~ Forward
There are mysterious forces surrounding you. They aren’t nice. They’re trying to destroy you. You can’t see them, you can’t hear them, you can’t feel their presence around you. Most importantly, you can’t fight them. That’s my job. And I really suck at it.
If you’re reading this, it probably means the world hasn’t ended yet. That’s good! Hold onto that, because I doubt it’s going to last very long. Reality is falling apart too fast. This is the journal that I’ve been keeping since I was pulled from the normal world. If it really makes it back to reality, then who knows? Maybe there’s hope for us after all.
If you’re reading this, it probably means the world hasn’t ended yet. That’s good! Hold onto that, because I doubt it’s going to last very long. Reality is falling apart too fast. This is the journal that I’ve been keeping since I was pulled from the normal world. If it really makes it back to reality, then who knows? Maybe there’s hope for us after all.
~ June 6th, 2012
My mom opened the door, turned on my light, said, “Naleen, it’s time to get up,” then turned and left. I shifted, rolling over to look at the clock. Its cold, red letters looked back at me, calmly proclaiming 7:00. I don’t know why I bothered to look. It was always seven.
My bed was soft. My covers were warm. My pillow was placed just right. I didn’t want to get up. I got up.
Mom and Dad were sitting at the table in the dinning room, waiting for me. Dad smiled, and said, “Good morning, Naleen. Did you sleep well?”
“Yes, I did,” I told him. Last night I had a nightmare where the sun fell from the sky and was coming towards me, getting hotter and hotter and brighter and brighter, but I couldn’t run away.
“That’s good,” he said. I sat down and looked at our breakfast. A pile of pancakes sat on a plate in the middle of the table, next to a bowl full of sliced strawberries and a bottle of syrup. I’ve never really liked pancakes. I took a pancake, poured some syrup on it, and ate it.
We all finished eating. Dad got up, said a brief goodbye, and went off to work. Mom told me it was time to start on my report about the history of literature. I didn’t want to start my report. I sat down at my computer and started my report.
The summer sunlight streamed through the window shutters. I heard a laugh outside. It was the high, cute laugh of a little girl. It didn’t matter that that little girl was off of school. In the Swanson household, school is held year round.
I have three older brothers, who all have had the same regimen of strict homeschooling that I’ve been attempting to get through. My oldest brother, Jeremy, owns a law firm. Roland, the second child, has become a surgeon. Then there’s Darian. He dropped out of college and moved in with his girlfriend. We don’t really talk about him very much anymore.
I finished the rough draft of my report. This time I didn’t need to be told what to do. I could hear my Mom’s voice in my head. Naleen, it’s time to do your math. I didn’t want to do my math. I pulled out my math book and started on my math.
I’m not advancing as fast as my parents want me to. Even Darian was in pre-calculus by the time he was 15, and I’m still struggling through geometry. Math has never been my strong suit.
I was attempting to discover the identity of the elusive x when a sharp voice called, “Naleen!” from upstairs. I looked at my geometry book, and after a moment’s thought I put my answer sheet on the page so that if it closed accidentally I could find my place. Then, I went to find what was amiss.
It turned out that I’d forgotten to make my bed. My mom scolded me for a minute, telling me that I needed to remember that appearances were important, then left, allowing me to remedy my mistake. She wasn’t really that mad, I knew, just a little disappointed with my thoughtlessness.
Story of my life.
I remembered when Mom and Dad were actually mad. It was when they found out about Darian. They kept asking one thing: Why? Why would he do that to them? Why did he throw everything away like that? Why, why, why? They asked each other, they asked their friends, they asked their own parents. Why? I can only think of one person who didn’t get asked the dreaded question. One person they never thought could answer Why? Me.
But I knew why. He told me.
The email came before we heard that he had dropped out of college. Now that I think about it, he probably sent it to me the day he got to his girlfriend’s house. I remember the exact moment I opened it. I was glad to hear from him, but also curious. He hadn’t sent me an email from college before. Why now? When I opened it, it looked like this.
From: Darian Swanson
Subject: [No Subject]
Naleen,
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Darian
That was why. Darian was tired of the hallway our parents had made his life into. He didn’t want to walk that straight line anymore. So he didn’t. He turned slightly, saw a door, and opened it, only looking back long enough to call out my name before shutting it firmly behind him.
And there I was, still walking. I went on and on, trying to live up to the expectations of those around me, trying to cover up the fact that I was stumbling. Hoping that I wasn’t going to fall flat on my face anytime soon.
I hadn’t even started making my bed. I had my hands down on my dresser, like they were supporting me. My head was down, and I stared at those hands while taking deep, ragged breaths.
I looked up, knowing what I would see in the mirror above the dresser, and I wasn’t disappointed. It was that girl. The one who couldn’t do anything right. Couldn’t be free. Couldn’t even be trapped!
My reflection turned red, and slightly blurry. Without a thought, I pulled back my arm, made a fist, and shot it forward in a whole body thrust.
But the mirror didn’t shatter.
The world did.
~
I found myself lying on my back. I felt disoriented. What was happening? I was waking up. I was pretty sure of that. That meant I had been asleep, right? No, not just asleep, I realized. Knocked unconscious. Something bad had happened. But what? I racked my brains. Why was it taking so long? There, there it was. I had been upset. I’d punched a mirror. I grimaced. How stupid could I get? But that was when things got strange. It wasn’t just my fuzzy brain. There was the noise of breaking glass, but a thousand times louder than it should have been. And what I’d seen... well, it didn’t make sense. My vision had fractured. Split. Crumbled. Fallen. And as the pieces, pieces of what I didn’t know, fell, so did I. And that was where the memory ended.
Weird.
Now I was waking up. Or something was waking me up. Was something waking me up? I listened.
Yes, there was a sound. A sound like the ocean, or the wind. It was just so loud. What was it? It occurred to me to open my eyes. I did.
At that moment, when I first saw this place, all I could think was, that’s a lot of paper cranes.
They fly randomly around, occasionally bumping into each other. Their wings lazily go up and down, up and down. There are so many that I could never count them, even if I stayed here all of my life. Each individual crane barely makes any noise at all, but together they fill the air with a rustling, whooshing sound. I imagine that if you packed all of the people of a city into a room, gave them all a copy of the same book, and then read out loud to them so that when you got to the end of a page all of them would flip their papers together, you could make a sound like these cranes make.
I know, of course, that paper cranes can’t fly. I’m operating on the assumption that this is a dream.
I put my hands behind me and pushed myself up, then crossed my legs and sat there for a minute, rubbing my eyes. My brain was moving a little faster by then. Finally, I stood and looked around me.
I seem to be in some kind of giant bird cage. There are lots of bars surrounding me, all going upwards until they meet in the center, creating a dome shape. Six of these bars are thicker than the others. Each of these thick bars has a different picture on it, at about my eye level; they are an umbrella, a hand mirror, the number thirteen, a cat, and what I think are probably a pocket watch and a salt shaker. I guess that they’re all bad luck symbols, since I broke a mirror. Not that I have anything against umbrellas, cats, and salt. The superstition is that breaking a mirror gets you seven years of bad luck, right? Maybe it was ten. I don’t know.
What’s really interesting is that it’s not just the bars that have these symbols. Every one of the cranes also has one of the pictures on its side.
Beyond the bars, I see only whiteness. Either it’s a trick of the light and it’s too bright outside to see anything, or there isn’t anything out there at all. That line of thinking is only going to give me a headache, though, so I’ll just move on with my description. I haven’t even gotten to the coolest stuff yet.
You see, in the center of the room is a pyramid with a six sided base. Each one of the corners points to one of the thick bars, which makes them and the drawings they show seem even more important. The top of the pyramid, though, points to a glowing orb, which gives everything in the room a slightly purple tinge. I am not kidding. There is a floating, purple, circle-y thing. Orbs usually fly even less than paper cranes, making this the highlight of the room. I really like the purple color. It’s a royal purple, the kind of color that says, I’m going to be light and dark at the same time, and you’re just going to have to deal with it! It’s so great.
Last but not least, I found a book on the ground. It’s about the size of a spiral notebook, but instead of spirals it has regular binding. It’s like it’s some old fashioned diary, since there isn’t anything written in it. At least, there wasn’t anything written in it. Now it is filled with my very own thoughts. It’s a thought book. You know, that’s not even funny, but it’s still making me giggle. Maybe I’m tired.
Anyways, the pages of this book are lined, but not in blue and red like normal loose leaf paper. They have even, black lines running horizontally across them. On the cover of the book, which is purple like the orb, there are three words: Naleen Elizabeth Swanson. I wasn’t sure about writing in it at first, but this is my dream, and the book has my name on it, so I guess it’s okay.
The cover of the book is undecorated, besides my name, which is written in bold block letters. The pencil I’m writing with is much more complicated.
I guess I didn’t mention the pencil until now, did I? It’s circular, instead of ridged like the normal yellow pencils usually are. It’s absolutely beautiful. It’s covered in swirls of every color I can think of, and even a few that I have trouble identifying. The detail is exquisite. I have no idea how it could have been made. There doesn’t seem to be any pattern to the swirls. They just flow all over, never seeming to end. The eraser is white, and it works really well. There’s no residue left on the page from my mistakes at all.
There’s something I didn’t realize until just now. The point of the pencil is still as sharp as it ever was. It’s not worn down at all. The eraser is the same, not a dent in it. Man, I love this pencil! I’ve always hated it when my pencil points get dull, and I don’t like mechanical pencils, so I end up wasting way too much time at the sharpener.
That’s all I know right now, I guess. I wonder what’s a dream and what isn’t. I started at the beginning of today to try and make sense of it, but now I’m even more confused. If I really did punch a mirror, Mom’s going to kill me. I guess I won’t worry about it now. My record of June 6th is complete. All that’s left is to wait.
My bed was soft. My covers were warm. My pillow was placed just right. I didn’t want to get up. I got up.
Mom and Dad were sitting at the table in the dinning room, waiting for me. Dad smiled, and said, “Good morning, Naleen. Did you sleep well?”
“Yes, I did,” I told him. Last night I had a nightmare where the sun fell from the sky and was coming towards me, getting hotter and hotter and brighter and brighter, but I couldn’t run away.
“That’s good,” he said. I sat down and looked at our breakfast. A pile of pancakes sat on a plate in the middle of the table, next to a bowl full of sliced strawberries and a bottle of syrup. I’ve never really liked pancakes. I took a pancake, poured some syrup on it, and ate it.
We all finished eating. Dad got up, said a brief goodbye, and went off to work. Mom told me it was time to start on my report about the history of literature. I didn’t want to start my report. I sat down at my computer and started my report.
The summer sunlight streamed through the window shutters. I heard a laugh outside. It was the high, cute laugh of a little girl. It didn’t matter that that little girl was off of school. In the Swanson household, school is held year round.
I have three older brothers, who all have had the same regimen of strict homeschooling that I’ve been attempting to get through. My oldest brother, Jeremy, owns a law firm. Roland, the second child, has become a surgeon. Then there’s Darian. He dropped out of college and moved in with his girlfriend. We don’t really talk about him very much anymore.
I finished the rough draft of my report. This time I didn’t need to be told what to do. I could hear my Mom’s voice in my head. Naleen, it’s time to do your math. I didn’t want to do my math. I pulled out my math book and started on my math.
I’m not advancing as fast as my parents want me to. Even Darian was in pre-calculus by the time he was 15, and I’m still struggling through geometry. Math has never been my strong suit.
I was attempting to discover the identity of the elusive x when a sharp voice called, “Naleen!” from upstairs. I looked at my geometry book, and after a moment’s thought I put my answer sheet on the page so that if it closed accidentally I could find my place. Then, I went to find what was amiss.
It turned out that I’d forgotten to make my bed. My mom scolded me for a minute, telling me that I needed to remember that appearances were important, then left, allowing me to remedy my mistake. She wasn’t really that mad, I knew, just a little disappointed with my thoughtlessness.
Story of my life.
I remembered when Mom and Dad were actually mad. It was when they found out about Darian. They kept asking one thing: Why? Why would he do that to them? Why did he throw everything away like that? Why, why, why? They asked each other, they asked their friends, they asked their own parents. Why? I can only think of one person who didn’t get asked the dreaded question. One person they never thought could answer Why? Me.
But I knew why. He told me.
The email came before we heard that he had dropped out of college. Now that I think about it, he probably sent it to me the day he got to his girlfriend’s house. I remember the exact moment I opened it. I was glad to hear from him, but also curious. He hadn’t sent me an email from college before. Why now? When I opened it, it looked like this.
From: Darian Swanson
Subject: [No Subject]
Naleen,
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Darian
That was why. Darian was tired of the hallway our parents had made his life into. He didn’t want to walk that straight line anymore. So he didn’t. He turned slightly, saw a door, and opened it, only looking back long enough to call out my name before shutting it firmly behind him.
And there I was, still walking. I went on and on, trying to live up to the expectations of those around me, trying to cover up the fact that I was stumbling. Hoping that I wasn’t going to fall flat on my face anytime soon.
I hadn’t even started making my bed. I had my hands down on my dresser, like they were supporting me. My head was down, and I stared at those hands while taking deep, ragged breaths.
I looked up, knowing what I would see in the mirror above the dresser, and I wasn’t disappointed. It was that girl. The one who couldn’t do anything right. Couldn’t be free. Couldn’t even be trapped!
My reflection turned red, and slightly blurry. Without a thought, I pulled back my arm, made a fist, and shot it forward in a whole body thrust.
But the mirror didn’t shatter.
The world did.
~
I found myself lying on my back. I felt disoriented. What was happening? I was waking up. I was pretty sure of that. That meant I had been asleep, right? No, not just asleep, I realized. Knocked unconscious. Something bad had happened. But what? I racked my brains. Why was it taking so long? There, there it was. I had been upset. I’d punched a mirror. I grimaced. How stupid could I get? But that was when things got strange. It wasn’t just my fuzzy brain. There was the noise of breaking glass, but a thousand times louder than it should have been. And what I’d seen... well, it didn’t make sense. My vision had fractured. Split. Crumbled. Fallen. And as the pieces, pieces of what I didn’t know, fell, so did I. And that was where the memory ended.
Weird.
Now I was waking up. Or something was waking me up. Was something waking me up? I listened.
Yes, there was a sound. A sound like the ocean, or the wind. It was just so loud. What was it? It occurred to me to open my eyes. I did.
At that moment, when I first saw this place, all I could think was, that’s a lot of paper cranes.
They fly randomly around, occasionally bumping into each other. Their wings lazily go up and down, up and down. There are so many that I could never count them, even if I stayed here all of my life. Each individual crane barely makes any noise at all, but together they fill the air with a rustling, whooshing sound. I imagine that if you packed all of the people of a city into a room, gave them all a copy of the same book, and then read out loud to them so that when you got to the end of a page all of them would flip their papers together, you could make a sound like these cranes make.
I know, of course, that paper cranes can’t fly. I’m operating on the assumption that this is a dream.
I put my hands behind me and pushed myself up, then crossed my legs and sat there for a minute, rubbing my eyes. My brain was moving a little faster by then. Finally, I stood and looked around me.
I seem to be in some kind of giant bird cage. There are lots of bars surrounding me, all going upwards until they meet in the center, creating a dome shape. Six of these bars are thicker than the others. Each of these thick bars has a different picture on it, at about my eye level; they are an umbrella, a hand mirror, the number thirteen, a cat, and what I think are probably a pocket watch and a salt shaker. I guess that they’re all bad luck symbols, since I broke a mirror. Not that I have anything against umbrellas, cats, and salt. The superstition is that breaking a mirror gets you seven years of bad luck, right? Maybe it was ten. I don’t know.
What’s really interesting is that it’s not just the bars that have these symbols. Every one of the cranes also has one of the pictures on its side.
Beyond the bars, I see only whiteness. Either it’s a trick of the light and it’s too bright outside to see anything, or there isn’t anything out there at all. That line of thinking is only going to give me a headache, though, so I’ll just move on with my description. I haven’t even gotten to the coolest stuff yet.
You see, in the center of the room is a pyramid with a six sided base. Each one of the corners points to one of the thick bars, which makes them and the drawings they show seem even more important. The top of the pyramid, though, points to a glowing orb, which gives everything in the room a slightly purple tinge. I am not kidding. There is a floating, purple, circle-y thing. Orbs usually fly even less than paper cranes, making this the highlight of the room. I really like the purple color. It’s a royal purple, the kind of color that says, I’m going to be light and dark at the same time, and you’re just going to have to deal with it! It’s so great.
Last but not least, I found a book on the ground. It’s about the size of a spiral notebook, but instead of spirals it has regular binding. It’s like it’s some old fashioned diary, since there isn’t anything written in it. At least, there wasn’t anything written in it. Now it is filled with my very own thoughts. It’s a thought book. You know, that’s not even funny, but it’s still making me giggle. Maybe I’m tired.
Anyways, the pages of this book are lined, but not in blue and red like normal loose leaf paper. They have even, black lines running horizontally across them. On the cover of the book, which is purple like the orb, there are three words: Naleen Elizabeth Swanson. I wasn’t sure about writing in it at first, but this is my dream, and the book has my name on it, so I guess it’s okay.
The cover of the book is undecorated, besides my name, which is written in bold block letters. The pencil I’m writing with is much more complicated.
I guess I didn’t mention the pencil until now, did I? It’s circular, instead of ridged like the normal yellow pencils usually are. It’s absolutely beautiful. It’s covered in swirls of every color I can think of, and even a few that I have trouble identifying. The detail is exquisite. I have no idea how it could have been made. There doesn’t seem to be any pattern to the swirls. They just flow all over, never seeming to end. The eraser is white, and it works really well. There’s no residue left on the page from my mistakes at all.
There’s something I didn’t realize until just now. The point of the pencil is still as sharp as it ever was. It’s not worn down at all. The eraser is the same, not a dent in it. Man, I love this pencil! I’ve always hated it when my pencil points get dull, and I don’t like mechanical pencils, so I end up wasting way too much time at the sharpener.
That’s all I know right now, I guess. I wonder what’s a dream and what isn’t. I started at the beginning of today to try and make sense of it, but now I’m even more confused. If I really did punch a mirror, Mom’s going to kill me. I guess I won’t worry about it now. My record of June 6th is complete. All that’s left is to wait.
~ June 7th, 2012
Everything has changed since I last wrote in this journal. My whole world has done a back-flip, leaving me disoriented and confused. I am now certain of only two things, throughout the entire universe. One is that I’m not alone anymore. The other is that, for better or for worse, I’m not dreaming.
