Journey of an Einherji - The Sword of Summer

Congratulations! You're dead

I know what you must be thinking.

<<Bruno you can'te be dead. You couldn't be telling the story if you were.>>

Thanks for the concern.

But I was dead. Plain and simple.

Not really, I wasn't fully dead, despite having broken ribs, perfored lungs, a dislocated shoulder and impaled through the chest. I wasn't completly dead.

Have you ever been dreaming and you know you're in a dream, yet you can't change any of it? That happened after I died.

I was sitting in the backyard from my home, in Argentina, but I looked like I was eight. I was playing absentmindly with a few very small rocks I had found, staring at the grass when two pairs of legs blocked my view. My dad and my mum.

My mum was called Catalina Gómez, she was a rather short woman with blonde hair and a round face with green eyes. Her face always seemed to be sour. but she radiated the warm all mothers have. My dad was Pablo Sazzione, he was a tall man, grey hair with some white and a well kept beard and brown eyes mixed with blue. He was always in a rush, even when he was relaxed his eyes showed that his brain was working non-stop and had a kind of humour that always made me laugh.

They sat next to me and without a word watched me play with rocks and then, they spoke words that would change me.

"Son" - my dad started, he swallowed a lump on his throat - "Your mother and I had decided to tell you something. The truth".

"The truth?"

"Yes, sweetheart.  truth we didn't wanted to tell you because we were afraid". - said my mum as she put a hand on my back - "Do know that this doesn't change how we see you, what we think of you. We love you".

"We always will". - said my dad with a warm smile.

"What is ist?" - I asked. I was a bit afraid - "Did I do something wrong"?

"No, you did nothing wrong honey" - my mum's face changed to one of concern.

I wanted to change this, I knew it wasn't a dream, it was a memory I didn't liked.

My dad looked at me and with a deep breath he said.

"We need to tell you the truth about your father. Your biological father".

I looked at him without understanding and they explained. How my dad wasn't my biolgical father, but my mum was my real mother. How before she met my dad, she met another man, that she and this man dated for a year. How my mum was happy, how she learned the news that I was pregnant and how the man had left shortly after I was born. That he said he didn't had a choice, that he had to travel north because of his work and how he never called and never returned. How my mum met Pablo and how they started dating until they got married three years after I was born.

After that conversation I didn't know what to think. Was it wise to say that to kid? Yes, i think it was, it allowed me to understand, to thinks things through and to realise that I didn't care about my biological father. It took me a few years to see that my dad, Pablo, was my real father and that I didn't have anything against him or my mum. Sure, at first I was angry I hadn't been told sooner, but I was a kid and as I got older I understood.

I didn't care about my biological father, even though my mum had told me how he looked like, that he was a good man, kind, how he really loved me. I didn't care, if he had left the most wonderful woman I had ever met, he was a fool.

I never looked for him, I was happy with my family.

The dream changed. I was in a cave, a man was there. He was dressed like he was going for a run, his long hair was red, blonde and brown, depending on where you looked. He had it unkempt like he had woken up recently and his face was attractive, like the models who were in perfume advertisements, but his face was filled with scars. The skin of the bridge of his nose and his cheeks were burned, like the impacts on the moon surface. His lips were filled with lines, like water had been there, as if water left any marks. His hands and legs were tied to some strange looking red chains.