OK all I just wanted to thank you in advance for taking the time to read my story and I hope that you enjoy it. Also the usual disclaimers pertain to it so if you are not at least 18 or whatever the legal age in your area is then you are ordered to leave and not read this. Also all characters and events are fictitious and products of the authors bored mind. Thank you again for reading and enjoy.
The Guardian Past Beginnings
Now as I lay there thinking about what Caleb could be up to and here he might be my thoughts were propelled to over 2000 years into the past. They are sent back to the events that caused me to become what I am today. These events will haunt me for all of eternity. For the first time ever these events will be recorded in someplace other than my mind.
It all started on a small island that today is part of the Shepard Islands of England. It was shortly after my birthday and the harvest had just been brought in. I was a member of one of the Saxon clans. I was only about 6 or 7 when it happened. My family was herders and we took care of a flock of sheep on the northeast coast of the island.
It was my mother and father, my three older brothers, and myself living in a small one-room hut at the edge of the field in which the sheep were kept in. The day had started well with my oldest brother going out to replace the other two brothers in watching the flock. My mother had gotten up early as always to fix the morning meal of porridge and klah. After the meal I was sent out to gather herbs and mushrooms from the surrounding forest while my father went to join my brother in the pasture watching over the flock. Unknown to me was the fact that that would be the last time I saw any of my family alive.
The times were very unsettled with bands of savages and Vikings raiding all over the place. My family knew the risks they took by keeping the flock so close to the shore but that was where the best grazing land was. Therefore it was a risk we had to take. While I was off gathering a band of Vikings landed and slaughtered my entire family. The only thing that saved my life was the fact that I was several miles away in the forest when it happened.
I came back home to find our hut burnt to the ground, my entire family slaughtered, and the flock butchered. I collapsed on the ground next to the body of my mother and cried. I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I knew it was morning again and a member of our clan was picking me up. There was about 20 of them that had come to investigate what had happened after having seen the smoke from the burning hut. They carried me back to the clan stead where a family of weavers took me in. They had a son about my age named Jarrod. The clan elders hoped that being around someone my own age would help me through my grief.
For about the first month I was inconsolable. I would not talk or eat or anything I just sat there and stared at the wall. Then one morning Jarrod was trying to help his father with the dyeing vats and he fell in. For some reason I found this absolutely hilarious and just could not stop laughing. After that my healing started and things eventually returned to a semblance of normality for me.
After that the two of us become the best of friends as he helped me heal and learn to deal with the pain. On nights that I would wake up he would wake up with nightmares he would hold me and comfort me as I cried. Over the next year we became absolutely inseparable. We did everything together. During the day we would go out into the surrounding area and look for the different plants that his family used to dye the wool that they weaved. In the evenings his father would take us both out to a small clearing behind the house and teach us how to use different weapons so that one day we would be able to protect our clan and families. At night the two of us would lay in our bedrolls and talk about becoming great warriors and raiding the Vikings for all their treasure. Then coming back to the clan as heroes. Little did this routine change over the years till we were about 13.
It was summer and our family was given an order to make a cloth of rich purple for the declaring of a new clan chief. The dye necessary to get this color was made from a shellfish that could be found on the south shores of the island. It took Jarrod and me about three days to convince his father that we were old enough to make the trip on our own. The trip would take about three days altogether a day there, a day gathering, and a day back.
It was during this trip that I finally realized that I was not like the other boys. I had listened to the older boys at the clan stead talk about how pretty the girls where and what the thoughts of them did to their bodies but I had never had these thoughts my self about girls. I noticed how the guys looked when they would take off their shirts to practice at arms or how my body would react when we would all go down to the stream to go swimming. I put these thoughts down to me growing up and wanting to be like them.
During our trip though I started to notice strange feelings for Jarrod. Feelings that at the time I did not understand. I noticed things about Jarrod I had not noticed before. Like the way that his cheeks dimpled when he smiled or the sparkle in his eyes when he laughed. I also started to notice his body when we were walking and the effect it would have on me.
That first night after we had set up camp I sat up half the night watching Jarrod sleep. I wondered about these feelings I was having. I tried to figure out why I was having them and what I should do about them. As I watched his sleeping form I felt a feeling of yearning come over me. I felt a need to be closer to Jarrod. All these feelings left my head reeling as I tried to figure them out. Eventually I fell into a restless sleep as my mind raced over the events of the day. Over the next two days it was like I was walking through a haze as my mind shuffled through the confusing thoughts and feelings I was having.
