443. This is the number of years that has passed since I woke up for a simple college field trip. This is the number of years I have been missing from my family. This is the number of years that separates me from humanity, shopping malls, university, friends. Then it hits me, everyone I have ever known is dead.
My chest constricts, and my eyes burn as they well up with large, wet tears. I fall to my knees, feeling like I am dying myself, mourning everything I have ever known in one fell sweep. How can this be?
"Nola? May I embrace you now?" Jude, who has been over confident and excited and awkward, is now attempting to console me. He reaches out, gently placing a hand on my shoulder. I struggle because I don't know whether I should shrug it off or not. Instead, I turn to this man I've only just met, and fall into his arms sobbing.
We stayed like that for what felt like an eternity, he and I holding on to each other like our life depended on it. He loosened his grip on me, gently grabbing my chin and lifting my face to look at him. His eyes shown like Emeralds, glistening with his own tears.
"Nola, I can't imagine a life without my parents, but if you will allow, I will be here for you whenever you need me. My parents can be your parents, my home, your home." Jude looked as if he was serious, and as much as I'd love this to be the fairytale moment where I run off and marry the prince, my heart is just aching, and nothing can replace what I have lost.
"Ok Jude, I think I'd really just like to lay down and rest my head a little while." There's no point arguing for the moment, I don't have the strength right now.
"There's nothing I could deny you right now, Nola. I have never experienced loss in my life, but your pain is radiating in to everything around you. What can I do to take your pain away?" Jude meant well, but how could he possibly mean to take my pain away the day I found it?
"I am hurt and angry and confused. Some dirty plant grabs me, puts me in a sleeping beauty slumber, and throws me in to a strange world with no family." My voice starts raising in volume unintentionally, "My hair has changed, my skin has changed, and I just want to go home and sleep in my own bed with my own pillow and get away from this nightmare!"
Unbeknownst to me, the ground below my feet began to change colors. It looked like the tree, Awanassa, was beginning to rot. Black tendrils scored out from my bare feet in all directions like hairy black legs of a spider. Jude grabbed my shoulders, shaking me gently saying, "Nola snap out of it! What are you doing!?"
My eyes fell to the ground, seeing the eerily creeping blackness coming from my feet. I screamed and jumped unashamedly, right in to prince Jude's arms. "Get it off, get it off, take me away!" I started blushing immediately after I realized what I had done, but he wouldn't release me as much as I wiggled. "You're freaky strong Jude, what the heck?"
"I jump through the trees all day, what can I say? I am kidding though. Part plant remember? Only you are as delicate as a lily, Miss Nola. I am as strong as the roots of the biggest tree."
"I am not. A. Delicate. Lily. And you earn no brownie points by holding me like we are headed to the marital bedroom, please put me down." Although I was glaring at him, there was some sinfully, selfish part of me that wanted to be in his arms, and to just be held. The other side of me wanted to hide in the darkest part of this darned tree and hide until my body was just another part of the soil nourishing Awanassa.
"How about we strike a deal?" Jude was grinning ear to ear, almost making me forget the emotions I had just been bearing down on moments before.
"What is your grand deal, Prince Jude? I should have a say in the matter of who is holding me." I rolled my eyes, not expecting his answer.
"Kiss me. Kiss me and I will put you down." I expected some sheepish grin to be smeared across his face, but in reality, he had a look of seriousness and maybe undertones of curiosity.
I stared in to his eyes for a moment, my own curiosity flaring at this shameless request. "Why would you want to kiss me, after we only just met? Have you no shame? Just put me down."
"Then I will have no choice but to carry you, how did you put it? Marital style? Marriage is a foreign concept to me, as well as kissing. My parents were the last to wed of us. We can't reproduce; therefore, we live our lives as a large family unit. All of us are connected through Awanassa, but unless we want to partake in your 'shameless behaviors' for fun, most of us don't look for romantic ways. There were many married before my parents, but we have all know each other for what seems like eternity, there have been no new relationships, no children, and no marriages for centuries."
"Centuries… how old are you? You were born around your parents wedding, right? I don't know the exact timeline, but wouldn't that make you several hundred years old?" This handsome man looked just barely older than myself, but if being a plant can keep you this attractive this long, count me in.
He tilted his head in thought for a moment and then responded, "I believe I will be… 300 next week. Yes, I am sure, next week is my birthday, 300th. You must attend for sure, there will be people of all kinds, from all over coming to celebrate. Now come, why haven't you kissed me yet?"
"You want me to kiss a grandpa? I don't care how old you look, you are a grandpa's, grandpa's grandpa." I pursed my lips in disgust, even though I was a little tempted to fulfill his wish.
"Nola, you are yet still older than me, so you must be a grandma's, grandma's, grandma's grandma." That attractive smirk appeared again as he said this.
"You are so mischievous Jude, I am merely 19 years of age, a young pup compared to you, old man." He laughed at me saying this, although I wasn't trying to be overtly humorous.
"Nola, you do realize you weren't magically transported from your time to mine, right? You were in a state of transition, so you are roughly 462 years old, give or take a few for me not knowing your day of birth. You my dear, are a cougar in this world, only my mother surpassing you in age."
"Transition, or hibernation? Regardless, I have 19 years of memories so I haven't a clue as to why I should have to claim such an outrageous number of age. We shall simply say I am 19 and move on with our lives."
"Well, it was a hibernation of sorts, because essentially you were sleeping, but my mother attempted to tell me what she knows of her own transition and what came about after she awoke from her own lily. She didn't know how to explain very well, so Awanassa has been reaching out to me since we left, filling in blanks." I hadn't given much thought about why Lascella was tinted green over her Ivory skin, or why she seemed to carry the same otherworldliness around her that Jude and the rest of them did.
Jude continued, "Awanassa was just a baby plant when she took a lily seed and planted my mother deep in the ground. She was the result of an illegal genetic experiment at the time. What would happen if you took the best, and sturdiest elements from humans, and multiple plants? You get Awanassa. She has some sort of mind in herself that allows her to communicate with us. May I, show Awanassa to you, similar to how my mother showed herself to you?"
"Show me how? Are you going to wrap my body in viney tendrils and omit strange glows?" I responded, half joking.
"Something like that, sure. You could put it that way, but no, not the same." He sat down, sitting me in his lap from his holding position. His hands reached up, hovering over my temples as he asked, "May I?"
What did I have to lose? "Yes you may" I responded. I didn't feel him touch my temples, but I felt as if my entire mind was invaded, every thought, memory, question, all laid bare for Jude to see just before it all went white, like staring in to the sun.
WHITE. The color of Knowledge.