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| Details |
| Author: | Saaron |
| Summary: | Therald is invited to the Spellbond's mansion, as Sandy has a few things he must announce to him and his mother. |
| Rating: | T for Teen |
Chain: Prompt Responses
Therald knocks on the door of the Spellbond’s mansion, in the Cathedral District. He’s wearing his most formal attire; a simple white shirt, ill-fitting black pants with suspenders, and old brown shoes. The whole look doesn’t look like anything special or expensive, but it’s at least clear the guard takes good care of the few clothes.
The door opens, and an unknown middle-aged woman, wearing a perfectly tailored suit appears in front of him, bowing. Therald visibly shrinks down at the sight of a new person. “Welcome, Mr. Oakley. Please, come in,” she moves out of the way. Her moves are precise and fast as if she’d repeated them for years (which she probably did). Therald silently nods and takes his first few steps inside. He looks around at the entrance. “So, you’re… Sandy’s mom?” he asks.
The butler clearly stifles a laugh, her cheeks puffing up for a second. It takes her a moment to answer. “No, sir, my name is Florendine. I’m the Spellbond family’s butler, at your service.” She bows once again. “Please, Mr. Gausanders and Lady Spellbond are awaiting your arrival in the living room.” She extends her arm and guides him towards his hosts.
As Therald enters the room, the first thing he notices is the black woman in a purple dress, sitting on a couch and raising an eyebrow at him. He shrinks down even more than when he met the butler. He’d have disappeared if he could. The second thing he sees is Sandy, standing there, looking out the window.
“Hello… Mr. Oakley?” She looks at him, her eyebrow still raised as Sandy finally turns around. He doesn’t seem as happy as he usually is. They regularly meet, but he’s never looked as exhausted as he does now. “Sandy? Can I talk to you for a minute? Will you excuse us, Mr. Oakley?”
Both men nod. She can do anything as long as she stops looking at him the way she does. The Spellbonds move to the next room. Clearly, Ekorenine overestimates her wall’s soundproofing. “Why are you bringing this man home?” Therald stands where he was, clearly not trying to eavesdrop but also, he can’t do anything than hear what she says. He can’t quite catch Sandy’s answers, though. “Are you setting me up? Or maybe… Listen if anything happened with Gwenivene, that is none of my business, but trust me, I am speaking from experience, these things never work out with an older man, I tr—” Therald clearly hears his son this time. “EWW, MOM!”
Their conversation seems to be cut short as Sandy storms back inside the living room, quickly followed by his mother.
“So, let’s start with the… easier thing to announce, I guess. I’ve got a few things to say today.” Ekorenine bites her lower lips, gesturing towards Florendine to bring glasses of wine for her and her guest as she sits down on one of the couches. Therald still hasn’t moved from the doorframe. “Mom, this is…” She’s the one who takes a deep breath, bracing herself. “This is my dad. I’ve been looking into who my birth parents were and… I found dad.”
Therald’s body rotates ever-so-slightly towards the front door, ready to take off if the mage decides that he’s not welcome anymore. Ekorenine takes a few seconds to react though. She stares at Sandy, silent. She breathes in loudly, as if about to speak, but words don’t come out of her mouth yet. The guard waits for her reaction, but he knows her silence speaks loudly… but at least not as loud as the spells she could be casting at him could have been. Ekorenine finally speaks. “Well… as I’ve always said, there’s always one more seat available at the table during our family reunions,” she turns to Therald, a smile on her face. “A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Oakley. I apologize for my… coldness earlier, I just… my mind ran wild,” she chuckles. “Must be all these romance novels I read.”
Therald nods his head. “No worries, Mrs.—Lady Spellbond. A pleasure to meet you too.” Therald looks at her smile. There’s something wrong. He doesn’t feel any anger coming from it, but a complex array of emotions emanates from that smiling face. Maybe she’s happy. Maybe she’s sad. Maybe she’s both! Therald feels like she’s glad Sandy is unearthing more information from his life before her, but perhaps she’s taking it personally that he had to find out more about that part of him. Maybe she feels she wasn’t good enough if he had to look for more.
Or maybe he’s just projecting.
Florendine comes with two glasses of wine, one for Ekorenine, the other for Therald. She swiftly comes back with a glass of water for Sandy.
“You can call me Ekorenine, really… Therald.”
Therald clears his throat and nods. He tastes the wine. He knows nothing about wine, but he knows that tastes expensive.
Ekorenine smiles and places a hand between her face and Sandy’s direction as if he couldn’t hear her anymore this way. “Do not tell the Aspenwood we sometimes get a few bottles from their competitors.” Therald smiles shyly.
Sandy clears his throat. “Um, I’m sorry this is going to sound a little weird but… can we go back to me right now? I still have a few announcements I really need to make.” His mother throws him a glare for the rude interruption, but, completely oblivious as to what caused that glare, he simply answers: “Don’t worry everything else shouldn’t be a big surprise for you.” He takes a piece of paper out of his pocket. “I wrote a list, actually, um…” Sandy pauses, reading his list. While he does, Ekorenine takes a sip of her wine. “So, first of all, remember, dad, when I told you I was a fire mage?”
Ekorenine chokes on her wine. “You did what?!” Therald’s eyes widen. Why is she reacting like that? Is he not? What’s happening? He needs to know! He stares at his son, waiting for an explanation.
