Guidance.

A/N: This is a fun one. Not so sure I\'ll keep the ending of this one the same... may change it later on. I just wanted to let everyone know why Erin looks down on the humans like she does now...

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These Are the Things You Shouldn\'t Know.



I turned on the boy, and he gasped. "Why are you here?" I yelled, the air shaking with my rage. Noah shouldn\'t be here, in my mind. These things were private; he shouldn\'t be seeing them. "You shouldn\'t here."



"I want to know what\'s going on, Erin," he said in his soft voice. "The Summoners... are hiding something from me. And I\'m..." He broke off and shook his head, his aura glowing with frustration. "I\'m sick of being lied to. There are things about you they don\'t see fit to tell me." He looked up, and his blue met my powerful gaze with a confidence I had never seen in Noah McBride before. "Will you show me, Erin? Will you show me what happened to make you the way you are?"



I hesitated. This was going to be hard for me to share, and I knew it would be even harder for him to accept.



But I nodded. \'The boy deserves to know what he is - and what he comes from.\'



Everything around us faded away and reformed. The wind was building outside the small stone house, and Noah gave me a puzzled look. I pulled him by the arm, taking him close to the window. I heard his gasp at the sight. The younger me sat on the edge of the small, makeshift cot, only fifteen, blood running down my chin from my cut lip. The collar of my dress was torn, as was the skirt, and we could make out the bruises covering my shoulder, collarbone, and legs.



I felt Noah\'s fascination grow when he spotted Ian sitting beside me on the bed.



"Is that-?" Noah murmured in awe, looking at me.



I glanced back at him. "Ian? Yes. He was barely a century old at this point, but he\'s always had a heart of gold. He wanted to make this as easy as possible on me, which is no easy task."



Noah stared at me. "He wanted to make what as easy as possible?"



I didn\'t answer; I just watched.



The two of us watched as Ian offered lonely, little Erin Immortality. We watched as lonely, little Erin stupidly accepted it. We watched as lonely, little Erin became infused with the Mother and was made into a creature of the air. It was painful when I first went through it, and the memories of that pain made me turn away, bringing Noah to the next scene.



I nearly stopped breathing as I looked around at the familiar village. "Do you know of this place?" I asked him. Noah nodded, gaping at his surroundings with wide eyes and a hanging jaw.



"This is the Great Massacre," he murmured.



I nodded. He stared at me in shock, his aura sparking with fear. "YOU did this?" he wanted to know.



At first, I couldn\'t answer. I remembered the way the pressure built so high in the village that the windows of every building shattered. The wind tore through the town in front of us, laying the homes to the ground. The people...



"Every man, woman, and child drowned that day," I told Noah. I stepped forward. The wind shook the ground, the wooden buildings rattled and collapsed all around us as we walked up to where Ian and I crouched in the middle of the dirt street. We stared as Ian held me, and I sobbed loudly and violently.



"What did they DO?" Noah practically screamed. I could almost hear his inner argument, fighting with himself over whether to be angry with me or feel pity toward me.



I whirled on him. "They killed her," I shot at him. He stepped back from me, a little afraid. "You SHOULD be frightened of me," I told him. "I\'m over a millenia old. I have killed more people than you\'ve SEEN in your entire LIFE. But I have never felt as angry or as betrayed as I did that day."



"Who did they kill, Erin?" he asked me quietly, cautiously.



"Her name is so old now that I\'ve forgotten how to pronounce it," I told him. "The language we spoke then... it\'s dead and gone. But her name..." I closed my eyes, breathing in the damp, sweet air. "Her name translates to English as hope. She was the daughter of Ian and a human woman whose name meant fire. She was one of the first fire-based Summoners; she had a connection with Ian that ran so deep Leia and I could both feel it. We weren\'t a part of it, of course, but when that little girl was born..." I shook my head, tears welling in my eyes as the scene changed again.



Noah stared at her as she materialized beside where Ian and I squatted on the ground. Ian clutched me tightly as I sobbed, and Noah\'s aura flashed with emotion as the old version of me cried out, "She was a child!" I saw Ian tense up, and I knew that holding me was just as comforting to him as it was to me.



She stood beside us, watching Noah and me. Her hair was long and wavy, and it was a dark, shiny brown color. She was tall, taller than Noah, and she was thin and slender. She had a heart-shaped face with wide cheeks and a sharp chin. Her skin was fair, a very light pink. She stared at Noah with fiery, sparkling grey eyes. The two of us could feel the heat radiating from her. As I took a step toward her, the air between us sizzled.



"We all four loved that girl," I said to Noah. "She was connected very deeply to all of us."



Noah stared at her. "She was the avatar," he breathed in disbelief.



I stared at her also. "She was nineteen when they murdered her." I turned my head to look at Noah. "We had hope for the humans at one time. We felt we could trust them. We felt we could love them. And... as soon as we started to care about them, THIS happens. Humans murdered her." I knew by the look on his face that my eyes had turned hard, unforgiving. I was ancient, and I was tired, and I was hurt.



Humans murdered my hope that day.



Noah suddenly gave me a strange look. "What do you mean, \'all four\'?" he asked me.



I gave him a small, sad smile. "I was wondering when you\'d catch that."



Right then, the old version of Noah walked up to Ian and me. Ian stood, bringing me to my feet, and this prehistoric version of Noah held me in his arms.



The Noah standing beside me basically freaked.



"Now you\'re just making shit up, Erin," he told me.



I shook my head. "The Mother made Leia. Leia made Ian. Ian made me." I looked away from him. "I made you."



He stared at me in shock.



"I was, for several centuries, only the air element," I told him. "You were the water element. When... when I massacred these humans, that was when we created the one rule that the elements follow: never kill humans out of spite.



"In 491, you broke that rule," I went on, looking him right in the eye. "It\'s all right; I know you don\'t remember. And... none of us blamed you. You did it for a good reason."



"Oh, yea?" Noah asked, practically yelling. His aura was flashing a dangerous red. "And what reason was that?"



I watched him. "They threatened me. And they threatened Jordan."



"Jordan?" Noah repeated. "What the hell does Jordan have to do with this?"



I sighed. "This must be part of the punishment," I mumbled. "Jordan... is our son."



I wasn\'t surprised when Noah passed out.