27. Halfway Down

Halfway down the stairs
Is a stair
Where I sit.
There isn’t any
Other stair
Quite like
It.
I’m not at the bottom,
I’m not at the top;
So this is the stair
Where
I always
Stop.

Halfway up the stairs
Isn’t up
And it isn’t down.
It isn’t in the nursery,
It isn’t in town.
And all sorts of funny thoughts
Run round my head.
It isn’t really
Anywhere!
It’s somewhere else
Instead!

— A.A. Milne

***

For Havana and Vered, quite some time has passed—and they had moved, slowly but surely, from their childhood days into adolescence. With that, of course, came the acquiring of their vampire powers. It was something they had to get used to; for Havana, it felt decently natural. After all, she had always known she’d be a vampire, so nothing had changed much, except that she could now finally *really* call herself one. Had no problem showing her new face to best friend Mauricio, who—admittedly–was a little daunted at first…

But he got used to it just as soon. “I’m officially different like you, now,” Havana had told him. “See? You don’t have to feel lonely now.”

Mauricio couldn’t stop himself from raising an eyebrow at her. “Least you can hide your difference,” he muttered.

Havana shot him a cheeky grin. “True… but you’ll have to admit that my difference would’ve been a bit more scary than yours. Could sooner see humans being accepted for a blue-skinned individual than a yellow-eyed, eyebrow-less, fang-bearing one.”

Mauricio returned her smile. “True.”

***

Vered, in the meantime, had gotten to gaming. He wasn’t as interested as Havana in demonstrating his difference for the world to see. He’d had his few brawls with Havana—which, to both their shock, revealed that between them, Vered was actually the stronger one—

So he knew enough. He wasn’t interested in his powers… not at all. In fact, he might even be a little scared of them. From the moment he’d felt them, he’d felt the irresistability they came with… and Vered, a self-proclaimed control freak by heart, liked nothing less than to not have full control over himself.

And so he took up gaming. Though his father had made it more than clear that he wished he’d just go outside a bit more and find himself some actual—non-pixelated—friends, he did try to humor Vered and would sometimes join him for some games. Liked to believe that he possessed some decent skill, himself…

Nothing that would ever defeat Vered, though.

Although Havana had managed to reach her fair share of popularity at school, she could relate to her brother in the sense that she wasn’t all that interested in forming friendships, either. Believed that most of them would only be fake, at any rate, and she could care less for anything that wasn’t real. That, and she had Mauricio; whom she still liked to spend every minute of her free time with.

Mauricio, she acknowledged as they hung out together at the pool, him never failing to make her laugh, was really all she needed. All she wanted, even. She had zero interest in getting to know anyone else, since she couldn’t see herself ever finding someone better to spend her time with anyway. He was the best she could hope to have. He really was.

***

Even more time had passed for Mara, who had continued to make a career for herself; she was no longer ‘just’ a mad scientist, but a reasonably famous one at that. There was some gossip going around town about how her child wasn’t really her husband’s—how she had somehow fallen in love with an extraterrestrial creature who had granted her this child that looked human, but wasn’t.

They weren’t too far off.

Husband Sergio hadn’t shown many signs of change, ever since the birth of daughter Chaya. He still refused to acknowledge her much, and when he did, it usually wasn’t good; it had gotten to a point where Chaya learned to just not bother him.

But sometimes, like when Sergio used the term ‘abomination’ on her for what felt like the umpteenth time (she didn’t really know what that term meant, but from her mother’s reactions she gathered it wasn’t any good), she’d bother him alright. When one day she responded to his condescending scowl and overt reluctance to take care of her by chomping down on his finger (and hard, she might add), Sergio had officially had enough of her. Could no longer even bother to hide his already very poorly disguised hatred for the child, however young she was; she sure wasn’t innocent, Sergio found.

With the birth of Gioia, who *did* happen to be his biological child, he didn’t really ‘need’ Chaya anymore at any rate—would rather spend his affection on a child that was actually his.

This, of course, didn’t do his relationship with Mara any good. Many a time, Mara found herself wondering why she hadn’t just dumped the guy yet. As for why, there were—unfortunately–several reasons; there were her parents, who had been so happy with the news that she was finally settling down and living the whole civilized, traditional nuclear family life that had always been silently expected of her. There was also the fact that it wasn’t exactly easy to fall out of love with someone you once held so dear, no matter how crappy they may show themselves to be.

The most important factor of all, though, was the fact that through her own upbringing, she had become convinced that any child would always prefer to have two parents, and that every child needed a mother *and* father figure in their lives, and she just didn’t want to take away their father figure. Sergio really wasn’t ALL bad with Chaya—they had their moments. Of course these ‘moments’ only happened when Mara was around and, oblivious to Mara, were more feigned than Mara’s interest in Sergio’s hobby of wine tasting was.

