Free The Awakening by Gary Alan Wassner Page A

inadequate to the task. It struck her suddenly that perhaps she should turn around now and escape without going any further. But she quickly relegated that cowardly thought to the deep recesses of her mind.
    In the near distance she heard a humming sound, but she could not discern exactly where it was coming from. She continued to walk cautiously forward until she saw, to her great relief, a man crouched upon a woven mat on the ground before the trunk of the massive tree. His image almost escaped her completely, dwarfed as it was by the sheer magnitude of the tree’s breadth. But the sound drew her eyes to it and she was guided by the harmonious cadences. Crea lifted his head and gazed in her direction. Alemar immediately felt as if she was intruding and all of her doubts surfaced at once, causing her to blush from head to toe.
    “Do not fear, Alemar,” the hunching man said. “You are welcome here.”
    She was so relieved to hear that, after all the hours she spent anticipating how she would deal with the rejection that she was certain would come.
    Crea stood up slowly and brushed the clinging leaves and grass off of his silver-hued cloak. His long auburn hair hung in soft waves over his broad shoulders. A belt of woven reeds secured his grey tunic and upon his feet he wore boots of supple suede. In the sunlight she saw his aqua-blue eyes glint and sparkle, and they caused her to drop her gaze humbly to the ground in fear of having them catch her own. The words she had planned to speak were momentarily lost to her and she found herself unable to utter anything. She wished only to turn and run back to the city.
    “Why do you look so uncomfortable? Have I not said that you are welcome?” His voice was riddled with confusion.
    In fear of insulting him any further, she gathered her wits about her and finally spoke. “Thank you, Crea,” she said, the words barely escaped her mouth in an intelligible fashion, dry as it was. “I was unsure as to whether or not you would allow me to approach you.”
    “Why is that? Do you think I am that aloof and untouchable?” he asked, disappointed by the thought.
    “It is just that I have never done so before and you have never really convened with my people. I have always assumed that you preferred to remain distant from us.”
    “It is not a preference Alemar, as you suspect. It is a necessity,” he responded. “I have walked a path chosen for me, not one that I chose myself.”
    “Has it not been of your own free will that you wear the mantle of a Chosen?” she questioned, astounded by his revelation.
    “Free will? And what may that be? Do any of us really choose our destiny? You may think that you decide among various options but in fact, what is was meant to be. You have very little choice,” he responded.
    “Yes, the fabric weaves of its own will. I understand that, Crea. But regardless I see the need to make choices, to decide to do something or to do nothing. I have decided to come here to talk to you and to learn from you. Are you saying that I did not make that decision on my own?”
    “On your own? Do you mean to say that no one else influenced you, or that no other circumstances compelled you to come here? Do you mean to say that everything around you does not affect how you behave and how you feel? No, my dear, we are all obliged to do what we do in conjunction with all that is around us and with everything that occurs even in the remotest of places.”
    “Can we not embrace our decisions regardless, Crea? Even if destiny brings me here to face you and Wayfair, I am here because I want to be nonetheless.”
    Alemar was listening carefully to every word, and she believed that even in this brief discourse she could garner some meaning that might guide her in the future.
    “I thought that I was fated to be Chosen,” she suddenly revealed, surprising even herself with the utterance. “I so desperately wanted to be you, to be the one favored by Wayfair. My whole