It took Imani a while before Imani showed some signs of being able to process everything that was going on.
The child she’d look after like he was her own son was not only back, but he was grown, married, and he could see her in her hiding place!
Her head began to hurt, and she simply flung her body around both of them so that they could hold her up and she could embrace them.
She kissed them both on the cheek firmly, seemingly oblivious to any sort of personal boundaries.
Eventually, she relinquished them and maintained enough of her clarity to tackle the most pressing endeavor first.
“H-How could you see me..? W-What happened to the cute fat on your face!”
“…I do a lot of exercise at night.”
“Chu! What happened to my young boy’s sweet mouth, eh?”
Imani retracted her egregiously long claws and started to pull at Carter’s cheeks like they were made of rubber.
lightsΝοvel Off to the side, Lisa felt her eyes become slightly wide.
Up until now, she had only ever seen Yara interact with her husband like this, and even then he often tried to escape her.
Because at the end of the day, who is quite bold enough to touch the cheeks of the black dragon and call him a young boy?
The number could not be more than two, and even his own father was not included.
“I missed you so much and I just… *sniff, sniff*”
Suddenly, Imani pulled Carter in closer by his cheeks and started to sniff him like some sort of green bloodhound.
“Eh..? Why do I smell so many women on you, boy? Jennès bon mache!” (Cheap whore)
“Lè poul a gen dan! You know me better than that!” (When the chicken has teeth. basically a saying used for something impossible.)
As if he’d been living around Imani for both of his lives, Carter slipped right back into his accent she’d cultivated in him and defended himself from these unfounded accusations in kind.
“I thought I did! But now my boy is a cheater! Wont sou ou!” (Shame on you)
“Ummm…”
Lisa finally raised her hand hesitantly, and stopped the beautiful cymbee from pulling her husband’s cheeks clean off his face.
“Your son is actually a very loyal man… We are the only women in the world he has ever loved and he takes perfect care of us. He would never betray our trust.”
Imani suddenly released her grip on Carter’s face and he immediately rubbed them back into shape.
Meanwhile, the charming cymbee swam right up to Lisa and showed her a very sweet and apologetic smile.
“My apologies, ti fi. I haven’t been very good at showing a dignified side of me since you arrived.”
She gingerly took Lisa’s hand in hers and brought them against her own face warmly.
“I can feel that he holds a great love for you, and for you him. Thank you for being there for him, despite his wandering zozo.” (Dick)
Lisa giggled and allowed her newly discovered mother-in-law’s warm gesture to take root inside of his heart.
“Think nothing of it. I and the other wives make sure that he never wanders far. Although it isn’t as though he is the kind of disloyal man who would, even if we gave him the chance.”
“Eh? Other wives? My boy has become some sort of king in my absence?” Imani joked.
“…”
“…”
“…Ou te dwe fè shitting m ‘…” (You have got to be shitting me)
Carter laughed as he sat cross legged on the ground and looked up into the starry sky.
“Where do I begin..? There’s a lot that I have to tell you about life after we lost touch.”
–
Imani Ayim is a cymbee, a spirit well known in kongo spirituality and a creature of hoodoo, and one who has been alive for a very long time.
She, had seen a lot, and done more, and she thought by now that she was capable of understanding pretty much anything.
After all, she had her own share of tragedies in life.
Captured by warlocks and drug to the bayou slums of Louisiana to be used as a glorified zoo animal for several decades, she escaped and used her powers to settle in Alabama, hoping to draw as little attention as possible and maybe use her powers to bless a particular family along the way.
However, she had hardly anticipated that she would be followed by a particularly scornful warlock.
For denying his affections, she was stripped of her magic and sealed within a small pond behind a suburban backyard; doomed to be stuck here forever.
She agonized when a family finally moved in.
They were very sick and troubled beyond belief, and she lamented over the fact that she could not save them from themselves.
If she had her powers back, it would have been nothing for her to bless this family and bring them luck, wealth and prosperity beyond belief.
But she was doomed only to a living a life as a glorified goldfish.
However, things would not always be bad.
The family that moved in had a little boy.
He was around seven years old and she was the cutest thing that Imani had ever seen in her life.
But that boy was not treated well by his sick parents.
He was beaten a lot, and he was even thrown outside like a common house pet whenever the parents were not in the mood to deal with him.
