Rebirth (Legends of the Kilanor Book 2)

by Jared Stone

  “Well, I was hoping…,” she began, looking off to the side bashfully as her face turned red. “Well, you see….”

  Lucian just stood there silently, waiting. He had the sneaking suspicion that anything that was about to come out of the girl’s mouth would ultimately lead to an uncomfortable situation. But he really hoped he was wrong.

  “Well…, I was thinking…,” Lilly continued, clearly working up her courage. “Maybe…, Well….”

  Lucian continued to wait as Lilly took another deep breath.

  “Would you like to go out with me sometime?” she finally blurted out with a look of mortification on her face that suggested that even she was taken aback by her own boldness.

  Lucian’s mouth dropped as his eyes grew wide, and he had to catch himself so the girl wouldn’t see his obviously shocked reaction. It wasn’t that the offer itself was particularly strange or absurd; it was just that… she was a girl. Does she really not know? thought Lucian as he absently stared at her. Can’t she sense I’m not attracted to her? How do I let her down easily? He had never run into this situation with a girl before.

  “Uhhhh, Lilly…,” Lucian stammered, reaching up and scratching his head nervously. “You’re a great girl. But I’m sorry, I can’t.” He tried to sound as genuine and apologetic as he could, especially as he watched the disappointment creep into the girl’s face before him.

  “Oh, okay…,” said Lilly, clearly embarrassed and maybe even on the verge of tears. “I understand. Do you already have a girlfriend?”

  “N-Yeah…,” Lucian clumsily said as he shook his head. He was definitely still not very good at lying. “Yeah, I’m actually seeing someone else right now. Sorry.” He grappled in his head with whether or not to tell her the truth. On the one hand, he was proud of who he was, and he very rarely ever felt the need to hide that with family and friends. However, on the other hand, he had experienced his fair share of judgment from the Christian community before, and he didn’t want that preexisting stigma to color his interactions with Lilly. As such, he determined he should just let her come to her own assumptions about his private life.

  Lilly still looked dejected and ashamed, but at least she hadn’t fully started crying. “Okay…, well…, I should head home now, then,” she said shakily, frantically gathering up her things in her arms and avoiding all direct eye contact with Lucian. “Bye, Lucian! Good luck tomorrow!”

  She turned and scuttled away from the table before Lucian could even respond.

  “Thanks again, Lilly!” he called out after her so she wouldn’t think there was any weirdness on his side after the events of the night; but he knew things would undoubtedly be strange between the two of them from there on out. She disappeared around a bookshelf quickly, and Lucian could hear a door open and close a few seconds later as she left the central area on that floor of the library.

  Lucian let out a heavy sigh. Even when he wasn’t grappling with supernatural forces and fighting for his life, he still couldn’t catch a break. He quickly glanced around the table, making sure he hadn’t left anything there by mistake, then walked over to the exit door, down the stairwell, and out into the night.

  The blast of cold air which hit his face as he exited the library was a painful reminder that it was now very much winter. Though it had snowed several times already over the past month, this night was dry and crisp; not completely freezing Lucian to the bone through his jacket like more humid days, but feeling biting and harsh against his bare skin. He hunched up his shoulders a bit more as he walked, protecting his neck the best he could from the frigid air.

  Lucian walked the pathways of campus quietly, and all around him the school was completely silent, with students holed up in the library or their dorms preparing for the week’s upcoming exams. Lucian was happy he didn’t have a very long distance to go, as his dorm wasn’t too far from the library, and he was ready to get to bed after several long days of continuous study.

  Walking this particular path brought into Lucian’s mind memories of the morning he first met Gus, after the Kílán had saved him from almost certain death at the hands of a possessed Blake. He had been practically dragged by Gus back to the safety of his dorm, feeling dazed and confused by events and the sudden explosion of protective qi he had released. He let out a short laugh and shook his head as he thought once again about how ridiculous his life had become.