When Sergio tried to convince Mara to hire a nanny, she initially resisted. “We can raise our own children,” she would say. “They want to be with us, and not with some stranger.”

Continued to spend as much time as she could spare with them.

But she had since come around—both she and Sergio were off for work quite a lot… and when Sergio voiced that if they wouldn’t get a nanny they would “just have to give up on our careers,” she realized that she really, really didn’t want to do that. And with them at work, the children would sometimes spend entire days at day care. So they got themselves a nanny… and once they did, Mara found it was becoming more and more easy to spend longer days at work; the threshold for career time and kids time becoming more warped.

Chaya did miss her mother—it was becoming less frequent by the day that she got to actually talk to her and spend time with her—but through this loss she only grew closer to their nanny…

And found she much preferred her company over that of her parents, who would always end up cranky and quarreling over her whenever they were around her.

It was good, though. Chaya really didn’t have that much to complain about; she still had a loving mother and a sister whom she got along beautifully with. Gioia had been interested in Chaya’s alienness from the day she was born; their form of peek a boo had always been Chaya changing in and out of her disguise as Gioia cackled happily.

And their good bond had followed them into childhood.

So, really, Chaya wasn’t unhappy. She realized there were kids out there who could be much, much worse off than she was. She got to live in a beautiful house with a beautiful, sparse landscape around for her to explore and play in, with a beautiful, admirable mother—she always told people she wished to be like her when she grew up, and become a successful scientist of her own rank—and a kindly, more than tolerant little sister. Altogether, things were pretty good.

She didn’t need Sergio. Admittedly, his rejecting her had hurt her just a little…

But she could do just fine without him. At least she still had Mom.

And of course she had her nanny.

***

When Remi and Tori got back together, they decided to do things better this time, and got themselves a house not in Forgotten Hollow, nor Brindleton Bay, but the up and coming Willow Creek—a compromise still better befitting Remi’s wishes, but Tori would take what she could get. She was already more than happy that she and Remi had gotten back together, and things had gone back to how they should be. And their new house was beautiful; even Tori had to admit it was heaps better than her Forgotten Hollow home had been.

After that faithful night, Remi had been honest with Gigi and she had been understanding, and above Remi’s stoutest expectations, they actually managed to have a clean, friendly break-up. Gigi never told him how she had recently been longing back to her much-needed solitude and had been pondering how to break up with him for quite a while, now.

This desire for solitude exluded even son Colt, and although a co-parenting deal was struck, Remi’s place, and his new place with Tori, remained Colt’s home. He was OK with that; although Tori didn’t like him much, she was happy enough to have Remi back with her to tolerate the little guy, fully cognizant of the fact that not accepting him would mean losing Remi.

The most significant—and by far the most difficult—change was for Calo, who had been born and raised in Forgotten Hollow, and didn’t much like to be parted with it… nor, though it had by now been a while, had he liked being parted with Caden, whom he had learned to see as his brother.

Havana and Vered, on the other hand, he never really got to see as siblings. He had never even met Havana, and Vered had only visited him once or twice, both of which times Calo had distanced himself from Vered, trying to wriggle himself out of Vered’s friendly embrace when he’d tried to get to know his little brother.

After that, Vered never really managed to get himself to show more interest in the guy. It wasn’t like Calo ever approached them or showed any signs of needing it. He might have done it, once or twice, back when he was younger, but now… not so much.

Remi had his fair share of struggles with Calo just as well; he had tried so hard to gain a connection with his youngest son, but it proved more than difficult. Even when he was still younger, Calo had already grown to be aloof. But for a moment there, once Calo finally realized Remi was coming back for him, they actually managed to grow closer – and Remi had hope.

But with all these new changes, Calo had changed. After meeting his siblings, he immediately came to realize quite forcibly that he didn’t need them — never had.

He had by now learned to enjoy his own company, and so he really couldn’t care any less for them. It didn’t matter, that he was constantly faced with their close bond, knowing full well he could never hope to become as close with them as they were with each other.

It didn’t matter, that they seemed to hold their parents’ affection much more readily and much more easily.

It didn’t matter, that they felt so much more at home than he did, since this was actually their home, while Calo could never really manage to convince himself that it was.

He had his own two feet to stand on, and even though he acknowledged the fact that he was ‘just a child,’ the fact that he really didn’t need much else only made him feel stronger. He didn’t need anyone else to validate him; he’d validate himself, as Tori had taught him to do.