Alethiology in Volterra (Volturi Kings/OC)

16

A/N: you guys, sorry, this is all i got for now. feeling down about it. writer's block sucks.

Chapter XVI: Essence

"There you are."

Altheia paused. Her hand hovering over the spine of the catalogue she'd just shelved, her gaze turned to the direction of the library entryway and landed on the atypical image of her old mentor.

The last she'd seen of him was when she'd handed over her resignation letter from her teaching post at the academe – barely a couple weeks fresh from losing her father, the only anchor that kept her in Campania ashore. She'd said her goodbyes to him over a cup of untouched coffee and a promise to come back when her adventures were done – safe and sound.

Three years. Three whole years away from everything she knew. Now, she had returned. Safe, sound; and yet there was not an ounce of her that felt the same. And yet there he was, across her – a remnant from what felt like time so long ago. Still so constant. So unchanged.

For a stretch of seconds they just stared. Stood.

And then Altheia's lips broke into a wide smile. "Amun!"

The scholar hastily placed the remaining stack of tomes to be sorted aside and headed to the man with an excited shuffle of her feet. Her arms wrapped around Amun's torso in cordial embrace; and Amun was relieved to find no difference in the disposition of his former student towards him, despite the newfound knowledge of his being a...

"Sly dog," Altheia kidded him with light laughter. "I treated you like a nonno and you could lift a tow truck all this time?"

As though he was unaffected by the jab at his age, Amun returned the firmness of her embrace. While his wrinkled facial features and ash white hair coloring did work to his advantage in blending in with the mortal crowd – as a serial pretender supposedly fifty-three years of age – the strength under his feeble appearance undoubtedly surpassed any mortal's a thousand times. There was no need to prove himself in the matter.

"Has travelling diminished your manners?" he sniped instead with a roll of his eyes. After he surveyed the woman from head to toe, "You... have transformed."

Altheia's head tilted. "Oh, I'm still human."

"That's not it."

"No?"

Amun could still remember the state at which his former student departed from Campania. How, from a bright-eyed educator, he'd feared that a daughter's grief would eat her entirely and turn his only mortal mentee into a worthless carcass of emotional rot. Eventually he found confidence in the letters and postcards Altheia sent from her travels, though as sparse as they came. From single-sentence greetings to page-long correspondences, gradually, his bright-eyed Altheia Abrielle returned.

Academically, spiritually, philosophically, practically – Amun raised Altheia. He'd led her to various wells of knowledge and imparted to her his very own tokens of wisdom. He'd watched her grow, shift from one mastery to another, then supported her and pushed her to her limits. Admittedly, had the girl's biological parents not been good people, Amun would have taken her into the Nehesy line and treated her like his own. He would have instilled in her the Mesopotamian virtues and molded her into a woman with prowess rivaling even those of the ancient hemetnetjer – priestess of the gods.

Unfortunately, even as influential as Amun was during her formative years, even though her own abilities caused her exclusion from her peer group most times, Altheia's capacity for affection towards humanity remained unconditional. What she saw, and felt, and learned – she accepted with grace. The girl loved books just as well as she loved thoughts, flaws, and cultures of people. He'd seen Altheia lose herself to music, and laughter, and dance; and what else life wanted to offer her, painful or not, she embraced with open arms.