Balisted

As soon as I sent the essence into the framework of energy holding the charm together Robbie fell out into the open sunlight and directly on top of me. The Earth of the pathway stopped rumbling and everything was silent except for the light show and the music blasting out of House. Then a painful crash broke the air, a vacuum in the air rushed past me and for a moment my brother and I were lifted into the air, I heard the startled cries of the beings and creatures standing outside of our home. I imagine they had felt the sudden rush of air as well. Then, in the split second we were in the air I looked down and saw the greenhouse was gone. "What in the hells?" I managed to mutter before we crashed back down into a heap on the trail.

"What happened?" My brother said weakly, his face was pale but he was fine. As he stood up a small dose of his essence and his clothes were perfect and intact again. "The greenhouse just vanished, it was here but when I deactivated the charm to pull you out it just vanished." I replied to him after I stood up. With the greenhouse missing I think we all felt a member of our village had just vanished, not just my brothers and my sister but all of us that called this place home.

With the crisis over I turned and walked up the trail, some of the beings were helping other members of our home up. Some others were rounding up creatures that had fled House and brought them to the stables and pens. "It's about time you all came back." I heard a voice from the center of the group say. A thin line of smoke filled the air and without seeing, I knew it was Pogs. I had no idea how long it's been but it didn't seem to have been too long, I had to ask. "How long have we been away?" A small wood pixie came up to me and in a chirping voice like a finch I heard it say. "Well we sent the gray mouse to you a month ago." If they had sent the mouse to us a month ago how long had we been gone? Before I could ask, Pogs spoke up again. "It's been a month and a half." Pogs replied, his pipe in the corner of his mouth, his little fists were resting on his hips. He wasn't even looking at us as he spoke. He kept stealing glances back at our home between words and draws of his pipe. I noticed that I couldn't smell Billy Weed in the air, he must be smoking something else. He saw me sniff the air and spoke one more time. "It's marshmallow and chamomile." He continued to explain that he switched when he had to take more responsibility around the manor as it healed and started to act out.

It had only taken House 4 days to heal but it started acting up during its third day of healing. I was suddenly overwhelmed by groups of beings talking all at once about what had happened over the last month. From what I could take in, House had started doing strange things but small things. Moving windows around more randomly, it closed off the main rooms for a couple of days, anyone trying to enter the kitchen ended up in the training room and the attic. Anyone trying to enter the library ended up outside the back door or entering the basement emergency room. It quickly progressed to locking beings in different rooms. It was a made house for days. House had sealed them in, in every way. No one could teleport out, no one could open a door. From the sound of it, it was a nightmare.

So the next problem to deal with was our home. House had just had a full on breakdown and started fires and kicked everyone out. When everyone was out it locked the doors. "I guess that explains the water hose." Steven said as he walked up to me out of the group. "So what's the game plan?" David asked from the side of the group as he bent down to help the last of the creatures into the stables. We came together and made a strategy for how to deal with House. "First we figure out if House is really on fire, then we need to try to make contact with House's core being and see what is going on in its mind." I said to them, then as a group we walked up to our home and each found a way to look inside. It didn't look like a fire happened, there was no real danger at the moment. "The longer these people are outside the more danger some of them are in." Karen reminded us that not all of them were here to live with us, some were in fact under our protection. The glamor around our property hides most of them from prying eyes but House could mask anyones magical radiance under its own essence. It added a layer of anonymity to those that called it home and hideout. The hideout was not just from the magical community, humans have gotten their hands on expression over the years and learned to mimic essence to activate them through what humans called witchcraft and ritual. It was a dark form of blood magic, mostly. Some of the beings hiding here are the last of their kind because of human hunting habits. Always reaping until there was nothing left to give and these evil blood witches would squeeze every last drop they could from some of the small and fragile beings hidden here.

