"How was that mom?" he asked with the best smile he could put on, but like always she seemed like the only person in the world immune to his adorable smiles.
"...surprisingly effective and well thought out," she answered begrudgingly, she wished that she had the time to do a little bit of research between her meetings.
"You are supposed to be in school," she said with a dissatisfied tone as she looked at the scarf he was wearing, she was lucky that she had made it before he even started school, or she wouldn't have been able to make him one since all her time had been taken up thanks to him and his little stunts.
"You had better have a good reason for skipping, Lirian, or else," she left the implied punishment to his imagination.
"I'm at the top of my class in everything so skipping a day won't do much and besides it was the only opportunity for me to spend some time with you," he said helplessly.
Her eyes softened slightly, "I'll have the chefs prepare us something to eat so we can enjoy a meal together." she relented to his little request.
"No need for that," he said quickly and pulled out two burgers wrapped in a paper and set it down on the table, ", by the time a meal comes down you'll have to start another meeting."
She glanced at the food wrapped in wax paper and frowned, it looked like the cheap food people sell on the street corners.
"Come on mom, when is the last time you ate a simple meal prepared by a food vendor on the side of a street," he asked with a little smile on his lips as he watched her changing expression.
"Lirian I have a personal cooking staff, to prepare my meals, and how exactly am I supposed to eat this, there is no plate or cutlery, there isn't even a serviette to clean up any mess!" she yelled in outrage.
Lirian chuckled softly and opened his wrap, he reveled in the smell of barbequed meat and lifted the entire burger to his mouth to take a bite and he let out a groan of pleasure as the cheese mixed in with the meat flavour and melted in his mouth.
Taliyah felt herself losing her mind, it was no wonder that all the etiquette teachers left while calling him a barbarian, the only thing that you eat by hand is a cocktail item, it is small and bite-sized and even then, it is always served with a skewer, but to eat a main course meal like that drove her mad.
As she watched the look of delight on his face as he bit into it, she felt herself get slightly tempted, but damn it she was the empress and it was her job to set an example.
"There is no one watching mom," Lirian said as if reading her thoughts, ", and I mean you're the empress if you can't even eat however you want to what's the point of all your power," he tempted her further with an extremely exaggerated reaction to the food.
She glanced around the room carefully and slowly picked up the cheeseburger and unwrapped one side of it and took a very lady-like bite from it, even while eating she kept looking around the room like she was doing something bad.
But she quickly grew so engrossed in the taste of the common food that she hadn't eaten for thousands of years, then she started to devour it like a starved wolf, when she heard Lirians chuckle she came back to reality and realised that she didn't even keep her proper sitting posture as she ate and she had slightly leaned forward, it felt so relaxing to not be completely stiff like some automaton while eating.
'No,' she chided herself, ', I am the empress and I must always do things in a representable way.'
"Mom, can you guess what it means to become a god?" Lirian asked suddenly he lowered her guard and now it was time to speak about what really mattered.
Taliyah felt that strange feeling of excitement wash away, as Lirians words forced her to think about things she had been trying to avoid but she knew deep down that this was why he came here, it was also because of this that she had been making herself seem busier than really, she really was, deep down she wished that had never learned the truth about him but that ship had sailed and now she had to confront it.
"There are of course many obvious things that define a god, but there are couple things that one must learn to become a god," he continued, ", one of those things is to free one's self from the opinions of the masses," he lingered on his words and caught her eye.
"Those who fear being judged will never become a god, for a god is one who truly reigns supreme over the masses they are not some king or queen who is both above and below their subjects, they truly stand above all others and must never subject themselves to one beneath them."
He went silent and looked away awaiting her response.
"You have told me about what it means to be a god, but tell me Lirian do you know what it means to a child?" her eyes shone with a dangerous light and Lirian wisely shut his mouth.
"A child is meant to be weak, foolish, and naïve, this is why children need their parents to raise them properly, it is not a child's responsibility to make their parents feel needed, a child is meant to lie to their parents when they break something they shouldn't have or if they did something that could get them in trouble but a child is not supposed to lie about who they are and what they truly need."
"Do you think me so cruel, that after raising you for ten years, I would have cast you out of my home without a second thought if I had learned the truth about you?", her eyes stung as she posed the question to him because she feared to hear the answer herself, once the truth about him came out she noticed that he refused to lie to her and she feared that brutal honesty of his.
She waited for him to respond but when she looked at him, she could see his entire body trembling and he looked away from her in shame, it was an answer without words and it made her heart sink.
'Maybe Katerina was right about me,' he thought, ', the reason that I was always alone, maybe it was to protect other people from me, maybe it's because deep down I deserve to be alone and if I had let Ella become her own person maybe she would have thought the same about me.'
As his thoughts went there even the voices of the others ceased and backed away, they didn't like those thoughts it made them remember things they would rather forget. Things that would make them want to kill themselves, things that made them kill themselves.
Lirian forced himself to think of those thoughts, it hurt more than any other but it was the only way to get the others to shut up and let him take a breath, images of a girls broken and lifeless body flashed before his eyes, then the madness that came with it and piles of corpses that he used to decorate her grave.
Last he remembered as his hand sunk into Katerinas flesh and he boiled her insides slowly with fire that could erase a star, her cold blue eyes looked at him spitefully, "You deserve to be alone for what you turned our daughter into," she spat venomously.
His eyes burned with fury at her unjust accusation, it was her that got Ella killed but she blamed him for forcing her hand, how could she possibly understand his desperation, she had no right to judge his desperation, and the madness took hold of him completely, making him think things he did not want to and as his final resistance he turned his entire body into a spiraling flame without control and incinerated an entire star zone of that god realm as a lowly immortal.
He pulled out of those thoughts and took deep breaths to regain his calm, it wouldn't last long but at least for now his thoughts were clear, "I have not been allowed to trust any other, I don't really know how to do that, it's a concept as foreign to me as the mountains are to a fish in the deep seas."
"But that said, there is only one thing that I can say, while I have never had any intention of telling you the truth about me I am glad mom," he paused to look at her and spoke honestly without any deception.
"I am glad that you learned the truth about me, I am glad that I do not have to hide my true self from you any longer and most of all if you still want me after this I would be the happiest person in the world if you still want to get to know me as your son that you raised..." he took one of her hands in his own and looked deep into those blueish- grey eyes.
"... because even if you think that I'm lying the truth is that I will always need you, no matter who I was or who I become, that will always remain true."