Nurture: A Story of the Peacemakers Saga

In the city of Sanctuary, capital of the Isle of Mixed Blood, home to the half-angel, half-human folk known as Nephilim, the BehnElizan family's household garden lay picturesque beneath a serene summer morning. Dew glittered on the well-kept flora thriving in the volcanic soil, with small rainbows glinting inside every diamond droplet. Through the myriad of trees, bushes, vines, and flowers whispered a cool breezeーthe last breath of a fading spring. As it passed, the gentle wind lifted the wings of birds, butterflies, and bees as they flitted to and fro amid the brightening dawn.

Stepping away from the house and into the garden, Jonathan BehnElizan inhaled the fresh air caressing his face. The perfumes of lavender, honeysuckle, and gardenia met his nose at once, and then the more subtle, delectable undertones of ripe fruits and vegetables followed. While imagining the scrumptious lunch soon to come from his verdant sanctuary, Jonathan equipped himself with a wheelbarrow, some sacks, and several other gardening tools before setting to work.

Paying no attention to time, the young man hummed away as he tended the vegetation. Each cultivated bit of foliage gladdened his heart, and soon, his knapsacks also weighed heavy with some of the garden’s riches. Ruby tomatoes, cherries, and strawberries, citrine apricots, emerald cucumbers, green beans, and arugula, sapphire blueberries, and dark amethyst eggplants and figs coalesced into an edible spectrum, and Jonathan’s stomach rumbled as his eyes feasted on the bountiful harvest.

Much more preferable to the fruits of war. Jonathan touched the patch covering his missing left eye—a minor casualty from a recent battle. Blessedly, he and his Peacemaker brethren, the protectors of Nephilim kind, stood victorious over their latest enemies, a cult seeking to conquer both the Isle of Mixed Blood and the world.

But the cost...

Jonathan shook his head to clear it. Then, after reveling in a job well done, he began trekking back toward the house.

“Agh!”

The cry barked from within the dark purple blossoms of some black knight butterfly bushes. Then, a flurry of not-quite-swear-words took a clumsy flight through the fronds. Halting, Jonathan silently debated whether or not to intrude, but he soon set down his loaded wheelbarrow and approached the little hideaway. 

While ducking through the stalks, he was a young boy again, seeking rest among this flowering kingdom of monarchs and their princely swallowtail brethren after school. The fragrant blooms, confined seclusion of the bushes, and the butterflies' black-striped oranges and yellows further soothed Jonathan's spirit. Then, as he emerged into the heart of the grove, he watched bits of sunlight filter down into a circular space big enough for two people to sit side-by-side. 

There, in the center, placing pressure around his bleeding, right index finger, sat his youngest brother, Yonah.

"Hey,” Jonathan called. “You alright?"

The fifteen-year-old started at the voice. His head whipped toward Jonathan, who sat down cross-legged with his reasonably short white hair, fair skin, and single green-and-gold right eye contrasting his drab brown work clothes. When the newcomer then glanced at their Peacemaker father’s twin daggers resting in the dirt, Yonah blushed and looked away.

"Here," Jonathan said, handing out a sterile wipe and a small adhesive bandage from a pouch on his belt. "Let's get that cut cleaned and covered, huh?"

Yonah took the supplies with a muttered, "Thanks," and tended his finger. Meanwhile, he sensed Jonathan now examining several trimmed stems, leaves, and blossoms from a small patch of lighter purple flowers.

"Trying your hand at pruning, eh?" Jonathan asked with a tender smile.

Finished bandaging himself, Yonah nodded. "Yeah."

"Pity we didn't send you to respite like the doctors wanted; looks like the Mental Health Center will miss a bright and talented young gardener.” Jonathan looked at the bandage. “Just be sure to cut away from yourself next time; you’ll be less likely to get hurt."

"...right."

Yonah didn’t acknowledge Jonathan’s probing stare. Instead, he gazed at the rough cuts in the flowers, but their bright green insides triggered thoughts of enclosed spaces and being dragged kicking and screaming into torturous, cryptic experiments for an enemy army. Of course, nothing like that took place within Sanctuary’s healing institutions, but...

"You want to talk?” Jonathan offered. “Or do you want your privacy?"

