Must the Flowers Die

Chapter 11: It Begins

Alex cursed himself as he stalked into the woods. What did he expect? That Mia was just going to be there when finally he became available? He wasn't even sure he was available. He convinced himself he would be free from family obligations once Olympus destructed, but that was pure speculation.

Once again, Alex raged against his family's lot. They were sorceresses, witches, warlocks, humans who had powers and knowledge to manipulate the world beyond conventional physics. They were the ones who exiled the Olympians back to their world.

He had heard this story ad nauseum since he was a child, lest he forgot. Before the Olympians, his ancestors watched over a balanced world. They were the intermediaries between humans, nymphs, and nature, calibrating to make sure no one thing became dominant. Then the Olympians showed up, and they destroyed the balance. They could not countenance the sorceresses' competing powers and influence, and so they initiated a genocide, until his ancestors were a pitiful group of refugees who supplicated themselves to save the few who were left. The sorceresses never recovered after that. Their powers were greatly diminished, and the era of gods and humans began.

Well, the bastards should have finished the job. When Apollo lusted after the sorceresses' favorite daughter Aina, and she rejected him because she just wasn't interested in anyone with a penis, he did what he always did. He punished her for her insolence. He drowned her and made sure her body flowed past the Dover cliffs, the power source of her lover Albion. The matriarch of the sorceresses, Briana, and Albion both went crazy – burn-it-all-down bananas. Facing annihilation, and against overwhelming odds, they managed to corral all the sorceresses into performing a hail-Mary and untried spell to kick the gods out of Earth. Alex still could not believe to this day that Briana was willing to risk the complete and total destruction of the sorceresses.

Amazingly, it worked, but the sorceresses had been living with the burden since. The spell required constant renewal, drawing on the powers of all the offspring of the sorceresses. There was an allowable range of about two hundred to three hundred miles, with the boost given by the selenite cave they harness as a power source, but if any member of the family strayed outside that range, the spell became unstable and took a physical toll on all. It meant no one could stray far from the tribe for very long. No vacations to France, no careers requiring traveling, no moving to New York, no exploration of the Himalayans. They were stuck, unless the whole tribe decided to up and move.

There was another major limitation. A few generations ago, the Elders were progressive, and as a result, some of his ancestors branched out and married non-sorceresses. All hell broke loose. The half-sorceress offspring couldn't handle the strain of the spell, and they all went insane, some grotesquely and violently. So the Elders put an end to that.

Some in his family appeared to enjoy the restrictions. It meant not having to wonder, to search, to decide. Their paths were set. To Alex, it was claustrophobically suffocating.

Especially after he met Mia.

Well, not right when he met her; they were barely potty-trained. But when they actually became real people. She was a dreamer, an adventurer, and an outsider. Piston was never going to keep her. Slowly and surely, she hooked him into her plans, even though he knew they were unattainable. For him. She was going to accomplish everything she set her mind to. She did it on purpose - weaving this web of excitement and anticipation and hope around him - because she wanted a fellow traveler and because she couldn't fathom why he would stay. He let her, despite his vocal assertions that he wanted to stay close to his family, because that unattainable dream made his life a bit more bearable.

And slowly and surely, his feelings for her became something more. Alex used to love girls. It was undeniably fun, a bright spot. But at some point in the past year or so, he began finding his amorous liaisons tedious. When he was out with his date, he kept wanting to cut it short to hang out with Mia. Even hooking up, which had hereunto been one of the highlights of his existence, soured. In the middle of caressing Lisa Pummel's voluminous and so-soft breasts, he found himself envisioning Mia's long legs and trim waist. In reality, his legs were tangled with Jessica Eisenberg's, but his mind kept wandering to Mia's perfect, bow-shaped lips and her side boob in her bikini. Alex was fully aware of how much of a jackass this made him. He had no desire to react this way. He was perfectly content to frolic lightheartedly with Lisa and Jessica and Tory. Yet his body and mind betrayed him. By the Moon, it was confusing.