Back when I was in the giant cage, I noticed something on one of the cranes. I thought I saw words on its wing. Quickly, I scanned the rest of the cranes. On one near me, I saw a flash of darkness that was apart from the symbol of a cat on its side. I snatched the crane as fast as I could. While it flapped its wings weakly in protest, I examined it and saw that there was definitely a word peeking through its folds. It started with a capital S, then had what I thought were a p and an o.
I stood holding the crane for a moment, unsure of myself, but eventually my curiosity overcame me. Feeling slightly bad, I went to work unfolding the poor thing. Is it animal cruelty to be mean to a paper crane? Even when it was unfolded, the paper wriggled in my hands. It was actually kind of creepy.
In random spots all over the paper was writing. There would be a sentence here, a paragraph there, all placed so that the outside of the crane would be mainly white, besides the drawing. I looked for the spot where I had seen the Spo. It was a small collection of sentences, and I read, In this one, Spongebob and Patrick go to-
That was all I saw, because the crane then gave a well placed yank, jerking out of my hands. More quickly than I would have thought possible, it refolded itself in the air and flew off. It might have been my imagination, but it seemed like that crane flapped its wings more energetically than usual in its haste to get away from me.
I stared after it, but soon lost it in the mass of origami birds. The only thought that crossed my mind was that I only ever watched Spongebob a couple of times.
I went and leaned against the thick bar with the mirror symbol on it, and thought about what I wanted to do. I decided that I would definitely open more of the cranes and see what I could read out of them, but first I wanted to watch the cranes for awhile and find out if I had missed anything else about them.
After a few minutes of careful observation, I did notice that their flight patterns weren’t completely random. It seemed like they all stayed at a certain level of height. They moved up and down a little bit, but not enough that it mattered very much. I also noticed something that should have been obvious. At the lowest level of flight, somewhere near the height of my stomach, a new crane would appear every once in awhile. I guess I never saw it before because it happened so smoothly. There wouldn’t be a crane, and then suddenly there would. The first few times I saw it happen, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me.
Finally, I made up my mind that it was time to catch another crane. It wasn’t hard. I just plucked one out of the air, almost right in front of my nose. This one had an umbrella on it.
It was stronger than the last one, but before I lost it I was able to read, Man! I’m gonna die, aren’t I? It’s going to fill up with water, and I’m going to drown. I always thought I’d be done in by a shoelace... hehe, aglet- and the crane escaped.
Well, that was even weirder than the last one. The cranes seemed to have people’s thoughts written on them. I suddenly had the idea that they were just like my journal. Thought book. From that moment on, I called them thought cranes. No other name would work in my mind.
I tried to read a few more cranes, but only got snatches of thoughts. Apparently I had gotten lucky to read so much from the first two. Either that, or they had somehow told each other how to get away from me. I prefered to believe the former.
On a thirteen crane, I saw the word candles, and the watch one that I grabbed had some kind of list on it.
All was going well until one of the cranes did the appearing into existence thing right in front of me. I snatched it up immediately, and saw that this one had a symbol of a mirror.
Then they started swirling.
The cranes began to move differently, every one of them going in a counterclockwise circle, all around the edges of the cage. And they started to move faster.
I slowly backed away from the bars, keeping my eyes on the thought cranes. I didn’t even notice that I had lost the mirror one. I still wonder what it could have said.
They kept going faster and faster, and their circles were getting tighter. Closer to me. What the sound had been before was nothing compared to then. The lazy, paper rustling noise had grown into a deafening roar. I kept backing away, hands reaching blindly behind me, watching as the cranes started to go so fast they blurred. I had no doubt that touching them would slice me to ribbons. Paper cuts to the extreme.
I only understood what happened next when I thought it through later. I had left the book on the ground, touching the base of the pyramid. My shuffling feet ran right into it, causing me to trip and fall backwards. I turned my head as I was falling, so that I saw when my outstretched hand collided with a glowing purple light.
My vision exploded, and I sat down hard in the grass.
The first thing I noticed was the quiet. The sound of all of the thought cranes was suddenly gone, replaced by the cheerful whistle of a bird, a real bird. It was such a relief, but almost sad, too. I don’t think I’ll ever get back to my cage of cranes again.
At least the book came with me, with the pencil on top. I could feel its hard surface under one of my feet.
I’ve been avoiding telling you what I could see. I’m not sure I’ll be able to explain it. All around me, there were colors, ones that didn’t make any sense. I tried to sort out what I was seeing, but it was impossible. I realized that if I was seeing anything at all, it was bunches of images, layered on top of one another. I tried to focus on one, and thought that I saw myself, only with my face twisted into a hungry, triumphant smirk. It passed as quickly as I found it, though, and I saw two black cats chase each other down a long tunnel. Under that picture was one of the seaside, with a dark aura rising up out of the horizon. You get the idea. I was never really sure what I was looking at, though, because I could never see one image for more than a second, and even then it was still covered with the others. At one point I even thought I saw my mom, sitting at a table with her face in her hands.
My glasses felt like they had gone askew on my face. I pulled them off and put them back on, righting them. Then I took them off again. And put them back on, experimenting. Off again. Strange. Somehow, with my glasses on, the visions got fuzzier than before. It seemed like having them off made things slightly clearer, so that it was easier to focus on one image at a time. That wasn’t logically possible. I couldn’t even see my glasses. But that was the way it worked. I’ve never needed the glasses much, anyways. My sight is only off by the most minuscule amount, so that I only wear the glasses because my parents tell me to. I shoved them into one of the looser pockets of my black cargo pants, farther down on my leg, and wondered if they were going to break. It didn’t seem like it would be much of a loss if they did. At this point, they sure weren’t helping anything.
I moved my foot and tried to lean forward to grab my book and pencil, but it was much harder than I thought it would be. You try to do things coherently while illusions pulse and swirl around your skull. I had to completely detach what I was seeing from what was actually around me. It was ten times worse than just going around with your eyes closed, because at least then you don’t expect things to be where they aren’t. It was a little bit like having your depth perception mess up, and you reach out to touch something but it’s still three feet away from your hand. The things I saw, though, weren’t there at all. Talk about disorientating.
Eventually I was holding my book and pencil in my left hand, and I used my right to push myself up. I steadied myself, and then began to cautiously shuffle forwards, with my right arm stretched out in front of me. After counting out seventeen tentative steps, I ran face first into a solid object, which my arm had simply gone around. My thoughts were something along the lines of, who put this tree here?
After that little error in judgement, I kept my arm held out, but bent so that it was protecting the front of me. I tried to walk more, going faster now that I was confident in my defense. The first time I managed to knock my funny bone into a tree, I slowed down.
I had just developed the correct balance of speed and protection, so that I could walk places and bump into things without injuring myself, when the universe decided that I wasn’t in enough pain. It had to give me some more.
I got the feeling that something was wrong a split second before a thick projectile collided with my face. I think I yelled out something intelligent, like “Ow!” then shouted out the first thing that popped into my head, which was, “I come in peace!”
There was a long, uncomfortable pause. I wasn’t sure what to do. Eventually, I said a quiet, “Hello?”
There were a few more tense moments. Then, a voice asked, “Who are you?” It didn’t sound hostile, only curious, and slightly confused. I moved my head around, searching for the source of the noise, but at that moment all I could really see was three glowing lights, which were bouncing off of one another like they were having a fight.
I kind of gave up, and said, “I’m Naleen,” and, after a moment’s thought, asked, “Where are you?”
They seemed really confused now. “I’m right in front of you,” the person told me. I tried to fix my face towards the direction I thought they would be. It was a girl’s voice, probably around my age. Strange. I finally thought to ask, “Oh, who are you?”
Another pause, and the only response was, “What are you doing here?” My question was ignored.
I must have still been a little dazed, because all I said was, “I’m not really sure. I just kind of got here. I touched a glowing purple circle, if that helps.”
There was a now familiar lull, then she said, “Really? Uh, me too. So, you, erm, you’re from, ah, Earth, right?”
She was like me! Somehow, I immediately felt comfortable. I smiled and said, “Yeah, I am! Were you in a cage with paper cranes?”
“Uh, no,” she replied. “It was,” pause, “raining.”
“Oh, okay.” I was still smiling. It was so great to have found someone. “So, do you know where we are?”
All I got from that was a, “No.”
I deliberated, then asked, “Well, what do you see?”
“We’re in a forest.”
I grimaced, remembering. “Yeah. I must have run into twenty trees.” Which reminded me. “By the way, you hit me, right? What was that?”
“My umbrella.”
She got that much force out of an umbrella? “Oh. Why?”
This answer came faster than usual. “I, I just figured that if you were, um...” she trailed off. “Well.... s-self defense....”
Something occurred to me. “Wait, you can see the things around us, right?”
There was a regular pause this time. “Yeah.”
I have to admit, I panicked a little. What was wrong with me, then? Was I always going to be like this? All I could see was a six-sided pyramid, like the one in my cage, only this one was huge. And I didn’t even see that for long. I started grabbing at straws. “Are you sure?” I asked her. “There’s nothing weird going on with you?”
The silence was longer. I wished I could she her. Her face. Anything. I waited for her answer in nervous anticipation. Please, reassure me, somehow. Then she said, “You sure ask a lot of questions.”
It was kind of funny.
She burst out, “Ah! I mean,” pause, “my head, um,” pause, “hurts... sorta... I guess.”
Yep, it was funny. Also horribly depressing.
“Oh, alright,” I said. “I’m...” it was my turn to pause. “Seeing things, I guess.”
“Are you schizophrenic?”
Hm. I hadn’t thought of that. “I don’t think so,” I told her. Then I cracked a grin. “But then, what crazy person thinks they’re crazy?”
She asked, “Um, what kinds of things do you see?”
Good question. “I’m not really sure. It keeps shifting. Right now...” I tried to focus my sight. It might have been my imagination, but it seemed like it was getting easier. “I see rain, and it’s really gray, with, a um... it’s the umbrella symbol! Right in the middle!”
All she said was, “Huh. That is weird.”
“Oh, sorry.” I felt the need to explain to her, even if it didn’t seem like she wanted to know. “You see, I came from this cage, and it was filled with paper cranes, only they were actually flying. There were six bars in the cage that were different from the rest, and they had symbols on them! There was an umbrella, a mirror, the number 13, and, um, I thought the others were a salt shaker, a cat, and a pocket watch. And the thick bars corresponded to the six corners of this pyramid in the middle, with a glowing purple orb right above it. And all of the cranes had the symbols on them, too! One symbol per crane, and they all flew around, and they made this incredible sound.” Suddenly I realized that I wasn’t doing well in convincing her that I wasn’t crazy. “So, um, I touched the orb and here I am, seeing weird stuff. I can’t even see the rain anymore. The images shift a lot.”
Once again I wished I could see her face. Then she spoke. “Oh, well, I, uh, I was also in a room. …. six sides.... M-my sphere was grey, a-and the room was.... raining....”
My brain was working overtime. We were more alike than I had thought. Some of the parts of the cage, which had just seemed like details compared to the cranes, were the same for her raining room. What was the significance?
A noise interrupted my musing. She had cleared her throat. I turned towards her, curious. It occurred to me that this was the first time she was talking to me without my prompting or questions.
“Should we, uh, maybe, I don’t know... stick together? Just-just, strength in numbers and all. We don’t have to... I was just thinking...”
It took me a minute to reply. I know it’s weird, but I was, well, touched. I realized that I really liked this girl. Her way of talking, with short sentences and the occasional stutter, struck me as kind of cute, and you had to be impressed with a girl who could nearly bash in people’s faces with nothing but an umbrella. That she at least thought I could be worth traveling with was unexpected, to say the least. I smiled.
“Yeah, I think that’s a great idea,” I told her.
I heard rustling in this pause. “Right, then,” she said. “Let’s, uh, move out?” It was more like a question than anything else. “L-let’s go...” She trailed off again.
“Oh, yeah, we should do that. Umm...” I stayed where I was, shuffling my feet and feeling my face grow very hot. I thought about my previous walk through the woods. My stumbling and running into things was sure to make me look extremely intelligent. And that arm position... ugh. But what else was I supposed to do?
I heard a sigh. It was coming from a slightly different direction, and a little closer. Had she moved? Just a little bit. She was upset with me, wasn’t she? She’d probably realized how useless I would be...
There was another sigh, then she mumbled so that I could barely catch the words, “My hand.”
Oh! Did she want me to grab her hand? It would be better that way. Did I trust her enough to let her lead me? Yes, I realized, I definitely did. I reached out, feeling stupid again as my hand only hit thin air. After a moment, her hand reached out and grabbed mine. I almost jerked away, because I wasn’t expecting the contact, or what her hand was going to feel like. She was clammy, and extremely cold. Well, she did say it had been raining. Poor girl, she must be freezing. A thought struck me. I was still just calling her girl.
“Hey, what’s your name?” I asked her.
After one of her usual pauses, she answered, “Allin.”
I smiled again. “Well, let’s go,” I said, because it seemed like the only thing to say.
And Allin led me off into the forest, where I thankfully didn’t bump into any more trees.
We walked on for a while, and it was, well, nice. Besides the fact that I kept tripping, and a couple of times I jumped because I thought I was going to trip over things that weren’t actually there. Once I saw the ocean again, only this time I was actually on top of the waters, with the darkness getting closer. That was a weird moment, where all I saw when I looked down was the swirling tides, but I could still feel my feet hitting firm ground. That vision was soon snuffed out by a brilliant explosion of great fiery light, which was so bright that for the first time since I’d touched the orb I was able to see only one thing. It was pretty incredible.
But anyways,we kept walking. I had no idea where we were trying to go, and I doubt that Allin had an objective in mind, either. It just seemed like the right thing to do. If we were always moving, we would eventually get somewhere, right? I guess it never really mattered. The walk just helped to comfort me.
I have no idea how long the two of us strode on in silence. It seemed like a long time to me, but that might have just been because of my difficulties. I only know that when we finally stopped to rest I lowered myself gingerly to the ground and stretched out on my back. I was amazed at how exhausted I was, both mentally and physically. I closed my eyes and set my journal down, putting my hands behind my head. The illusions didn’t go away, but closing my eyes still felt like the natural thing to do while resting.
I heard rustling from where Lin was, and then a scratching sound. “What are you doing?” I asked her.
“Writing,” she said.
“In what?” I asked her, thinking, maybe we have one more thing in common. I moved my hand from under my head and fingered my book.
“A journal I found in the room,” she said, then after a moment added, “It’s black and kind of looks like yours. ‘Cept it doesn’t have my name on the front...”
“Okay. I wonder what’s with all of these similarities...” I mused. Did they mean anything?
“Maybe we were both chosen for some great destiny by some unknown force. Yeah right...” she said. I sat up and turned my head in her direction. I tried to see her beyond the images. She had to be there somewhere, right? That was the longest sentence I’d ever heard her say, and it had come out the easiest. I just wanted to see her, right then. I couldn’t do it.
I leaned back again. “Yeah, I don’t think that kind of thing is going to happen to me. I’m worn out from just walking all day. I wouldn’t exactly be a prime choice.”
“Y-yeah,” she said. Timid again. “Too much work...”
I smiled up at the sky. Or where the sky probably was. I couldn’t see it, of course.
Then I heard the rustling. I was about to ask Lin if she wanted to leave, when I heard a quiet, “Shhh...”
It wasn’t her. Something else was moving.
More rustling, and something cold touched me. Lin’s hand. She grabbed mine, and led me slightly off one way. Then she pushed on my shoulders, telling me to get down. I sat.
Lin walked away, so stealthily I could barely hear her. Where was she going? Did she know what was coming?
The noise came closer.
And then a voice said, “Oh, there you are-” and was cut off by a loud thunk!, quickly followed by, “Ow!”
I understood instantly. Oh, that poor person’s face... Well, maybe she missed this time.
“My face!”
Nope. I felt nothing but sympathy. That umbrella was a deadly weapon.
I heard sniffling, and the voice, sounding close to tears, said, “I think my nose is bleeding...”
It sounded like someone young, but I couldn’t tell if it was a boy or a girl. My heart went out to the kid. Too bad I’d probably fall over trying to get to them. Gosh, this whole thing was horrible.
I wondered what Lin would do.
Not much, apparently, because the voice soon said, “Um, well, my name is...” and trailed off. Then, “Will you please put the umbrella down?”
“What do you want?” said Lin in a cool and unfeeling voice. It was downright frightening, especially since I knew what she was really like now. Maybe the person looked more threatening than they sounded?
“W-well, I just wanted to, I mean,” how ironic, Lin was making other people stutter now, “d-did you come from one of the hexagon rooms?”
Now that made my ears prick up. Was this person one of us? What did that mean?
Lin didn’t sound any friendlier. “And how would you know that?”
And the voice was still terrified. “Well, Sylf told me he thought a couple of you would be o-over here, and I should come get you, ‘cause he wants to explain things with everyone at the base of the p-pyramid.” They tried to talk quickly, I could tell. I wondered what Lin’s face looked like. They sounded like they were not one of us, which wasn’t going to bode well with her.
“Thanks,” Lin said, her voice like ice, “but we’re good.”
“We?” the voice questioned.
I figured that that was as good of an introduction as I was going to get. I had decided by now that Lin was mostly just being really defensive. Sometimes you had to take a chance on people. I had just decided. Not that that was ever my philosophy before. Oh, gosh, before... well, I’d think about that later. Or just continue to try to not think about it.
I started to stand, slowly and carefully, while saying, “Hi,” in what I hoped was a friendly voice. “I’m over here. My name’s Naleen.” I straightened up all the way.
“Naleen!” Lin whispered sharply through her teeth.
I tried to make sure that my head was facing the right direction. I made my best reassuring face for Lin’s sake, then grinned and said, “Don’t mind Lin there, she’s just slightly homicidal. She’s not really too dangerous, just keep away from the umbrella.” I concluded with, “Erm, where exactly are you guys?” seeing as I did not wish to have another encounter with a poorly placed tree.
With a sigh, Lin said, “Over here,” and pulled me in the exact opposite direction from the way I had been facing. Well, that was mortifying.
We stepped a few paces, then stopped at a spot that I was hoping was relatively near the person. I kept my eyes forward.
“Are you blind?” they asked. Definitely a kid. One with even less tact than most.
I made an involuntary face, then said, “For all effects and purposes, yes.” The image had just flickered into an adorable little kitten, looking up at me with expectant eyes.
They seemed to accept that. Sounding relieved that they didn’t have to try and talk to Lin anymore (and I couldn’t really blame them), they said, “My name’s Rothgar. My, um,” they seemed to search for a word, “friends and I would really like you to come to this place we set up. Once we have everybody, we can explain what happened. So please come?”
“Naleen?” I heard Lin ask quietly. Like she wanted me to make the decision. She was asking me what I wanted to do. I was free to say what I thought was best. And I liked it.
