Kyrie is almost forty and that day with his uncle Fitzroy was the most impactful of his life. He takes very good care of himself and he tries to be a good man, though who really knows what that is? He lives in Charleston. He became a real estate agent, a very successful one, and he owns a historic house next to one of the cozy cemeteries he has always enjoyed so much.
He’s been married twice, to the same woman, and they are currently divorced. They have a very volatile relationship. They love one another intensely, but they are very similar people and it just happens that once a decade they have a huge fight and decide to end their marriage. Kyrie lies and tells her that he is dating, she lies that she is not.
Her name is Bernadette and they have known one another since they were children in Bluffton, before Fitzroy died. When Bernadette’s father woke up one day on the front lawn, bigger than the house, Kyrie revealed himself to be just the man to deal with the confusion.
Bernadette’s father was an unwitting inheritor of the great powers of Anes that she had fused with the powers of Koyu, the blue deer, and hidden away in A-space to avoid the wrath of the hostile red rage energy that plundered the Quinspace in its history. He was a descendant of Mog, a First People’s giant, and through machinations that are honestly extremely difficult to detail because of the specifics of genealogy that determine the closest living relative and association to the original, let’s just say that it was a stroke of probability that endowed Bernadette’s father with Anes powers. The Anes powers were with Mog long enough that they became his in A-space, and following a curse from the first Alia, those powers sought a human vessel that was a descendant and most resembled him.
Bernadette’s father was always a special man, though in his early adulthood, he used his abilities for nefarious things. He was an excellent fighter, but rather than bother with the pageantry of boxing, he chose instead to take part in underground fights. The man was literally invincible. He allowed his opponents to make him bleed so that people wouldn’t assume him inhuman, but he learned when he was in a fight in high school that if he wanted to be invincible, he only had to believe it and concentrate on making his body as solid as a rock. And he felt his fists reinforce; sometimes he swore they grew when he really wanted to hit harder. He made a lot of money and a family that included many children. He raised them in Bluffton, or his wife did, and he did not keep his occupation secret from his children. In fact, he hoped that his sons would follow in his footsteps, but the man did not realize the repulsive forces at play; the meddling of Anes that was subtly alienating his family and everyone around him. The man became brutal and people were afraid of him. Bernadette loved him, but he was a rough man, even into her teens. She spent a lot of time with Kyrie in her youth, and when they were fifteen, he told her that one day soon, the two of them would have to save her father’s life.
And then the man woke up as a giant on the front lawn.
Ever since that day, Kyrie has known that he loves Bernadette more than anyone else in the world. But maybe the repulsive force that he uses to keep everyone safe from Anes is subtly working against him and making a life with Bernadette impossible. Or maybe they just need their breaks. They’ve been apart for two years, and Kyrie wants to see her. But maybe that is out of his control. Maybe he thinks of her because she thinks of him.
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