  Lucian stopped walking abruptly when he heard shuffling behind him, and he turned around slowly to see what it might be. He didn’t want to overreact as he had before, thinking it was likely some other student heading home. But the night around him was dark and empty, and he could see nothing and no one upon the streetlamp-lit path behind him. Taking a breath and releasing it to calm himself, he turned and continued walking, thinking to himself that recent events had made him overly jittery.

  After a few more steps, he was almost certain that he heard something again. This time, he whipped around quicker, hoping to catch whatever might be there stalking him. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something small and dark scurry under a bench by the side of the path. Lucian let out a sigh of relief, happy that it was just some tiny animal again. Curious, and taking the gamble that anything so skittish and small would be unlikely to kill him, Lucian approached the bench and peered beneath it.

  There, huddled against the bench leg, looking very hungry and shivering in the cold, was a little black puppy. His miniscule size and undeveloped features seemed to indicate that he was not much more than a year old. The animal looked up with the biggest brown eyes Lucian had ever seen, and the boy’s heart immediately melted.

  “Awww,” cooed Lucian quietly. He slowly reached out with a finger toward the puppy. “Hey, little guy. What are you doing out here all alone?”

  It is quite amazing, the change in someone’s voice and demeanor when confronted with something so small and adorable, and Lucian was no exception. His suddenly high-pitched, soft manner of speaking seemed to soothe the puppy, who leaned his head out a little and sniffed Lucian’s outstretched finger. After his preliminary inspection was completed, the puppy once again looked up at Lucian with an almost pleading look.

  “Where’s your family, little guy?” Lucian asked, looking around him, behind bushes, and beneath trees. He saw no other humans or animals around, and he knew he couldn’t just leave the poor thing there alone in the freezing cold.

  “There, there. It’s okay,” Lucian whispered as he reached out very slowly and put his hands around the stranded pup. The animal did not struggle or make a sound, but rather allowed Lucian to scoop him up gently and bring him in close, as if he instinctively knew that the boy could be trusted. Once the puppy was in his arms, Lucian unzipped his jacket and covered the little guy with one flap to keep him warm.

  “Come on,” Lucian softly said down to him. “I’ll take you home.”

  * * *

  “Wow, he’s… really pretty cute,” Blake confessed, standing with his arms folded in the center of their dorm room. Lucian could see that his roommate had been completely won over upon first sight of the puppy, though Blake’s tough exterior would not allow him to express that fact openly.

  “I know, right??” Lucian responded, sitting on the floor as the puppy tumbled around beside him. He had found one of the boys’ old, torn socks and was in a state of pure ecstasy, chewing on it and rolling around with it like a treasured playmate. After a few minutes of such intense movement, however, the little guy seemed exhausted and collapsed on his side, fast asleep.

  “You planning on keeping him here?” Blake asked. Lucian looked up, a bit surprised; he hadn’t really planned that far out yet. He also couldn’t tell by Blake’s tone whether or not his roommate would be okay with that.

  “I was considering it, I guess…,” Lucian stated hesitantly. “I mean, if that’s okay with you. He didn’t have a collar on or anything, and I don’t see any fliers about a lost puppy around campus. I know we’re not supposed to have pets in the dorm, but
this little guy seems pretty quiet and well behaved. I’ll make sure no one finds him or anything….”

  Blake let out a chuckle. “Dude, that’s the least of my worries nowadays,” he said, sitting down on his bed. “It’s cool. He can stay.”

  Lucian’s face broke out into a giant, relieved smile. “Awesome,” he said, looking down at the little ball of joyous fur beside him. “Guess we should give him a name then, huh?”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” Blake responded thoughtfully, looking down at the puppy as well. “What about Champ?”

  Lucian was dumbfounded. It seemed a completely arbitrary name with no real connection whatsoever to current circumstances. “Why Champ?” he asked.

  “I had a dog growing up named Champ,” Blake answered, almost defensively. “Well, actually, it was our neighbor’s dog…, but I played with him a lot! So he was basically mine.”

  “Eh, I don’t know,” said Lucian cautiously. “Champ is so generic. And wouldn’t it be a little creepy to feel like you’re replacing your old dog with a new one who has the same name?”