“Lead the way... Rothgar, right?” I said.
“Yeah! Come on, it’s this way. You guys just follow me!” and I heard the child, who I figured based on the name was a boy, rush off.
I thought Lin probably wasn’t happy. I waited until Rothgar’s footsteps were a little farther ahead, then said, “Lin?”
She tightened her grip on my hand reassuringly, and told me, “Let’s go.”
As we started off after Rothgar, I tried to explain myself softly to Lin. “It’s just that, whether it’s good or bad, we know we’re going somewhere now. We’re a step closer to learning what’s happening here, even if Rothgar and his friends don’t really tell us.”
She seemed to think for a moment, then said, “Yeah.”
Rothgar probably noticed we were way behind him, because the sound of his footsteps was getting slightly closer, and a little slower. He walked in silence with us, which actually seemed kind of mature compared to what I had observed of him so far. It kind of confused me as to who he really was.
Eventually we arrived at the place Rothgar had told us about. I heard a door open, which was a surprise. I had been expecting more of a camping area. We walked into the room and Lin whispered the word, “Stairs.” Even with her warning, the first step surprised me and I pitched forwards a little. It was mostly because I had been distracted by a vision of the night sky, only with way more stars than I had ever seen.
We went down the flight of stairs, and Lin squeezed my hand when we reached the bottom so that the last step wouldn’t trip me up. Rothgar spoke when we stopped. “Well, here we are. I guess we’ll just wait for Rafael to come back now... anyways, they’re sleeping bags over there, and some stuff to eat, and... stuff. I guess... I’ll see you guys in the morning?”
Aw, it was so awkward for the poor kid.
I smiled and said, “Sure.” I heard him walk away.
I hadn’t really thought about it before, but it probably was bedtime. I had noticed it was getting colder as we walked. What I hadn’t realized was that that probably meant the sun had already gone down.
Lin spoke, softly. “Sleeping bags on left. One girl is there. Food on right. Two girls standing in front of the tables. I’m going to go set up my stuff. Will you be okay?”
I nodded, and Lin left.
More of us. There were more of us, here. Three girls. A warm feeling grew inside of me. I can’t think of a word that describes how I felt. These were my...people. My companions. I felt this strange connection to those girls that I had never met.
I leaned back a little and touched the stairs to get my bearings. Then I started to shuffle to the right. My feet quickly hit a solid object, and I reached out. I realized that there were stairs over there, too, only slightly at an angle. So that meant the room was probably circular, with stairs all around.
I walked a little bit more, until, horror of horrors. I tripped. For real this time. A deep, dark feeling of awfulness settled into my stomach as I fell...
And was caught, by a pair of arms that belonged to a girl who had just started laughing hysterically.
When she was sure I was steady she seemed to fall back herself. She giggled, then guffawed.
Between laughter and gasping for breath, she was able to say, “Can’t... hold it in... anymore...”
Someone else made a disparaging sound. When she spoke, it seemed like she was talking to me. “You made the chronic laughter come back. I will hate you forever.”
It sounded like she meant it.
Then she hiccuped.
I wondered how laughter could be chronic, and if my tripping was actually that funny. At least I had found the two girls. I felt slightly self-conscious, but not as much as you would think. I was just so happy to meet them.
“I’m Naleen,” I said.
The girl who had caught me burst into another round of howling laughter, like my name was the most hilarious thing she had ever heard. It was a kind of nice laugh, very open, but not booming, exactly. There weren’t many hitches in it, like she was able to keep it up with barely any breath. She must have some impressive lung capacity. A couple of times I thought I heard a small snort mixed in with the flowing laughter. She tried to talk several times, but she always was cut off by her own chuckles. Eventually I made out her name. “Aria.”
The other girl didn’t say anything, or else it was too quiet to make out over the laughing. Even after Aria subsided into small giggles, she stayed silent. I’m pretty sure she hiccuped a few more times, though. It sounded like she really needed some water or something. I was just trying to think of something to say that would keep the conversation going, when she spoke one word. “Robin.”
“Really?” I asked. “Where?”
“My name,” she said, then hiccuped. It sounded like she was trying to hold back her anger and exasperation, “is Robin.”
I almost smacked myself in the face. “Oh, sorry about that. Nice to meet you guys.”
Robin grunted and hiccuped. Aria laughed some more, then attempted to speak. I’m pretty sure that what she said was something along the lines of, “You too! We were about to go see if we could get some sleep. Wanna come?”
Hoping that my translation from the chronic laughter language was correct, I said, “Sure.”
After saying some kind of word that I couldn’t really understand, Aria grabbed my hand and started to half lead, half drag me over to the left. I guessed that Robin was coming with us, and found I was right when I heard a hiccup near me.
We stopped suddenly, and judging by the sounds, my amused friend plopped down to the ground. I knelt carefully, and found what I assumed was one of the sleeping bags that Lin told me about earlier. I put down my journal and pencil, and after a little bit of embarrassing fumbling, found the opening of the sleeping bag. I crawled inside, suddenly exhausted. It seemed like my visions knew that I was tryin to sleep, because they started wavering a bit less and seemed to get dimmer. It was all too easy to block out the now quiet giggles next to me, as well as the occasional hiccup. I was asleep in moments.
Oh, they’re calling me over now. It’s morning, and I CAN SEE! I guess I’ll just call this the June 7th entry, since that’s all I described. I write about today later. Everything is happening so fast. Gotta go!
Back when I was in the giant cage, I noticed something on one of the cranes. I thought I saw words on its wing. Quickly, I scanned the rest of the cranes. On one near me, I saw a flash of darkness that was apart from the symbol of a cat on its side. I snatched the crane as fast as I could. While it flapped its wings weakly in protest, I examined it and saw that there was definitely a word peeking through its folds. It started with a capital S, then had what I thought were a p and an o.
I stood holding the crane for a moment, unsure of myself, but eventually my curiosity overcame me. Feeling slightly bad, I went to work unfolding the poor thing. Is it animal cruelty to be mean to a paper crane? Even when it was unfolded, the paper wriggled in my hands. It was actually kind of creepy.
In random spots all over the paper was writing. There would be a sentence here, a paragraph there, all placed so that the outside of the crane would be mainly white, besides the drawing. I looked for the spot where I had seen the Spo. It was a small collection of sentences, and I read, In this one, Spongebob and Patrick go to-
That was all I saw, because the crane then gave a well placed yank, jerking out of my hands. More quickly than I would have thought possible, it refolded itself in the air and flew off. It might have been my imagination, but it seemed like that crane flapped its wings more energetically than usual in its haste to get away from me.
I stared after it, but soon lost it in the mass of origami birds. The only thought that crossed my mind was that I only ever watched Spongebob a couple of times.
I went and leaned against the thick bar with the mirror symbol on it, and thought about what I wanted to do. I decided that I would definitely open more of the cranes and see what I could read out of them, but first I wanted to watch the cranes for awhile and find out if I had missed anything else about them.
After a few minutes of careful observation, I did notice that their flight patterns weren’t completely random. It seemed like they all stayed at a certain level of height. They moved up and down a little bit, but not enough that it mattered very much. I also noticed something that should have been obvious. At the lowest level of flight, somewhere near the height of my stomach, a new crane would appear every once in awhile. I guess I never saw it before because it happened so smoothly. There wouldn’t be a crane, and then suddenly there would. The first few times I saw it happen, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me.
Finally, I made up my mind that it was time to catch another crane. It wasn’t hard. I just plucked one out of the air, almost right in front of my nose. This one had an umbrella on it.
It was stronger than the last one, but before I lost it I was able to read, Man! I’m gonna die, aren’t I? It’s going to fill up with water, and I’m going to drown. I always thought I’d be done in by a shoelace... hehe, aglet- and the crane escaped.
Well, that was even weirder than the last one. The cranes seemed to have people’s thoughts written on them. I suddenly had the idea that they were just like my journal. Thought book. From that moment on, I called them thought cranes. No other name would work in my mind.
I tried to read a few more cranes, but only got snatches of thoughts. Apparently I had gotten lucky to read so much from the first two. Either that, or they had somehow told each other how to get away from me. I prefered to believe the former.
On a thirteen crane, I saw the word candles, and the watch one that I grabbed had some kind of list on it.
All was going well until one of the cranes did the appearing into existence thing right in front of me. I snatched it up immediately, and saw that this one had a symbol of a mirror.
Then they started swirling.
The cranes began to move differently, every one of them going in a counterclockwise circle, all around the edges of the cage. And they started to move faster.
I slowly backed away from the bars, keeping my eyes on the thought cranes. I didn’t even notice that I had lost the mirror one. I still wonder what it could have said.
They kept going faster and faster, and their circles were getting tighter. Closer to me. What the sound had been before was nothing compared to then. The lazy, paper rustling noise had grown into a deafening roar. I kept backing away, hands reaching blindly behind me, watching as the cranes started to go so fast they blurred. I had no doubt that touching them would slice me to ribbons. Paper cuts to the extreme.
I only understood what happened next when I thought it through later. I had left the book on the ground, touching the base of the pyramid. My shuffling feet ran right into it, causing me to trip and fall backwards. I turned my head as I was falling, so that I saw when my outstretched hand collided with a glowing purple light.
My vision exploded, and I sat down hard in the grass.
The first thing I noticed was the quiet. The sound of all of the thought cranes was suddenly gone, replaced by the cheerful whistle of a bird, a real bird. It was such a relief, but almost sad, too. I don’t think I’ll ever get back to my cage of cranes again.
At least the book came with me, with the pencil on top. I could feel its hard surface under one of my feet.
I’ve been avoiding telling you what I could see. I’m not sure I’ll be able to explain it. All around me, there were colors, ones that didn’t make any sense. I tried to sort out what I was seeing, but it was impossible. I realized that if I was seeing anything at all, it was bunches of images, layered on top of one another. I tried to focus on one, and thought that I saw myself, only with my face twisted into a hungry, triumphant smirk. It passed as quickly as I found it, though, and I saw two black cats chase each other down a long tunnel. Under that picture was one of the seaside, with a dark aura rising up out of the horizon. You get the idea. I was never really sure what I was looking at, though, because I could never see one image for more than a second, and even then it was still covered with the others. At one point I even thought I saw my mom, sitting at a table with her face in her hands.
My glasses felt like they had gone askew on my face. I pulled them off and put them back on, righting them. Then I took them off again. And put them back on, experimenting. Off again. Strange. Somehow, with my glasses on, the visions got fuzzier than before. It seemed like having them off made things slightly clearer, so that it was easier to focus on one image at a time. That wasn’t logically possible. I couldn’t even see my glasses. But that was the way it worked. I’ve never needed the glasses much, anyways. My sight is only off by the most minuscule amount, so that I only wear the glasses because my parents tell me to. I shoved them into one of the looser pockets of my black cargo pants, farther down on my leg, and wondered if they were going to break. It didn’t seem like it would be much of a loss if they did. At this point, they sure weren’t helping anything.
I moved my foot and tried to lean forward to grab my book and pencil, but it was much harder than I thought it would be. You try to do things coherently while illusions pulse and swirl around your skull. I had to completely detach what I was seeing from what was actually around me. It was ten times worse than just going around with your eyes closed, because at least then you don’t expect things to be where they aren’t. It was a little bit like having your depth perception mess up, and you reach out to touch something but it’s still three feet away from your hand. The things I saw, though, weren’t there at all. Talk about disorientating.
Eventually I was holding my book and pencil in my left hand, and I used my right to push myself up. I steadied myself, and then began to cautiously shuffle forwards, with my right arm stretched out in front of me. After counting out seventeen tentative steps, I ran face first into a solid object, which my arm had simply gone around. My thoughts were something along the lines of, who put this tree here?
After that little error in judgement, I kept my arm held out, but bent so that it was protecting the front of me. I tried to walk more, going faster now that I was confident in my defense. The first time I managed to knock my funny bone into a tree, I slowed down.
I had just developed the correct balance of speed and protection, so that I could walk places and bump into things without injuring myself, when the universe decided that I wasn’t in enough pain. It had to give me some more.
I got the feeling that something was wrong a split second before a thick projectile collided with my face. I think I yelled out something intelligent, like “Ow!” then shouted out the first thing that popped into my head, which was, “I come in peace!”
There was a long, uncomfortable pause. I wasn’t sure what to do. Eventually, I said a quiet, “Hello?”
There were a few more tense moments. Then, a voice asked, “Who are you?” It didn’t sound hostile, only curious, and slightly confused. I moved my head around, searching for the source of the noise, but at that moment all I could really see was three glowing lights, which were bouncing off of one another like they were having a fight.
I kind of gave up, and said, “I’m Naleen,” and, after a moment’s thought, asked, “Where are you?”
They seemed really confused now. “I’m right in front of you,” the person told me. I tried to fix my face towards the direction I thought they would be. It was a girl’s voice, probably around my age. Strange. I finally thought to ask, “Oh, who are you?”
Another pause, and the only response was, “What are you doing here?” My question was ignored.
I must have still been a little dazed, because all I said was, “I’m not really sure. I just kind of got here. I touched a glowing purple circle, if that helps.”
There was a now familiar lull, then she said, “Really? Uh, me too. So, you, erm, you’re from, ah, Earth, right?”
She was like me! Somehow, I immediately felt comfortable. I smiled and said, “Yeah, I am! Were you in a cage with paper cranes?”
“Uh, no,” she replied. “It was,” pause, “raining.”
“Oh, okay.” I was still smiling. It was so great to have found someone. “So, do you know where we are?”
All I got from that was a, “No.”
I deliberated, then asked, “Well, what do you see?”
“We’re in a forest.”
I grimaced, remembering. “Yeah. I must have run into twenty trees.” Which reminded me. “By the way, you hit me, right? What was that?”
“My umbrella.”
She got that much force out of an umbrella? “Oh. Why?”
This answer came faster than usual. “I, I just figured that if you were, um...” she trailed off. “Well.... s-self defense....”
Something occurred to me. “Wait, you can see the things around us, right?”
There was a regular pause this time. “Yeah.”
I have to admit, I panicked a little. What was wrong with me, then? Was I always going to be like this? All I could see was a six-sided pyramid, like the one in my cage, only this one was huge. And I didn’t even see that for long. I started grabbing at straws. “Are you sure?” I asked her. “There’s nothing weird going on with you?”
The silence was longer. I wished I could she her. Her face. Anything. I waited for her answer in nervous anticipation. Please, reassure me, somehow. Then she said, “You sure ask a lot of questions.”
It was kind of funny.
She burst out, “Ah! I mean,” pause, “my head, um,” pause, “hurts... sorta... I guess.”
Yep, it was funny. Also horribly depressing.
“Oh, alright,” I said. “I’m...” it was my turn to pause. “Seeing things, I guess.”
“Are you schizophrenic?”
Hm. I hadn’t thought of that. “I don’t think so,” I told her. Then I cracked a grin. “But then, what crazy person thinks they’re crazy?”
She asked, “Um, what kinds of things do you see?”
Good question. “I’m not really sure. It keeps shifting. Right now...” I tried to focus my sight. It might have been my imagination, but it seemed like it was getting easier. “I see rain, and it’s really gray, with, a um... it’s the umbrella symbol! Right in the middle!”
All she said was, “Huh. That is weird.”
“Oh, sorry.” I felt the need to explain to her, even if it didn’t seem like she wanted to know. “You see, I came from this cage, and it was filled with paper cranes, only they were actually flying. There were six bars in the cage that were different from the rest, and they had symbols on them! There was an umbrella, a mirror, the number 13, and, um, I thought the others were a salt shaker, a cat, and a pocket watch. And the thick bars corresponded to the six corners of this pyramid in the middle, with a glowing purple orb right above it. And all of the cranes had the symbols on them, too! One symbol per crane, and they all flew around, and they made this incredible sound.” Suddenly I realized that I wasn’t doing well in convincing her that I wasn’t crazy. “So, um, I touched the orb and here I am, seeing weird stuff. I can’t even see the rain anymore. The images shift a lot.”
Once again I wished I could see her face. Then she spoke. “Oh, well, I, uh, I was also in a room. …. six sides.... M-my sphere was grey, a-and the room was.... raining....”
My brain was working overtime. We were more alike than I had thought. Some of the parts of the cage, which had just seemed like details compared to the cranes, were the same for her raining room. What was the significance?
A noise interrupted my musing. She had cleared her throat. I turned towards her, curious. It occurred to me that this was the first time she was talking to me without my prompting or questions.
“Should we, uh, maybe, I don’t know... stick together? Just-just, strength in numbers and all. We don’t have to... I was just thinking...”
It took me a minute to reply. I know it’s weird, but I was, well, touched. I realized that I really liked this girl. Her way of talking, with short sentences and the occasional stutter, struck me as kind of cute, and you had to be impressed with a girl who could nearly bash in people’s faces with nothing but an umbrella. That she at least thought I could be worth traveling with was unexpected, to say the least. I smiled.
“Yeah, I think that’s a great idea,” I told her.
I heard rustling in this pause. “Right, then,” she said. “Let’s, uh, move out?” It was more like a question than anything else. “L-let’s go...” She trailed off again.
“Oh, yeah, we should do that. Umm...” I stayed where I was, shuffling my feet and feeling my face grow very hot. I thought about my previous walk through the woods. My stumbling and running into things was sure to make me look extremely intelligent. And that arm position... ugh. But what else was I supposed to do?
I heard a sigh. It was coming from a slightly different direction, and a little closer. Had she moved? Just a little bit. She was upset with me, wasn’t she? She’d probably realized how useless I would be...
There was another sigh, then she mumbled so that I could barely catch the words, “My hand.”
Oh! Did she want me to grab her hand? It would be better that way. Did I trust her enough to let her lead me? Yes, I realized, I definitely did. I reached out, feeling stupid again as my hand only hit thin air. After a moment, her hand reached out and grabbed mine. I almost jerked away, because I wasn’t expecting the contact, or what her hand was going to feel like. She was clammy, and extremely cold. Well, she did say it had been raining. Poor girl, she must be freezing. A thought struck me. I was still just calling her girl.
“Hey, what’s your name?” I asked her.
After one of her usual pauses, she answered, “Allin.”
I smiled again. “Well, let’s go,” I said, because it seemed like the only thing to say.
And Allin led me off into the forest, where I thankfully didn’t bump into any more trees.
We walked on for a while, and it was, well, nice. Besides the fact that I kept tripping, and a couple of times I jumped because I thought I was going to trip over things that weren’t actually there. Once I saw the ocean again, only this time I was actually on top of the waters, with the darkness getting closer. That was a weird moment, where all I saw when I looked down was the swirling tides, but I could still feel my feet hitting firm ground. That vision was soon snuffed out by a brilliant explosion of great fiery light, which was so bright that for the first time since I’d touched the orb I was able to see only one thing. It was pretty incredible.
