After taking a shower she put on some clean clothes and pulled her hair back in a tight ponytail, wincing as the band snapped down harder than she meant it to. It was nine in the morning, and she was determined to look in the sarcophagi today. She'd already confirmed opening the sarcophagi with the landowner's lawyers and the State couldn't step in and override the owner once permission was given.
She was pumped with excitement when she called downstairs, away from Anne's ears, and told them that she was taking no guests whatsoever, besides Ben, perhaps. She didn't want Anne to know that she would be doing anything but lying in bed or she'd hear an earful from her. Grabbing the tools she needed, she went to work. She opened the snake's head, first. It was as large as a refrigerator. Its mouth was open and inside laid a baby wrapped in a blanket. The teeth were each a foot long and the tongue wrapped around the mound that was supposed to be a newborn, from the looks of it. All of this was made in brown coral and was horrifically beautiful. It turned her already fragile stomach.
Working past the pain she was able to get the top off, but it took close to an hour since she was doing it alone and injured. On the inside were clothes fit for what looked like a king. It had been arranged as if someone was sleeping in them. The most interesting find was what looked like a map.
There was no food at his side and nothing for the afterlife. Just small chests filled with jewelry, scented leaves, and perfume. This was something she had never seen before. Most afterlife tombs held concubines, food, or coin for a Ferrier of some kind. Carefully she removed the map and small gold trunks and put them on the small white sheet she had laid out. As an afterthought, she placed the map on her desk, for research later.
Next, she opened the female sarcophagi. It was similar to the other one, empty of body but it had a queen's outfit inside. In the gloves, she held a necklace. It was a small chain and at the end of it was a small golden disk with emeralds embedded around it. She pulled the chain and trinket around her neck, feeling all the naughtier because of it. She was going against almost all of her training by opening and touching things like this.
She started to take out the other chests as well when Gairett showed up beside her and said, "This was my mother." At the sudden sound of his voice, she jumped. "Oh! I am sorry. I did not mean to scare you."
"No, I'm... fine. You were saying?" She said through a sarcastic sneer.
"He was my father." He gestured with his head in the direction of the coffin. "She wasn't my birth mother though. My birth mother was human, and he, my father", he pointed to the other coffin again, "was not." A smile started to form on his face as he cocked his head to the side, watching her.
"I'm sorry?" She stumbled over the words. "Did you just say… Did you just say your dad wasn't... a human?" Her heart was still pounding from earlier and at his sentence, it began to race. To calm herself, she started looking around in the box again. She was sure he was going to give her more nonsense. It wasn't like anything he'd said since they'd met had been real. Right?
"It is the year two thousand and five, is it not?" She nodded her head somewhat slowly. Trying to act uninterested she let out a long sigh. "That would make me . . . four hundred and fifty-two years old. Does that surprise you, Velori?"
"You're four hundred and fifty-two?" She burst into laughter and pulled her head out. "Right! And I'm negative two hundred. Nice to meet you." A tight smile drifted briefly across her face. "Now are you going to tell me where you really came from, and why you were in there? You left so fast the other day we didn't get to finish our little", she paused to emphasize the final word "conversation?" Thinking about it now was making her irritated again, so she went back to snooping around in the coffin.
"Do you want the truth?"
After lifting her eyes to his, she stopped smiling. He wasn't joking. She simply nodded with small movements of her head.
"Are you sure, because I have never told a human the secrets, the truths of my family and our heritage? You would be the first. And I would only be telling you because I believe you are somehow related to me, though I am not sure how. And sadly, I can only retell it as it was told to me"
He took in a deep breath and pulled her off of the sarcophagi. After which he started to set back the chests and things she had taken out. With one hand he closed both tombs.
It took her two hours to open both, all with great effort and many tools. This only irritated her further because she was starting to believe him, which was nonsense. Also, she wanted those little containers and bottles. This meant she was going to have to go back and re-open them to take them back out.
"You see this?" He gestured as he walked to the tapestry. "This is my family, but you knew that already, did you not? I wonder why." He smiled. "You see over here?" He pointed to the far bottom left side where a small figure stood with a large snake wrapped around him. "This is my grandfather. And up here?" He referred to the far top left side where a giant bird was sitting, grooming itself, "Is my grandmother. This was over two thousand years ago."
"But she's a bird." Great, Vel! Point out the obvious. How about, I don't know… two thousand what?! In truth she didn't understand, any of it. And the fact that she was still interested was slowly digging itself under her skin. Not to mention she unexplainably believed some of the things he was saying.
