“Follow me young man.”
Myliss held tightly to the hand of the paramedic rushing down the hall. His little three year old legs ached and throbbed for a break but the paramedic and his storm of colleagues behind him didn’t seem to notice. His iridescent grey eyes widened in the faint lighting as he tried to piece together the puzzle that was way over his head. For the past year of his life he had been in the custody of his uncle Niarian to let his father partake in the dragged out war. Today his father was said to have made a recovery from his coma. Today he could see the great, young, totalitarian lord Saeoriya again. As a child he barely understood anything except his father was back. None of the medical miracles mattered to him.
“I can’t believe he's awake…” Another nurse muttered.
Myliss watched her and cried out sharply at the increasing weariness of his legs. The doctor joined at his hand took the hint and lifted the child into his arms, “There, there, little Sae. You’ll see! We’re going to go and see your father!”
“My father is in a comma.” Myliss stated blandly.
“No, your father was in a coma, not a comma. And now he's awake.”
Myliss had long since begun to busy himself with a piece of his wine red hair, leaving the doctor to simmer in his own lamenting excitement. The white of the hallway ended with the black hospital door and the group burst in, finding Sae sitting up in his bed looking merrily out the window at the sunset. . He slowly turned his long identical red head to the doctors and his eyes stopped on the little bundle of joy in one of their arms.
“Myliss Cruelty Fe-Ling. My son, come here.”
Myliss’s face glowed like a candle as he wiggled free of the doctor and dashed over to his father’s bed. Each tiny patter of Myliss footsteps widened Sae’s smile.
“Father!”
“Hello son, did you miss me?”
Myliss said nothing and reached up for the welcome embrace of his fathers’ arms. Sae pulled him away from confusion and cradled him in comfort as he clung to his chest. The beat of his heart raced against Sae’s and he smiled, smoothing his sons red strands from his face and back toward his braid.
“Where did you go this whole time?” Myliss asked innocently.
The questioned poisoned everyone but Myliss with its potent purity. Sae visibly buckled somewhat then smiled again, “I was in a special place son. But not to worry I have returned.”
Myliss didn’t bother with any more questions; he just laid there on his father and beamed twice as much Sae himself.
“And mommy? What happened to her?”
Sae instantly fazed into a corpse like state. His eyes suddenly seemed black and his head dropped, “Myliss listen closely to me now.”
Frightened by his seriousness, Myliss sat up stiffly and stared daggers into his dad, “Yes?”
“Your mother is dead. You’ll never see her again and I need you to be strong with me. We have to move on without her.”
Deaths cold grip failed to touch Myliss’s little body, but Sae was obviously ill with it’s vice. He had lived loss and breathed calamity growing up. Most of it was actually caused by him. He faltered somewhat and placed his head in one hand, the other extended to the doctors, a gesture to shoo them away.
“Lord Saeoriya, You shouldn’t tell him that!” A doctor cried.
Myliss’s gray eyes grew wide at the way the man had spoken to his father. He had seen others say less and die on the spot for it.
“Do not mistake my sickness for weakness, “Sae growled.
Seconds later, flames manifested before his outstretched hand and swallowed the doctors in feral bursts of blue and black prominences.
“Myliss watch closely,” Sae muttered in Nalinian, his head was still in his hand and he was shaking it unhurriedly.
Myliss understood him clearly; this fact sent a chill up his spine, inviting an odd welcome feeling from the heat of the flames. He stared intently at the doctors who had seconds ago been so protective of him and excited to see the man who was killing them. They literally melted from their bones until only a pile of fine powder remained. Sae stopped and rested his hand on Myliss head and sighed removing his face from his hands Myliss caught a glimpse of something glistening from his eyes, by disregarded it when Sae suggested they visit the park.
“Ok! Can Megan come?”
“Your mother is dead Myliss. Try to understand. Your mother won’t be here again. She’s in heaven now.”
“What’s heaven?”
The remaining nurses who had just watched their co-workers die stood inert and paralyzed with trepidation and alarm. Here the man they worshiped had just killed the people who had saved him and he was having a heart to heart chat with his three year old son as if they had just roasted marshmallows over a fire and not live people where they stood.
“Heaven is a special place where only good people go.”
“Will I go?” Myliss's sly gray eyes were expecting the answer a Christian would want to hear from years and years of dulling their life down to mere, prayer, worship, and bible flicking.
“Yes,” Sae admitted, “You’re a child. All children go to heaven.”
“But what about when I grow up?”
Sae wiped something Myliss would never even fathom on his father from his face: A tear.
“Father are you…”
“I’m fine son, I miss Megan.”
Myliss nodded solemnly, beginning to understand that she was gone forever, “Megan was nice to me.”
“Megan was your mother, of course she was.”
Myliss had never seen her as his mother. She's was never referred to as such. She was just as ill tempered and feared as his father. He had come to call the two of them lord and lady bad but was reprimanded and began to call them their actual names. Sae had corrected this and ‘father’ became his title but as Megan was scarcely seen, he was never told to call her mother.
“Will you go to heaven?”
Sae paused and gave Myliss a face he would never forget; a confused blended decision between true sorrow and pure anger. Myliss couldn’t tell which was dominant.
“Probably not my son, and with our family M.O, neither will you.”
