Page 175 of Seer Prophet

Something about the absurdity of that made me snort a laugh.

When I did, he laughed too, but when I looked up, he was crying again.

I glimpsed the intensity of his grief, and that time, I closed my eyes, looking away.

I was wiping my face with the back of my hand when I realized Revik and the woman weren’t talking anymore. Instead, I could feel both of them looking at me, worry rippling in different currents off both their lights.

Then Kali reached for me tentatively, clasping my other arm, the one her husband wasn’t holding, the one Revik had been stroking with his fingers.

“I hope you will not be angry with Revik,” she said to me, in English.

Somehow, in all of that, the main thing I noticed was that she had a perfect, West Coast, American accent.

She could have been from California.

“I hope you know I made him vow his silence to me,” she added. “I made him vow not to tell you that he and I had met… or anything about who I am. Or about your father.”

I nodded, but I didn’t look at Revik.

Revik still gripped the hand attached to the arm Kali held.

All three of them held me now, even as all three of them wrapped me in their light, as if afraid I might explode. Or disappear, maybe.

Or run away.

“Run away, yes,” Kali said, smiling tentatively as she wiped her eyes. She clasped my forearm tighter, using both of her hands. “I think that is probably more accurate… more than exploding.”

I just looked at her, numb.

I knew I hadn’t said much. I didn’t know what they expected me to say.

You don’t have to say anything,Uye sent, his thoughts firm.

You really do not,Kali added, gripping me tighter in her long fingers.

Only Revik remained silent.

Somehow, it was harder to look at him or to feel anything from him than it was with these two seers I knew but didn’t know.

I could feel Kali wanting to tell me things.

I felt pieces of that in her light, images of her and Uye in the periphery of my vision. I felt them watching feeds with my face in them. I felt them watching me from the Barrier and working with infiltrators. I felt them meeting with Vash in Asia, even as Revik watched over me on the other side of the world.

I felt them before that, walking a beach I recognized from my own childhood. I saw the boardwalk in Santa Cruz and a long pier where they gazed out at the ocean. Somehow, feeling them there, even just in that bare glimpse, choked off my breath a second time.

The image whispered away.

It disappeared into the darkness behind my eyes.

They’d been close.

All that time, they’d been so close, but they’d never come near me.

I could feel them wanting to explain that, too. I felt the inadequacy of words, mostly from my father. I felt him wanting to try anyway.

But somehow, it wasn’t him I wanted the explanation from.

It was her.

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