After deciding that there was no danger from a fire we each tried reaching out with our minds out to the core of House's being but none of us got a response. We tried different expressions that allowed for communication but nothing came back. More power was needed to reach into our home and find the soul, the core being and figure out what was going on. On any other day House would just open when it felt one of us approaching or when it recognized our touch but this was full-on resistance of an unknown kind. We took our places next to one another and breath by breath we fell into our places as the flock. After I felt the edges of myself dissolve into the glory of our tribal mind I directed that power forward, with that extra boost I was able to walk the halls and pass through walls reaching for the core we needed to reach. In and among the murmurs of our minds I heard soft suggestions to look left, or to look up, or down. As I did we saw as a group different signs of what looked like mental illness or a breakdown. As a group we echoed one another. "What is going on here?" We felt wonder and surprise as one being but tinted by each of our individual experiences. It is the closest I ever felt to another being. Something about a tribal mind is beautiful beyond what anyone outside a tribe could ever understand. Being in this place, linked together I felt safe, exempted, powerful beyond words. Thanks to our abilities and the spell that made us, we are more powerful than any other being in the tribal mind.

After searching for a while we came on an invisible border that pushed back against us as we tried to enter. The core wasn't a place in the physical world, it was a state of being, it was outside of space and time. In our spirit form, without our bodies the core became a place. It was full of fresh blooming flowers, the air was calm and filled with peace. It was the definition of spring. In the center of the world around us was a ball of flashing and swirling energy. It was purple with flashes of pink and red lightning flashing over its surface. It displayed intelligence and awareness as it pulsed. As a single mind we reached up to it and placed our hand on it and the mind of our home, the soul of House connected with us. Something was wrong with what we felt back, the calm and patient core of House was turbulent and full of anxiety. It couldn't make a choice or a decision about anything it thought about. We watched as thoughts raced through its mind and collided with other thoughts. Pictures of the inside of our home blinked in the orb of energy, only to shift into something new. The images were of different time periods, the hallway in the seventeen forties, then a window in the Victorian style that changed into something from a modern high rise. Every Time period of style ran through those images, it was like House couldn't make up its mind. Meanwhile our connected thoughts fought to process it all, seven minds watched from afar unable to make sense of everything we saw. "House! House, what is wrong!" We all called out together, the core stopped all at once. For what seemed like an eternity it went dark. No light cast on the floor of the world we floated in, it was so dark we couldn't see our own form. One of us feared that House had died at the shock from our sudden presents in its core. Slowly the light came back to the world as the core took a new form, it looked like a person with gossamer wings made of light. Its hand embraced ours where we had been touching the ball of light. There were no defining features that could have given us a gender. The being before us could have been either male or female, it could have been human or elf or fairy. We never had before and we wouldn't start now, questioning things that House had never seen fit to share with us. This was our home we were communicating with and we loved our home no matter how it represented itself to us. We were just thankful we had them. For the first time in over three thousand years, House spoke to us.