A heavy pause blanketed the hideaway. 

"You can stay,” Yonah murmured at last. “Not sure there's much to talk about, though."

"Okay. We can just sit and enjoy the quiet, then. You want help with your pruning while we're at it?"

Yonah shrugged. Grasping one of the daggers—Crane's Wing, a blade of both pearlescent and shimmering silver steel—Jonathan picked up where his little brother left off. With pinpoint precision, he then sheared down some of the untouched stalks in half of Yonah’s original time.

"You're really good," Yonah said. 

Jonathan smiled. "Thanks. I've had lots of practice."

"...did Father teach you?"

"Some. This was my mother's—your step-mother's—garden, but she and Father took care of it together. Then, they both taught me," Jonathan set aside Crane's Wing and admired his work, "and I've helped manage it ever since."

Yonah let out a short, "Hm," and contemplated the newly pruned flowers. For a moment, he was a little child in a false memory, sitting at his father’s side and watching him shape the garden. Not a single movement went wasted, each successive cut quick and perfect as the last, just like Jonathan’s. 

Beneath the bandage, Yonah’s cut finger stung.

"You could be really good at this, too," Jonathan said. "You just need more practice."

Yonah pressed his thumb against the cut until it throbbed. “Yeah. Sure."

Frowning, Jonathan asked, "What do you mean?"

"Father wouldn't’ve hurt himself,” Yonah scoffed.

"...but you're not our father, Yonah."

The boy’s harsh laugh clapped around the grove. "Don't I know it."

Jonathan said nothing, only sighing with understanding.

Looking down, Yonah glimpsed his reflection in Eagle’s Claw, a black dagger crafted from the finest obsidian. A fair, hollow-eyed face stared back at him, plain in his triangular jaw, high cheekbones, and halfway snubbed nose beneath a mat of short, prickly black hair. Only Yonah’s bright green eyes marred the strong, dignified, near-mirror image of his father residing in the blade.

“An unfortunate error of creation, but one we can happily ignore,” Yonah’s birth mother crooned. Beneath glittering green eyes, her smooth, powdered white fingers stroked Yonah’s cheek as she held him down. “Isn’t that right, my love? My handsome, ever-rebellious Elizan?”

Five painted black nails scraped across Yonah’s skin.

“You’ll never escape me again,” his deranged mother hissed with a ghoulish smile. “Never!” 

Wrapping his arms around himself, Yonah shuddered as a finger-like draft lingered on his body. Nauseous hate bubbled from his belly to his eyes, and his gaze sharpened into a glare that clanged against Eagle’s Claw.

A gale of accusations, brewed over fourteen years, thundered through Yonah’s veins. But then, they slipped through his fingers before the knowing heartbreak pouring from his father’s dark blue-grey eyes.

A heartbeat; a breath; a clench of every muscle in Yonah’s body, especially his fists; and then…

“Why?” he whispered, his breath hitching. “Just...why?”

Why, why, why, why, why? Everything always circled back to that one simple, loaded, horrible question. Everything, and the asking pierced through Yonah even as it struck his father, who faced his biological son for the first time.

After a long, weary moment, Elizan sighed. “I don’t know. I don’t know, but...I’m sorry.” Then, his head bowed under the weight of grief. “I’m so, so sorry!”

In the real world, Yonah murmured, “Don’t know, don’t know, don’t know…”

Then, the feelers of a parasite, engineered for war, gouged into Yonah’s brain. Pain drilled through his head until he collapsed. In the agony, the creature then wrested away the reins of the boy’s own thoughts. Light and hope melted into darkness, despair, and death, their poisons eating through him even as he fought desperately for life.

And his father, infected by the same parasite, defied his own body’s treason. A spasming Yonah watched him charge forward, his black-armored figure—limbs pumping, muscles tight as whipcord—seeming to fill the sky. Elizan then skidded across the ground, the stones beneath his boots crackling like lightning, before falling to his knees. There, his arms whirled around the rag doll of a boy, drawing him close against his father’s chest.

The world stilled, and the blood in Yonah’s ears pounded in perfect time to a deeper, greater beat. 

For once, he didn’t even struggle against being held.

