estirose

Mar and her teammates are original characters from an unfinished novel set in the late 1980s.

"It'll get better," Marie advised. "Eventually." She looked like she was about to say something else, but thought better of it.

"Very eventually," a woman sitting with three men said. "Let us know what you need, we'll do everything we can, even if it's not very much."

There was a murmur as others chimed in to agree with her.

"And I'll stand in the way of any more Taigas who come to bother you while I'm here," Wataru said, and was rewarded with a weak grin from Koutarou. Mio hugged her pseudo-grandson before returning to Wataru's side. "In the meantime, anybody want to volunteer while he recovers?"

"Well, there is that time when we met Mar's family," one of the quartet said. "That was interesting."

"Don't remind me." the woman, Mar presumably, facepalmed. "My family needs a bit of explanation so you're not all terribly confused."

--

My name is Marissa, though everybody calls me Mar. I live in Redlands, California, in the United States of America, not totally by choice. I and my teammates keep a gate to another universe safe, which can get more than a bit awkward when you're also taking college classes.

For millennia, my family has been protectors. Some of us are very long-lived, a few centuries or so. I do not expect to live that long, due to my duties.

This whole long-lived thing makes some of us have very interesting attitudes towards shorter-lived people. Such is the case when my family came to town to make sure I was all right and to check out the campus of the University of Redlands, where I now go to college because it's the only school of higher education near the place I have to guard. After all, even a guardian has to eat.

My mom swept me up in an embrace, while my grandmother beamed at me. They'd come from Ontario Airport, the nearest airport to us. "How was the flight?" I asked.

"Wonderful! Your grandmother enjoyed taking the stairs down to the tarmac. I believe she's still bathing in the nostalgia."

"Most of the airports I go to, you can't walk on the tarmac anymore," my grandmother groused. "So, these your friends?"

"Yep, grandma. Theo, Buddy, Martin." I indicated each with a wave of my hand. "Fajro, akvo, aero."

"Kaj tero," Buddy said, adding my element to the list.

"Let's get to that private dining room your headmaster gave us," Grandma said, beaming at me. "To talk about things."

To talk about what I and the others were doing, I knew. She looked at my teammates in the way only a protective elder could, especially one of our protective elders. I groaned inwardly, knowing that they'd have to establish that they were tougher than they looked. Especially since Grandma wasn't apt to go into battle.

We all walked in, and I noticed Buddy walking a bit stiffly. Which really wasn't surprising, given that he'd been injured in battle and he couldn't heal himself. The rest of us had been hurt, but he'd patched us up. And he healed faster than the rest of us.

"Are you all right?" Grandma asked Buddy. She's not a healer, but she's been around assisting enough of them that she knows the aftereffects of battle.

I glanced around, hoping to distract my relatives with food. Even knowing that Buddy was - still is - a protector didn't mean that they'd automatically start treating them as anything other than humans to protect.

"I will be. Battle damage." He smiled at her. "It'll heal."

"Let me take a look, young man." She moved towards him.

"Grandma's worked with a lot of healers," I told Buddy, "Our equivalent to doctors - though we have those too."

"Oh." He gave her grandmother a tentative smile. "I haven't gotten the knack of healing myself, that's all."

Her grandmother sighed. "Young ones, did nobody in your group think of contacting a backup healer?"

"The headmaster has contacts," Theo pointed out, "If any of us need help."

Which they had, I knew. It wasn't easy for them, even if they were young. Her grandmother had to know how tough it was to defend something.

"Yes, that's all well and good, but Marissa should know better." Her grandmother turned to her. "Why does your group not have a backup healer?"

"Because we refuse to risk anybody else," I pointed out. "We didn't ask for this duty."

"Ahem. Some of us didn't ask for this." Theo shook his head. "But Mar's right. We can't ask anybody else to risk themselves for this. There will always be other Guardians, even if we fall."

"But your lives are so short...." Grandmother shook her head. "And shorter still with what you do." She looked at me.

"We know that, Grandma." I attempted a smile. "But Theo's right. We can't get our people involved."

My grandmother muttered something about foolish kids, and her mother was smiling slightly.

"She does have a point," Mom said. "Your lives might be so much longer if you have at least a little help."

"A little help would be great," Buddy said. "Says the person who can't heal himself."

"And maybe one of our healers can help Buddy control his powers a bit better," Mom added reasonably. "Even if we don't know much about the source of your powers, it can't hurt."

I looked at Mom and then her grandma and sighed. Wondering what Sandross would make of this, and then I decided that he probably would be supportive. Grandma would probably remind me that my family wasn't made up of civilians. They were used to fighting.

And at least some of them were used to healing.

"I say we let them get involved, Mar. Your folks know a lot about this whole defending thing." Theo said, and I looked around. Buddy and Martin were nodding in agreement.

Well, it looked like it was almost unanimous, and I could hardly object. After all, we didn't want to replace our Water anytime soon.

"What they said." I had no idea what form the help would take, but they were right. We needed help. And my people could provide it.