a man with a scar can hide it. The ones that see that, they will react to it. Those kind ones, the ones that would help you, they will keep away. They do not wish to have what marks you have mark them. They do not wish your taint to come upon them." "Well, I wanted to be left alone," Alex said, not really seeing this as a bad thing, but his grandfather stepped in, "You will not be alone. There will be those that see your stain and want it. They want it to cover you completely. They want you to become one of them. A dark being that must hurt others in order to survive. So tainted that your own body will never accept you back unless you force it. And even then, you will be a stranger in your own body. It will contort and twist and the ugliness that you have become will show even there." Alex shut up now. He didn't know what to say about that. Except that he thought of those spirits that hung around Leon. Dripping and dark, emanating a power that Alex was terrified of. He thought of movies where people got possessed by demons and they looked twisted and demented. Maybe Hollywood got something right. He didn't know what to say to that, but then he realized his grandfather didn't want him to say something in return. He wanted him to see what he'd done and Alex couldn't blame anyone else. He couldn't say that Ashton forced him into this because Alex had done this willingly. He'd made the conscious decision to do something to someone else, even if he hadn't expected it to become a big problem. He did something. "Fuck," Alex said and his grandfather gave him a hard look, but he knew that Alex was finally starting to grasp what he'd done. His grandfather didn't say anything more, but turned to the leech that drained at Ashton's spirit and began chanting. It was all said in Chinese, and Alex mostly understood it, but he never fully understood the older dialects that his grandfather kept trying to drill him to learn. The leech stopped moving and then part of it turned to look at Ashton's grandfather, almost as if asking what he was doing or preparing to laugh at him. But the chanting continued and the thing shivered. Whatever his grandfather was saying, it was working. Then his grandfather started making motions with his hand, and Alex realized he was drawing symbols in Chinese. As he continued and the chanting grew louder, the symbols began to actually paint in the space before him and glow. The leech began pulling away from Ashton and turning to face Alex's grandfather. It drew away from Ashton's brain and then his heart and the dragon's spirit was notably improving, rather quickly too. The leech made a strange noise that sounded extremely high pitched but also with a deep bass to it as well. The cacophony of sounds made Alex cover his ears and then he saw his grandfather shove the glowing letters before him onto the creature. It howled and hissed as soon as it hit it but began shrinking. As the seconds passed it got smaller and smaller, almost exponentially. In a matter of a few brief moments it was back and small again, it original size and resting in the palm of his grandfather's hand. "Damn," Alex breathed and his grandfather turned to him, "You have hurt the dragon as much as you have hurt this. It did not want to be what it became. No more, Guowei." Turning his hand over, the small speck of darkness floated to the ground and then began moving along, almost as if a wind came and swept it away. Somewhere Alex didn't know but it was gone and he looked to see his grandfather staring at him. His eyes immediately turned to the ground and his grandfather said, "Now we go back. Our job is done." Alex's body was learning how to accept his spirit back, but there had been a slight hesitation when he tried to go back in. He was worried that it might already not want him back, but soon he was blinking his body again, next to his grandfather, and Ashton lying before him asleep with the rest of the staff looking over at them. "It's done," his grandfather said and looked at Alex who translated for him as he continued to speak, "He will wake up soon and be fine. I do not ask you to forgive the stupidity of my grandson, but he understands now fully what he has done. Punish him accordingly, but remember he was too stupid to know what he created. What he knows now will stop him from doing anything like this again." Alex's eyes remained lowered to the ground as his grandfather spoke and Alex provided the translation. The elder shaman bowed and Alex mimicked him without needing to be prodded to do so. Then came the pain in his ear and Alex was dragged from the room by the elderly man. When they got a reasonable distance away, his grandfather turned to him, "Do not embarrass this family ever again. You are—" he began coughing and his sentence died there. Alex's face burned with that embarrassment he felt before, but his mind too pondered on what transpired there. Even if his grandfather fixed Ashton's situation, he was still in a shitload of trouble. Alex's grandfather's coughing didn't stop and he was hunching over his cane as his body shook from the violent seizing of his body. His hand covering his mouth and the small, but strong frame shivering as it finally came to an end. "Grandfather," Alex said stepping closer and his grandfather waved him off, "Stop. I'm fine." Alex paused and frowned. His grandfather was still mad at him, but he was also still dying. Death was one of those things that teenagers didn't think about unless it was about how they weren't going to die. Straightening himself up, his grandfather looked at him, "Your headmistress said you can stay, but you will be in detention. But that is nothing compared to what you saw in yourself." He jabbed a finger into Alex's chest, right between his ribs, and Alex's hand immediately went to nurse the sharp pain it caused. Yes, he knew. He'd seen himself in the spirit world and the large black splotch. The one that was never there. The one his grandfather said would stay with him for a long time. Possibly the rest of his life. A mark of the misuse of his abilities. It would make the spirits that Alex would want to converse with afraid of him or angry at him. It would make the ones he didn't want to be around get closer. Detentions would be bad, but Alex pretty much marked himself for a lot of trouble in the future. What had been a harmless—well, kind of harmless—prank had gone spiralling out of control. It caused damage to the school. He nearly killed the dragon and anyone else that might have suffered from his delusional rage, and it made him a lot of enemies in the school. Yet that seemed puny compared to what Alex had done to himself. Alex was always selfish in that manner, but given how many problems he already had with spirits and his body, he was worse off than what it'd been like when he first started. "Learn from this," his grandfather said, "And never be this stupid again. You bring shame on our family and what you are. You are an embarrassment. Do not embarrass us any further. Do not sully the Jiang name with thoughtlessness. If you continue this, I will make sure that your name will be erased from our family. You honor our name or you remove it." "Yes, sir," Alex replied without any sarcasm or attitude at all. His eyes were lowered to the ground and he felt . . . embarrassed. He never thought much of his name before but the way his grandfather spoke of it, well, it made Alex realize that the name meant a lot more than he thought. He felt angry but this anger came at himself. He had been stupid. He had been thoughtless. Alex felt a weight on his shoulder, but didn't look up, knowing the hand belonged to his grandfather. "You will apologize to the dragon," he said, "and mean it." This time Alex's jaw clenched but only briefly. He still didn't like Ashton, but Alex knew he owed him an apology. Which fucking sucked. "Yes, sir," Alex said and his grandfather said, "Prepare me some tea. My flight doesn't leave until the morning." |