“Don’t give in, my son!” his father cried. “Keep fighting it! Don’t give in!” 

Bright green met stormy blue-grey as Elizan shouted three words that latched onto Yonah’s heart:

“I love you!”

Within the bushes, a tear slipped down Yonah’s cheek, and he turned away from Eagle’s Claw.

"I only escaped from my mother because she planned it—a disguised, mobile, and ignorant container for the enemy’s bioweapons,” he murmured. “Then, I only survived the wilderness outside my mother’s lair and made it to Sanctuary because an oblivious stranger gave me rations and told me where to go.”

“And then, I..." Yonah bit his lip. "I...”

The ground cracked and heaved beneath Yonah’s feet, and he stumbled, hitting his head. His brothers shouted for him and his father as huge chunks of quaking earth splintered the group.

Then, a deepening darkness loomed over him, and Yonah gaped dizzily up into the face of a falling building.

Screaming, he—

Someone shoved Yonah aside, and his world spun as several tons of brick crashed down behind him.

Then, as the dust settled, blood. Blood, and the upper half of a black-clad body sticking out from under the debris.

“FATHER!”

“He...died...because of me—because I couldn’t protect myself that day,” Yonah croaked over a mewling cry. “It… It should’ve been…”

A gray cloud obscured the sun from sight. Beside Yonah, Jonathan wiped at his eyes.

"For so long," Yonah confessed, "I wanted revenge against Father for helping create me—for what I found out wasn’t even his choice—and then...then for just never being there for me. Then, I hoped I could be half the man he was. But now..." 

His eyes closed, and he relived Eagle’s Claw slicing across his finger. "Now, I don't see how I could be like him. If I haven't been manipulated and controlled, I've only survived because of others. Outside of just existing, I can barely do anything by myself. Compared to him, or anyone else, I'm nothing special." Yonah’s sight traced each petal of the trimmed plant. "I have his face, but I'm not beautiful, or as useful or wanted as everyone else."

Another, softer breeze swayed the bushes. 

Exhaling through his nose, Jonathan leaned back and closed his eye. "Why did you prune it, then?"

Yonah paused, and then shrugged. "I like it, and it's a flower. It needs pruning if it's going to grow right."

Jonathan chuckled. "Do you know what that flower is, Yonah?"

"No."

"It's called goat's rue," Jonathan prodded one stem with the toe of his boot, "and it's a weed."

Yonah's brows raised high. "What?"

Jonathan poked the flower again. "It's a common weed, and not even native to this land. Unfortunately, like several other introduced plants, it damages the environment when it runs wild. If we let these little sprigs grow unchecked, they'd eventually kill the butterfly bushes and maybe the rest of the garden. 

“Oh, and goat's rue is also poisonous if you eat it raw,” Jonathan pointed to Yonah’s hands, “so I'd wash up well and good before having lunch."

Yonah stared at the invasive but mildly elegant little plant. "I didn't know."

"Not your fault." Jonathan picked up his spade. "You want to uproot it, or shall I?"

Yonah hesitated, glancing between the sharp, cold spade and the flower. 

"Do...?" His right hand reached out and idled against a feather-soft blossom. "Do we have to?"

"...Yonah, will you look at me for a minute?"

Soon, the boy found himself transfixed by a single green-and-gold eye.

"Yonah, you see beauty and worth in an everyday weed that many people despise—who'd kill it without thinking twice. Even knowing what you've been through, and what’s plaguing your heart right now," Jonathan shook his head, "it still astounds part of me that you don't see the same value in yourself."

Beneath the entreating stare, Yonah began fidgeting.

"Father saw it," Jonathan whispered. "I was there, too, Yonah; I looked into his eyes just like you did as he passed. Honestly, for a moment, I didn't think he had any last words for me or Jaik. For so long, the only one—the only one—reflected in his gaze was you."

Elizan’s eyes shimmered, reflecting Yonah’s shadowed face and the corona of sunlight gleaming behind him. 

Not even a stream of blood erased his father’s smile.

"That…” Yonah shook his head. “That doesn't mean..."