But anyways,we kept walking. I had no idea where we were trying to go, and I doubt that Allin had an objective in mind, either. It just seemed like the right thing to do. If we were always moving, we would eventually get somewhere, right? I guess it never really mattered. The walk just helped to comfort me.
I have no idea how long the two of us strode on in silence. It seemed like a long time to me, but that might have just been because of my difficulties. I only know that when we finally stopped to rest I lowered myself gingerly to the ground and stretched out on my back. I was amazed at how exhausted I was, both mentally and physically. I closed my eyes and set my journal down, putting my hands behind my head. The illusions didn’t go away, but closing my eyes still felt like the natural thing to do while resting.
I heard rustling from where Lin was, and then a scratching sound. “What are you doing?” I asked her.
“Writing,” she said.
“In what?” I asked her, thinking, maybe we have one more thing in common. I moved my hand from under my head and fingered my book.
“A journal I found in the room,” she said, then after a moment added, “It’s black and kind of looks like yours. ‘Cept it doesn’t have my name on the front...”
“Okay. I wonder what’s with all of these similarities...” I mused. Did they mean anything?
“Maybe we were both chosen for some great destiny by some unknown force. Yeah right...” she said. I sat up and turned my head in her direction. I tried to see her beyond the images. She had to be there somewhere, right? That was the longest sentence I’d ever heard her say, and it had come out the easiest. I just wanted to see her, right then. I couldn’t do it.
I leaned back again. “Yeah, I don’t think that kind of thing is going to happen to me. I’m worn out from just walking all day. I wouldn’t exactly be a prime choice.”
“Y-yeah,” she said. Timid again. “Too much work...”
I smiled up at the sky. Or where the sky probably was. I couldn’t see it, of course.
Then I heard the rustling. I was about to ask Lin if she wanted to leave, when I heard a quiet, “Shhh...”
It wasn’t her. Something else was moving.
More rustling, and something cold touched me. Lin’s hand. She grabbed mine, and led me slightly off one way. Then she pushed on my shoulders, telling me to get down. I sat.
Lin walked away, so stealthily I could barely hear her. Where was she going? Did she know what was coming?
The noise came closer.
And then a voice said, “Oh, there you are-” and was cut off by a loud thunk!, quickly followed by, “Ow!”
I understood instantly. Oh, that poor person’s face... Well, maybe she missed this time.
“My face!”
Nope. I felt nothing but sympathy. That umbrella was a deadly weapon.
I heard sniffling, and the voice, sounding close to tears, said, “I think my nose is bleeding...”
It sounded like someone young, but I couldn’t tell if it was a boy or a girl. My heart went out to the kid. Too bad I’d probably fall over trying to get to them. Gosh, this whole thing was horrible.
I wondered what Lin would do.
Not much, apparently, because the voice soon said, “Um, well, my name is...” and trailed off. Then, “Will you please put the umbrella down?”
“What do you want?” said Lin in a cool and unfeeling voice. It was downright frightening, especially since I knew what she was really like now. Maybe the person looked more threatening than they sounded?
“W-well, I just wanted to, I mean,” how ironic, Lin was making other people stutter now, “d-did you come from one of the hexagon rooms?”
Now that made my ears prick up. Was this person one of us? What did that mean?
Lin didn’t sound any friendlier. “And how would you know that?”
And the voice was still terrified. “Well, Sylf told me he thought a couple of you would be o-over here, and I should come get you, ‘cause he wants to explain things with everyone at the base of the p-pyramid.” They tried to talk quickly, I could tell. I wondered what Lin’s face looked like. They sounded like they were not one of us, which wasn’t going to bode well with her.
“Thanks,” Lin said, her voice like ice, “but we’re good.”
“We?” the voice questioned.
I figured that that was as good of an introduction as I was going to get. I had decided by now that Lin was mostly just being really defensive. Sometimes you had to take a chance on people. I had just decided. Not that that was ever my philosophy before. Oh, gosh, before... well, I’d think about that later. Or just continue to try to not think about it.
I started to stand, slowly and carefully, while saying, “Hi,” in what I hoped was a friendly voice. “I’m over here. My name’s Naleen.” I straightened up all the way.
“Naleen!” Lin whispered sharply through her teeth.
I tried to make sure that my head was facing the right direction. I made my best reassuring face for Lin’s sake, then grinned and said, “Don’t mind Lin there, she’s just slightly homicidal. She’s not really too dangerous, just keep away from the umbrella.” I concluded with, “Erm, where exactly are you guys?” seeing as I did not wish to have another encounter with a poorly placed tree.
With a sigh, Lin said, “Over here,” and pulled me in the exact opposite direction from the way I had been facing. Well, that was mortifying.
We stepped a few paces, then stopped at a spot that I was hoping was relatively near the person. I kept my eyes forward.
“Are you blind?” they asked. Definitely a kid. One with even less tact than most.
I made an involuntary face, then said, “For all effects and purposes, yes.” The image had just flickered into an adorable little kitten, looking up at me with expectant eyes.
They seemed to accept that. Sounding relieved that they didn’t have to try and talk to Lin anymore (and I couldn’t really blame them), they said, “My name’s Rothgar. My, um,” they seemed to search for a word, “friends and I would really like you to come to this place we set up. Once we have everybody, we can explain what happened. So please come?”
“Naleen?” I heard Lin ask quietly. Like she wanted me to make the decision. She was asking me what I wanted to do. I was free to say what I thought was best. And I liked it.
“Lead the way... Rothgar, right?” I said.
“Yeah! Come on, it’s this way. You guys just follow me!” and I heard the child, who I figured based on the name was a boy, rush off.
I thought Lin probably wasn’t happy. I waited until Rothgar’s footsteps were a little farther ahead, then said, “Lin?”
She tightened her grip on my hand reassuringly, and told me, “Let’s go.”
As we started off after Rothgar, I tried to explain myself softly to Lin. “It’s just that, whether it’s good or bad, we know we’re going somewhere now. We’re a step closer to learning what’s happening here, even if Rothgar and his friends don’t really tell us.”
She seemed to think for a moment, then said, “Yeah.”
Rothgar probably noticed we were way behind him, because the sound of his footsteps was getting slightly closer, and a little slower. He walked in silence with us, which actually seemed kind of mature compared to what I had observed of him so far. It kind of confused me as to who he really was.
Eventually we arrived at the place Rothgar had told us about. I heard a door open, which was a surprise. I had been expecting more of a camping area. We walked into the room and Lin whispered the word, “Stairs.” Even with her warning, the first step surprised me and I pitched forwards a little. It was mostly because I had been distracted by a vision of the night sky, only with way more stars than I had ever seen.
We went down the flight of stairs, and Lin squeezed my hand when we reached the bottom so that the last step wouldn’t trip me up. Rothgar spoke when we stopped. “Well, here we are. I guess we’ll just wait for Rafael to come back now... anyways, they’re sleeping bags over there, and some stuff to eat, and... stuff. I guess... I’ll see you guys in the morning?”
Aw, it was so awkward for the poor kid.
I smiled and said, “Sure.” I heard him walk away.
I hadn’t really thought about it before, but it probably was bedtime. I had noticed it was getting colder as we walked. What I hadn’t realized was that that probably meant the sun had already gone down.
Lin spoke, softly. “Sleeping bags on left. One girl is there. Food on right. Two girls standing in front of the tables. I’m going to go set up my stuff. Will you be okay?”
I nodded, and Lin left.
More of us. There were more of us, here. Three girls. A warm feeling grew inside of me. I can’t think of a word that describes how I felt. These were my...people. My companions. I felt this strange connection to those girls that I had never met.
I leaned back a little and touched the stairs to get my bearings. Then I started to shuffle to the right. My feet quickly hit a solid object, and I reached out. I realized that there were stairs over there, too, only slightly at an angle. So that meant the room was probably circular, with stairs all around.
I walked a little bit more, until, horror of horrors. I tripped. For real this time. A deep, dark feeling of awfulness settled into my stomach as I fell...
And was caught, by a pair of arms that belonged to a girl who had just started laughing hysterically.
When she was sure I was steady she seemed to fall back herself. She giggled, then guffawed.
Between laughter and gasping for breath, she was able to say, “Can’t... hold it in... anymore...”
Someone else made a disparaging sound. When she spoke, it seemed like she was talking to me. “You made the chronic laughter come back. I will hate you forever.”
It sounded like she meant it.
Then she hiccuped.
I wondered how laughter could be chronic, and if my tripping was actually that funny. At least I had found the two girls. I felt slightly self-conscious, but not as much as you would think. I was just so happy to meet them.
“I’m Naleen,” I said.
The girl who had caught me burst into another round of howling laughter, like my name was the most hilarious thing she had ever heard. It was a kind of nice laugh, very open, but not booming, exactly. There weren’t many hitches in it, like she was able to keep it up with barely any breath. She must have some impressive lung capacity. A couple of times I thought I heard a small snort mixed in with the flowing laughter. She tried to talk several times, but she always was cut off by her own chuckles. Eventually I made out her name. “Aria.”
The other girl didn’t say anything, or else it was too quiet to make out over the laughing. Even after Aria subsided into small giggles, she stayed silent. I’m pretty sure she hiccuped a few more times, though. It sounded like she really needed some water or something. I was just trying to think of something to say that would keep the conversation going, when she spoke one word. “Robin.”
“Really?” I asked. “Where?”
“My name,” she said, then hiccuped. It sounded like she was trying to hold back her anger and exasperation, “is Robin.”
I almost smacked myself in the face. “Oh, sorry about that. Nice to meet you guys.”
Robin grunted and hiccuped. Aria laughed some more, then attempted to speak. I’m pretty sure that what she said was something along the lines of, “You too! We were about to go see if we could get some sleep. Wanna come?”
Hoping that my translation from the chronic laughter language was correct, I said, “Sure.”
After saying some kind of word that I couldn’t really understand, Aria grabbed my hand and started to half lead, half drag me over to the left. I guessed that Robin was coming with us, and found I was right when I heard a hiccup near me.
We stopped suddenly, and judging by the sounds, my amused friend plopped down to the ground. I knelt carefully, and found what I assumed was one of the sleeping bags that Lin told me about earlier. I put down my journal and pencil, and after a little bit of embarrassing fumbling, found the opening of the sleeping bag. I crawled inside, suddenly exhausted. It seemed like my visions knew that I was tryin to sleep, because they started wavering a bit less and seemed to get dimmer. It was all too easy to block out the now quiet giggles next to me, as well as the occasional hiccup. I was asleep in moments.
Oh, they’re calling me over now. It’s morning, and I CAN SEE! I guess I’ll just call this the June 7th entry, since that’s all I described. I write about today later. Everything is happening so fast. Gotta go!
~ June 8th, 2012
I’ve thought it over, and I just have to start from the beginning of today. It’s really the only way that this is going to make any sense. I still have trouble processing everything that’s happened to me. Oh well.
I was having some kind of dream. I remember a person, speaking to me. Something about being trapped. And... it seemed like they were angry. For some reason, they were really familiar to me. I just can’t remember. I never really remember my dreams unless I wake up naturally, and take a little bit of time to think them over. If I have any distractions, I lose it. The whole ‘sitting and thinking’ thing just wasn’t going to happen today.
My dream, whatever it was, was shattered suddenly by something landing on me, followed by several exclamations of surprise (one of which was probably mine) and a sharp thwack! “Allie!” someone cried. I could hear some kind of argument going on in the background, and the small rustling of other people moving. Too much to take in.
It took me a moment to get my bearings. I was still pretty groggy when I sat up as much as I could with some kind of obstruction on my lap. I made a weird grunt sound, then looked around, blinking, and asked, “What’s happening?” Please, cut me some slack for the lack of intelligence conveyed in this scene. I was still sleepy and had absolutely no clue what was going on.
Memories from yesterday ran through my head while I peered around, bringing my dazed brain up to speed on where I was, at least. I’ll admit that for a moment, I thought that the recent events of my life were the dream. Part of what made waking up so confusing was trying to separate the fiction from the fact. It wasn’t easy, seeing as how everything that’s been going on shouldn’t be able to happen to anyone.
Anyways, the first thing that occured to me, the very first, was that my vision wasn’t shifting and wavering from one strange scene to the next. I saw a girl’s legs on my lap, in exactly the spot they ought to be according to what I could feel. On my side was another girl, holding an umbrella threateningly over the girl who had fallen over the two of us, and now seemed to be unconscious.
So, of course, the first thing I did was exultantly shout, “Oh! I can see! I can see!” Then I noticed the slight flickering, and added, “Well, sort of... but this is much better!” The things I could see were still layered, and not perfect. Sometimes it would seem like it was raining around Lin, even though I knew that couldn’t be possible. The other thing that I noticed was around the other girl, and, well, it’s almost impossible to describe. I could tell that she was asleep. Knocked unconscious, by the looks of things, but that’s besides the point. It was kind of like she had this weird glow, or the word ‘sleep’ was written around her, but that wasn’t quite it. Somehow, just by looking at her, I could see that she was sleeping. Like I could suddenly see... the Truth, if that makes any sense. I know it doesn’t. Just pretend like it does for me.
Anyways, it was better than before.
A voice from a little bit away, sounding quite uncertain and a little timid, asked, “Who’re you guys?”
I turned and saw a girl standing off to the side. She had dark-ish blonde hair that was pulled up into a ponytail. Her skin was fair, and I saw a sprinkling of freckles around her face. She had on a faded pair of blue jeans and a white shirt under a pretty light blue jacket. She was kind of tall and lanky, but not to the point where it looked weird.
I didn’t get the chance to answer her question, though, because Lin shot back at her, “What’s your name?” in her slightly threatening, slightly suspicious way.
The girl sitting next to me was obviously Lin. Well, I have to admit, the umbrella was a big hint, as well as the poor blacked-out other girl, but it was more than that. Everything about her, from her shoulder-length black hair with long bangs, to the contrast of her pale skin with her pure black dress, just said ‘Lin’ to me. She had bright, determined blue eyes, and I was ecstatic to see her at last.
“Oh,” said the girl Lin had addressed. “Well, I’m Alex. Alexandra Nike Webbings.” She kind of trailed off. “And so... um...”
I liked Alex already. She was another one of us, I could tell, just like Aria, Robin, Lin, and me. Something about her face seemed trustworthy to me, like she was the kind of person who would have your back. For a moment, I was unsure if this was an idea that I had just come up with myself, or if it was another one of those cases where I was able to in some way see things that shouldn’t be visible, like the aura of sleep around the knocked out girl. I shook off the feeling.
“I’m Naleen!” I said, beaming at her, “and this is Lin!” I looked over at Lin for emphasis, and abruptly noticed something. “Wow, Lin! You look smaller than I thought you would be!” Worried that I may have offended her, I quickly added, “I can tell it is you, though,” I tried to think of a way to explain it that would make sense. “Because of your umbrella,” I finished lamely.
Lin gave me the smallest of smiles.
Alex began talking again. “Okay. You were brought here by Rothgar then? That little kid right? He’s not so bad huh?” She asked. I silently agreed. I liked Rothgar. “So how’d you both wind up here?”
I was trying to think about where to start when a familiar voice called out, “Wow! More people! Robin, you have to wake up! These are our new friends!”
I looked over and saw two girls who could only be Aria and Robin. Robin was laying on the ground, with her dark brown hair drooping into her eyes. She wore a black shirt, with a black coat over that. She had on a pair of very old looking jeans. She looked... well, I could say that she looked annoyed, but really she looked like she was about to murder someone. That someone was probably going to be Aria, who was currently shaking her shoulder spaztastically, trying to get a reaction.
Aria’s hair was red. And purple. And orange. And green. On one side of her face it was short and spiky, while the other curled down towards her neck. She was wearing clothes spattered with paint, and her bright green eyes were lit up as she looked at Robin, apparently not noticing the waves of hate coming off of her.
Robin growled something unintelligible. Aria went on, “Oh, this is going to be so much fun! We’ll meet new people, and become really good friends, and have great times-”
“Hey!” shouted Alex, looking slightly panicked. I guessed that she was worried about Aria’s wellbeing. “Um... maybe you should... come over here and introduce yourself? You know, let your friend sleep or something.”
Aria stayed right where she was, but she did introduce herself as Aria Mel and the “sleepy head” Robin as her best friend.
I looked over at Alex, who turned to face me with a doubtful and worried expression. Sorry, Alex, but I wasn’t touching that one. She tried to get to Aria again. “Um,” she said, “Actually I think that Robin is already up, so...”
“What? I can’t hear you over this strange growling sound!” Aria told her. “Who’re you anyway, friend?” she inquired.
Alex was starting to look desperate, but just then a BANG! reverberated throughout the room, and something wet smacked into the side of my face before Lin opened her umbrella to protect the two of us (three if you count the unconscious girl, whom I only remembered at that point because the blast had woken her up) from the rest of the debris.
I touched the side of my face, afraid of what I would find, but the wet substance was... bright pink. I licked it off my fingers. Frosting. The food table had exploded.
Looking around, I realized that it hadn’t really been a table of food. It had been a table of desserts. Robin looked stunned, with a cupcake somehow balanced right on top of her head. Aria’s face full of frosting was worse than mine, and she was smiling while working on removing it all with her tongue. Lin and the girl sprawled across our laps, who was then sitting up, were only lightly splattered with various bits of donuts, cotton candy, and chocolate. I saw the chocolate fountain, rolling off to one side. Good thing that hadn’t hit anyone.
Only Alex was unscathed. Actually, it was kind of crazy that nothing had gotten to her at all, almost like- oh, wow. I noticed it then, the silver bubble surrounding her. Saw it almost too clearly, really. I was pretty certain that if it wasn’t for all of the strange visions I’d been seeing, Alex’s force field, with the number 13 etched on the side, wouldn’t have been near as apparent.
“What...” Alex looked for words, and ended up with, “was that?!” Her voice sounded weak.
After a pause, Robin spoke up. “I... I think I did it... I caused the explosion...”
What was happening to us?
Aria started giggling. It seemed somehow... morbid, amidst the distress and silence of the rest of us. “No, silly,” she said, “You can’t cause an explosion like that! The cakes just blew upsy, that’s all... right?”
Alex’s shield suddenly dropped, and all the desserts that had been stuck to it splattered onto the ground. Alex looked like she might fall down, too, she seemed so exhausted. The 13 symbol stayed in the air for a moment, though, before fading away.
