They sat quietly and Mona tried not to make eye contact over their mugs of coffee. The cafe continued to bustle and pulse around them, unaffected by their awkward auras. She tried to allow the toasty mug to warm her palms and relax the tension in her shoulders. She tried to let the aroma of the smooth dark roast, soothe the anxiety in the pit of her stomach.

How had her day turned into this...whatever this was? There was still the ghostly feeling of rope that had been around her wrists about an hour ago. This encounter had already progressed from a chance meeting to a near death experience, to a kidnapping and then to a pseudo coffee date. What was the next direction it would turn? She forced herself to look at him but it seemed difficult to start at his face. She began at his hands, wrapped around his mug and resting on the table only a few inches from hers. They looked soft and smooth but she still remembered how they had felt against her arms and the strength behind them when they had effortlessly lifted her from the ground in one swift movement. They had felt rough when moving hair away from her face as he'd been trying to clean the abrasion on her scalp. The difference in appearance confused her but confusion was better than fear. So, she tried to let herself sink into it. It was almost as though, now that they were in a more public (and seemingly safer) environment, her body was allowing her to feel the full fear that it had thought a luxury when she was bound in the dark. 

There was a creamy caramel color to his skin and perhaps it was this that made his hands appear velvety and enticing. She realized that she had been easing her hands (though still wrapped around the comforting warmth of her coffee) slowly closer to his. She immediately flinched and took a sip to try to hide the reaction.

Why had his presence not affected her this way in the cave? Is it really a little sunlight that is making all the difference? She sipped with her eyes closed, trying to regain her composure. When she opened them again, she had forgotten to look down and was left staring into eyes that trumped the enticing nature of his hands by a laughable amount. The alluring chocolate brown made her mouth water and her tongue felt thick and heavy. She fought to close her mouth but couldn't make herself look away. They had seemed black and intimidating in the low light of the cave but she now realized that there was also more than just brown to their color.

There was a crisp black ring around the outer edge of his iris and a soft burst of deep rich honey gold that seemed to backlight his pupil. She had never seen eyes like this before and again...there was that pull. She couldn't help herself. Her hand began to move without her knowledge. So, that when it came into her field of view (reaching for his face), it startled her. She gasped and them immediately began coughing; choking on her own surprise. She couldn't stop coughing and her eyes began to water. A warm hand was suddenly cradling her face and brushing a tear away with a thumb.

She felt a tightness in her stomach and she struggled with the urge to look up. The coughing stopped and she held her breath...trying not to move...giving him nothing...no fear, no signs of anything...or so she thought.

"You're going to have to breathe eventually." he murmured as he leaned close enough to not be heard over the random cafe noise.

She made the mistake of letting her eyes drift up to where the velvety voice came from. When her eyes naturally stopped at his lips, she realized that she was breathing again as a soft sigh escaped her. She swallowed the growing lump of fear and confusion that was wedged in her throat and met his gaze again. He let his hand drop to the table and what appeared to be a concerned look melted away to an unreadable mask of handsome.

"I need to know what's going to happen to me," she managed to stammer.

"That depends on if you come willingly or not," he whispered before he leaned back and started sipping his coffee again...as if their conversation was completely normal.

"If I say yes, then what?" Her brain did a slow blink...'what did I just say? Why am I half agreeing with almost no information?' She nervously fidgeted with her napkin, tearing it to shreds under the table, anxious and confused.

Darric's honeyed voice was soft and calm as he spoke. "Then I will take you to our home and you will learn who you really are from our mother."

She stopped breathing again as she tried to process what he had just said. "Wait...our.... we're...what...who?" She had to look away to try to concentrate. "My mother DIED...two years ago. What the hell are you trying to say?" She felt the tears start to build and her throat ached from the shout.

Mona had never said those words aloud before. She had always thought it would be easier to move past the loss if she never admitted that her mother was really gone. The anxiety and emotions, of the current situation, made the statement feel like a knife to her stomach. Her hands started shaking and she felt dizzy. She clenched her fists and fought to look up again. Everyone within twenty feet was staring at her.

"If you would please keep your voice down,'' he whispered. "It is not what you think. However, this is not the place for me to explain in detail." He sighed and softly added, "I am truly sorry about my choice of words. I did not know that you had suffered such a loss. Please forgive me."