"Where did you come from?" We heard a voice ask, it came from all around us and it spoke with the voice and language of every being and creature that had ever called this land home. I heard the bird-like chirps of the wood fey and pixies, the croaking voice of mud imps, the bright sparkling voice of will-o-wisp. Through our joined mind I felt the other six minds recognize many other beings that we have hosted, or treated in our emergency annex. "House we came in a while ago. We watched as you struggled to think. While you struggled to process." Our mouth moved as our thoughts flowed out of it. The smooth face of the being standing before us was shocked, it looked afraid of some unknown event. "Balisted." The voice said, we struggled to think of what it meant. It wasn't a word in any language that any of us knew. "Balisted? What does that mean?" We asked in response. "Call me Balisted." The multitude of voices said back to us. We didn't know that our energy projection could show shock but our face must have because House's voice, Balisted's voice filled the void again. "I have never had a name before, have I? Did you not give me one?" It asked while the beautiful smooth face looked down as if noticing that there were two legs and arms connected to its body. "You've never actually spoken to us, we never forced you to have a name." We all replied in our confusion. "Can we come in and have this conversation in person, we are sure that everyone would like to make sure you're ok." We finished asking and we withdrew back into our individual minds and our own bodies. While we waited for Balistad to make a decision we talk among ourselves and every being present about what our home had just told us. The name Balisted made the rounds as everyone tried to make sense of it. It was a shock only because it was so unexpected, but if House wanted to be called by a name everybody was prepared to accept the name. Still, no one knew what language Balisted came from, some beings knew or heard parts of their own tongue in one part of the short name or another. As we were talking the back door to the kitchen opened. The room was dark and a small fire was set in the hearth. The only light was from the flame and a glowing tall,thin, two armed, and winged being in the corner. The kitchen that had never been changed was wildly different. The range and oven had been updated to a modern gas stove, it looked fresh out of a magazine of Home and Gardens. The long table was still the butcher block top that it has always been but the floor it sat on looked like it was made out of Pergo. The long thin boards would have been maple and oak if they had been real boards. The windows were tinted, preventing the warmth of the summer sun from heating the room. Oddly there was a double sink on the marble counters but in the corner there was an industrial dishwasher. It could have served a restaurant of four hundred people. There was a bar at the far end of the eighteen meter long room, the bar stretched from one wall to the other wall filling up the seven meter space between them. There were even bar stools and a beer tap, and top,middle, and bottom shelves with wines,alcohols, and spirits from all different realms on them. The tap had shifting pulls that displayed beer,ales, and meads from a long span of time and places. "I made changes, I'm sorry if the room is awkward." Balisted was addressing us as we took chairs around the great table. "No, the room kitchen is fine, it's just that none of us have experienced you changing your kitchen before." It's true we hadn't nor had any of the beings that have come to call this home of the millenia. Honestly I personally had started to think it was outside of House's power to change. We've had to add to it or update it on our own when we wanted to change it or add something. It was the only part of the building that we had to use a lightning stone to power. No other room or area needed electricity because the essence of the foundation provided light, through either oil lamps or candles or electric lights. "I wasn't able to before, but now I can not only see in here but affect it as well. I left the table alone. I know how much you love it." Balisted said to us. "I didn't know you had a form either." I had to say something because Balisted's face caught me examining the body hoovering in the corner. I've never felt uncomfortable in front of our house before, it was a strange feeling. As we looked at the new body that our home had created for itself more defining features formed on the face, not masculine or feminine but somewhere in between. Still, it was a striking face, a beautiful face. It looked more and more like one of the High-Elves faces. The body too, was taking on more Elf like features but the wings remained the same. Four giant wings made of white-bluish light. As the last of the features took place the wings folded behind the tall body and there standing on the kitchen floor was Balisted. "Hello my old friend, it is nice to meet you." I said as I held out my hand to shake their's. "I'm, I'm me! I can feel your touch, I can see you with my own eyes! I'm talking to you directly!" The avatar of our home said with excitement as our hands met and we shook hands for the first time, they clasped my hand tightly and moved up and down with such vigor it made my entire body bob up and down with each shake. "You are, in fact you!" I smiled when I said it, it was like meeting an old friend after centuries of being apart. The whole family came together and hugged one another in a big group hug with Balisted at the center. We sat down and offered them a cup of tea, which they took with a smile. "Oh, it's…it's warm." The smile of first experiences crept over their face. "I'm sorry, I wasn't sure what tea you might like so it's blueberry and sage." Karen said as she handed the steaming mug over. During our first conversation with our home's new body the day had ended and the first stars of night came into view. Balisted stood up with their tea in hand and approached the back door. For a moment they just stood there looking out at the stars, then the door flew open and Balisted stepped out onto the grassy path and cool night air. "Oh it's so cold out here." They said, I had never witnessed so many first time experiences before. Everything for them was brand new, which I found odd. House knew when it was cold because they warmed the house for us, or understood when the weather changed and the weather grew hot for the winter because they always cooled the main rooms and were able to tell when individuals were too cold in their rooms because the heat would rise. "Balisted you know what hot and cold is, why is this such a surprise for you? You also know what it looks like out here, you're connected to the stables and, well you were connected to the greenhouse." I was a little suspicious of the avatar because our home knew all about the world around us.