Winds of Change

How do I even begin to tell you about all that has happened in just the past week?

One week.  Exactly one week ago today, Jake crash-landed into my life and ignited the flame of hope that has quickly spread like wildfire.  I know that many here continue to live on in their mundane lives, but still the people of Earth have sensed a change in the winds.  I watch the police begin frantic searches for the unnamed, neighbors are noticing heightened activity around my family's home when no one is there, and moods in general are shifting.  Perhaps that is the main advantage to working where I do.  I get to monitor the general public's views on the universe.

I am going to effing kill this stupid fly that keeps distracting me from my dramatic prose.

Dramatic prose..... Ten years ago, if you'd told me that I would one day be writing the "Return Speech" for a lost prince of the oldest human civilization in the universe, I would have considered you insane and laughed, then quickly walked away.  But write I have, into a short but hopefully powerful speech that Jake has deemed "perfect".

At times I am glad that we have far bigger issues to focus on rather than the interesting awkwardness that is our relationship.  Four years wondering what I would say to him if I ever had the great gift of seeing him again, and my first word was, "Yessir."  At some point between teaching me how to fight and gazing up at the stars from a country road, to arriving unexpectedly in my new house, Jake has become someone of great influence and authority.  I hear it in his voice, the new way he uses formal language, and I see it in the way he carries himself.  Four years ago if he told me what to do, I laughed in his face and told him to try again and see what happens.  Now....For some reason I find it so easy to just do what he says.  I trust him.  I sort of never thought I'd actually be able to say those words: I trust him.

There exists a wall between us, a wall that was smashed down when we reunited and then quickly raised back up when he told me what had occurred in his life while we were apart.  I cannot fault him for anything, nor do I have the right to feel hurt or betrayed or anything of the sort.  I just....I wasn't allowed to get married or have children thus far.  So I struggle with the reality that he was allowed to do both.  God has His reasons and the main one He has already shared with me, which I in turn shared with Tristan, who is considering the matter carefully.  I pray for Jake every day, as he is still grieving the recent death of his wife that happened in childbirth.  I told him that I am here for him if and when he needs to talk, as I know all too well what it is to grieve the loss of someone you love.  Only difference is, mine came back from the dead.

In everything that has happened within this past week, I am very well aware that there are those in this world, and theirs, who oppose what Jake and I have been doing to help Tristan.  In this one week, I went from being able to survive okay financially to not having anything at all to live off of until September, if I am lucky.  Not too far away, someone tried poisoning Jake's infant son in his sleep.  Again, I am grateful for issues to worry about that are greater than my own, such as praying protection over little Marius and praying for wisdom and insight into all the intrigue.  The fact that I am now so poor and desolate, I'm lucky if I can get assistance from the Food Bank?  Pssshhhhtttt.  Small potatoes.

Tristan's father, the late king of Gora, who I had affectionately and personally known as Nicks, left a message for me that Jake gave in the first few moments we had together again.

"Hope is a flame that with one puff of air, is so easily blown out and snuffed.  But build a wall around it, protect that flame, and no one can take it from you."

There is a change in the winds, and I am guarding the flame of hope within me that may very well ignite a wildfire on Earth.