Come Love A Stranger

Thirty six

“I-I do not understand, how can I bear the same name all over again?” Mariah asked, the impossibility of what he said shocking her more.
Alador smiled why caressing her face, “I just told you how Sheila gets you to give her the same name over and over?”
Mariah furrowed her brows then, “Sheila gets my parents to give me the same name?”
“Not Sheila this time, me,” he revealed.
“What?”
“Mariah, I can hear thoughts and I can speak to anyone telepathically.”
Mariah opened her mouth to speak but no words came out, she blinked again and again and then opened her mouth once more, “I noticed that with Ilayas, your mother and Bamushka.”
“All gods can hear human thoughts, it’s what we are blessed with so that we can be able to identify the evil ones and to get them out before they do something more tragic, the best way to know a human’s personality is their thoughts, that is the place that they don’t filter. The place they can be themselves and you can see their true intention.”
“So you can always hear my thoughts?”
“Aye, that was why I know some things even if you refuse to tell and also why I react to some if t’s something I cannot endure.”
“Like that day in the forest that I thought you didn’t want to hold me because you don’t want me anymore,” she recalled.
“Aye, and you can remember how I reacted right?” Mariah chuckled at that, “think about that, the very woman I have waited for three hundred years and then I would not want her anymore?”
“Three hundred years?” She asked in shock.
Alador nodded, “aye, this reincarnation is the longest you have taken. The first one, you took one hundred years to reincarnate, the second you took fifty years, the third you took a hundred and fifty and the fourth and fifth, you took two hundred years each and then this last one took you three hundred, the longest ever and I remembered I even panicked, thinking that maybe the Hackeries decided to trap your soul on the fifth kill rather than the sixth.”
Mariah heaved a deep sigh and snug deeper into his arms, “how do you used to know when I am reincarnated?”
“On the day of birth,” he tucked her hair behind her ear, “I used to feel it deep in my heart and my mating mark would sting, and then I would start searching for a woman giving birth. I used to bump into a lot but I would always know they are not the one and so I would keep searching till I finally find her,” he closed his eyes, “then I would watch her, stay by her side and help her by taking away the pain.”
“What? She doesn’t see you? And the midwives as well?”
“No, the midwives do not and sometimes your mother would but I always make it seem like a dream to them.”
“How do you take the pain away?”
“The way I did that day you were having a headache, I would pass the energy to them and I would take the pain upon myself.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Because no one deserve to be in pain for you but me, t’s my responsibility,” he smiled, “you were always so beautiful, nothing different and you always grow up to look the same,” he chuckled, “I will always be with you from then on, watching over you while you slept, helping up when you fall and sometimes, making things go your way that your parents would be surprised. I often spoil you,” he laughed softly, “the day of your birth, while your father thinks of the name to give you, I put Mariah in his thought and that of your mother and at the end, they would both agree to it.”
“Alador,” she called with a soft giggle and he laughed.
“The first time I met you, it was my hundredth birthday and my father believed I have come of age to look after the forest without his supervision. I had gone to check on the animals and the trees on my own, loving the forest smell as I always do and the birds songs but then I heard a soft whimper and I followed the sound to a tree trunk where a little girl of six was crying. From her thought I picked up she was lost and I felt so bad for her but when I approached her and she looked up at me and I looked into her emerald green eyes, I lost my heart and from nowhere, the force to protect her, to make sure she was always happy and that nothing happened to her suddenly overwhelmed me and I felt dizzy and right after that, I felt a burning pain on my neck, that was when I got this, the only wound on my body that never heals,” he turned his neck to her and pushed off his silky hair to reveal a small burnt mark in form of a heart.
Mariah touched it but he didn’t flinch in pain, rather he trembled, “what is it?”
“T’s the mating mark, I was not so sure about it that day until I got home. All I know was that after going through the burning pain, I noticed you were not scared of me, rather you watched me in fascination, I even read from your mind that you thought I was beautiful,” he smiled, “I talked softly to you and you told me you were playing with friends but you did not know when you wandered far into the forest and now you do not know your way home. I offered to take you and home and it was the first time I saw the cottage. It was where you lived then.”
“The cottage? The one we were banished in?” Mariah was surprised.
“Aye, your first father built it with his own hands,” he revealed, “it had been very beautiful and there was no place you loved more than there. I had gone home that day telling my mother about you and it was in my zeal of telling her about it all that she saw the mark on my neck and that was when I knew what it was. Ever since that day, I cannot stay away from you, I used to be the most loved and obedient god but I could not listen to my parents from then on, they wanted me to marry Bamushka and if I had not met you, I may have agreed to it but they had to tell me the day after I have seen you. Everyone became angry with me then but I do not care, all I knew was that, I would come to the edge of the forest to watch you play in the cottage and not long, you started coming to me, whenever you see me, you would run to me and I stayed with you till you were fourteen. That was the day I confessed to you and you the same,” he stared at her then, at a part on her neck and softy caressed it, “you have had the same experience with me, the mark appeared on your neck as well but…” he sighed, “that was also the day my father released the hackeries and I had to watch you…” he closed his eyes, letting out air through the mouth.
“I had been so angry with him, I could not forgive him and I told him I would not. After your death, your mother had been so broken, you were all she had and she took her life. I would have saved her but I came a minute too late, I did not know she would do that, I was not connected with her otherwise I would have felt it but when I finally did, I teleported there but she was gone. Your father could not handle losing the two women in his life at the same span of time so he did the same and after their deaths, people feared the cottage, believing it was the forest beast that hypnotized them to do that and no one agreed to live in it ever.”