It was a couple of years later when in midwinter Jarrod and I were sent on our naming quest so that we could become full members of the clan. The purpose of the name quest was for us to discover our true selves. It was during our quest when we were stranded in a cave by a blizzard that I discovered that Jarrod might have similar feelings towards me as I had towards him.
We had been snowed in for three days and had run out of firewood and as the temperature in the cave turned bitter cold Jarrod and I bundled together for warmth. With our bodies so close together I couldn't help but notice his hardness. I did my best to ignore it but my mind reeled at the idea that maybe Jarrod was like me, that maybe he had the same feelings I had.
I spent the night turning these thoughts over in my head trying to decide what to do. Over the next few weeks I watched Jarrod trying to see if there were any other signs that he might have feelings in return. It was not until about two days before we were suppose to head back that I found out how he felt.
We were up on a cliff watching the sunset when behind us we heard a noise. We looked back to see a wild boar running at us. We turned and Jarrod started to run as I was frozen in fear. The boar took off after Jarred causing me to unfreeze as I saw the person that meant the most in the world to me in danger. I ran after Jarrod and knocked him out of the way just as the boar was about to hit him. The boar rammed me and we both went tumbling over the cliff falling about 30 feet to the sandy shore below. The boar hit a large rock breaking its neck while I landed on the sand knocking the wind out of me and causing me to black out for a few min. When I came too I felt warm drops on my face and as I opened my eyes I say Jarrod above me crying while holding my head in his lap. He was praying to the lord and the lady that they would not let me die because he loved me and had not even told me yet. He asked them for one last chance with me and he promised that he would take the risk and tell me about his feelings for me even if it caused me to hate him. I could not help it any more I burst out laughing.
At the time the situation seemed incredibly funny to me as it had taken me almost getting killed by a wild boar to bring us together. Laughing I told him that I could never hate him and that those were the words I had been trying to tell him as well. I then reached up and grabbed him by the neck pulling him down into a kiss. I think that the shock of me still being alive was too much for him because as I kissed him he just sat there. Once I pulled away from him he realized what I had said and done and kissed me back passionately in return.
We sat there on that beach all night talking about what we felt for each other and what it meant. We decided that we should try to keep our relationship a secret from the rest of our clan because we had seen what happened to people that were like us.
Now as I said earlier this was our naming quest so before we could return we had to decide on what our private names would be. Jarrod and I decided that we would choose each other's names. For him I chose Tanis, which in our language means "Greatness". For me he chose Ash`ke which was the word for "Guardian" in our language.
The next day we had to head back to our clan to be initiated into the adult society. We would now move out of his parent's house and move into the men's barracks, which was, were all unmarried men lived. The next thing we had to do was decide what role in the clan we would adopt for ourselves. Jarrod chose to apprentice himself to his father and become a weaver while I on the other hand was drawn to the healing arts. The clan healer was an old man with no children and no apprentice so I was happily given the task of being his apprentice. This also allowed me to move out of the men's barracks and into the healer's hut since it was just him there.
Now even though I was studying to become a healer I still trained every evening with the assorted arms I had show a proficiency at. I trained with the short sword and the long bow trying to keep a promise I had made myself. After my family was killed I promised my self that I would be able to protect those that I loved if the need ever arose. The old healer after seeing my dedication to learning combat skills along with the healing arts took it upon himself to dedicate the mornings to training me in unarmed combat as well.
As time went Jarrod and I would get together several times a week to go and gather the necessary ingredients for our separate crafts. Thankfully we both needed plants from the forest so there was no suspicion when we would disappear together into the woods. That summer after our name quest we explored each other's bodies in an effort to ever please the other. Since in those days there were no resources we could use to look up what to do it was all trial and error.
As time passed I grew close to the old healer and learned many things about him. He told me about his life and explained to me one day that the reason he had never hand fasted was because he was never attracted to women. He also explained that this was the reason he had become a healer, as it was not unusual for healers to never marry. He told me that the reason he was telling me this was that he thought me and someone else might be kindred souls. When he said this I looked at him in shock wondering if Jarrod and I had done anything to give us away. Apparently judging my thoughts from the look on my face because he assured me that around others we were very good at hiding it. The only thing that had given us away to him was that every time Jarrod would come over for us to go gathering my face would light up like a noon day sun.
