Omega's Rebirth-Chapter 664: A Blank Canvas ()

I still remember this day quite vividly, it is the morning after a cold and stormy night and dawn has come with the beautiful rays of sunrise and a much needed warmth.

This morning...it boasts of the most beautiful sunrise I have ever witnessed, unmatched even up to this day. And try as I might, I cannot forget it...

I cannot forget how even the eternal darkness that had long taken hold of our world seemed to stay its hold on this day, as though in acknowledgment.

I can still feel the warmth of the sun that graces our skies on my cheeks, banishing all the chills.

The sky is unusually beautiful on this day...too beautiful, I loathed it.

I can still hear my father’s anxious footsteps, pacing this way and that. I do not care much for it, but I would soon come to.

I can still see hear his rushed footsteps hurrying into the room as the travails of a three day long labor finally let my mother free.

And just as vividly, I still remember the very first words that had been said on this day.

My father and mother both seem too stunned to speak, he stands by the bedside while my mother lay weakly on the bed, and those first words had been uttered by the midwife.

’It is a boy, and look at his neck, Lord! Little golden scales!’ She cries out in elation, lifting a carefully wrapped bundle up in much too vivid excitement.

Golden scales... right, that was it. The very first thing that tagged me unworthy before my father even from the moment of birth.

The crooked old woman should have known her place, she should have known better than to speak a word with such delight in her eyes, yet she did... I loathed her.

With the words said, the expression on my father’s face reveals many emotions he does not bother to conceal, delight, gratitude, relief...and what stands out above all else was hope.

Hope...it was a mysterious, powerful emotion. The kind of emotion that kept even the most tormented hopefully for a better dawn.

In the eyes of a man such as my father,it was an emotion that had been dead a long time, up until this moment.

’You did not disappoint me, my love. You have done me proud.’ Father commends my mother.

Disappoint...

Disappoint...?!

’What did his words mean exactly?!’ I wonder.

’Who then was the disappointment?!’

It was a question to which I already know the answer. And because I know the answer to it, I loathed him.

Weak and barely conscious, my mother revealed a smile. She smiled and said not a word against him...but her gaze spoke volumes.

Pride, there was pride in her eyes as she watched her husband hold the little bundle for the first time.

So blinded by her love for him, she finds nothing wrong with a word he has said. She finds no cause to speak up on my behalf, she never did. And once again it appears I am the crazy one... the one who sees my father for what he is.

My mother, my beautiful, beautiful mother...she says not a word on this day, perhaps too weak to utter them, still... I loathed her.

’Come Asrig, come and hold your brother...’ My father finally acknowledges my presence only to beckon me nearer.

And as much as it is the last thing I feel inclined to do, I do walk over and I do hold my hands out and I was gentle with the little bundle when he was placed in my care, weighing barely anything.

I hold him close to my chest, I can feel his little heartbeat against mine, it is steady, it is strong...then his eyes open,

Unusual, yet beautiful eyes, and I swore I should have loathed him at this moment, but for the first time... I did not find everything so absolutely loathsome.

He was precious, yes. He was pure, more than I can ever hope to be... perhaps more than I was even at birth, it surely looked that way from my father’s gaze.

I should not let myself falter, I should not let my eyes meet those eyes... And even if they do, I should just loathe them from the start, because I know at this moment that someday I would.

Instead, I think to myself, he is pure... untouched, unmarred by the darkness that overwhelms our world.

A blank canvas, one could not tell what could be painted on it... and I had a million ideas, a beautiful masterpiece to create, and I hold the bundle even more previously.

Rather than loathing, I can finally feel excitement creeping up my veins, a strange giddy feeling sets me alight, all the possibilities leave me practically shivering in excitement, anticipation...there was not a single word that could on its own describe this feeling.

In the end, when my masterpiece is done, would my father still be able to gaze down at it so lovingly and with such hope? Would my mother still look so proud? Would the midwife still find it just as delightful?

I cannot wait to see... what the future holds for him...

What the future holds for us...

~~~~~~~~~~~

Neveah released a choked gasp, letting the scroll drop from her trembling hands to the table.

A cold shiver of terror ran down her spine as she stared at the scroll and her heart was tightly constricted in pain, aching terribly with each gasp for breath.

Rage unlike anything she had ever felt curled within her, so overwhelming she could barely sit still, and she trembled from head to toe.

Between her gasps, and the wrath within, Neveah could sense her wolf rising to the surface to force a shift. The prickling feeling of fur piercing through her skin and the familiar snapping of her bones had begun without her control.

’What was this feeling?’ Neveah wondered.

Rage? Despair? Helplessness? Or was it all of these and more?

It was one thing to know it and see in Jian’s eyes that he had faced a bitter childhood.

But it was another thing to come to know it so intimately, that from the very moment he came into this world, a dark and painful path had

been carved out for him in the mind of a deranged man...a man that was his own brother.