A Big Shiny Blue Marble Ch. 02

The boy laughed as he nodded.

"Then you know that she's somebody that I fear," he grinned, "How crazy do you think I am, huh?"

It brought the desired response and they laughed about it and joked over it all the way back.

Over breakfast, Rachel explained that the adults had obviously been a pair a long time ago, since Sariel was the result and that they'd decided to get back together. "I never thought that something like this would ever happen," she said, "at best, I thought that one day, we might leave to live somewhere else a little closer to people. I thought that if I was really lucky I might find a boyfriend, but then you and I would both have to be so careful that he never found out what we also are.

But your father is the same as us, Sariel, so we don't have to hide anything." She looked at Azrael a little pointedly, "Especially since he was ready to just toss a lightning ball around in the meadow."

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Over the next week or so, Rachel healed almost completely, though she was just getting back to really feeling like her old self. With Azrael around, she found that her heart now had the ability to step out from the purely defensive mindset that she'd unconsciously adopted from living in a remote place alone with a boy and always having to worry. She wasn't a weak person by her nature, but living there had caused the two of them to live more like fearful mice, always wondering who might be coming up the hillside.

Now she was happy, and though she'd had a concern about how her two boys would find their roles as father and son at the outset, she'd seen that it had been groundless. Sariel had just seemed to take to his father in an instant, and Rachel now had the time to devote to regaining the abilities that had begun to wither in her from lack of use. Just a little more time, and she planned to speak to Azrael about beginning to teach their son how to use whatever he'd been given. It was time for him to learn more about whatever he had and how to use it. He could fly well, but other than a few simple things, he knew little of what he might have inside him.

As far as the two adults went, it was as though they'd never been apart. They just fit together, smiling and laughing, trying their best for each other and wanting to make up for all of the lost time. The difference was that they had been apart, and each one had changed in little ways so that even though they'd been so close in the past, they were now finding that there were enough of these little changes to make it seem as though there was an element of newness to the relationship that they both enjoyed. It was a little like falling all over again.

It came as a bit of a moment when she was talking to her son, telling him that while things might be a little different now, she still loved him so much. She noticed that while she had a slight fear that Sariel might have had an objection or a worry or two, that didn't seem to be the case at all. He was standing with her and listening, but he was looking out of the window, watching as Azrael worked at stretching out the hide of a mountain sheep so that one of them would have something warm to wear later in the year.

"You know," she said with a little smirk, "I thought that you might have a bit of trouble with Azrael and I being back together again. You never knew him. I was a little worried. You are listening, aren't you?"

"Hmm," he nodded as he watched Azreal work, seeing the wings, the horns and the tail, so very like his own. Mostly, he was a little fascinated with his father's size and the strength which came from the muscles on his body. "He's my father and I like him a lot," Sariel said quietly, "I know he loves me. I can tell. Will I look like him one day when I grow up?"

Rachel wanted to laugh. She'd been worried, and Sariel was more interested in something much more basic to a little boy's mind. "Well," she smiled, "You already do look like him, just smaller because you're seven. But yes, I imagine that when you're all grown up, you'll look like him, and you'll be just as handsome. You already are, you know."

"Just handsome as a kid, right?" he asked as he looked up.

"Just as handsome as a kid can be," she smiled.

"That's good," he said as he walked to the door to see if he could help.

Rachel grinned to herself as she watched the two of them, her men at work, she supposed.

She thought back to the previous evening when Azrael had taught his son that he didn't always need to have to stop if he had a sudden need to adopt his more human form.

"It can be a problem then, can't it?" he'd smiled, "What do you do, if you're here like that, and you hear humans coming up the hill? What if you're too far away to change so that you look like them and are nowhere near your human clothes? They lose their minds to see us as we are like this, and they always wear clothes unless they're washing. So what do you do then, son?"

Sariel had thought about it for a moment, "I always just hide in the woods. There's nothing else that I can do then."

Azrael grinned at his son's expression as he'd stared, seeing his father as a human and wearing clothing in an instant. "How did you -- "

That was when Azrael began to teach the boy something very useful for what they were, how to create the illusion of clothing out of thin air. "They sure won't keep you warm on a cold day, but you won't have to hide in the forest then."

Sariel's first attempts had been a little torture to his parents, not wanting to laugh, but other than one particularly funny case where he'd forgotten about his tail, the boy had it in a few minutes.

"I can't believe that I forgot about showing him that," Rachel said later, long after Sariel was asleep.

"I understand why, Rachel," Azrael whispered as he got to his knees in their bed and she lifted her legs for him. They groaned quietly as he entered her again and they smiled at each other. "You only forgot that he'd reached an age where it was possible for him to do it. You've had your hands full for so long just trying to keep the two of you alive up here."

"I suppose," she sighed as he began to thrust slowly, "but right now, it's not my hand that's full." She raised her legs a little higher and he pulled her a bit closer as though she weighed nothing.

"I love you," he whispered.

"And I love you," she smiled, and she reached up to touch his chest.