Alex seemed to straighten, and she turned toward a group in the background that I hadn’t noticed before, a young boy that I assumed was Rothgar, a cat, and a small lizard- no, snake- no, it had wings. Dragon. Alex asked them, sounding determined, “What is going on?”
The three seemed to look at each other nervously. Finally, Rothgar said, “We’d, uh, we’d better talk.”
Alex, Robin, and Aria started to walk over towards where they were, but Lin and I still had to take care of one thing. The girl that Lin had knocked out was looking around. Her hair was dark blonde, and it was pulled into a ponytail that fell past her shoulders. She was wearing jeans and a striped purple jacket. She turned to me, and I could see glasses covering greenish eyes that were wide open, questioning. The look on her face was so confused that I had to crack a smile.
“Kind of a rude awakening, huh?” I said, and she nodded her head, smiling back. “I’m Naleen, and this is Lin,” I told her.
“I’m Allie,” she replied. “Have you seen a guy, around seventeen, probably looks... stoic? Maybe annoyed. Or like he’s trying for the strong and silent type.”
How do you respond to something like that? “Uh... no. The only male person around here is really young.” I pointed over at Rothgar.
She sighed. “What kind of jerk leaves a blind girl alone, where anything could happen to her? She could walk off a cliff, or get stolen by zombies, or-”
“Wait, you’re blind?” I asked.
“Well, yeah, that’s why I tripped, and...” she stared at me for a moment. Then she burst out, “I can see!”
I smiled. I was happy for her. I knew what that was like.
“So, can you tell me what happened?” Allie asked.
I started to explain. “Well, you apparently tripped over us, waking us up, and Lin kind of, well, hit you in the face with her umbrella, and it appears that she knocked you out cold. Then the desserts exploded, and one girl made a forcefield, and we’re all going to go over there so that a little boy, a cat, and a dragon can tell us what just happened.”
She looked at me worriedly, then said, “The donuts exploded? Really? I ate one of those! What if it explodes!?” She paused, then added, “Oh no!”
“What?” Lin asked.
“I’m still hungry!”
We stared at her, then I said, “I think you’ll be okay for now. Now, Lin, was there anything that you wanted to say to Allie?”
Lin stared at me, uncomprehending.
“About the umbrella?”
Now she understood, she just didn’t seem to believe that that was what I could possibly mean. She gave me an incredulous look, saw that I was serious, and turned to Allie. There was a pause.
“Uh, sorry I, um, hit you.”
Allie looked back at her, then said, “Oh, uh, sorry I tripped over you.”
“... s’fine.”
“Are you coming?” a new voice asked.
We turned, and saw... the cat.
“Over here,” the voice said, and it was clearly the cat speaking. Then he turned and walked over to where the rest of the girls were gathered. I exchanged glances with Lin and Allie, and then the three of us followed him.
“Well,” Rothgar was saying, “For starters, this isn’t your... world. We call this place the Lost Reality. I know that things here and things on Earth are, well, different. Basically, everything that can’t exit there does exist here.” He looked over uncertainly at the cat, and the cat nodded at him. He continued. “I think that it’s kind of connected to human’s imaginations, but that as time went on we drifted apart a little bit, and we’re our own place now. I’m not really sure... it’s always been confusing to me.”
He continued speaking, telling us more about the world. I remember that the place we are staying at now is called the Traveler’s Haven, and outside is an enormous structure called The Pyramid of the Moon. The thing that shocked me was that I wasn’t shocked at anything that he was saying. Some crazy stuff had been happening, for sure, but was I so ready to accept a whole new world? Yet somehow, I was. Maybe I’m still in denial, and it all still feels like a dream. Well, what would be the point of denying what’s right in front of my eyes? If this isn’t a whole other world, then what could it be? It’s a place where cats talk, and girls can make things explode, or create force-fields, or see things that aren’t there. Speaking of which...
“We called you here, kind of,” Rothgar said. “Well, not really you, specifically, but we sent a call for help into your world, and you all answered, even if you didn’t mean to. See, things are starting to fall apart. These creatures of evil, blips and nightmares, are getting more powerful, and we found out that we can’t stop them on our own. We’re going to need you guys to try to get the different clans of demons to work together and to eventually help us fight the threat. You all got powers coming into our world, so those ought to help.”
Whoa. Nightmares? Demons? Powers?
“We have... powers?” Allie asked, with awe in her voice and an excited gleam in her eyes.
“Yes, as I said before you each were brought here by the taint that was sent out into your world in order to help us save ours,” Rothgar told her with a sigh. “You gained these powers to aid you in your journey and stuff I guess… No one really knows how or why it works out that way, it just does. It might have to do with each of your personalities, though.”
Robin glared defiantly at Rothgar, and called out a challenge. “Why should we help your world?” she scoffed. “You basically kidnapped us all. What is in it for us?”
Rothgar looked too flustered to answer, so the cat stepped in for him. “In saving our world you’ll be saving your own as well, because the Lost Reality is connected to yours in a way.” He paused, watching Robin. The two of them, Robin and the cat, were pretty evenly matched. Neither of them gave an inch, or showed any fear. “That and the guy behind this is trying to open up a portal into your realm and take over with his hordes of blips and nightmares. What is in it for you is the safety of your own homes as well.”
Robin nodded.
“So about our powers then...” Alex asked. “What was it that I did? What Robin did?”
“Ah, well,” Rothgar started, but with just a twitch of his tail, the cat silenced him.
The cat said, “You all were given powers, as we have explained before, to help you complete the quest. Some believe it is gained from your personality, while others think it is from your symbol, the thing that brought you here. You were brought here by the symbol thirteen, yes?” he asked, addressing Alex. “That is why you have the gift of the shield and other abilities related to protection and banishment.”
“We’re certain of what Alex’s power is because the number thirteen is a powerful symbol in and of itself,” he continued, and he spoke to all of us now. “Common people use it for protection and banishment, by drawing it over doorways, placing it in important places, and collecting thirteen of various items. For the rest of you,” he hesitated. “Well, we don’t really know.”
“At all,” Rothgar added.
The cat gave him a look, then turned to Robin. “Your power has already shown itself, thankfully. You seem to be able to-”
“Make things go boom?” Aria finished, then giggled.
It was her turn to see the exasperated cat’s half-hearted glare. Then he seemed to give up. “Yes, that’s basically it. At least, that’s what I’m assuming, based on,” he looked around at some of the cake splatters, “recent events. As for the rest of you, we’ll probably have to wait and see-”
I cut him off this time. “I’ve figured out what mine is.”
Then everyone turned to look at me, and I realized that maybe speaking up hadn’t been the best idea. I squirmed a little under their gazes and then tried to explain what I had noticed. “Well, it has to do with sight. I can see things that... aren’t there. Only they aren’t random. They mean things, and they aren’t the normal stuff that people can see. It’s like I can see...” gah, this was frustrating! I had no idea how to explain what was going on. “Well, like the status of something,” I said, moving my hands in front of me and then slicing them downwards, “or the reality of a situation.” And my powers sparked up, and I saw the reality of this situation. No one had any idea what I was talking about. Some of them weren’t even paying attention. I wanted to pound the ground in my irritation, but at least I now had an example. “Like, right now I can tell just by looking at you that you can barely understand a word I’m saying. But it’s not the looks on your faces, or anything like that. It’s... something else.”
There was an awkward silence. Then the cat seemed to decide it wasn’t worth it. “Yes, well, there’s that.” That was the end of one of the most terrible moments of my life. “Now, right now your powers are unstable and growing within you. There’s no way to tell when they might come out, or how.”
“That’s good, right?” asked Allie. “That way we’ll get to know what they are sooner or later.”
“No!” the cat answered her, sharply. “We cannot let you stay in this state! Think about what just happened. Think about how much worse it could have been. Your powers are too dangerous, too uncontrollable. We need to keep them under wraps, and we have a way to do that.”
He nodded at Rothgar, who ran to grab a bag and pulled out of it a jumble of necklaces.
“These are called limiters,” the cat told us. “Each of them was created for you as you arrived in our world. They will stop your powers from bursting out of you until you have better control over them. They will focus and direct your power so that you can use it in the way you want to, once we discover what they all are.
Rothgar walked around our circle, giving everyone their limiter while the cat made sure that we all knew what they were and that we put them on. The limiters were all shaped the same; a necklace with the pendant being a crystal that kind of reminds me of a pencil. They are long and ridged in the same way that pencils are, with a point at the end, except instead of being round like in a pencil the point is also ridged. Mine was a color that I recognized instantly. It was the same royal purple that my orb had been, back in my cage! Floating in the very center of the crystal was what looked like a silver shadow of a hand mirror. I thought it was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen.
Next to me, the cat was telling Alex what the limiters were. Apparently she hadn’t been paying attention before.
He moved on, but after he did Alex suddenly burst out, “Oh, Sylph! It was just… I had thought that my sister had wished for me to disappear. That’s all. I’m just relieved that it was something else that sent me here.”
I looked at her in confusion. “Who’re you talking to?”
“Well… um…” she looked flustered. “Actually I am talking to Sylph, the dragon.” She gestured at the small creature. He had a bright golden underbelly. Pure black scales covered the rest of him, all except for a white star on one of his cheeks. His wings were leathery, like a bat’s, and to me the look in his eyes was mischievous. “But he can only communicate through here,” Alex told me, and tapped the side of her head.
That was some pretty crazy stuff. When would Alex have even learned that the dragon could talk to her telepathically? And why would he only have talked to her? But Alex seemed reluctant to say more, so I just smiled and said, “That’s cool!” because really, it was.
Rothgar concluded our meeting of sorts and told us that we should all pack up for the journey tomorrow. He still seemed really shy about having to talk in front of six older girls that he didn’t know. It only then struck me how ridiculous the situation was then, that we were all sitting in a semicircle around a little kid and a cat like preschoolers would be around their teacher. I giggled. Rothgar was so cute, too. It just made you want to hug him.
Then Lin raised her arm into the air. The one with the umbrella. Rothgar flinched slightly, which you can’t really blame him for, then said, tentatively, “Um... yes, Lin, what is it?”
I was able to keep my composure, but it was almost too much for me. I’d never been in preschool, of course, since I’ve been homeschooled all of my life, but if I had, well... that situation was just so perfect, that it took everything that I had to not burst out laughing.
Lin asked, stoically, “Where are we heading? What is our final destination?”
The cat, whose name I had discovered was Rafael, answered her instead. “We are going to the king’s palace on the west shore. There is the queen’s uncle. He’s gone insane. He’s locked all the royalty away within the palace’s own walls and he’s building a machine to tear through time and space itself. That is where we are going. That is who we are stopping.”
With that, we dispersed, off to mull over this all, to pack, or, as was the case with Lin, to write in our journals.
I mulled, then packed, then wrote.
I sat on the stairs and leaned against the wall (it turns out that the stairs are a semi-circle instead of a whole circle, and there is one solid wall on the far side) and stared up at the skylight, just thinking. Not really thinking, more just processing, soaking it all in. How was any of this possible? What were we going to do? Why us? Why me?
And then there was the worst question of all. Would I ever get home? I ignored that one. I absolutely refused to let it linger in my mind. Even now I’m skimming over it, only letting it pass through the surface of my brain. Because the true question is, do I want to go home? And I’m not going to answer it.
That’s enough about home. What’s really important is the here and now, and I still feel like I barely know anything. I do know that somehow, I’m supposed to help save the world.
Oh, wow, how cliche does that sound? It seems ridiculous, like something you’d make up. It just... doesn't happen. The very idea is mind boggling.
I couldn’t take it anymore. My head was starting to hurt. I got up to gather some things to take with me. I found a nice bag. I suppose you would call it a rucksack.
Now, there’s been something that I’ve neglected to mention up until now. We were unbelievably lucky that the dessert table exploded. Because if anything else had, we probably would have all died.
Scattered around the room, filling up drawers and tables, are piles of weapons. There are medieval maces, wrecking balls, nunchucks, throwing stars, and other things that I never even imagined could exist before, like a staff topped with a half-moon blade, a small black knife shaped like a diamond, and some kind of claw-glove type thing, that you would attach to your wrist. There are average tools as well, like small screwdrivers, hammers, and the occasional ax, but they pale in comparison to the sheer power of the weapons.
To top it all off is a rack of swords against the back wall, displaying its gleaming death devices as proudly as can be. As it should. The swords are elegant in a way that I cannot explain. Something about them commands respect, and there is a quiet dignity to the razor sharp blades. Just looking at them can give you goosebumps. I walked down the line of them, admiring each one, when I came upon the smallest. It seemed little more than a long, thin knife, about the length of my fingertips to my elbow. The grip was slender and silver in color, as well as oddly shaped, with bends and grooves. The small blade had something written on it in a language I didn’t know. The thing looked as if I could snap it in two with my fingertips, and I was just wondering why anyone would make such a sword when my powers stepped in and showed me.
It started with a red glow in the corner of my eye, one that grew and flared and blazed until I stood in front of an inferno. Then the man appeared, hunched over, his hands and face grimey with soot and ash as he stared straight into the flames, unafraid. I thought that he was old, wizened by his years of work, when he suddenly stood, his back straight and proud, thinner than a blacksmith ought to be, and I saw his green eyes that were still bright with his youth. He was in his early twenties, then, maybe still an apprentice, making his own work for the first time.
And I saw him work. He made the hilt and blade separately. The blade was steel, and it turned out that the hilt actually was silver. Both metals he worked and folded and shaped, until I was certain that they were as strong as they could possibly be. He kept at it, working with a passion, the heat of the forge browning the skin on his face while his filthy hands made something of exquisite beauty and power. Months came and went while he gave that metal a purpose and a life, and then a year passed him by. Then, almost suddenly, it seemed, he was done. He leaned over his creation for the last time an engraved in it the tiny, flowing words, “True greatness hides in the humblest appearances,” then lifted his creation, holding the hilt that fit perfectly into the contours of his hand. Then the image faded away.
I stood, awed, for a moment, then, unable to resist, I closed my fingers around its grip. I felt it slip into my palm and shape around my fingers, and I wondered how it was logically possible. How could such wonderful hands as his, that had accomplished so much, fit the same way into this hilt as my small, useless ones? The sword felt like it had been made for me, perhaps just as much as my journal and limiter had been. From beneath it, I grabbed it’s sheath. This sword was not meant to stay here. It was made for use, to be a power that could be relied on when you needed it most. I realized now that it would not be so easy to break, but I resolved to still care for it and make sure that I never weakened it. I slipped the sheath over the blade, and walked away from the rack, knowing that I had gained something priceless.
The hilt had a kind of strap on it that I tied to one of the loops of my cargo pants. It would have to do for now. After that, packing was easy. One corner had some camping supplies, and out of there I picked a water jug, a large frying pan, a bar of soap, a toothbrush and toothpaste, four packs of matches, a coil of rope, a compass (that I had no idea how to read, but still), and a hat. After stuffing all of that into my bag, I looked to see if there was enough room for my sleeping bag in the morning, and decided there probably was. I hoped that this world had towns and that we had money to buy things with, but decided not to worry about it.
I looked over at Lin to see her still writing, and I remembered the journals. I wondered briefly about all of the other girls.
A quick scan of the room showed me that all of us had them. Then I scanned the room again. I could only see three journals, one that Lin was holding, one girl other writing in hers, and another sitting on the ground. How could I have been so sure that we all had them- then I remembered. Weird powers. Even if I couldn’t see the journals, I had seen them. Argh. I was going to get a headache. I walked over to Lin, hoping that she could distract me.
I snuck up behind her, rather stealthily I thought, and leaned over her shoulder to see what she was writing.
I saw-
After that we went back to the sleeping area where I located my jacket and put it on.
That’s where I am now.
Naleen’s leaning over my shoulder as I’m writing this.
I was mildly disappointed in my lack of stealth, but was happy to be noticed anyways. I pointed at the words and said, grinning, “You’re talking about me! That’s so great! Hey... ” I saw that as I said my words, she copied them. “You’re writing this down?,” I asked, and quietly laughed. “Hi Lin’s diary.”
She didn’t reply.
“What, not talking to me?” I teased, before she pointed back at the book. She had written the words-
It’s a journal.
“Oh, ‘It’s a journal’,” I got it, she was just going to talk to me that way. “Hey, I have a ‘journal’ too. I’ll write it later tonight.
She wrote-
Cool.
Everyone seems to be in pairs. Allie and Alex. Aria and Robin. Naleen and me.
“Yay!” I’m paired with Lin!” I interjected, and she wrote it. Then-
Even the boy and the cat have been sticking together. Though the dragon
“His name is Sylph,” I told her-
(Sylf
“No, with a ‘ph’, I think.”-
(Sylf Sylph as Naleen is reminding me) has been sticking with Alex.
“Like a mascot!” I said.-
...sure.
Everybody’s heading off to bed now, or at least getting ready. It seems that all of the other girls have a diary- I’ve seen one or two of them writing in something- it makes me wonder what they have to do with...
I smiled and left Lin to write in peace. I walked over to my sleeping bag and pulled my own book out, then walked around for a bit, trying to find a comfortable place to sit and record the days events. I had just settled on a spot on the stairs near Lin when she looked up and said, “Night, Naleen.”
“Wha-,” I looked up at the skylight. It had just gotten dark. “You’re going to bed?”
She paused, writing, then said, “Yeah.”
“Aw, ‘kay. Night, Lin!” I beamed at her.
She simply looked back at me, wrote a couple more words, and then crawled into her sleeping bag.
And that’s about it. I’ve been sitting here, recording my day, ever since. Alex is already in bed, perhaps asleep, with Slyph curled up next to her on a pillow. Aria’s still bouncing around Robin, annoying her to no end. Robin’s kind of silly, really. It seems like she’s good natured on the inside, and she just likes to keep up that rough exterior. Allie is sitting, staring at Rafael, the cat, it looks like. She looks almost... restless, over there. Oh, she just caught me looking at her. That was embarrassing. Rafael and Rothgar are talking to each other under their breath, but they seem like they’ll probably get to sleep, soon, too. Well, I ought to wrap it up. Good night, journal. Here’s to hoping things’ll make more sense soon.
I was having some kind of dream. I remember a person, speaking to me. Something about being trapped. And... it seemed like they were angry. For some reason, they were really familiar to me. I just can’t remember. I never really remember my dreams unless I wake up naturally, and take a little bit of time to think them over. If I have any distractions, I lose it. The whole ‘sitting and thinking’ thing just wasn’t going to happen today.
My dream, whatever it was, was shattered suddenly by something landing on me, followed by several exclamations of surprise (one of which was probably mine) and a sharp thwack! “Allie!” someone cried. I could hear some kind of argument going on in the background, and the small rustling of other people moving. Too much to take in.
