Drabble # 4
“What have you done?” the older man asked, eyes usually bright from smiling and lined in the corners now shining with tears.
“Please don’t be mad, grandpa,” Mina said gently, reaching out to wipe away one of the wet trails down her grandfather’s lined face.
“Your legs…sweetheart, what have you done? What did you give up? How could you be so reckless?” he lamented, sniffing and making no move to hide his grief and fears from his granddaughter. He pulled off his delicately framed glasses—they were useless anyway with the tears catching in the bottoms of the frames.
“I knew what I was doing. I’m okay,” Mina pleaded again, taking the glasses from him and reaching out to settle them on the table beside the couch, legs motionless beneath her skirts. Her throat was thick with tears, and her hands trembled a bit, but her smile and the set of her face said she was certain.
The old man shook his head, insistent. “You’re not okay, love. You’re not. You were so gifted already—you’ve never been a greedy child, so I don’t understand.”
“This isn’t about greed, grandpa,” Mina said gently, struggling to pull herself closer to her grandfather without the use of her lower body. “I did it for the cause. He will come to us—I know it. He will find his way to us and between your gifts of the mind, and now all of my circles, we can make him more ready than we ever could before.”
The old man paled, all of the color draining from his usually warm cheeks. “ ‘All’ of your circles…?” he asked, lips parting. “You mean you unlocked more than one?” he breathed.
Mina looked down, the corner of her lips turning up. “I unlocked three,” she replied. “I can use all four elemental circles.”
Silence hung in the air, and Mina could tell her grandfather was warring between the two halves of himself. ‘The Professor,” one of the most powerful men in the circle of Mind, the man responsible for successfully unlocking the Knowledge in more people than anyone else—that man was fascinated, bubbling with questions. But the part of himself that was simply Mina’s grandfather; the man who’d almost lost Mina once before, who’d lost so many—that man could only think of how much of a sacrifice such an act would have required.
“Your legs and what else?” he asked, tears he didn’t care to wipe away catching in his beard.
Mina did not look at her grandfather. The smile of her achievement fell from her lips. She’d had no hesitation about what she’d given away for these gifts, and no doubt in her heart, but loss was still loss. “A quarter of my lifespan,” she whispered, wincing as the man choked a sob. “Please don’t grieve,” she pleaded, forcing her gaze up, pushing her mousey black hair behind her ears and taking her grandfather’s hand. “I’m still here, and I’m not going anywhere. We know the prophet will be of age in the next few years. This seems like a tragedy, but it’s a beautiful gift, I promise.”
“I’m sorry, Mina, but I can’t see how this could possibly be a beautiful gift. You cannot walk. You used to dance so wonderfully…” the man frowned.
Watching the man a moment, Mina reached out to the potted plant in on the table beside her, fingertips grazing the edge of the pot. The air around the plant heated up, and the moisture in the air condensed into a little cloud over the pot, rain dribbling down. From the soil beside the plant’s original residence, a new one began to slowly creep out of the dirt, growing at a record pace until it was full and tall. “I can create beautiful things. And I can still dance,” she murmured, pulling the air in a little whirlwind around the plants, making them blow and wave. “I just do it a little differently now.”
The Professor stared at the plant for a long moment before moving to sit beside Mina, wrapping his arms tightly around her. “I just want you to be okay and happy. Please promise me you’re happy. Promise you have no regrets. Yours is not my life to live, but I want to see only joy for you in your life.”
Mina smiled. “This life is beautiful,” she promised. “It doesn’t have to be long to be full and well-lived. I have no regrets.”