"Yonah, when I was four-and-a-half, my parents were murdered, and Elizan adopted me, helped raise me for twenty-one years, and also helped train me to be a servant, diplomat, and soldier. Believe me,” Jonathan said, his tears falling unimpeded, “I knew him well, and that look he gave you in his final moments...was so full of love. He didn't care what you had or hadn't been able to do, Yonah. He saw his son, who was an irreplaceable part of him, and more: He saw you. Even if you weren't his blood, you were, and are, a living being to him, completely unique with your own soul, body, thoughts, feelings, weaknesses, and strengths, just like everyone else. 

“And yet, despite everything, do you remember what he proclaimed to the world about you?"

Embracing his dying father, and while feeling strength forsaking the man’s body, Yonah nearly cried out at the whisper alighting in his ear like a dove.

“Behold, all…” Elizan breathed, his words trembling. “This...is my son...of whom...I am...so, so proud!”

Sobs, breaking against clenched teeth, rocked Yonah’s body. On his shoulder, Jonathan’s left hand came to softly rest, though he said nothing until a lull in the tears.

"You say you're nothing special compared to Father, or anyone else?" Jonathan gave his brother another gentle but piercing stare. "Yonah, with a human body, mind, heart, and soul as given anyone else, you endured fourteen years of captivity and extreme abuse while clinging to your own identity. Then, after someone gave you food, water, and directions, you survived in the wilderness alone, for almost three weeks, just to meet our father and maybe find safety and closure. And then, you had to withstand being held captive again by our enemies and their deadly mind-controlling parasite." Jonathan shook his head again. "It's no wonder you couldn’t handle yourself during the earthquake! But Yonah, if you’d survived even a fraction of those horrors, only someone naive or outside their right mind wouldn’t be thoroughly impressed.”

“But…” Yonah shook his head. “But I—!”

"And even if you hadn't done all of that, even if you weren't my father's son in name and blood," Jonathan gestured to the goat's rue, "you still, of your own free will, love something ordinary that many other people hate. You consider its life precious enough to keep tending, even though it could ruin this garden. Yonah, if that's 'nothing special,' then 'nothing special' is one of the most beautiful and valuable things that anyone can be."

Another silence fell between the two young men. Vaguely, Yonah noticed the sun reemerging overhead. He then watched its rays once again glimmer off the keen, stainless edges of Eagle's Claw and Crane's Wing.

"You know," Jonathan continued, "there's something else interesting about goat's rue. When given to a trained herbalist, this weed can be refined to produce medicine."

Yonah looked back at the plant. "Really?"

"Yes. I know several people who might die without the drug produced by goat’s rue. It’s amazing, really."

"Wow..." Yonah breathed.

Jonathan nodded. "So, you see, goat's rue can be more than just an ordinary, poisonous, and invasive weedーor a commonly pretty face. But, do you know what else you can do that's ordinary and makes you so much more beautiful, useful, and wanted than this little plant?"

Yonah sat bewildered. "What?"

"You can choose, Yonah," said Jonathan, "and just like the rest of us, your choices—more: the mind and heart behind them—shape who you are. You are equal to how you allow your thoughts and feelings, which often lie, to influence your decisions. In time, you'll become the way you think. 

“So, you can either keep choosing to believe that you won't amount to anything more than a humdrum and disappointing existence, or," Jonathan watched a butterfly flutter up and out of the bushes, "you can choose to find a healthy way to pick yourself up and live just as Father knew you could, even as he took his last breaths."

With care, Jonathan picked up the twin daggers and held them out to Yonah.

"What do you say, Yonah, my precious little brother?” Jonathan smiled. “For the record, I know we—me, our entire family, and our people—can’t wait to see you be wholly and wonderfully ordinary, as well as infinitely special. A hero and survivor, just like Father, with a little more tending.”

Around the two young men, the breeze petered out. The butterfly bushes and goat’s rue drifted into stillness. Overhead, as Yonah stared tentatively at the knives, another cloud slid close to the sun.

Then, with a tiny smile, and without another word, Yonah reached out and took hold of the emblems of his father’s legacy. In the heavens, while the cloud and its brethren remained in the sky, none of them overshadowed the shining daylight.

From that day onward, blooms of transplanted goat’s rue sat, beautiful and cherished, in a black, blue, and gray painted ceramic pot in Yonah’s windowsill.