It took me a moment to get my bearings. I was still pretty groggy when I sat up as much as I could with some kind of obstruction on my lap. I made a weird grunt sound, then looked around, blinking, and asked, “What’s happening?” Please, cut me some slack for the lack of intelligence conveyed in this scene. I was still sleepy and had absolutely no clue what was going on.
Memories from yesterday ran through my head while I peered around, bringing my dazed brain up to speed on where I was, at least. I’ll admit that for a moment, I thought that the recent events of my life were the dream. Part of what made waking up so confusing was trying to separate the fiction from the fact. It wasn’t easy, seeing as how everything that’s been going on shouldn’t be able to happen to anyone.
Anyways, the first thing that occured to me, the very first, was that my vision wasn’t shifting and wavering from one strange scene to the next. I saw a girl’s legs on my lap, in exactly the spot they ought to be according to what I could feel. On my side was another girl, holding an umbrella threateningly over the girl who had fallen over the two of us, and now seemed to be unconscious.
So, of course, the first thing I did was exultantly shout, “Oh! I can see! I can see!” Then I noticed the slight flickering, and added, “Well, sort of... but this is much better!” The things I could see were still layered, and not perfect. Sometimes it would seem like it was raining around Lin, even though I knew that couldn’t be possible. The other thing that I noticed was around the other girl, and, well, it’s almost impossible to describe. I could tell that she was asleep. Knocked unconscious, by the looks of things, but that’s besides the point. It was kind of like she had this weird glow, or the word ‘sleep’ was written around her, but that wasn’t quite it. Somehow, just by looking at her, I could see that she was sleeping. Like I could suddenly see... the Truth, if that makes any sense. I know it doesn’t. Just pretend like it does for me.
Anyways, it was better than before.
A voice from a little bit away, sounding quite uncertain and a little timid, asked, “Who’re you guys?”
I turned and saw a girl standing off to the side. She had dark-ish blonde hair that was pulled up into a ponytail. Her skin was fair, and I saw a sprinkling of freckles around her face. She had on a faded pair of blue jeans and a white shirt under a pretty light blue jacket. She was kind of tall and lanky, but not to the point where it looked weird.
I didn’t get the chance to answer her question, though, because Lin shot back at her, “What’s your name?” in her slightly threatening, slightly suspicious way.
The girl sitting next to me was obviously Lin. Well, I have to admit, the umbrella was a big hint, as well as the poor blacked-out other girl, but it was more than that. Everything about her, from her shoulder-length black hair with long bangs, to the contrast of her pale skin with her pure black dress, just said ‘Lin’ to me. She had bright, determined blue eyes, and I was ecstatic to see her at last.
“Oh,” said the girl Lin had addressed. “Well, I’m Alex. Alexandra Nike Webbings.” She kind of trailed off. “And so... um...”
I liked Alex already. She was another one of us, I could tell, just like Aria, Robin, Lin, and me. Something about her face seemed trustworthy to me, like she was the kind of person who would have your back. For a moment, I was unsure if this was an idea that I had just come up with myself, or if it was another one of those cases where I was able to in some way see things that shouldn’t be visible, like the aura of sleep around the knocked out girl. I shook off the feeling.
“I’m Naleen!” I said, beaming at her, “and this is Lin!” I looked over at Lin for emphasis, and abruptly noticed something. “Wow, Lin! You look smaller than I thought you would be!” Worried that I may have offended her, I quickly added, “I can tell it is you, though,” I tried to think of a way to explain it that would make sense. “Because of your umbrella,” I finished lamely.
Lin gave me the smallest of smiles.
Alex began talking again. “Okay. You were brought here by Rothgar then? That little kid right? He’s not so bad huh?” She asked. I silently agreed. I liked Rothgar. “So how’d you both wind up here?”
I was trying to think about where to start when a familiar voice called out, “Wow! More people! Robin, you have to wake up! These are our new friends!”
I looked over and saw two girls who could only be Aria and Robin. Robin was laying on the ground, with her dark brown hair drooping into her eyes. She wore a black shirt, with a black coat over that. She had on a pair of very old looking jeans. She looked... well, I could say that she looked annoyed, but really she looked like she was about to murder someone. That someone was probably going to be Aria, who was currently shaking her shoulder spaztastically, trying to get a reaction.
Aria’s hair was red. And purple. And orange. And green. On one side of her face it was short and spiky, while the other curled down towards her neck. She was wearing clothes spattered with paint, and her bright green eyes were lit up as she looked at Robin, apparently not noticing the waves of hate coming off of her.
Robin growled something unintelligible. Aria went on, “Oh, this is going to be so much fun! We’ll meet new people, and become really good friends, and have great times-”
“Hey!” shouted Alex, looking slightly panicked. I guessed that she was worried about Aria’s wellbeing. “Um... maybe you should... come over here and introduce yourself? You know, let your friend sleep or something.”
Aria stayed right where she was, but she did introduce herself as Aria Mel and the “sleepy head” Robin as her best friend.
I looked over at Alex, who turned to face me with a doubtful and worried expression. Sorry, Alex, but I wasn’t touching that one. She tried to get to Aria again. “Um,” she said, “Actually I think that Robin is already up, so...”
“What? I can’t hear you over this strange growling sound!” Aria told her. “Who’re you anyway, friend?” she inquired.
Alex was starting to look desperate, but just then a BANG! reverberated throughout the room, and something wet smacked into the side of my face before Lin opened her umbrella to protect the two of us (three if you count the unconscious girl, whom I only remembered at that point because the blast had woken her up) from the rest of the debris.
I touched the side of my face, afraid of what I would find, but the wet substance was... bright pink. I licked it off my fingers. Frosting. The food table had exploded.
Looking around, I realized that it hadn’t really been a table of food. It had been a table of desserts. Robin looked stunned, with a cupcake somehow balanced right on top of her head. Aria’s face full of frosting was worse than mine, and she was smiling while working on removing it all with her tongue. Lin and the girl sprawled across our laps, who was then sitting up, were only lightly splattered with various bits of donuts, cotton candy, and chocolate. I saw the chocolate fountain, rolling off to one side. Good thing that hadn’t hit anyone.
Only Alex was unscathed. Actually, it was kind of crazy that nothing had gotten to her at all, almost like- oh, wow. I noticed it then, the silver bubble surrounding her. Saw it almost too clearly, really. I was pretty certain that if it wasn’t for all of the strange visions I’d been seeing, Alex’s force field, with the number 13 etched on the side, wouldn’t have been near as apparent.
“What...” Alex looked for words, and ended up with, “was that?!” Her voice sounded weak.
After a pause, Robin spoke up. “I... I think I did it... I caused the explosion...”
What was happening to us?
Aria started giggling. It seemed somehow... morbid, amidst the distress and silence of the rest of us. “No, silly,” she said, “You can’t cause an explosion like that! The cakes just blew upsy, that’s all... right?”
Alex’s shield suddenly dropped, and all the desserts that had been stuck to it splattered onto the ground. Alex looked like she might fall down, too, she seemed so exhausted. The 13 symbol stayed in the air for a moment, though, before fading away.
Alex seemed to straighten, and she turned toward a group in the background that I hadn’t noticed before, a young boy that I assumed was Rothgar, a cat, and a small lizard- no, snake- no, it had wings. Dragon. Alex asked them, sounding determined, “What is going on?”
The three seemed to look at each other nervously. Finally, Rothgar said, “We’d, uh, we’d better talk.”
Alex, Robin, and Aria started to walk over towards where they were, but Lin and I still had to take care of one thing. The girl that Lin had knocked out was looking around. Her hair was dark blonde, and it was pulled into a ponytail that fell past her shoulders. She was wearing jeans and a striped purple jacket. She turned to me, and I could see glasses covering greenish eyes that were wide open, questioning. The look on her face was so confused that I had to crack a smile.
“Kind of a rude awakening, huh?” I said, and she nodded her head, smiling back. “I’m Naleen, and this is Lin,” I told her.
“I’m Allie,” she replied. “Have you seen a guy, around seventeen, probably looks... stoic? Maybe annoyed. Or like he’s trying for the strong and silent type.”
How do you respond to something like that? “Uh... no. The only male person around here is really young.” I pointed over at Rothgar.
She sighed. “What kind of jerk leaves a blind girl alone, where anything could happen to her? She could walk off a cliff, or get stolen by zombies, or-”
“Wait, you’re blind?” I asked.
“Well, yeah, that’s why I tripped, and...” she stared at me for a moment. Then she burst out, “I can see!”
I smiled. I was happy for her. I knew what that was like.
“So, can you tell me what happened?” Allie asked.
I started to explain. “Well, you apparently tripped over us, waking us up, and Lin kind of, well, hit you in the face with her umbrella, and it appears that she knocked you out cold. Then the desserts exploded, and one girl made a forcefield, and we’re all going to go over there so that a little boy, a cat, and a dragon can tell us what just happened.”
She looked at me worriedly, then said, “The donuts exploded? Really? I ate one of those! What if it explodes!?” She paused, then added, “Oh no!”
“What?” Lin asked.
“I’m still hungry!”
We stared at her, then I said, “I think you’ll be okay for now. Now, Lin, was there anything that you wanted to say to Allie?”
Lin stared at me, uncomprehending.
“About the umbrella?”
Now she understood, she just didn’t seem to believe that that was what I could possibly mean. She gave me an incredulous look, saw that I was serious, and turned to Allie. There was a pause.
“Uh, sorry I, um, hit you.”
Allie looked back at her, then said, “Oh, uh, sorry I tripped over you.”
“... s’fine.”
“Are you coming?” a new voice asked.
We turned, and saw... the cat.
“Over here,” the voice said, and it was clearly the cat speaking. Then he turned and walked over to where the rest of the girls were gathered. I exchanged glances with Lin and Allie, and then the three of us followed him.
“Well,” Rothgar was saying, “For starters, this isn’t your... world. We call this place the Lost Reality. I know that things here and things on Earth are, well, different. Basically, everything that can’t exit there does exist here.” He looked over uncertainly at the cat, and the cat nodded at him. He continued. “I think that it’s kind of connected to human’s imaginations, but that as time went on we drifted apart a little bit, and we’re our own place now. I’m not really sure... it’s always been confusing to me.”
He continued speaking, telling us more about the world. I remember that the place we are staying at now is called the Traveler’s Haven, and outside is an enormous structure called The Pyramid of the Moon. The thing that shocked me was that I wasn’t shocked at anything that he was saying. Some crazy stuff had been happening, for sure, but was I so ready to accept a whole new world? Yet somehow, I was. Maybe I’m still in denial, and it all still feels like a dream. Well, what would be the point of denying what’s right in front of my eyes? If this isn’t a whole other world, then what could it be? It’s a place where cats talk, and girls can make things explode, or create force-fields, or see things that aren’t there. Speaking of which...
“We called you here, kind of,” Rothgar said. “Well, not really you, specifically, but we sent a call for help into your world, and you all answered, even if you didn’t mean to. See, things are starting to fall apart. These creatures of evil, blips and nightmares, are getting more powerful, and we found out that we can’t stop them on our own. We’re going to need you guys to try to get the different clans of demons to work together and to eventually help us fight the threat. You all got powers coming into our world, so those ought to help.”
Whoa. Nightmares? Demons? Powers?
“We have... powers?” Allie asked, with awe in her voice and an excited gleam in her eyes.
“Yes, as I said before you each were brought here by the taint that was sent out into your world in order to help us save ours,” Rothgar told her with a sigh. “You gained these powers to aid you in your journey and stuff I guess… No one really knows how or why it works out that way, it just does. It might have to do with each of your personalities, though.”
Robin glared defiantly at Rothgar, and called out a challenge. “Why should we help your world?” she scoffed. “You basically kidnapped us all. What is in it for us?”
Rothgar looked too flustered to answer, so the cat stepped in for him. “In saving our world you’ll be saving your own as well, because the Lost Reality is connected to yours in a way.” He paused, watching Robin. The two of them, Robin and the cat, were pretty evenly matched. Neither of them gave an inch, or showed any fear. “That and the guy behind this is trying to open up a portal into your realm and take over with his hordes of blips and nightmares. What is in it for you is the safety of your own homes as well.”
Robin nodded.
“So about our powers then...” Alex asked. “What was it that I did? What Robin did?”
“Ah, well,” Rothgar started, but with just a twitch of his tail, the cat silenced him.
The cat said, “You all were given powers, as we have explained before, to help you complete the quest. Some believe it is gained from your personality, while others think it is from your symbol, the thing that brought you here. You were brought here by the symbol thirteen, yes?” he asked, addressing Alex. “That is why you have the gift of the shield and other abilities related to protection and banishment.”
“We’re certain of what Alex’s power is because the number thirteen is a powerful symbol in and of itself,” he continued, and he spoke to all of us now. “Common people use it for protection and banishment, by drawing it over doorways, placing it in important places, and collecting thirteen of various items. For the rest of you,” he hesitated. “Well, we don’t really know.”
“At all,” Rothgar added.
The cat gave him a look, then turned to Robin. “Your power has already shown itself, thankfully. You seem to be able to-”
“Make things go boom?” Aria finished, then giggled.
It was her turn to see the exasperated cat’s half-hearted glare. Then he seemed to give up. “Yes, that’s basically it. At least, that’s what I’m assuming, based on,” he looked around at some of the cake splatters, “recent events. As for the rest of you, we’ll probably have to wait and see-”
I cut him off this time. “I’ve figured out what mine is.”
Then everyone turned to look at me, and I realized that maybe speaking up hadn’t been the best idea. I squirmed a little under their gazes and then tried to explain what I had noticed. “Well, it has to do with sight. I can see things that... aren’t there. Only they aren’t random. They mean things, and they aren’t the normal stuff that people can see. It’s like I can see...” gah, this was frustrating! I had no idea how to explain what was going on. “Well, like the status of something,” I said, moving my hands in front of me and then slicing them downwards, “or the reality of a situation.” And my powers sparked up, and I saw the reality of this situation. No one had any idea what I was talking about. Some of them weren’t even paying attention. I wanted to pound the ground in my irritation, but at least I now had an example. “Like, right now I can tell just by looking at you that you can barely understand a word I’m saying. But it’s not the looks on your faces, or anything like that. It’s... something else.”
There was an awkward silence. Then the cat seemed to decide it wasn’t worth it. “Yes, well, there’s that.” That was the end of one of the most terrible moments of my life. “Now, right now your powers are unstable and growing within you. There’s no way to tell when they might come out, or how.”
“That’s good, right?” asked Allie. “That way we’ll get to know what they are sooner or later.”
“No!” the cat answered her, sharply. “We cannot let you stay in this state! Think about what just happened. Think about how much worse it could have been. Your powers are too dangerous, too uncontrollable. We need to keep them under wraps, and we have a way to do that.”
He nodded at Rothgar, who ran to grab a bag and pulled out of it a jumble of necklaces.
“These are called limiters,” the cat told us. “Each of them was created for you as you arrived in our world. They will stop your powers from bursting out of you until you have better control over them. They will focus and direct your power so that you can use it in the way you want to, once we discover what they all are.
Rothgar walked around our circle, giving everyone their limiter while the cat made sure that we all knew what they were and that we put them on. The limiters were all shaped the same; a necklace with the pendant being a crystal that kind of reminds me of a pencil. They are long and ridged in the same way that pencils are, with a point at the end, except instead of being round like in a pencil the point is also ridged. Mine was a color that I recognized instantly. It was the same royal purple that my orb had been, back in my cage! Floating in the very center of the crystal was what looked like a silver shadow of a hand mirror. I thought it was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen.
Next to me, the cat was telling Alex what the limiters were. Apparently she hadn’t been paying attention before.
He moved on, but after he did Alex suddenly burst out, “Oh, Sylph! It was just… I had thought that my sister had wished for me to disappear. That’s all. I’m just relieved that it was something else that sent me here.”
I looked at her in confusion. “Who’re you talking to?”
“Well… um…” she looked flustered. “Actually I am talking to Sylph, the dragon.” She gestured at the small creature. He had a bright golden underbelly. Pure black scales covered the rest of him, all except for a white star on one of his cheeks. His wings were leathery, like a bat’s, and to me the look in his eyes was mischievous. “But he can only communicate through here,” Alex told me, and tapped the side of her head.
That was some pretty crazy stuff. When would Alex have even learned that the dragon could talk to her telepathically? And why would he only have talked to her? But Alex seemed reluctant to say more, so I just smiled and said, “That’s cool!” because really, it was.
Rothgar concluded our meeting of sorts and told us that we should all pack up for the journey tomorrow. He still seemed really shy about having to talk in front of six older girls that he didn’t know. It only then struck me how ridiculous the situation was then, that we were all sitting in a semicircle around a little kid and a cat like preschoolers would be around their teacher. I giggled. Rothgar was so cute, too. It just made you want to hug him.
Then Lin raised her arm into the air. The one with the umbrella. Rothgar flinched slightly, which you can’t really blame him for, then said, tentatively, “Um... yes, Lin, what is it?”
I was able to keep my composure, but it was almost too much for me. I’d never been in preschool, of course, since I’ve been homeschooled all of my life, but if I had, well... that situation was just so perfect, that it took everything that I had to not burst out laughing.
Lin asked, stoically, “Where are we heading? What is our final destination?”
The cat, whose name I had discovered was Rafael, answered her instead. “We are going to the king’s palace on the west shore. There is the queen’s uncle. He’s gone insane. He’s locked all the royalty away within the palace’s own walls and he’s building a machine to tear through time and space itself. That is where we are going. That is who we are stopping.”
With that, we dispersed, off to mull over this all, to pack, or, as was the case with Lin, to write in our journals.
I mulled, then packed, then wrote.
I sat on the stairs and leaned against the wall (it turns out that the stairs are a semi-circle instead of a whole circle, and there is one solid wall on the far side) and stared up at the skylight, just thinking. Not really thinking, more just processing, soaking it all in. How was any of this possible? What were we going to do? Why us? Why me?
And then there was the worst question of all. Would I ever get home? I ignored that one. I absolutely refused to let it linger in my mind. Even now I’m skimming over it, only letting it pass through the surface of my brain. Because the true question is, do I want to go home? And I’m not going to answer it.
That’s enough about home. What’s really important is the here and now, and I still feel like I barely know anything. I do know that somehow, I’m supposed to help save the world.
Oh, wow, how cliche does that sound? It seems ridiculous, like something you’d make up. It just... doesn't happen. The very idea is mind boggling.
I couldn’t take it anymore. My head was starting to hurt. I got up to gather some things to take with me. I found a nice bag. I suppose you would call it a rucksack.
Now, there’s been something that I’ve neglected to mention up until now. We were unbelievably lucky that the dessert table exploded. Because if anything else had, we probably would have all died.