It was that night as we sat at his fire talking he told me about his love. He told me how they had found each other when they were both about 20 summers old and how up until his partner's death 10 summers ago they had been inseparable. The old man explained the deep commitment and love that the two had had for each other. Listening to him I could not help but hope that someday Jarrod and I would be able to have a similar life together.
From that night on I would talk to the old healer about what I felt and what I hoped for before bed each night. In all the years I have been alive I do not believe that I have ever met a wiser person than that healer. I have known many people that are acclaimed today as being the greatest minds in history but in my mind none of the compare to him. Along with imparting on me knowledge of life he also explained much of the physical side of love to me. I think that in the month after we started talking Jarrod and I learned more about sex than in all of our previous months of experimenting combined. Now do not get me wrong the experimenting was fun but some of the things that he told us where things that we would never thought of on our own.
That next spring and summer flew by as our love for one another grew. (Have you ever noticed the funny thing about love is when you think that you can't love a person anymore than you do something happens causing you fall deeper into love with them.) It was late one night right after harvest that we had our first big fight. We were sitting there in the healers hut talking when he said he wanted to let his parents know about us because they were pushing him to get hand fasted before long. (In those days it was not unusual for people to get married at 15 or 16.) When he told them he would not they wanted to know why but he would not tell them. He did not like lying to his parents but wanted to talk to me about it first. I was adamant about us not telling anyone else because I did not want to have to deal with the consequences until we were full productive members of the clan.
We argued through most of the night until the next morning I yelled I had had enough and stormed out of the hut and did not stop running till I found myself sitting on the cliff above the beach on which we had first kissed. I spent two days sitting up there trying to decide what to do. Finally as I watched the sun set on that second day I decided that as long as I had Jarrod I could survive anything. The next morning I headed back to the clan stead to let Jarrod know what I had decided. Around noon I crested a hill about 3 miles from the clan stead and saw columns of thick black smoke rising from were the clan stead should be. I took off running hoping for the best and praying to the Lord and the Lady that Jarrod would be all right.
I was rudely brought back to the present day when my alarm clock went off announcing the beginning of a new day. When I awoke I was refilled with a sense of purpose. I knew I had work to do, I had to find Caleb. I got up, showered, and ate breakfast before heading out the door to start my day's work. As I moved through the city I could feel the sense of evil having grown stronger reminding me of the commitment I had made long ago. I had to push thoughts of Caleb aside so that I could do the job I was supposed to do. The protecting of people from the evil that surrounds us.
I spent the next three days trying to locate the source of my growing unease but was unable to locate it. On the fourth day I was sitting down for lunch when I noticed a scrubby looking kid of about 13 or 14 come into the restaurant. He walked up to the cashiers station and talk to one of the waitresses for a moment before the waitress walked over to me. She told me that the kid was looking for me and that he claimed to have a message for me from Caleb. She asked me if I wanted to talk to him or if she should ask him to leave. With a sense of growing fear I told her to let him come over and join me.
Once the kid had come over I told him to have a seat and asked him what his name was. He told me it was Adam and that he had a letter for me that Caleb had asked him to give to me if he had not heard from him by today. He handed me the letter and then got up to leave but before he could walk off I told him to sit back down and join me. As he sat back down I waved my waitress over and asked her for a menu for Adam. After she had brought him his menu I told him to order whatever he wanted as a thank you for delivering Caleb's letter to me.
As we sat there and ate I asked Adam about how he knew Caleb and he told me that Caleb was like a big brother to him. He explained to me that about 6 months ago his father had died and his mother's new boyfriend had kicked him out of the house. When he first ended up on the streets the older boys would always beat him up and steal any money he had managed to get that day. One day he was sitting on a bench in Travis Park crying because it had happened again and he had not eaten in like three days when Caleb walked up. Caleb asked him what was wrong and after Adam had told him he took him under his wing and helped take care of him. He told me about how three weeks ago he had gotten really sick and Caleb had saved up all his money so that he could take him to the doctor and get medications for him so that he would get better.
He also told me that when Caleb had given him the note to give to me that he had told him that if he needed anything or was in trouble that he should come to me because I was safe and would probably help him. After he said this I asked him if he was having any problems from the other teens and he told me that they had been stealing his money again and telling him that Caleb would not be back that he was gone just like the others. When he said this I asked him what he meant by like the others and he explained that for the past two months teens had been disappearing off of the streets and that last week a friend of his and Caleb's had disappeared. He told me that Caleb had been trying to find him when he disappeared. At this I told Adam that he was coming with me at least until we had found Caleb and that I would find him.
