The Fallen Ascending 01 -- Rebirth
Letting Go

De’Nara’s graduation ceremony was one of the saddest times in my new life. She was beautiful in her pure white dress, with a golden rose in her platinum blond hair, but I knew her graduation meant she was going to be leaving soon afterward. I’d never made it to my high school graduation, but a lot of my friends had graduated a year before me, and I can honestly say that losing them didn’t pain my heart like her ceremony did.

After the speeches, drinks, and hugs with all her friends, and mother and father, she finally made some time for me alone. I think over the last several years I had grown on her as well, and I was the last person she came to after all was said and done. Quietly, we walked together and left the school, and she followed me into the forest where I hadn’t had a chance to go and visit for quite some time. I wanted to show her the beauty of my special place, and I had a gift for her before she departed.

Getting deeper into the forest, we finally stopped walking and I turned to hug her. She laughed lightly, roughly rubbed my head, and then pulled off her dress and stretched naked back on the soft grass. I knew the forest probably better than anyone else on the island, and I knew that we were in one of the deeper and most beautiful sections where most people never came. Shadows danced between the trees as the sunlight dappled rays of illuminance around us. Flowers of various sorts were in bloom (some I may have had to use a little magic to convince to grow and open their petals out of season), and the area we were in was a small little piece of paradise here on earth. I’d never imagined that she’d take her clothes off out here – even though I’d seen and bathed with her many times – and the sun dancing across De’Nara’s skin made her look like an angel in my eyes.

“Like it?” I finally asked.

“I do!” She was relaxing and simply inhaling the smells of all the blooms in the air, and I was mesmerized watching her chest rise and fall with each deep breath. “How did you ever find such a beautiful place?” She asked me.

“It’s a secret,” I told her with a twinkle in my eye. “If you want, you could think of this as De’Nara’s glade. It’s a special little place built only for you.”

She laughed lightly, plucked a flower from its stem and then smelt it. “Well thank you Mik’hail. This place helps calm me like nowhere I think I’ve ever been. You really know me well. Today has fried my nerves, and I needed something like this to just sit and unwind.”

All I could do is smile, go over, and sit down beside her. I wasn’t going to cry, no matter how my heart was breaking. Now was time to leave her with a good memory, and not the thought of some foolish child who wouldn’t let go when she had to leave. “I was hoping you’d like it,” I told her honestly.

De’Nara laughed lightly, leaned up, and then wrapped her arms around me and pulled me down beside her. If I was just a few years older, and if puberty would’ve started, I would’ve taken her then and there. Unfortunately, I was still too young and even though my mind was willing, my body was capable of doing anything remotely like that yet. All I could do is sit, snuggle, and enjoy the time together with her.

“I’m really going to miss you, you know.” I finally had to tell her the truth about how I felt.

“I’m going to miss you as well.” De’Nara leaned up and kissed me lightly on the nose. “But somehow, I don’t think you’re going to be missing me as badly as what you think you might.” She giggled lightly, ruffled my hair again, and then pulled my head down between her breasts to scrub it.

“You know, I have a surprise for you as well when we get back,” she told me when she finally let go so I could breathe again.

“Well,” I tried to straighten up my hair where she’d mucked it all up, “I have a surprise for you even before we leave here!”

“Oh really?” She sat up and looked at me all seriously. “What is it? You should know not to keep a girl waiting if you have gifts for them!” Her eyes were twinkling and I could tell from the smile at the edge of her lips that she was simply joking around with me.

“Well, here’s the first surprise!” I told her as I suddenly reached out and grabbed both her bare breasts and squeeze them! “Noogie! Noogie! Noogie!” I jiggled them up and down and back and forth like she’d just scrubbed my hair, and her eyes got huge. For a moment, I thought she might get angry, but then she started laughing and just pulled me up and hugged me.

“I’m going to miss you too, rugrat. I hope you know that,” she finally told me when she let go of me.

Knowing that somewhere in her heart, I might have a special place, made me smile and feel somewhat better. I wasn’t certain how exactly De’Nara viewed me – friend or little brother – but I was just grateful to know that she had some sort of true feelings towards me. I was sad but happy at the same time.

Seeing that the sun was dipping down lower in the sky, I knew that our short time together was coming to an end. She was supposed to be on one of the boats and sail away by the setting of the sun, and the evening was getting long in the hour. Not wanting to let the moment pass, but knowing that I lacked the power to stop time even if I wished I could, I finally walked over and pulled out the cloth-wrapped bundle from behind some of the bushes that I’d placed so carefully there earlier.