In this little boy, Imani found reason for living again, and came to the decision that as long as she was around, she would never let this boy come under harm from anyone else.
Out here, they would have only each other, and they would be each other’s most cherished existences.
Against the laws of the supernatural community, Imani revealed herself to the boy.
It took so very long for her to get him to trust her, but she was eventually able to win him over through her own gentle nature and compassion.
Inadvertently, her kindness rubbed off on the boy and he ended up embodying some of her same values as he grew up, even with all of the cruelty he endured still on his mind.
The relationship that the two of them had continued for two more years, with Imani always making herself scarce by the time the morning rolled around so that the child always believed she was imaginary.
But one day… he did not come back at all.
She waited and waited for what felt like an eternity but… he never came back outside, and she did not know why.
Without her knowledge, Carter had gotten into an argument with his birth mother over his dislike of the way she treated him.
Teary eyed, he screamed that one day his ‘real’ mother was going to take him away, and then she would never see him again.
Enraged, she gave him the worst beating of his life, and she likely wouldn’t have stopped until she had killed him.
But at that moment, his grandmother came with the intention of staging an intervention, and stopped the boy from meeting his maker too soon.
Afterwards, Carter went to live with his grandmother for a few years and his life was okay, but he was still lonely.
When she died, he got himself emancipated at sixteen so that he would not have to go back underneath his parent’s care, and he started to fend for himself from then on.
Imani thought she would only be heartbroken to hear Carter’s story.
But the more she heard and learned, the more his story felt simply miraculous.
The boy she’d raised with so much love and care was the split soul of creation’s first monster, and he was living a new life with nine beautiful wives, five children, two sisters, an entire race of dragons underneath him and he was the equivalent to walking viagra for every sentient creature in this world and the next!
She felt like she needed to lie down and take some time to digest all of this!
Carter could have become anything else in this world and developed an ability to see her.
A werewolf, a vampire, a ghost, the list goes on!
But out of everything that her son could have ended up being, he ended up being a dragon-demon-spirit hybrid.
Who was also a cosmic god!
Whatever that was…
She didn’t understand half of it, but all she did know was that the little boy she had raised with so much love and care ended up being even more special than she already knew him to be.
It was sort of every mother’s dream, although she did wish his life was not in so much jeopardy all the time.
After he finished explaining, Carter took Imani by the hands and pressed them both against his face.
“Mother… I want you to come to my world. I want you to see everything I have built, the family that the girls and I have created, and the people who have taken care of me in your absence.”
Imani smiled softly at that, and she pressed her forehead against his own.
“I think.. that there is very little that I would like more, my son. But unfortunately my place is here, in this pond. I am sealed so that I can never leave the water and my powers will never be returned to me. Only the one who did this could possibly undo this spell and I am sure by now he must be-”
“It’s done. You can get out now.” Carter said.
“I… what..?”
Carter suddenly pulled his mother out of the water and placed her feet on the concrete walkway before she could even take a moment to realize what’d happened.
“H-How did you…?”
“Magic is just another strand that makes up aether, so I can manipulate it as I please. You should also feel your power returning to you at any moment now.”
Sure enough, as Imani looked down at her hands she found that her son’s words were no mere falsehood.
Bit by bit, she began to feel more power flowing into her from the nature around her, and soon enough flowers began to grow through the concrete at her feet.
“I..I..”
“Well what do you know? I am just like you.”
Imani suddenly saw her son’s feet change and a moment later, flowers that were black and violet started to spring up from the gravel underneath his feet; completely different from anything she had ever seen, but so incredibly pure and full of the raw energy of life.
Looking up, she found that her son now looked like a different man she did not know.
Dangerously seductive, with long and unnatural blood-red hair pared with matching eyes and dark horns the color of obsidian.
Unused to the sight of a dragon for the first time, Imani immediately backed away without understanding why, but a moment later she regained all clarity of herself.
‘What am I doing..? No matter what he is, how could I be afraid of my son?!’
As quickly as she backed away from Abaddon, Imani flew back into his arms, with cool, crystal tears running down her green cheeks.
“Mèsi… mèsi..!” (Thank you)
“Please, don’t thank me just yet.”
Abaddon gently made his mother look him directly in the eyes, which were now much more intense than before.
“Thank me after you tell me exactly where the place you were imprisoned was, and the name of the man responsible for sealing you here.”