Donare Donum: The Gift Giver's Chronicle

I sat at my plate, picking through the Domilope meat that had long ceased to give me much benefit but was still helpful for recovery. My sisters sat across from me, with Ann animatedly giving mom a recap of her day, gesticulating about how she had beaten the stuffing out of a girl 2 years her senior, with mom smiling and nodding. Hope sat directly across from me, her eyes misted over in thought about something or other.

My father sat at the head of the table to my right, eating with the same steady and silent gusto he always did, watching the ladies talk with a hint of silent mirth. Occasionally, he would also glance at me, then go back to eating enough for 3 men.

“So, did anything interesting happen with you, Steve?”, mom asked, when Ann finally finished her story.

“Nothing much. I won a couple fights, lost a couple. The usual.” The pain of my defeats had simmered to a very dull ache, the meat doing its job in helping me recover.

At this, the whole table was sent into a palpable silence. Hope looked at me with a concern that I saw echoed in my mother. Ann also stared at me, but with a mixture of frustration and sadness. My father practically radiated discontent. I couldn’t bring myself to look at him, so I gazed at mom:

“I’ve been training, even after normal hours. I know the martial forms by heart. I’ve done everything I can. It’s just…”

“Enough,” My father spoke beside me. I slowly, reluctantly, turned to face him. Anger, disappointment, and even determination all flashed through the man’s eyes before he mastered himself and sternly considered me. He put down his fork and knife, before standing up:

“Sorry Corinna, but Stephen and I need to have a talk. We’ll be back soon.”

He began walking to the door and I stood up to follow. Mom looked like she wanted to say something but chose not to. Instead, she looked meaningfully at me with her soft cerulean gaze, as if to communicate that she loved me and that I shouldn’t be too hard on myself.

I walked with my father out of the house, through the light rain that had just begun to subside, and into the training shed next to our house. Our family training shed was even larger than the room that our class trained in within the gymnasium. The cavernous space and solid white walls were cracked and pitted from extra training that the Masons had yet to be called upon to repair. Large training sheds with Gwynstone walls were luxuries that most families couldn’t afford.

I followed him into the shed and closed the door behind us. He was already rounding on me to speak. “Have you given up so soon, my son?” His eyes blazed with anger. “As a boy, you were more talented than any of your peers. I knew you would make me proud. And now-“

“And now all of that has changed.” I shouted, interrupting him. “I don’t have your Strength or Ann’s Agility. I don’t even have Endurance or Sight or anything. I have a massive gray lump that I can’t do anything about. So why even bother yelling?”

As I went on, something unexpected happened. Fathers anger turned from a blazing inferno to a quiet flame, simmering down and being replaced with something else. His craggy face shifted into a simple melancholy. A dagger practically pierced my heart. Anger I could match but what was I supposed to do with sadness?

There was another silence then he spoke, softly:

“I never needed a son who would become the greatest warrior in town. While I would hate for our family to lose the position of Head Family, what I would hate even more is to have a son that gives up on himself.”

The ice that ran through my veins had nothing to do with the cool of the shed in the evening. I opened my mouth to speak but it was his turn to cut me off now.

“If you had just let me finish,” the anger starting to rekindle slightly in his narrowing silver gaze, “then you would have known that I still have hope that you might make me proud. Patriarch or not. Giftless or not. You have a good foundation to make an excellent warrior, given the right circumstances, but I’m talking about more than that.”

He turned his back to me, continuing to talk as he strode to the back of the shed:

“I’m talking about becoming the type of man who can create a home for his family and friends. Who can carve out a place in the world where they can thrive and live long, happy lives.”

I followed him and watched as he stopped, knelt, and thrust his hands into the solid stone ground like it was sand. He pulled and dislodged a large cube of stone that had been set into the ground:

“In order to do that, you are going to have to face a lot of obstacles that many would balk at. You’ll need strength to do that of course but you will need much more than strength. You’ll need courage.”

He set the cube aside and reached down into the hole he had made, pulling out a solid black box around the size of a man’s torso. He turned toward me, totally deadpan now, but with fiery resolve burning in his eyes. “And even more than courage, you’ll need hope.”

Opening the box, he revealed a large golden sphere around half again the size of a man’s head. Within the sphere swirled white-gold clouds, like fish lazily swimming around a small pinprick of white light directly in its center:

“A Lightcore” my father murmured to my unasked question, looking down at it, “the evolution of the Brightpearl Core. They are mostly more legend than fact at this point, as true Brightpearl Cores themselves are hard to come by. I found this one 3 years back in a Hunt where I braved the deeper forest far beyond a wise stopping point. Nearly cost me my life, but I have this to show for it.”

He looked up from it and stared at me with an unearthly intensity, before holding it out:

“It’s yours.”

My own world had started to swirl after staring at the pearl and this announcement hadn’t helped:

“But Dad, what about you? What about Ann?”

He raised his eyebrow:

“I never said that I wanted you to give up on becoming Patriarch, did I? I am strong enough as is and Ann is a woman. She wouldn’t be accepted, no matter how strong willed and tough she can be.”

Slipping into a rare grin, he added:

“The two of us have our own path to travel already, anyways. A Lightcore is said to be able to nurture one’s Giftseed directly, on top of your body. Who knows what it might be able to do for you, especially?”

I reached out and slipped the orb out of the box, gripping it gingerly between my palms and staring again into its murky depths:

“How do I even use this thing?” I muttered.

“Take off your shirt, sit in a meditation position, and hold it up to your heart. Envision your Seed and imagine it steadily pulling at the liquid within.” He instructed, standing up straight and clasping his hands behind his back.

I sat down and did as he instructed, ordering that silently rotating rock to take in every drop. It took a few seconds for anything to happen but eventually I felt a quiet pop as the core practically fixed itself to my chest around my heart. I could feel my Giftseed pulling at it, and I urged the little fellow onwards. I felt the coolness of the liquid being drawn out of the pearl’s hard exterior, through my pores, and into my heart before enveloping the seed in a pale golden sheen.

“Keep going” my father commented, his voice becoming even more gravelly and serious. “Hold onto your focus and let your Gift fulfill its purpose.”

I strained even harder as I watched the liquid start to meld into the seed itself, temporarily turning the exterior gold, before it trembled and pulsed. When it did, my body trembled from the heat that it had pumped all throughout my torso and into my extremities. The golden liquid had been processed and sent out in the form of nutrients to my whole body.

I couldn’t even begin to control it. I just sat there and watched as it pulsed for a second time, a third, and a fourth with the intervals of time between pulses getting shorter and shorter as the movements of my Seed began to match the beats of my heart.

It drew more and more liquid from the pearl to fuel this entire process.

My heart felt like a sun had been born within it and my limbs were tormented with that powerful flame as I fought to maintain my gradually slipping focus. The white-gold clouds within the pearl were also drawn within my body and forced my Seed, and my heart, to begin beating even faster. Dimly, I could hear my father begin to speak again.

“You should be in the clear now. Couldn’t stop it if you tried. Listen, son, hope is a virtue that most people like to make fun of. That’s usually because they mistake it for some kind of banal optimism. But that’s just plain wrong. Hope is what keeps you going when your surrounded by shadows, certain you’ll never see the light of day again. It keeps you moving when the odds are against you, and you think you have no way out. Hold onto hope in those moments and you will realize that light will always shine through that darkness.”

As he spoke, I drew in the last of the liquid and the tiny pinprick of light that had dwelt within the pearl. It passed right through my heart and touched my Gift, and I passed out.