"That's right. She was the biggest and greatest of all the winged creatures. A queen, in her own right. She was a true golden bald eagle, as your people call her. Her wingspan was fifteen feet and she stood five feet tall. Her feathers were pure gold. She was a prized bird... but a cursed one as well."
He took a deep breath, and let it out, as he walked back over and touched the girl on his tomb. "You see, though she was beautiful, she was doomed to never love, or make others of her kind. We don't know why she was cursed, or who did it. Just that she was." Velori's head started to pound to the beat of her heart. It felt like something was pushing from the inside, clawing to get out. Somewhat overwhelmed, she walked over and sat in her computer chair as Gairett leaned a hip against his tomb.
He looked from the tapestry to Velori to see if she was still interested. She was, so he continued, "One day she came across a human while trying to catch her morning breakfast. She had never seen a human and did not know what it was. So, she did not know that she needed to fear it. Instead, after catching her food, she sat down not but a hundred feet from the man and started to eat her breakfast, which was a giant python. The human came up behind her and stabbed her. For your kind are greedy and confused creatures and he did not think of anything other than his own interests." Gairett's voice had started to raise near the end and his face had began to darken as he spoke.
Velori wanted to interject and tell him that humans weren't as silly as he saw them, but somewhere deep inside, she knew she felt the same as him. Spending so much time on the streets or at the orphanage and seeing how low people could get had left her with a numb feeling towards her kind. She knew the dark side of mankind, so, she kept quiet and listened as he went on.
Calmer now, he continued, "Now, if she had been any other beast, she would have died. Instead, the curse had bent. It molded itself if you will. It had taken the man, and the male python, and made them one. A form we call Ru'tah, a mutant to your eyes. And allowed her to love, but only him. The man, now Ru'tah, could only love her. And at that moment the eggs she carried in her belly, were fertilized."
"Why would it change? Why would it do anything at all?" Velori couldn't help but ask. As silly as his telling seemed to be, she was taken in by it.
He simply looked at her and continued with the story. "Three months later, she gave birth to two children, in eggs. One of the eggs held one-half python, half-human, and a male. While the other was half-eagle, half-human, and female."
Garrett stood straight then and walked back up to the tapestry, running his fingers over the silver threading that connected the two beings.
"About 2 months after their birth my grandmother awoke one morning, and she and the male were in human form. For the curse had been changed even more so. She was now allowed to be either human or eagle. This was something she had never been able to do. The only thing she ever knew was her eagle self. It also allowed her mate to be either human or python."
By this time his fingers had traced their way to a small figure that was made of silver, with long hair. It was surrounded by a gold outline. As if it was supposed to be shining.
"The children were not bound by love or laws and were allowed to mate and love as often as they wanted. In this process, my adopted mother, the one from the eagle egg, mated with a gargoyle and she gave birth to my older brother, Hale. My father, the python egg, mated with a woman and had me." He paused again and walked over to Velori, leaning absently against her computer desk. He seemed a bit quieter now but continued to tell her of his history. "The whole pregnancy process was painful. And my birth sent her into shock and killed her."
Velori took in a breath. She felt as if she could feel his pain, remembering the death of her own mother. She could see guilt pass across his face before he locked eyes with her and started talking again.
"So, I was raised by my father and Aunt who became my mother. Shortly afterward, we came across a full-fledged High Ru'tah. She could give herself magnificent wings or a long, elegant fish's tail. She was the only one of our kind that we'd seen, and she was alone, with no memory. So, my parents took her in, and she became our family. She was beautiful." Gairett looked sad and pained, but he held his small smile in place. Velori looked back up at the statue that was supposed to be the image of this girl. "She died when I was not but a hundred and seventy years old and when I went to sleep, an earthquake was made by an angry sorceress that covered my sleeping chamber." The sides of his mouth turned up even more but then just as quickly, he frowned as if thinking about something. He shook his head and looked back at Velori.
"My grandparents departed this realm around a hundred years after my birth and my parents left about a hundred after that. To answer your other question, I cannot die until I have fallen in love and my loved one has perished or gone on to another space. And that affection may only be with someone in this realm. Although the remnants of my grandmother's curse may have skipped my parents, it did fall on my brother and me."
He walked forward and set the top of his lid back in place and continued without looking back at her. "But I will never die because I will never care for something..." He looked down at the dust on his hands and finished, "That will die so easily, again."