Blessed by Night

Nyx considered her creation's request to be absurd.

Watch over a single bloodline of humans for eternity??

Laughable!

She had neither the time, nor the patience to do… okay, so maybe she did have the time.

But she still didn't have the patience!

Nyx dismissed the idea without a second thought, but kept the soul of her experiment in her own personal custody.

It wasn't intended to be cruel, but to ensure that no one found out what she'd done, she couldn't risk letting the monster's soul rest in the Elysian Fields or any other afterlife.

Hades was a sort of stickler about his responsibilities and kingdom, so Nyx didn't know how he would react to the soul of a large monstrous snake suddenly taking a nap in his grassy pastures.

As such, she placed the soul in a small wooden box that she imbued with the power to create the ideal 'rest' of the inhabitant.

Afterwards, she went back to her normal primordial-being life and it didn't take long for her to set into another fit of boredom.

Though this time, it only took around 11 days.

But in that short time, she went back to observe the children of her experiment and found that one of them had died in a bad hunting incident.

At that moment, Nyx thought to herself; 'Wow. You really can't take your eyes off these meatbags for even a second, can you?'

As such, Nyx decided to pay close attention to the surviving sibling and his escapades.

And for the first time, the goddess got to experience the joys of what humans would later crown 'binge watching'.

Everything that the son did intrigued her immensely.

His perseverance, ingenuity, compassion, and sense of responsibility combined for an interesting protagonist to route for.

There were times where he would struggle, and others where he would not necessarily make the best decision, or even suffer some kind of monumental setback.

But nothing ever broke him.

There was never a setback he endured that made him harder, or made his view of the world distort.

Was that a weakness..? That depended on who you asked.

But Nyx found such a quality to be more admirable than words could even begin to express.

A sense of pride began to formulate in the mind of Nyx.

This was her creation, her descendant, her baby!

She rejoiced when they were blessed, and she agonized when they were in mourning.

For 1,000 years, her emotions reached various highs and lows as she experienced new sensations.

At a certain point, she became tired of waiting and wanted to interact with them, as well as keep some mementos.

So she gave one of their lineage the idea to start a new family tradition.

The baby boxes.

In her spare time, Nyx amused herself by sneaking down to earth and sifting through them; taking the time to admire little drawings that the children made and eventually writing names on their birth certificates.

Never before in her life had she loved something so purely as she did her 'children'.

Until Malachi and Aubrey came along.

For some reason, they were the only pair of siblings born into their family line after the first set.

So Nyx loved them immensely from the moment that Aubrey was brought home.

They were everything that someone would want in their children.

Smart, a little mischievous, gentle, good listeners. and unflinchingly loyal to each other.

The greatest day of Nyx's entire existence was when she actually got to speak to Malachi for the first time that fateful night; and began a true mother-son relationship with him.

And when she was eventually able to embrace Aubrey as well, her days became exponentially brighter.

But now, she feared that she was about to lose it all.

-

In the aftermath of Nyx's explanation, Malachi and Aubrey were completely frozen in place with their mouths on the verge of falling open.

Little Camille could only look back and forth between her the three adults in the room, as she had no idea why they had all just gone quiet.

"You.. had our parents souls the whole time..?" Aubrey's voice cracked as she touched a wooden box with the initials 'M.F'.

She knew it belonged to her father Marcus, and their mother Felicia.

Nyx couldn't even bring herself to look at her daughter. "I… I did…"

"Why?! Why didn't you tell us?!"

Nyx felt so small at the moment that she barely even seemed like a goddess. "T-They were resting, and I just…"

"D-Don't give me that! You kept this from us on purpose!!" Aubrey went from being on the verge of tears to full on bawling in the span of a few short seconds.

Her tears pooled atop the wooden box in her hand as her whole body trembled uncontrollably.

"Did you ever think about what I might need for once instead of your own fears?! That I might have something I needed to say to them..?"

"I-I wanted to tell you so badly but I.." Nyx cut her sentence short, as she realized that therein lie the problem.

'I'.

She had only thought of herself from the beginning.

Threatened by the idea of Malachi and Aubrey reuniting with their birth parents, she kept an enormous secret from them, even though she knew what the truth could've meant to them.

What kind of person does that?

What kind of mother does that?

For the first time in billions of years of existence, Nyx experienced the pinnacle of mortal emotion.

Self loathing.

"I just… I can't do this with you right now." With their parents' souls in hand, Aubrey vanished from the bedroom instantly and left her niece and brother behind.

And Nyx, for all of her power and lived experience, collapsed to the ground as soon as she left.

Malachi, for all his power and accomplishments, was still just a 21 year old man.

And any person around that age or younger can agree, there is very little that can compare to the pain of seeing the mother you love dearly cry her eyes out.

Cami was also upset and crying.

She was still a baby after all, and the only yelling she had ever heard was when she accidentally woke up in the middle of the night and tried to get into her parents' room.

So now, Mal had to consol two of the most important women in his life.

Malachi dropped to the ground beside Nyx and sat cross legged.

He took Cami into one arm and wrapped his mother underneath the other.

However, while Camille calmed down just a little bit, Nyx didn't.

"S-Stop it, don't touch me!" For all of her strength, Nyx tried and failed to push her son away.

It took everything he had, but Mal held onto her tightly and refused to let her go.

"Do you not understand what manner of being I am?! Get away from me, Malachi!! I don't need this, I don't want it!"

No matter how much Nyx screamed at him, Malachi never let her go.

Because he knew better than anyone that if she really wanted him to, there wouldn't have been a single thing he could have done about it.

But that didn't mean Nyx made the ordeal easy for him.

"L-Let me go, Malachi!"

"I-I hate this! I don't want to be touched by you!"

"I-I…"

Eventually, Nyx lost every bit of strength that she had and finally let herself be pulled into Malachi's chest.

She didn't even have a physical body, so Mal was a bit perplexed as to how this living personification of the night had soaked his jacket in under twenty seconds.

By now, Nyx was no longer understandable in any way, and Mal simply gave up on trying to understand her.

He just opened his mind to her quietly, in the hopes that she could try to understand him without breaking the silence.

Malachi wasn't mad at Nyx for hiding his parents.

Granted he was a little surprised to learn their heritage and that they were here the whole time, but that didn't matter a whole lot to him.

Truthfully, he suspected that maybe his parents were in the Elysian Fields this whole time given the fact that they weren't Christians.

But he never went to check or asked his mother about it, because secretly he didn't want to face them yet.

He missed and loved them just like any son, but there were always lots of things that he was afraid to tell them.

The fact that he had become an alien for one.

The daughter that he had before marriage was another.

The fact that he had six different fiancés and was pursuing a seventh would also be a tough pill to swallow.

The fact that he never finished college might kill his mom a second time.

He missed his parents just as much as his sister, but Malachi was prone to moments of self loathing just like Nyx was experiencing.

His worry was that his biological parents would not approve of the man he had become.

After listening carefully to all of Mal's thoughts, Nyx let her tears fall silently as she clenched his jacket between her hands.

"I-I am so… sorry..!" Nyx's voice was heartbreakingly small and hoarse.

In that moment, Mal could not recall ever seeing his mother so human.

"I know you are. Just like you know that I forgive you."

Nyx's body twitched as her silent tears flowed harder.

Though she was relieved to hear Mal's feelings had not changed, she was petrified by the fear that her relationship with Aubrey would never be the same again.

'I just… wanted them to love me…!'