  Blake shrugged. “Yeah, I guess so,” he admitted, looking a little defeated.

  “What about Milton?” Lucian suggested.

  Blake sat forward in the bed and furrowed his brow. “Dude, you can’t give a dog a human name,” he countered passionately. “That’s, like, super weird. And Milton sounds like he should be some fat dude behind an accountant’s desk. We need a tough, manly dog’s name.”

  Lucian rolled his eyes and laughed. “That’s my mom’s maiden name,” he clarified lightheartedly. “But you’re right, it’s too much like a first name. We can think of something better.”

  “What about Black?” Blake offered after a pause.

  Wow, really stretching your powers of creativity on that one, huh? Lucian thought sarcastically. He couldn’t think of a more self-evident name for a black dog.

  “That seems really…,” Lucian tried to explain. “I don’t know, it just seems really obvious. And it sounds too much like your name. That would be confusing.”

  “Okay, fine,” Blake said as he leaned back on the bed, bending his knee and bringing one leg up to rest his foot on the comforter. “Then you think of something better!”

  Lucian continued to mull over the matter. “How about Shadow?” he said. “That kind of ties in the black color, along with him following along behind me when I found him. Plus, it should sound cool and manly enough for you.” He said this last part in an obvious tone of jest, though he wasn’t confident that Blake picked up on that.

  “Yeah, I like Shadow,” Blake agreed with a nod. “I could have a dog named Shadow.”

  Lucian looked down at the puppy, who was now rolled over on his back, fully displaying his stomach with legs spread wide. The blonde boy reached out and began scratching him as Shadow’s short little leg began to twitch uncontrollably.

  “Awwwwwww, you like that, don’t you, Shadow?” Lucian said, bringing back the baby voice he always used around dogs. Shadow’s big brown eyes stared up at him in contentment, and Blake’s big blue eyes stared down at him in judgment.

  “Yeah, I think he likes it,” Blake said with certainty, reaching over to the desk beside his bed and grabbing a big bag of chips he had placed there. As soon as the boy began to un-crinkle the metallic bag, Shadow’s eyes snapped open wide as his body twisted frantically to right itself. Once he had managed to get back on his feet (which was no small task with such short limbs and giant paws), he bounded over to stand in front of Blake with saliva dripping from his mouth.

  Blake glanced down at the puppy. “I think he wants these,” he sputtered through a mouthful of chips.

  “No, we can’t give the dog chips,” Lucian said. “Dogs don’t eat chips.”

  Blake looked down at the puppy, who stared back at the boy with extreme hunger in his eyes. “Dude, he has definitely had chips or something before, and he wants them now.”

  Lucian shook his head. “Well, chips are bad for him,” he said as he stood up. “You guys wait here, though. I’ll head over to the convenience store down the street and see what I can find.”

  Blake still sat on the bed, staring at the salivating puppy. “Okay, well, hurry it up…,” he told Lucian. “I’m starting to think he’s gonna take a bite outta me soon….”

  * * *

  Wednesday, December 10th

  After a difficult and stressful couple of days, the final exam period was officially over. Fortunately for Lucian, all suffering is impermanent, and finals came and went without too much trouble. Despite stressing himself out over them, the exams for Algebra, World History, and Sociology were, in fact, quite manageable, and Lucian left each feeling that he had actually overstudied…, which was a good problem to have, in hindsight. Willow, on the other hand, was complaining incessantly about how unreasonably difficult Schuntz’s exam was, and Lucian found himself, for the first time, happy that the professor had just decided to give him a B without all the accompanying fuss.

  Now that exams were over, Lucian was finally on Winter Break, and it felt really good. He now had until the second week of January to not worry about attending classes, finishing homework, or turning in assignments, which would allow him to fully focus on the more important things, like saving the world. Though his parents had tried to cajole him into coming home the day after finals were done, he had convinced them that a lot was still happening on campus that he would like to be a part of, and so they settled on him coming home on December 22nd instead. He assumed that this would give Willow, Blake, and him enough time to figure out the best course of action and resolve the problem of the masked man in the mansion on the hill, and he would still make it home a couple of days before Christmas Eve.

