Innocent One
Innocent One
Her pure heart and peaceful mind were filled with troubles and worries. It affected her so much that her serene face looked depressed. She could barely go around doing her duty as the angel of peace.
And although she was having a difficult time, she didn't go back to see Ariel because she had a little bit of faith in her brother.
She was hoping that she would hear from her brother. She even waited by the beach of a familiar part of the ocean that she knew was her brother's favorite place. She had hoped that her brother would find her easily if she stayed there.
But days passed by and there was no news from Michael.
At that moment, Irene was sitting by the seaside and was looking at the setting sun on the horizon.
Her dreamy blue eyes were full of sadness. She was feeling suffocated by the fact that she wasn't doing anything. And to add to that, she couldn't quite shake the feeling that something terrible was going to happen if she didn't intervene soon enough.
She took a deep breath in and thought to herself, "I think I should go and check on Ariel myself. What if something bad happens to her while I am sitting here and doing nothing?"
Irene swiftly got up on her feet. She tried to teleport herself to where Ariel was by clearly visualizing the image of Ariel in her mind. However, she failed to do so.
She furrowed her brows and mumbled, "I thought that I would at least be teleported outside the barrier. But it looks like our mother's barrier is a bit more restrictive than I had thought."
Irene began thinking of other people who she had seen with Ariel. And she tried to teleport by thinking about Ariel's cousins and friends one by one. But that didn't work as well.
She heaved a deep sigh and thought to herself, "I guess all of them are in her vicinity. I think I should go to the castle of Brenalia and see if she is still there."
With that in mind, Irene was about to teleport to the Drayston castle. However, she suddenly felt someone's presence behind her.
Irene swiftly turned around. Her eyes widened when she saw someone she had been wishing to meet for a while now.
"Mother…" Irene let out a shocked whisper as she wasn't expecting a visit from the Goddess at all.
And because Michael had said things to Irene and had made her believe that their mother was actively helping Theodore in keeping Ariel like a captive, she couldn't bring herself to greet her mother warmly.
Irene kept on staring at her mother for a while. The Goddess was radiating like always. And she still looked the same as she did decades ago. She also had that same loving look in her eyes.
And she gave a warm smile and called Irene's name, "Irene. Aren't you going to give a hug to your mother?"
Irene couldn't keep on maintaining the distance when she looked at her loving mother who was spreading her arms and smiling at her.
"Mother..." She went forward and buried herself in her mother's arms.
The Goddess tightly wrapped her arms around the shy and innocent child of hers. She gently kissed Irene on her hair and caressed her.
The familiar scent of her mother and the warm hug made Irene recall all the good memories she had with her mother. And she thought to herself, "There's no way that our mother would put up a barrier without any good reason. That isn't her."
So she looked up at her mother so that she could get answers to the things that had been bothering her for days.
However, she was confused about how she was going to bring up those questions without hurting her mother's feelings.
By now, the Goddess had some loose ideas about what was troubling Irene. She had seen Irene trying to get closer to Ariel; and upon failing to do so, she had seen Irene getting disheartened.
So she lovingly asked her daughter, "Irene, I know that there are things that are deeply troubling your soft heart. I could not bear to see you like this, so I had to come and see you. You know that you can freely talk about anything with me, right?"
Irene couldn't contain her curiosity anymore. And she bluntly asked her mother, "Mother, why is there a barrier around Ariel? Why are you keeping her like a prisoner? What did she do to be treated like that? She doesn't deserve to be caged! She's just a child!"
The Goddess was a little taken aback because she had not expected to hear that question at all. A subtle change could be seen in her beautiful face when she asked, "Who gave you the idea that I was keeping her like a prisoner?"
"M–" Irene was about to reveal who she had heard those things from. However, she stopped herself and simply said, "I saw the barrier with my own eyes. I wanted to meet her but I couldn't get past that barrier. And I had also heard that she was kept inside the Palace surrounded by barriers until now. So, if those were not prisons then what were they?"
The Goddess held her daughter's hands and looked into her eyes. She saw genuine love and care towards Ariel in those eyes.
The Goddess could guess who gave her such wrong ideas. She was aware that Irene had visited the Heavenly Palace recently. And though she never heard Michael saying a word about Ariel to Irene, she was a hundred percent sure that it was him who did that.
She lightly rubbed her daughter's hands with her thumbs and softly said to her, "Irene… I have told you countless times never to put your complete trust in anyone without knowing all sides of the story. You're too innocent and even your brothers try to take advantage of you because of that very reason."
"Wh-What do you mean?" Irene felt a prick in her heart when her mother said that outright.
The Goddess lightly caressed Irene's cheeks. She gave a soft smile to her youngest child and said, "Let me show you everything. And you can decide for yourself who was in the wrong."