Remember that a child can dream and envision things that we tend to forget as we age with wisdom. A younger mind can find answers and ways to make what looks impossible work with ease and grace. A young girl with my age and experience can see no limits to what they can do and become; without those limits, what seems impossible today will become reality tomorrow. Open your heart and let in the hope that what we are doing will work and succeed.”
“Releasing the Aon Ór again…” That was the part that these, the wiser kings, seemed stuck on. “It is too dangerous.”
“That is why it will be divided into these four, and then again into their ten young ones. Each will be able to control their own power, and with three other queens there to stand against them or with them, they will easily be able to keep the past from repeating itself,” Mralia insisted.
King Alfdus stopped the brewing argument. “We are going to do this and we are going to bring an end to this senseless war. I know we each have our own reservations, but we need to stop and find a way to let go of our pain and trust that this will work.”
“Or it will blow up in our faces and destroy the entire universe and everything in it,” King Kodarint countered as he put the last of their signatures on the treaty which would hopefully guide their next generations into finding peace or continuing their war until there would be nothing left…only time would truly tell if this plan of theirs would work out.
“Four daughters of the Aon Ór and ten Golden Keys of hope…or fourteen souls that would rip apart the universe until all life as we know it disappears into nothing. That has to be the biggest risk anyone has ever taken, and we won’t know the truth until long after our days have come to an end…”
Crossroads
She never thought in her entire life that she would be in a situation like this. Cally stared up at the ceiling, wondering how something she had learned in a book from forever ago in school could really happen in today’s modern world. It just made no sense. How could the concept of facing a true crossroads ever really happen in real life?
Most people never even faced a monumental decision like this in their whole life, and here she was, facing the biggest and most monumental decision of her life. The road she chose to take would be the road that would forever make her wonder if she had made the right decision or not. How in the world was a fifteen-year-old supposed to make a decision like this and be sure they were doing the right thing?
The phone rang, and she just lay there, hoping and dreading who was on the other end. On one hand, it could be the man that had essentially told her to end it with her boyfriend; or it could be the boyfriend that she was supposed to breakup with. Either way, it wasn’t going to be someone that she really wanted to talk to right now.
A warm, cheerfully familiar voice, the one she was dreading the most today, sounded excessively upbeat as he greeted her with, “I was hoping to see you.”
It felt like the world was collapsing around her as she tried to grasp her next breath from the thick-heavy tension-filled air around her. Cally hesitated as she countered, “Yeah, we should talk, but aren’t you working?” It was the middle of the week, and he was supposed to be at work today. It was also not like him to call in the middle of the day either; something huge was going on, which only seemed to make this worse for her.
“I have the day off. I’ll be there in a few.”
Cally’s hands were shaking uncontrollably as she hung up the phone and started picturing what was coming. She had to do this; it was the right thing to do. Long distant relationships were hard, but she was only fifteen, and it was nearly impossible to know what a real relationship was when the guy she was with lived so far away. She had tried to tell him all of this, but she couldn’t do it over the phone.
Cally had tried to tell him when they had gone out to the beach party last weekend, but she couldn’t find the heart to get the words out. There was just something about him that made her melt every time she was with him. He was so perfect, but at the same time, this relationship was far too hard for her to deal with; at least, that’s what she was told by her friends.
Cally couldn’t help but wonder, How are you supposed to tell someone that you want to break up with them? Dakota was a good guy; well, he was more than that. He was the perfect guy in her eyes. They liked the same things, he never tried to change her or tell her that she needed to grow up, and they could talk for hours without running out of things to say.
Dakota was strong, confident, and he knew what he wanted out of life, whereas Cally was young, scared, and lost most of the time. She was all the opposites of the man he was, and yet, for some strange reason, he still wanted to be with her. He was everything she wasn’t and everything she wanted to be, and yet, she still had to do this. Deep down, she knew it was the right thing to do; at least, it was the right thing to do for him.
Cally slowly walked out of her room to hear the silence of an empty house. Her parents were working, her baby sister was at daycare, and her older sister was heaven only knew where, making the silence and fear build in the pit of her stomach as each second ticked by slower than the last. She could swear that the passing of time had to have completely stopped just to torture her until his arrival drew closer.
Cally’s friends had said this was a good thing. They said it was what she had to do, but they weren’t here right now to help her or support her; no one was here right now to help her end an amazingly complex relationship. Alone, that’s what she was—absolutely and positively alone to face the most difficult thing this world had ever seen; at least, the most difficult thing her world had ever seen.
Cally closed her eyes as she walked outside to the screened porch, and her heart was beating so fast, she could have sworn that it was going to break free from her chest and take off down the road. Deep down, she kind of hoped it would, because it would be easier than dealing with this. It would be easier than looking down all the paths that she could take and deciding on just one.
Cally hoped that it would be easier if she were outside; maybe she wouldn’t feel as trapped or alone or afraid. She looked around at the thin walls of the screened porch, and she felt just as trapped, even more so than she did when she was in the house.
Cally went out the last door that she could and sat down on the cold hard wooden steps, waiting for the inevitable, waiting for the worst moment of her life to come and kill her.
Trying to calm down, she started looking around her. The grass was bright green, even with all the heavily covered trees that hid the sun most of the day. She knew it was ninety-three degrees outside, and there was a light breeze that would make the leaves on the trees speak their words of warning; but to her, the world felt like a freezer trying to warn her of what she was about to do.
The dark patches of shade would hide the hopeful rays of sun, just like the fear was hiding all sane thoughts from her mind. The fear was controlling everything around her, even the weather; or at least, that was how she perceived it. How could fear control the weather around her? It made no sense, and yet it did. Okay, she was officially losing it, and it only seemed like it was going to get worse as the seconds ticked by and her overactive imagination was driving her to lose her mind.
Each breath felt like it was going to be her last. Each second stretched out for what seemed like forever, and her heart was pounding faster than a race car engine racing for the finish line. And yet Cally couldn’t move from these cold hard steps. She was about to face the hardest thing she would ever have to do in her life and just couldn’t move. Everything inside of her was screaming for her to run as far and fast as she could to avoid what was coming.
Something else told her to find the deepest darkest hole and crawl inside and wait for death, because that was definitely one of the roads she was facing right now. But no, she had to sit here, frozen with fear, knowing that there was no way to escape. Cally had to face this, and she had to face this now before she got in any deeper than she already was.
Cally heard his car long before she saw it. This little community she lived in was small and private for the most part, so the traffic was limited to people who