Scattered around the room, filling up drawers and tables, are piles of weapons. There are medieval maces, wrecking balls, nunchucks, throwing stars, and other things that I never even imagined could exist before, like a staff topped with a half-moon blade, a small black knife shaped like a diamond, and some kind of claw-glove type thing, that you would attach to your wrist. There are average tools as well, like small screwdrivers, hammers, and the occasional ax, but they pale in comparison to the sheer power of the weapons.
To top it all off is a rack of swords against the back wall, displaying its gleaming death devices as proudly as can be. As it should. The swords are elegant in a way that I cannot explain. Something about them commands respect, and there is a quiet dignity to the razor sharp blades. Just looking at them can give you goosebumps. I walked down the line of them, admiring each one, when I came upon the smallest. It seemed little more than a long, thin knife, about the length of my fingertips to my elbow. The grip was slender and silver in color, as well as oddly shaped, with bends and grooves. The small blade had something written on it in a language I didn’t know. The thing looked as if I could snap it in two with my fingertips, and I was just wondering why anyone would make such a sword when my powers stepped in and showed me.
It started with a red glow in the corner of my eye, one that grew and flared and blazed until I stood in front of an inferno. Then the man appeared, hunched over, his hands and face grimey with soot and ash as he stared straight into the flames, unafraid. I thought that he was old, wizened by his years of work, when he suddenly stood, his back straight and proud, thinner than a blacksmith ought to be, and I saw his green eyes that were still bright with his youth. He was in his early twenties, then, maybe still an apprentice, making his own work for the first time.
And I saw him work. He made the hilt and blade separately. The blade was steel, and it turned out that the hilt actually was silver. Both metals he worked and folded and shaped, until I was certain that they were as strong as they could possibly be. He kept at it, working with a passion, the heat of the forge browning the skin on his face while his filthy hands made something of exquisite beauty and power. Months came and went while he gave that metal a purpose and a life, and then a year passed him by. Then, almost suddenly, it seemed, he was done. He leaned over his creation for the last time an engraved in it the tiny, flowing words, “True greatness hides in the humblest appearances,” then lifted his creation, holding the hilt that fit perfectly into the contours of his hand. Then the image faded away.
I stood, awed, for a moment, then, unable to resist, I closed my fingers around its grip. I felt it slip into my palm and shape around my fingers, and I wondered how it was logically possible. How could such wonderful hands as his, that had accomplished so much, fit the same way into this hilt as my small, useless ones? The sword felt like it had been made for me, perhaps just as much as my journal and limiter had been. From beneath it, I grabbed it’s sheath. This sword was not meant to stay here. It was made for use, to be a power that could be relied on when you needed it most. I realized now that it would not be so easy to break, but I resolved to still care for it and make sure that I never weakened it. I slipped the sheath over the blade, and walked away from the rack, knowing that I had gained something priceless.
The hilt had a kind of strap on it that I tied to one of the loops of my cargo pants. It would have to do for now. After that, packing was easy. One corner had some camping supplies, and out of there I picked a water jug, a large frying pan, a bar of soap, a toothbrush and toothpaste, four packs of matches, a coil of rope, a compass (that I had no idea how to read, but still), and a hat. After stuffing all of that into my bag, I looked to see if there was enough room for my sleeping bag in the morning, and decided there probably was. I hoped that this world had towns and that we had money to buy things with, but decided not to worry about it.
I looked over at Lin to see her still writing, and I remembered the journals. I wondered briefly about all of the other girls.
A quick scan of the room showed me that all of us had them. Then I scanned the room again. I could only see three journals, one that Lin was holding, one girl other writing in hers, and another sitting on the ground. How could I have been so sure that we all had them- then I remembered. Weird powers. Even if I couldn’t see the journals, I had seen them. Argh. I was going to get a headache. I walked over to Lin, hoping that she could distract me.
I snuck up behind her, rather stealthily I thought, and leaned over her shoulder to see what she was writing.
I saw-
After that we went back to the sleeping area where I located my jacket and put it on.
That’s where I am now.
Naleen’s leaning over my shoulder as I’m writing this.
I was mildly disappointed in my lack of stealth, but was happy to be noticed anyways. I pointed at the words and said, grinning, “You’re talking about me! That’s so great! Hey... ” I saw that as I said my words, she copied them. “You’re writing this down?,” I asked, and quietly laughed. “Hi Lin’s diary.”
She didn’t reply.
“What, not talking to me?” I teased, before she pointed back at the book. She had written the words-
It’s a journal.
“Oh, ‘It’s a journal’,” I got it, she was just going to talk to me that way. “Hey, I have a ‘journal’ too. I’ll write it later tonight.
She wrote-
Cool.
Everyone seems to be in pairs. Allie and Alex. Aria and Robin. Naleen and me.
“Yay!” I’m paired with Lin!” I interjected, and she wrote it. Then-
Even the boy and the cat have been sticking together. Though the dragon
“His name is Sylph,” I told her-
(Sylf
“No, with a ‘ph’, I think.”-
(Sylf Sylph as Naleen is reminding me) has been sticking with Alex.
“Like a mascot!” I said.-
...sure.
Everybody’s heading off to bed now, or at least getting ready. It seems that all of the other girls have a diary- I’ve seen one or two of them writing in something- it makes me wonder what they have to do with...
I smiled and left Lin to write in peace. I walked over to my sleeping bag and pulled my own book out, then walked around for a bit, trying to find a comfortable place to sit and record the days events. I had just settled on a spot on the stairs near Lin when she looked up and said, “Night, Naleen.”
“Wha-,” I looked up at the skylight. It had just gotten dark. “You’re going to bed?”
She paused, writing, then said, “Yeah.”
“Aw, ‘kay. Night, Lin!” I beamed at her.
She simply looked back at me, wrote a couple more words, and then crawled into her sleeping bag.
And that’s about it. I’ve been sitting here, recording my day, ever since. Alex is already in bed, perhaps asleep, with Slyph curled up next to her on a pillow. Aria’s still bouncing around Robin, annoying her to no end. Robin’s kind of silly, really. It seems like she’s good natured on the inside, and she just likes to keep up that rough exterior. Allie is sitting, staring at Rafael, the cat, it looks like. She looks almost... restless, over there. Oh, she just caught me looking at her. That was embarrassing. Rafael and Rothgar are talking to each other under their breath, but they seem like they’ll probably get to sleep, soon, too. Well, I ought to wrap it up. Good night, journal. Here’s to hoping things’ll make more sense soon.
~ June 9th, 2012
June 9th
I had the same dream last night that I had the night before. The person (I think it was a girl) just wouldn’t leave me alone, and kept saying... things. I can’t remember what they were, but I remember how they made me feel, and it wasn’t good. Then some kind of brass instrument started playing in the background, weaving into my dream, and I soon realized that I wasn’t dreaming anymore. I had drifted into consciousness, pulled by the sound of someone playing a wake up call /very loudly/.
I rolled my head from side to side, scrunched up my face, and shivered. Then I resorted to pushing my palms into my ears and crouching down deeper into my sleeping bag (basically the equivalent of pulling the covers over my head). I did /not/ want to get up.
Finally, the noise stopped, and I was able to hear the grumbles and conversations of many other rudely awakened girls. /Please/, I thought, /Please just let me sleep./
I had no such luck.
Some kind of amazing force slammed into my back, and a cheery voice exclaimed, “Com’on, sleepy head, you too! Up! Up! Up!” Each /Up!/ was accented by the stabbing object pushing deeper into my side. Aria was kneeling on my back, bouncing on top of me.
I just lay and took it for a moment, then thrashed around from inside of the sleeping bag, knocking her off while she giggled. I waited for a second to prepare myself, sighed, and then eradicated myself from the warmth and comfort that I had been able to enjoy all too briefly. Aria beamed at me. I ignored her as well as I could, fearing that if I looked her way I would end up glaring. Instead, I rubbed my face, and asked, “What was that...” I searched for an appropriate word, “/din/ just a minute ago?”
Aria laughed. “Naleen, you’re so slow, we just talked about this. It’s Sylph’s mini tuba!”
I looked around and spotted the offending dragon, who did indeed have a yellow instrument that curled around his head. Instead of preparing to play it, though, he was looking at Alex, seeming almost indignant. She patted his head, and when I listened closely I heard her say, “Yes, Sylph, I know it’s a dragon horn, but they’re really not going to listen to me.”
I stood, awake enough after all of that. Everyone else was already up, although not many of them looked happy about it. Alex, however, seemed totally ready for the day, excited even, and Aria, of course, was a bouncing ball of happiness, no matter the hour of the day. Sylph, having mostly recovered from the dragon horn incident, was perched on Alex’s shoulders, talking to her, most likely.
The other person who I noticed was wide awake this morning was Rothgar, whose eyes shone when he called us all over to the same place we had our ‘meeting’ last night. “Today, we’re going to head out! We’re going over to-”
“The Dog-Clan area,” a grumbling voice finished for him. I noticed Rafael for the first time that day; I suppose that his black fur helped camouflage him somewhat. As he came to join us, he didn’t walk, he /slunk/, with his shoulders hunched and his head lowered. His feline eyes simmered, daring anyone to get on his bad side. It actually reminded me a little of my brother, Darian. Back when he was fifteen or so, he used to be the same way in the mornings (and most of the rest of the day, too, now that I think about it). I had always thought it was kind of a sulky teenaged guy thing. How old is Rafael, anyways? In cat years, I mean. Judging by his voice, he could be around that age.
Rafael’s eyes flashed over each of us, then he sighed and said, “Let’s just get going. If any of you have questions, we can talk on the way, alright?”
“I still don’t see why we should trust anything you guys have said,” someone growled.
It was Robin. The girl’s short hair was disheveled and spiky, and there was danger in her gaze. “Why should we come with you anywhere? You expect us all to just follow blindly? We have no proof that you’re telling the truth.”
Aria’s hands clapped together. “Robin, that rhymed! You’re a poet and you didn’t know it!”
Robin glared, Aria beamed; I was beginning to see a pattern.
Rafael’s eyes were narrowed; he opened his mouth to retort, but Alex surprised me by beating him to the punch. “Even if you don’t trust them, where else would you go? This way, you’ll at least know that there is some direction to what you do while we’re here.” Hm. That was the same kind of thing that I said to Lin, about following Rothgar yesterday. Alex and I seemed to have similar thought processes. “Anyways,” she added, “I think that we ought to all stick together. We’re kind of connected, you know?” She lifted her hand and stroked Sylph’s head, and I couldn’t help but think that the two of them had been talking about all of this. Those two were kind of confusing to me. Alex was acting so fond, as if the small dragon had been with her all of her life. The telepathy thing was still weird, too.
Robin was pouting. Well, really she was glaring, but on the inside it was downright pout-age. Still, she didn’t seem to have any argument, so we packed up and went on our way.
At least, we tried to. It only took me a few minutes to realize that my rucksack did not have enough room left for a sleeping bag. At all. After a few minutes of trying to squish it in, I felt a hand on my arm, and looked up.
“What’re you trying to do? You won’t get anywhere that way.” Allie knelt down next to me and relieved my hands of the squished and crumpled mess that was my sleeping bag. With an expert flip to her wrists she flattened it out and began rolling it up, kneeling on it to keep it extra small. She admonished me a little on my lack of sleeping bag skills, but mostly she was just mumbling and didn’t really mean it. She finished quickly and tied the cords tightly, pulling them taut, and handed me the bag, smiling. “It should fit now.”
I took the bundle gratefully and stowed it away. It still was a tight squeeze, but it worked well enough. I thanked her.
“Really, you guys are just so hopeless. I don’t think that you’re the only one without a clue how to roll a sleeping bag.” Allie tossed her own backpack over her shoulder and stood, her ponytail flopping, but still seeming good-natured. I gave her one last smile, then looked around.
Ah, there she was. Kind of spacing out over there. I crossed the floor to crouch next to Lin. “Hey in there,” I said, somewhat softly. She turned to me and blinked. Oh, man, that was cute. I grinned. “We’re all getting going, Lin. Are you packed?”
Ever so slowly, she turned around, grabbed her crumpled jacket from the floor (I think she’d been using it as a pillow) and shrugged it on. Her hand then closed around the handle of her umbrella. Then she nodded.
I decided not to question her.
Eventually, we were all gathered at the bottom of the stairs. Lin was still pretty tired, so I was kind of dragging her along. When it was confirmed that no one wanted to grab anything else, and Rafael firmly told us we would not be coming back for anything, we set off on what feels like the first adventure of many.
Then nine of us set out, and I gathered that we were going to a train station. Our walk was uneventful at first, and and the desert around us eventually began to gain more vegetation, as if it were converting into more of a plain. Rothgar was in the lead, still just about vibrating in his excitement.
I haven’t described Rothgar yet, have I? I’m not sure I can do him justice. He is one of the most adorable people I have ever seen in my life. He’s pretty young, maybe ten, I think? He has all of this shaggy black hair sticking out from underneath a floppy cap, and in all honesty, I think part of the reason he wears it is to cover up a pair of cat ears. I base this on the fact that tucked into his belt, in plain sight (although it seems like he’s trying to pretend it’s a rope or something) is a definite tail. Also, I have truth vision. It’s becoming hard to hide stuff from me. He has the widest eyes, and they are a deep, ruby red color, so much that it’s striking. These eyes usually seem to be filled with excitement or scrunched up in a pout, from what I have seen of him. He doesn’t bother with shoes, which can’t be good for his little feet, but I’ll bug him about it later, and wears clothes that look like they’ve seen better days.
It occurred to me that we were told that the normal people of this land are called demons. When I thought about it, a tiny, telepathic dragon, a talking cat, and a red-eyed boy with certain suspicious extra features could definitely fit under that category. Instead of worrying me, this thought calmed me somewhat. There is an automatic negative connotation with the word demon, of course, and I’d been worried about running into them. But I had probably already met some, and they weren’t so bad.
The walk was companionable. Lin eventually woke up, and the two of us walked quietly like the day before. Alex, Alice, and Sylph seemed to have a conversation going, with Alex as a translator for her dragon friend. Aria was as bubbly as ever, and Robin as grouchy. Even Rafael perked up a little as the morning went on, and he kind of trotted along right behind Rothgar. No real surprises.
Things quieted down for a little while, before Robin burst out, “Do you /have/ to do that?” with her best death-glare. She was referring to Aria, of course.
Aria giggled. “What?”
“You keep giving the sky this terrible look of absolute idiocy. It’s driving me insane.”
With an all out laugh, Aria told us, “Oh, I was just keeping track of our friend!”
Everyone seemed interested now. “What?” Rafael asked.
“Back there,” she said, and turned around with a blissful smile on her face, waving. We all looked, and...
There was something there. /There was something there./ A single black crow, gliding high up in the air, somewhat silhouetted by the sun. It glided along after us.
“Okay, how long has that been there?” Alex asked her.
“The whole time!”
Allie stared at Aria, getting a strange look in her eyes, then squinted at the crow “Oh gosh, it’s some kind of devil’s spawn, or a servant of evil, or,” she gasped, “even worse! Some kind of crazy stalker!”
Rafael looked at Allie, exasperated. He is so expressionate, even though he’s a cat. Then he said, “No, I think that’s just-”
“He’s coming down!” Aria said, joyously.
She was right. The crow was banking down towards us. We waited apprehensively for a few moments before it landed. It seemed almost to hesitate for a moment, and I saw what was going to happen right before it did.
What happened was that, in a flourish of feathers, the crow transformed from the form we had seen into a teenaged guy. It seemed like he didn’t get enough sun, like he should be tan but wasn’t quite. He had jet-black layered hair that seemed like it was trying to float away from his head, and his eyes were deep brown. And as he stood there, with a multitude of teenaged girls staring at him in shock, he only seemed to get more and more uncomfortable. At least, until Aria said, “Hi there!”
“You’re the one who was in my room, right?” she continued. He nodded, barely perceptively. She grinned. “I was hoping to meet you!”
“About time you showed up,” someone said, and I turned to look at Rafael. “Everyone, that is birdbrain, and now let’s just continue walking because he’s not very important to this mission.”
Said ‘birdbrain’ glared at the cat briefly. Then Aria asked him what his name was, and his full attention was on her. He said something under his breath that only she heard, but she repeated it loud enough for the rest of us. “Shecayah?” she asked, and there was another slight nod. “It’s great to see you again!”
Shecayah gave a nervous glance to the rest of us, and just like that, he was a bird again. Aria kept smiling at him. “It’s great to have you on board!”
“Speak for yourself,” Rafael grumbled.
And we continued on our way without anyone making all that much of a fuss over our new companion. Who was a shape-shifting bird guy. My life is so weird.
Shecayah rode on Aria’s shoulder from then on, and she had a particularly one-sided conversation with him. I started talking to Allie, and we quickly shifted to the topic of blindness.
Her eyes sparked. “You too? Augh, that was /terrible/! And I had to have Eon lead me around /all day and night/, with no food and hardly any breaks!” I tried to ask who Eon was, but she was still talking. “What was up with that anyways? Did anyone else have weird stuff happen to them?”
Here, Rothgar inserted himself into our dialog. He’d moved back towards us, and had apparently been listening. “Yeah,” he told us, “you all had a side-effect.”
Lin looked at him. “What do you mean?”
“Didn’t you say something about a side-effect?” Alex asked Sylph from off to the side.
Rothgar looked like he was about to explain, but instead Rafael was the one to say, “It was the transportation from your rooms that did it. You all had something different about you until the first time you slept in this world. Sometimes it’s obvious, sometimes it’s subtle. It can be relevant to your power, your personality, or... just random.”
“Alright,” I said, “so I have weird vision power, meaning that when I first got here my vision power was so intense that I couldn’t see anything that was real under all of the visions.”
“And I had a serious case of the giggles!” Aria added.
Oh, that was right, she hadn’t been laughing as much today as yesterday. So she hadn’t stopped laughing because she /literally/ couldn’t. Now the chronic laughter thing made more sense.
“Look, Rafael, the town’s getting pretty close,” Rothgar told the cat, changing the subject. I haven’t seen Rothgar smile yet, but his eyes are so expressive that it isn’t hard to tell when he’s happy. It’s like he’s trying to be more sullen than he is sometimes, although I don’t see why he would.
“Good,” Rafael replied.
At first, the small town was only a hazy object in the distance, but it slowly solidified. We came across the tracks of the train that we would apparently be riding and started to walk along those. As I could make out more of where we were going, I noticed that it seemed characteristic of somewhere you would find in this landscape. It had a real wild west look to it, like a ghost town from an old movie, only bigger and more populated.
When we started to really get close, Alex and Rafael both stopped walking. “What’s the problem?” Robin asked grouchily.