“So… that wasn’t exactly true,” Sandy breathes in, breathes out. “I’m a warlock. Specializing in demonology.” Therald’s heart sinks. This is what his son is actually doing? He’s doing the same thing as his mother? The thing that made him lose her? Lose him, for twenty years? The man feels like he’s hiding his emotions pretty well, but the way both Sandy and Ekorenine stare at him with sadness and expectations written all over their face proves otherwise. They’re waiting for him to say something.
But he can’t. He looks at his son’s face and sees how shiny his eyes are getting. Therald looks away to hide his own teary eyes.
Sandy breathes in, breathes out. “Okay, next announcement,” his voice cracks, and he clears his throat. Ekorenine wants to take another sip of her wine, but she doesn’t want to repeat her earlier mistake. No spit takes today. She sets it down on a table next to the couch. “I might give up on demonology.”
“Good!”
“What?”
“Wait! Are you encouraging him?” Therald asks, dumbfounded.
“Mr. Oakley, I will not let you tell me how to raise any of my sons. You have been in this house for less than 10 minutes and you have known Sandy for—for how long, sweetie?” she turns to Sandy.
He shrugs. “I—I don’t know… months? Since this summer?”
“And you are only telling me now?!”
“Wai— wait, you’re focusing on the wrong thing!” That’s the longest sentence Therald has uttered since he got here. “I work with the Argent Dawn, I know what warlocks do… I—I know it all too well. This is a good thing he wants to stop!”
“If he wants to stop then, yes, absolutely. I just want to know why, Mr. Oakley. I don’t want him to stop if it’s only because other people are telling him to. I know what it feels like to be pressured into a profession you don’t want to do, trust me, and it’s miserable.”
Sandy raises his gaze from the list he’s been awkwardly staring at during this whole altercation like a scolded child. He raises his eyebrows as well at the sentence. Therald looks around the mansion she owns, at her expensive wine, and just scoffs, crossing his arms. She must know about “miserable”, yeah.
“We will talk about this all together over dinner, dear,” Ekorenine says to her son calmly. “Let us get this list over with. Depending on how many things you want to announce, I suppose we will have plenty of topics to discuss about over that meal!” she adds, with a chuckle. Therald isn’t in a mood to chuckle back.
“Okay,” Sandy says seriously, nodding. “So, next thing, uh… Oh right, that’s a surprise for you too, mom!” She slows down her breath. Oh no. “I got fired from Cobalt Company’s squads.”
Ekorenine jumps out of her seat. She looks ready to rush to a study and write a strongly worded letter. Therald doesn’t really react, his only movement being the frown on his face growing deeper.
“Don’t worry that’s… okay. I did something bad, but I don’t really feel like talking about it right now,” he chuckles softly, yet the smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “Maybe over dinner.” He drinks some water.
His mother sits back down. She will write that letter after dinner, probably. “Is that all?” she asks, reaching for her glass and Therald truly hopes it is, even though he knows there’s at least one more thing Sandy has to mention. And indeed, his son shakes his head.
“I met my birth mom, too.”
Ekorenine sighs of relief. “Good, we are talking about her. I was afraid to ask… just in case she was…”
Therald nods. “Yeah, she was dead.” He can’t take it anymore with the slow reveals, he needs to get this out as soon as he can. “She’s a Forsaken, and she attacked Sandy. Bit him. A pretty nasty bite, at that.”
Ekorenine jumps out of her couch again, and with the way her gaze burns with fury, she’s not just going to write a strongly worded letter this time. “She did what?”
“How did you know that?”
“I met the Draenei who healed you, Nesselos. He told me about what happened.”
“And you didn’t think about telling me?” Ekorenine asks, as if they’d been in contact for months already.
“Sorry,” he says, glaring at Sandy. “I didn’t want to ruin today’s dramatic reveals.”
The young man looks down and stares at his list, tears beginning to roll down his eyes.
“Anyway,” Ekorenine comes standing between the two, her back to her son. “We should do something about this,” she turns to Sandy. “Where is she? Who is she? If she is any threat to you, we need to—”
“I didn’t wait for you to start looking. I’ve been searching for her.” His free hand tightens into a fist. “I can handle it,” he looks past Ekorenine, staring directly at Sandy who’s still avoiding their gaze. “I’ve fought warlocks going on a rampage before, and she won’t be the last.”
“A… warlock?.."
Sandy looks up at him, tearfully, silently. He stares right into his father’s angry eyes. He downs his wine, to Ekorenine’s dismay, and walks away.
“Wai—wait! What about the food Florendine made?” she exclaims.
As Therald reaches for the front door, he looks back to see Sandy running into the hall. They stare at each other for a second. Sandy’s teary, exhausted eyes seem like a call for help. He’s not saying anything yet he’s begging for Therald to stay. To help. But there’s nothing he can do now, it’s too late, he went down the same path as his mother, a path with no way back. He opens the door and leaves. Just as he closes the door, he can hear his son’s loud footsteps running upstairs, and Ekorenine’s worriedly screaming after him.
Therald begins walking away. The wish to find his son for twenty years is gone. Each step gets progressively faster, just as his thoughts do. Sandy is just as good as lost. He begins sprinting away from the cathedral district. Things never end well for warlocks. Tears pour from his eyes just as fast as they filled up with them. It’s only a matter of time, now.