“I do have one thing for you before you leave, and I hope you’ll take it and enjoy it. If it’s not worth using, simply put it up on a shelf somewhere and you can look at it and sometimes think about the foolish kid you left behind when your training was over.” Hesitantly, I held it out to her and she took it while looking at me all oddly.

“You should know I’ll treasure it no matter what it is, just as I treasure our friendship,” De’Nara told me as she unwrapped the cloth. When she saw what was inside, her eyes opened wide and she let out a little “Oh” of wonder.

What I’d given her was a pure white sword of my own making.

I knew that she would be graduating this year, and I wanted to give her something special to remember me by. Over the last several years, I’d practiced and refined my ability to work with earth and fire magic, and shaping earth was my greatest skill. For the whole last year, I’d focused single-mindedly on one simple task – putting energy into the earth, removing the impurities, refining the stone, strengthening it with my magic, and then repeating the process. Over and over and over I’d enhanced, refined, and strengthened a hunk of stone the size of my arm.

What had started out a dull gray flint or granite had changed sometime in the last year into a pure white seamless stone. It wasn’t off-white like ivory; it was a pure white – like freshly fallen snow in winter. And it was solid, heavy, and much, much stronger than any steel I’ve ever seen on the island here. I’d tested it once with one of the steel shields which father had in a storehouse – it sliced through the inch thick metal like a hot knife through warm butter. I’d had to use my magic to fix the shield just so no one would know what I’d did to it by testing the sword out.

Once I was certain that the density and strength of the stone was as hard as I could make it, I then spent the time to shape it and make it the ugly bastard that it was today. Lots of people talk about how beautiful a royal sword is, or how elegant a knight’s blade can be with all the fancy engravings and such on it. This blade was nothing like that!

The blade was about a meter long, and only about two fingers wide. It had a slight curve to it, and I knew that De’Nara had trained with similar weapons in the past. Instead of fancy engravings or decorations, I’d shaped the side of the blade to be spiked forward and backward – like a wood rasp. The top of the blade wasn’t smooth and elegant; it was serrated and jagged like a sawblade.

No matter which end of that weapon struck an opponent, it was going to cause them pain. Massive amounts of pain. And if someone was ever unlucky enough to have it thrust into them…

Let’s just say it wouldn’t be a pleasant experience and probably one they’d only experience once in their lives.

“I call it ‘Snowflake Razor’,” I told her as she stared at it in silence. “You might find it useful, or you might find it worthless. I really don’t know.” I was starting to blush slightly now, thinking about the one large flaw that the blade had. “I don’t have a clue how the heck you’d actually wear such a thing. It won’t fit in any scabbard that I know of from the way it’s made, and I don’t know how useful it’d be if you had to unwrap it from some moldy old cloth each time you needed it.”

De’Nara didn’t say a word and just kept staring at it. Long moments passed in silence and I was afraid she was going to hand it back to me before she finally spoke. “Can... Can I really have something like this? Is it OK?” Tears were flowing down her face and she was barely whispering the words.

“Of course you can! I made it for you after all,” I told her.

“You …”

“You made it?” Now she was staring at me with that same wide-eyed look that she had been staring at the sword with earlier. Tears freely leaked out of the corner of her eyelids and ran unattended down her cheeks.

“Uh…” Crap! I didn’t exactly want to admit to something like that as it might lead to questions which I didn’t want to answer. Unfortunately, it was too late to take back what I’d already said; I wasn’t going to lie to De’Nara.

“Yeah.” I barely whispered it. “I made it over the last year, but please don’t ask me how. It’s a secret, and I’ll share it with you sometime in the future when we meet again, but I can’t talk about it right now. If that’s OK?”

Laughing lightly, De’Nara stood up and hugged me. She was getting ready to say something when I put my hands on her lips and lightly hushed her. “We’ll meet again and then we can say more that needs to be said. For now,” I reminded her, “you ship is going to sail soon – with or without you.”

De’Nara looked up, looked around, gave a sudden little “Oh damn!” and started to run off towards the beach.

Naked!!

“De’Nara! De’Nara!” I grabbed her dress and chased after her as she disappeared out of sight through the forest.

I never did catch up to her to return her dress. The sight of her running naked, clutching the cloth bundle in her arms as her naked body dashed through the forest was the last I saw of her. Her legs were longer than mine as I still hadn’t come into my full man’s growth, and by the time I managed to reach the docks her ship was already casting off and sailing away.

She’d never gave me the present that she’d intended, and I didn’t have a clue what she wanted me to have, but I did end up with the last dress which she wore on our island and it still held the slightly perfumed scent of roses and her. It was one of my true treasures and I took it back to my room, folded it gently, and preserved it to keep forever more.

And after that, I cried myself to sleep like the child I was.

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