Once we got to my place I showed Adam where everything was and told him that if he wanted he could take a shower. He said that he would like and while he was in the shower I decided to read Caleb's note.
Arkail, 10/23/2001
I am writing this letter right after having written the one you got before. There were so many things that I wanted to tell you this morning but was afraid to. I decided that since there may be a chance of me disappearing like the others that I would write this letter to let you know how I feel and why I am doing what I am doing. First off I have watched you since that first night I saw you. when you came over to me in the park to make sure that I was ok. I did not want to let you know that I was a homeless kid so I stayed out of sight. That night something happened that i still can not explain. It was like I had known you forever. Over the next two weeks I could not help but watch you as I tried to build up the courage to come and talk to you. It was not until Adam got sick and I had to use all the money I collected on a doctor and medications for him that I finally decided to take a chance and ask for help from you.. I had not eaten in a couple of days and was starving. That day no one would help me and when I saw you I had hope. when you told me that you did not have any money on you my heart fell until you invited me to have lunch with you. I figured that we would go to some fast food place but then you took me to that wonderful restaurant and I could not understand how you could stand to be seen at such a nice place with me looking like I did. Then when we sat down I noticed that you did not pay attention to the dirty looks that people where giving us and that you were genuinely interested in hearing what I had to say. When you invited me to join you for lunch anytime I wanted at first I thought you were just being nice. That next day I decided to take a chance and go ahead and meet you for lunch again and when you did not have me thrown out of the restaurant I knew that you were being sincere. Then about a week ago a friend of mine disappeared and I went to look for him. That was why I missed those few days of lunch with you. Apparently I was asking the wrong questions because yesterday morning these three guys beat the shit out of me. I decided I needed to think things through so I met you for lunch. When you asked me to come and help you at your house after lunch my heart skipped a beat. I was so excited that I was going to get to see your room and stuff. It is like whenever I am with you the world fades away and all I can see is you. Then last night when I noticed you had fallen to sleep I decided to place my head in your lap just to feel what it would be like. I felt so secure and knew that if I was with you nothing could ever hurt me. I did not mean to fall asleep but the events of the day took over me. when I woke up I could not remember where I was and started to panic until you walked into the room. Once I saw you I knew that everything was ok. When you asked me to stay the night in the guest bedroom I was torn between my commitment to Adam and the want to spend time with you. I finally decided that Adam should be ok for one night without me so I agreed. I do not know why I got so upset by you looking at me as I stripped. I had asked you to stay in the room because I wanted you to see me naked I wanted to know what your reaction would be. I mistook the look in your eyes for lust when it was admiration and I think and hope love. Even after the harsh words your reaction was still worry and concern when I hurt myself. As you where rubbing the oil into my bruises my body reacted even though I tried my best to keep it from happening. Thankfully things were arranged in such away as it did not show that badly. I was glad when you had finished with my chest and asked me to role over on my stomach that way I was able to hide my growing problem. The next morning I was surprised that you asked me to meet you for lunch again and I am sorry that I could not join you. It was just that I had to act upon the information that I had gotten. I found out that some strange things had been happening in some caverns to the north of town. That is where I am heading to now. I hope that I can find my missing friend and get back to what may be building between us. Now I must close this letter as I have to leave.
Hopefully forever and always, Caleb
After reading Caleb's letter I realized that he had feelings for me as well and that Adam meant a lot to him. I decided that regardless of what happened I would take care of Adam but I was not giving up on Caleb yet. I knew where he had gone to but before I could go after him I had to make sure that Adam was settled in and ok. About that time Adam came out of the bathroom in nothing but a towel. When he saw me he explained that since he was clean he did not want to put his dirty clothes back on. I took his clothes and put them into the washer and then grabbed him a pair of sweats to wear. I handed them to him saying that they would be big on him but that they would do until his stuff was finished. I showed him around the house telling him where everything was at. As I got ready to go find Caleb I handed Adam a 20 telling him that if he wanted he could order pizza when he got hungry. I also told him to make himself at home and that I would be back. I also told him to stay put till I got back. As I walked out the door I heard him say to make sure I brought Caleb back with me and good luck.
Well guys I want to thank you taking the time to read this second chapter of The Guardian series. Please stay tuned for the next chapter "The Guardian Quest to Darkness". I would also love to hear what you thought of this chapter so please email me you comments whether they are good or bad at Darkmage1226@gmail.com.