She felt the knot, between her shoulder blades, begin to loosen and she realized that she was breathing normally for the first time since they had sat down. Her pulse had slowed and, as she wiped her clammy hands on denim clad thighs, she could feel even more tension slip away. "How long have I been gone? What day is this? What time?" Those three short questions gave her a pillar to lean against. She was regaining her strength.

"It has not been but a few hours." He glanced down at his watch, which made her eyes move with his. The strap looked like leather. It was a deep cherry red and seemed like it would be incredibly soft to the touch. The case looked like wood and the gears were exposed on the face. "It is almost five PM now." He noticed her attention on his hands and continued with, "Have you seen a watch like this before? It is made by our people."

"No. I was just admiring it." She studied his face (trying not to linger on any one feature for too long) to get a read on him. "How long was I unconscious?" Good! Her voice held no fear. It was cool and calm.

"No more than one- and one-half hours." He re-filled his cup from the thermal pot on the table. She stared down at the deep, rich, aromatic liquid in her own cup, and tried to decide how to proceed.

"Why don't I remember much before the car? The last thing I recall was stepping out of the library. I can't recall the walk or the events leading up to it." He stiffened a little and cleared his throat. If she was not mistaken, he almost looked nervous.

"You did hit your head, perhaps that is attributed to the injury. However, I do not believe it would be wise to continue much more of the conversation where there are so many ears nearby unless we lower our voices and remain calm."

"No, I'm not going to feel like I can even walk out of this place with you if I don't understand some of what is going on." She realized that her hands were flat on the table and she had half stood, as she spoke, to lean over...closer to him.

"Okay, but please...lower your voice. I will tell you some...but after I do, and you understand enough, we have to either continue elsewhere, or you need to agree to come willingly." His face was soft but still unreadable.

"Alright, start talking." She did a pretty good job of keeping the lingering anxiety out of her voice.

"When I said 'our mother', I did not mean that she gave birth to either of us." he paused for a moment. "I mean the mother of our line. Our fountainhead." He leaned in and laid a hand softly over hers. "She will teach you about your magic."

Mona's mouth felt dry as she exhaled. The words dropped to the pit of her stomach. After a moment of blankly staring at the man across from her, she remembered how to speak. She leaned closer and whispered in such a low tone that she almost didn't even heard the words come out. "My magic?" she made it sound like a question.

She felt the warmth of where his hand had rested when he pulled away. "I will not say anymore in this place. I am forbidden to say much more than this anyway. It would be best, if you have many questions, that we visit our mother. I will be of little use to you...at least in this capacity." He smirked again at the last bit.

Her head was stuck somewhere between feeling like it was going to burst or shrivel down into her neck. She blinked and let out a long sigh. That felt better...like it deflated her brain a little and made it easier to think. "How long will it take to get there? How far is it from here?" There were so many more questions but those two had won the race to the exit.

"If we leave now, we could be there by tomorrow morning." He sipped his coffee as if this conversation was one that he had every other day.

She felt as if every sentence that he had said, for the past hour, was like a brick being placed on top of her brain and now it was squished down to the size of a magazine...ceasing to be of any use to her. The part that controlled speech must've already burst because when she opened her mouth to try to respond, a tiny squeak was all that she could produce.

His eyes crinkled a little around the edges when he grinned at the noise and said "You do not have to come with me, I have done all I am permitted to try to persuade you." He lowered his volume, tone, and leaned in to continue. "I took you to a place to let you feel raw earth magic and hoped that when you woke there, you would feel it in your bones. I restrained you in case the magic overtook you and you could not control yourself. I had hoped that I would not have to explain much more than I already have because you would feel the truth in my words...from our connection. I will take this last moment to plead with you to take this journey with me. You are an important piece of the future for a lot of people and I really hope that you will at least give me the chance to introduce you to some of them."

She found herself staring at his mouth again. Her eyes lazily traced the plump outline of his bottom lip and she only snapped out of it when she realized that she had just licked her own lips. "This is crazy...I'm crazy right?" She chuckled and half whimpered before replying, "What am I doing? ...Let's go!"