  Feeding Shadow – who was always starving, even by growing puppy standards – had been surprisingly difficult, as it was nearly impossible to find dog food anywhere on or near campus. The first night, Lucian had bought an assortment of beef jerky, hard boiled eggs, and peanut butter, all of which the puppy scarfed down without protest. Lucian knew that this sort of fare would suffice in an emergency situation, but it was not a good long term solution to the puppy food problem.

  Thankfully, the closest pet store was accessible via the aboveground transit line, and Lucian gave Blake some money to go and get Shadow some real food. Blake came back later that day with no money left and the most expensive puppy food they had on the shelf. He adamantly claimed that his dog wasn’t going to be given some second-rate, bargain brand kibble, and Lucian had neither the patience nor the energy to protest further at that point. They learned very quickly that Shadow would readily eat as much kibble as he could before throwing it up, only to eat it again. After their first unfortunate experience with this, both boys agreed to feed him only in small portions from then on, even if he whined and used his adorable puppy eyes to beg them for more.

  Apart from caring for Shadow, Blake had very little else going on in life, and he still desperately wanted to storm the villain’s stronghold immediately, if not sooner. Lucian managed to keep him grounded just enough that he didn’t run off and do something crazy…, but just barely. Although the dark haired boy had seemingly forgotten his initial trepidation over the masked man’s superior powers, Lucian hadn’t, and Blake did not yet have the control or knowledge of his abilities to reliably defeat anyone in battle. As such, Lucian thought that focusing on something calming and productive was the best remedy for his roommate’s impetuousness, and so he planned to fill their new free time with more conversation and meditation at Deer Park.

  Lucian and Blake trudged along the brown, dying grass toward the bare tree at the back of Deer Park. Zipped up inside his coat, Lucian carried Shadow along with them, as he didn’t trust the hungry puppy alone in their dorm room without supervision. On the whole, Shadow just lay warm and sleepy against Lucian’s chest, though he would also occasionally squirm and struggle to escape if he saw something that interested him..., like the package of trail mix a woman
was eating next to them on the train car.

  Upon arriving at the spot under the tree, Blake and Lucian stood there and waited for their host to appear, as had become their usual procedure when visiting Panhavant. While waiting, Lucian twisted back and forth, slowly rocking Shadow in his arms like a baby. The rhythmic motion of the boy’s body, coupled with the steady beating of his heart, made it so that the little puppy could barely keep his big brown eyes open, and Lucian chuckled quietly to himself as he watched Shadow’s adorable wet nose twitching while he slept.

  “You are here!” joyously exclaimed Panhavant’s voice from behind them. Snapping his eyes open immediately, Shadow twisted his body around and leapt from Lucian’s coat down onto the ground before the boy could even stop him. Though Lucian tried to reach down and grab him, the puppy stumbled over to the tiny sage on his short, stubby little legs and began shaking his tail in such a flurry that he almost couldn’t stay upright.

  The enlightened master leaned down and scratched Shadow’s head with a big smile on his face. The puppy reared back and put both of his front paws up on Panhavant’s wrist, licking at the sage’s fingers frantically, as if he had just found his best friend in the world.

  “Ha!” Lucian laughed, seeing the spectacle. It was an extremely heartwarming scene, and Lucian was not sure if Panhavant or the puppy was more elated by the presence of the other. “Panhavant, this is Shadow,” he said in introduction.

  Panhavant stood back up and looked at the boy. “HA! Names!” he cried, as though it was the most absurd thing he’d ever heard.

  With this, he hobbled over to the foot of his tree and sat down in the lotus position without ceremony. Lucian looked over at Blake with a shrug of mutual incomprehension, then both of the boys walked over to join the sage by the trunk, with Shadow tripping over himself to keep up behind them. Lucian was pleasantly surprised to see that Shadow seemed to have no desire to run away when left off leash, and he thought that perhaps he would let the puppy enjoy the happiness of complete freedom until he saw evidence to the contrary.