The Obsidian Princess

Chapter 12

“Ah Uncle Howard!!! Thanks you know…I really had not thought about that but I am betting that Dad would love to start something of that sort. That is a really neat idea,” said Eloa as she turned and looked at Mephistopheles once and blinked hoping that the number that she was seeing on his head blinking go away. Then she again looked at his direction but to no avail the number was still hanging on his forehead as if someone had written it with a marker.

“I have always told Hans…that he should have never brought a freak home like this but no one listened to me…no one ever in this family listens to me…such a sick b***h you look like…” said Howard but he could not finish the sentence. Before he could speak something else something knocked him out with a punch and it was so fast that Eloa could not even understand before blinking at the person who did that twice.

It was Azrael who had punched him in the jaw and he had keeled back like the stump of a fallen tree.

“Azrael…what did you do that for?” asked Eloa as Mephistopheles cawed out loudly as if he was happy that Azrael had punched the man.

“It is your birthday party and he is drinking the beer which has been brought by your father and eating the pie and the cookies and cake which have been made by your mother. He will be drinking so much that he will pass out on the couch of your own house as well and still this man has the gall to say such things about you,” said Azrael as his voice was agitated and fire burned in his glacial blue eyes.

“But I did not ask for your help Azrael…he is my uncle…how could you?” asked Eloa as Nia stood beside her and Hans also came ahead. All the guests in the room had formed a circle around them.

“No Eloa, he is saying correctly. He is our guest and your friend and still he understands the decorum of coming to someone’s house and this rat bastard is my cousin and yet he has been abusing you since you were a kid. I know that you have never uttered a word just because he is family but Eloa, not anymore!!!” said Hans as his face was growing all red.

Howard had by then stood up and he was nursing his broken jaw which had become a disgusting purplish colour.

“What the f**k is wrong with you??? You are saying this about your own blood for a freaky b***h who is not even your own blood?” said Howard which was more of a guttural shout and Eloa looked at him and then at her father and the entire room had gone silent. She had no idea what the man was talking about but she could very well understand one thing that her entire life was a lie.

And her father this time did not wait any longer. The man who had never hurt a grasshopper in his entire life punched the man standing before him and then kept on punching him till he was out of the house and the entire bevy of guests kept on cheering him and then Sonia came and touched her husband’s shoulder. Hans looked at him and she nodded her head at him and he stepped back for a moment.

But then what happened that was unexpected from her part and everyone present there was shocked when Sonia punched him fair and square on his nose breaking it and then successfully closing the door on his face.  And Nia whistled at the punch loudly enough to blow through her ears.

“Well now the party pooper is gone please everyone get back to the festivities…we are all supposed to be celebrating, aren’t we?” asked Sonia as she smiled at Eloa who was still looking at her mother but she had not yet understood anything at all.

What on earth has been going on? Who was she? Are they not her parents? Has she been lied to all these years?

Sonia very well understood the reason why her daughter’s face had changed all of a sudden. Twenty-one years…all these years never anyone had come to know this secret that Eloa was not their child and today on her birthday party that f*****g s**t excuse of a man had told things to her baby which had made her question the very basis of existence on which she was standing.

Eloa noticed that there was a splash of green suddenly blooming out of nowhere in the halo of the colourful cloud of purplish blue above her mother’s head. She had a sudden inkling at the back of her mind that the cloud that she was seeing on the heads of the people was nothing else but the aura of the soul that each person carried on them. Eloa did not know what else she would do and she went back inside her room with Mephistopheles still perched on her arm and Siren mewling back and silently treading behind her feet.

Animals were a lot better than human beings, at least they were honest about what they felt and how they felt and they would not be lying to be closer or more loved by the person they were actually deceiving.

She sat down on the bed and then she placed Mephistopheles on the top of her desk. He perched there and c****d his head at her direction and then cawed out loudly.

“I know…I get it…you don’t have to tell me that as well,” said Eloa as she looked out of the window with the snow covering everything all was so white. It looked so perfect and so pristine. However the things she was feeling at the moment were far from the state that nature was in.

Her mother came inside just then and locked the door behind her and sat down on her bed.

“I am not sorry for what I have done,” she said quietly.

Eloa did not reply to her. She could not think what she was supposed to say to her mother, rather the woman she had known to be her mother from the past twenty one years from the beginning of her senses.

“I did not want you to suffer with the knowledge. It is a big thing to carry around you, you know? I did not want you to be burdened with that knowledge Eloa. And for that if you are not willing to talk to me then I am going to take that but this is not how I had thought how I was going to spend your twenty-first birthday,” said Sonia softly as the music and the karaoke that they had got for celebrating her birthday party.

“So what did you think Mama? What did you think would happen if I came to know about this even after ten years? Some day or the other I would have come to know that I was a freak born of some junkie…and then? What would you have done then?” asked Eloa as she turned to look at her.

“You were not born of a junkie Eloa. You have been asking us since long why we named you such..then know this today sweetie…t was chosen by your mother who gave birth to you and died at the spot leaving you in my arms. What was I supposed to do? Give you away? Take you to the state run foster home and leave you there to be taken up by some other people or may be never adopted at all?” asked Sonia. This time her voice was agitated.

“No Mamma…I never said that you did anything wrong at all. You have never taken a wrong decision in your entire life except the fact that I should have been told this. Just that Mom…nothing more nothing less. Don’t you think that I deserve the truth?” asked Eloa as she came and sat beside her mother on her bed who was picking at an invisible thread on the bed sheet.

“You do deserve the truth darling…but I was scared…I was afraid that what might happen…you do understand that, don’t you baby?” asked Sonia as Eloa found that her mother’s eyes were blurry and Siren leaped in her lap.

“I know Mom…I know…but I am glad that you told me everything…does my birth mother have a grave or somewhere I can go and place some chrysanthemums and orchids?” asked Eloa as he hugged Siren and her mother at the same time.

“Well that is a bit difficult Eloa..You see..the night that you were born and I went back to take care of her body, after I had cleaned you up…there was no existence of the body at all. I was baffled and we had led a search as well but there was absolutely nothing. It was like, if you weren’t there no one would have believed that there was a woman ever who had come and shouted for help,” said Sonia as Eloa looked at her with shock on her face.