“Oh, I guess that makes sense,” Alex said.
Sylph must’ve been talking to her about it. The rest of us looked to Rafael for an explanation. He paused, as if trying to think what he should tell us, then said, “Sylph and I probably shouldn’t be seen around town. Black cats... have a bad reputation, and a dragon would attract unnecessary attention. Neither are very common around here.”
“Well, you aren’t all black,” Allie pointed out. “You have that white streak.”
It was true; Rafael sports a small tuft of white fur starting between his ears and moving down his forehead. He looked away and mumbled, “That only makes things worse...”
“Well, that’s just great! How are we supposed to get on the train if you can’t even be seen?” Robin asked accusingly.
“Sylph can just hide in my jacket,” Alex said, and, as if to demonstrate, she opened up her hoodie and let Sylph slip inside, presumably curling around her back, then zipped it shut. You couldn’t tell he was there at all.
“So now we’ve just got to hide Mr. Cat!” Aria said.
“Well, Birdbrain ought to get lost, too, but he can just fly around so he’s fine. Not sure what I should do, though,” Rafael told her.
Allie’s eyes lit up, as if she’d had an idea. “Ah, that’s elementary my dear Watson,” she said, grinning, and pulled her backpack off. “I’ve still got some room in here.”
Rafael’s eyes widened. “No way.”
“I have to agree with Allie on this one,” Alex said. I noticed Lin giving a small smirk.
Rothgar looked troubled. “They are right, Rafael, it’s all I can think of.”
“I am not going to get shoved into a backpack!” he retorted, but Robin grabbed the scruff of his neck.
“Oh, I think you are,” she told him. “You could’ve gone willingly, but you chose to be shoved and so shoved you shall be.”
It required the combined efforts of Allie and Robin, but after a lot of yelling from the two girls, a lot of actual, cat-like /yowling/ from Rafael, a lot of giggling from Aria, a lot of looking nervous from Rothgar, and encouragement from the rest of us, the cat was in the bag. I was pretty sure that the ca-caw from Shecayah right after that was laughter.
“Now stay quiet, you. Don’t be a baby,” Allie commanded. “We’ve got to get on that train, you’re the one who said so.”
There was no response, so Allie shrugged the pack on.
“Well, let’s get going then!” Aria said, and we walked the last stretch.
We came up to the train station, a little bit aways from the actual town. It was a beautiful building of white stone, and actually seemed a little out of place when compared to the rest of the buildings nearby. As we approached the front of the station, we saw our first tabby. She was walking out of a little cat door and didn’t notice us for a moment, but when she did she gave us what was obviously a smile and said, “And where are you girls all headed off to? You seem a little young to be traveling on your own.” I exchanged a look with Lin.
Aria announced, “We’re off on an exciting adventure to meet friends!” and pumped her fist into the air.
The tabby laughed good-naturedly. “Well, good luck with your travels then,” she said, and headed off.
It seemed like no one really wanted to be the one to comment on there being another talking cat. Instead, Alex led the way up to the door.
We went inside to see a man and two cats, sitting next to each other on a bench, and a lady behind the ticket counter. Alex strode up to her. “Six tickets to Hounsaday, please.”
The woman looked surprised. “Planning to travel all the way to the dog clans?”
Alex hesitated, then nodded.
“Well, alright then,” the woman said shrugging. “I’ll be right back with what you need.”
She walked to a back room, and Alex faced us. “Allie, turn around,” she said, and Allie, looking a little confused, complied. Alex unzipped a small pocket in her bag and retrieved a coin purse. The worker returned with our tickets, and Alex paid the amount she asked using the strange currency. It was only then that I realized how useful it must be to have a knowledgeable, telepathic friend. Instructions are easy to come by.
“The train will be here at six and eight, so you can use those either time. Be careful out there.” Alex nodded, and we all gathered in a corner of the large room.
“It’s only 1 o’clock. Are we going to wait here all that time?” Robin asked.
“We’ve got to go buy some supplies,” Alex told her. “I mean, clothes, for instance. We have enough for that, right?” she asked, and apparently the response was not satisfactory, because she grumbled, “Sylph...” After a moment, she smiled and said, “It’ll be fine. Besides, it’s completely necessary.”
“I-I agree,” Lin said.
“So, clothes, and-”
“Food!” Allie called out. “We /definitely/ need some real food.”
“Do we have to keep carrying this stuff around?” I asked. “My shoulders are pretty sore.”
Rafael hissed, “/Do not/ leave anything lying around somewhere! Cats are notorious for thinking that anything unattended is up for grabs, /especially/ tabbies.”
“What if we left someone to look after it?” I suggested.
“Oh, /please/ let me,” Allie said. “I was walking for a day and night straight, and then again today! I can’t take anymore, I’ll just sit here for a while.”
Alex nodded, and it seemed decided. We all shrugged off our packs. She then said, “We should split up, to cover more ground. What if Lin, Naleen and I go find clothes, while Aria, Robin, and Rothgar go for food? Oh,” she turned and grabbed Allie’s pack, “You guys should probably take Rafael, too.”
“Oh, /heck/ no,” Robin protested. “I am not babysitting /three/ little kids. Nuh uh.”
Rafael started sputtering in anger, and Allie shushed him. “Quiet,” she said, “someone’ll hear you.”
I grinned at Robin. “They’re all yours.” I grabbed Lin’s hand and walked as quickly as I could out of the room, Alex following. I could hear Aria’s excited voice and Robin’s groan as we left.
The town was interesting. As far as I could tell, there were an equal amount of people and cats, and every one of them was a tabby. I could tell quickly enough that both the cats and the humans were equal citizens of the town, seeing as the clerks in stores were even cats sometimes (which is downright strange, when a cat asks what you’ll be buying today) but it took almost an hour before I realized what my special vision was telling me. Sometimes, out of the corner of my eye, it would look like a person and a cat were in the very same spot. I realized that they were not just equal; the people and the cats were one and the same. A while later, a lovely brownish cat was taking our change, when, poof, there was a human there, who gathered the money in her newly formed fingers and slipped it away.
We got the new clothes without a hitch, with Sylph guiding Alex through our transactions. We didn’t try anything on or anything, just got whatever seemed cheapest and most serviceable that was around the right size.
At one point, though, while I was examining a pair of brown cargo pants with a ton of pockets that I would have liked but were kind of expensive, I realised that Lin wasn’t holding my hand anymore. I looked around. Not there. No she wasn’t over there either. Well, where was she? I could feel the panic building in my chest. No don’t freak out, she’s fine, she’ll be somewhere close, right around here, you’ve just got to-
“Alex!” I called.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I can’t find Lin! I don’t know where she is! Do you see her? She’s gotta be here somewhere, right? Right!?”
Alex was kind of staring at me, and she shook her head. I nearly exploded. “I’ve got to find her!” I started pacing all around the small store. No, she wasn’t in there! I checked the bathroom, calling, “Lin?” No response.
I stormed past Alex, hastily moving towards the outside. “Not here,” I said. “Keep an eye out.”
Then I spotted her. She was right next to the store, looking at little statue of a woman’s head like it was the strangest thing in the world. “Lin!” I ran up to her and grabbed her arm. “You scared me! You have to stay close, alright? You can’t wander off like that.”
Lin stared at me for a second, then she pointed to the statue. “It’s the same...”
I blinked. “What?”
“T-there was a wanted poster. It had this person on it.”
I looked closer at the head. There was an inscription underneath proclaiming it to be of the town founder. “Lin, I think you’re mistaken.”
“N-no, it’s-”
Alex walked out of the store. “Oh, good, you found her. Well, let’s go guys, I think we have everything.”
Lin’s hand slipped back into mine as we walked off.
All was not well, however. We got back to the train station just in time to see Robin storm out of it. “She’s not there,” she hissed.
“What?” I asked.
Rothgar was scrambling after her. “Allie!” he said. “She’s gone, and so are all of our things!”
I immediately felt sick to my stomach. I had removed my sword, thinking that it might not be the best thing to carry around in public. Now it might be gone, forever... I couldn’t handle that. And what could have happened to Allie?
“Alright,” Alex said, “We’ll search the town for her. Together this time, so no one else gets lost.”
Robin just kept moving on past, so the rest of us followed after her. That was how we continued to spend the next several hours. Trudging through the town, checking every store, with a few of us pausing every once in awhile to ask a local if they had seen a girl with glasses and a long ponytail, rushing off quickly whenever they asked what her cat form looked like.
At 7:30, we gave up. Robin was still seething, and Aria’s attempts to calm her were only making things worse. We walked back to the station, opened the door, and-
“/There/ you guys are! You took forever! You’ve got to help me with this stuff before the train gets here, or we won’t be ready. Who even know that it was possible to shop for that long?”
We stared. Every one of us. Finally, I choked out, “Where were you?”
“What do you mean?”
Robin exploded. “You were /gone/! The stuff was /gone/! None of it was /here/, so where did it /go/!?”
Allie looked offended. “I have been here all day! I didn’t let any of this out of my sight! I even dragged it to the bathroom with me so it wouldn’t be unattended!” She gestured to a bathroom door a few feet away.
It really must hurt to smack your face as hard as Robin did just then. Aria giggled and patted her back. “It’s okay, we all thought she was gone, too!”
I went straight for my sword and grabbed it. I wasn’t ever leaving it alone again.
Rothgar sighed and sat down. The poor kid looked ready to drop. Luckily, when I sat next to him I was facing the right direction to see an approaching speck in the distance. Through the wall. Because that’s the way things work these days. I patted Rothgar’s back, and he jumped a little. Then I announced to the still bickering others, “Hey, we should pack up, the train will be here in a few minutes.”
“There’s still a quarter of an hour left,” Allie told me.
I shrugged. “It’s a little early.”
Some people looked a little sceptical, but either way it’d be soon enough, so we all grabbed our things. In just a little bit I heard a rumble and a whistle, and when the train arrived seven minutes ahead of schedule we were ready for it.
The train was sleek and black; it looked like new. Also, it was spewing bubbles instead of smoke.
Aria mentioned that they were quite colorful. Alex told us (I’m guessing that Sylph told her) that the train runs on soap. I decided to ask how that was supposed to work later.
We found an empty compartment and claimed it’s seats as our own, spreading all of our things around and splitting up the new stuff.
After we got settled, Robin wasted no time in calling out Rafael. “Alright, so what the hell is up with these cat people? So far, it seems like all of them are somehow people and cats, at the same time. Add that to Rainbow’s stupid bird buddy pulling a transformation thing, and I’m gonna assume that that’s how the residents of this stupid world work. So why did I have to get all scratched up forcing you into that stupid bag if you could’ve just /not/ been a black cat instead? Did it just not cross your mind?” she sneered.
I hadn’t really thought about that. It did make sense. Robin had impressed me today. She was not only extremely intelligent, but also seemed to have a lot more control than I would have given her credit for. No matter how mad she was, not one thing had blown up. That had to take some serious work, to keep a power like that under wraps. Well, it might always be that her limiter was just working really well, but still.
There was silence. I noticed that Rothgar looked nervous as we all waited for a response.
Finally a voice came from Allie’s backpack, and I don’t think that one person was expecting it to say, “Rothgar and I are actually brothers.” Out of all of us, the small boy in question was the one who seemed most shocked. Was Rafael not supposed to have told us? “We’re a little... different. You see, our mom isn’t a cat. She isn’t even a demon at all; she’s human. It kind of messed us up a little. We’re both in our current forms permanently, with me being all cat and Rothgar as a human with accessories. I don’t have a human shape.”
Our group was silent after that, mulling over this revelation. All except for me, I guess. I was thinking about something else. Because, as Rafael had been speaking, I had distinctly seen an image of a tallish guy with a white streak in his black hair. I wondered if Rafael was lying to us, or just didn’t know himself. Whichever it was, I decided to keep quiet for now.
“What about Sylph?” Lin asked quietly.
Alex blushed a little, and mumbled sharply, “No, I am not repeating what you said!” before telling us, “I already talked to him about that. Apparently dragons don’t ever turn into people, since they’re mythical creatures, I guess.”
With that all sorted out, things got quiet as everyone either prepared to sleep over our long trip or started writing in their journals. And I guess I’m in the present now. The sounds of the train moving are actually quite pleasant, and even though the smell of floral soap is a little overwhelming I don’t really mind. I’m also exhausted. I’m going to say a quick goodnight to Lin, then be done for the day.
I had the same dream last night that I had the night before. The person (I think it was a girl) just wouldn’t leave me alone, and kept saying... things. I can’t remember what they were, but I remember how they made me feel, and it wasn’t good. Then some kind of brass instrument started playing in the background, weaving into my dream, and I soon realized that I wasn’t dreaming anymore. I had drifted into consciousness, pulled by the sound of someone playing a wake up call /very loudly/.
I rolled my head from side to side, scrunched up my face, and shivered. Then I resorted to pushing my palms into my ears and crouching down deeper into my sleeping bag (basically the equivalent of pulling the covers over my head). I did /not/ want to get up.
Finally, the noise stopped, and I was able to hear the grumbles and conversations of many other rudely awakened girls. /Please/, I thought, /Please just let me sleep./
I had no such luck.
Some kind of amazing force slammed into my back, and a cheery voice exclaimed, “Com’on, sleepy head, you too! Up! Up! Up!” Each /Up!/ was accented by the stabbing object pushing deeper into my side. Aria was kneeling on my back, bouncing on top of me.
I just lay and took it for a moment, then thrashed around from inside of the sleeping bag, knocking her off while she giggled. I waited for a second to prepare myself, sighed, and then eradicated myself from the warmth and comfort that I had been able to enjoy all too briefly. Aria beamed at me. I ignored her as well as I could, fearing that if I looked her way I would end up glaring. Instead, I rubbed my face, and asked, “What was that...” I searched for an appropriate word, “/din/ just a minute ago?”
Aria laughed. “Naleen, you’re so slow, we just talked about this. It’s Sylph’s mini tuba!”
I looked around and spotted the offending dragon, who did indeed have a yellow instrument that curled around his head. Instead of preparing to play it, though, he was looking at Alex, seeming almost indignant. She patted his head, and when I listened closely I heard her say, “Yes, Sylph, I know it’s a dragon horn, but they’re really not going to listen to me.”
I stood, awake enough after all of that. Everyone else was already up, although not many of them looked happy about it. Alex, however, seemed totally ready for the day, excited even, and Aria, of course, was a bouncing ball of happiness, no matter the hour of the day. Sylph, having mostly recovered from the dragon horn incident, was perched on Alex’s shoulders, talking to her, most likely.
The other person who I noticed was wide awake this morning was Rothgar, whose eyes shone when he called us all over to the same place we had our ‘meeting’ last night. “Today, we’re going to head out! We’re going over to-”
“The Dog-Clan area,” a grumbling voice finished for him. I noticed Rafael for the first time that day; I suppose that his black fur helped camouflage him somewhat. As he came to join us, he didn’t walk, he /slunk/, with his shoulders hunched and his head lowered. His feline eyes simmered, daring anyone to get on his bad side. It actually reminded me a little of my brother, Darian. Back when he was fifteen or so, he used to be the same way in the mornings (and most of the rest of the day, too, now that I think about it). I had always thought it was kind of a sulky teenaged guy thing. How old is Rafael, anyways? In cat years, I mean. Judging by his voice, he could be around that age.
Rafael’s eyes flashed over each of us, then he sighed and said, “Let’s just get going. If any of you have questions, we can talk on the way, alright?”
“I still don’t see why we should trust anything you guys have said,” someone growled.
It was Robin. The girl’s short hair was disheveled and spiky, and there was danger in her gaze. “Why should we come with you anywhere? You expect us all to just follow blindly? We have no proof that you’re telling the truth.”
Aria’s hands clapped together. “Robin, that rhymed! You’re a poet and you didn’t know it!”
Robin glared, Aria beamed; I was beginning to see a pattern.
Rafael’s eyes were narrowed; he opened his mouth to retort, but Alex surprised me by beating him to the punch. “Even if you don’t trust them, where else would you go? This way, you’ll at least know that there is some direction to what you do while we’re here.” Hm. That was the same kind of thing that I said to Lin, about following Rothgar yesterday. Alex and I seemed to have similar thought processes. “Anyways,” she added, “I think that we ought to all stick together. We’re kind of connected, you know?” She lifted her hand and stroked Sylph’s head, and I couldn’t help but think that the two of them had been talking about all of this. Those two were kind of confusing to me. Alex was acting so fond, as if the small dragon had been with her all of her life. The telepathy thing was still weird, too.
Robin was pouting. Well, really she was glaring, but on the inside it was downright pout-age. Still, she didn’t seem to have any argument, so we packed up and went on our way.
At least, we tried to. It only took me a few minutes to realize that my rucksack did not have enough room left for a sleeping bag. At all. After a few minutes of trying to squish it in, I felt a hand on my arm, and looked up.
“What’re you trying to do? You won’t get anywhere that way.” Allie knelt down next to me and relieved my hands of the squished and crumpled mess that was my sleeping bag. With an expert flip to her wrists she flattened it out and began rolling it up, kneeling on it to keep it extra small. She admonished me a little on my lack of sleeping bag skills, but mostly she was just mumbling and didn’t really mean it. She finished quickly and tied the cords tightly, pulling them taut, and handed me the bag, smiling. “It should fit now.”
I took the bundle gratefully and stowed it away. It still was a tight squeeze, but it worked well enough. I thanked her.
“Really, you guys are just so hopeless. I don’t think that you’re the only one without a clue how to roll a sleeping bag.” Allie tossed her own backpack over her shoulder and stood, her ponytail flopping, but still seeming good-natured. I gave her one last smile, then looked around.
Ah, there she was. Kind of spacing out over there. I crossed the floor to crouch next to Lin. “Hey in there,” I said, somewhat softly. She turned to me and blinked. Oh, man, that was cute. I grinned. “We’re all getting going, Lin. Are you packed?”
Ever so slowly, she turned around, grabbed her crumpled jacket from the floor (I think she’d been using it as a pillow) and shrugged it on. Her hand then closed around the handle of her umbrella. Then she nodded.
I decided not to question her.
Eventually, we were all gathered at the bottom of the stairs. Lin was still pretty tired, so I was kind of dragging her along. When it was confirmed that no one wanted to grab anything else, and Rafael firmly told us we would not be coming back for anything, we set off on what feels like the first adventure of many.
Then nine of us set out, and I gathered that we were going to a train station. Our walk was uneventful at first, and and the desert around us eventually began to gain more vegetation, as if it were converting into more of a plain. Rothgar was in the lead, still just about vibrating in his excitement.
I haven’t described Rothgar yet, have I? I’m not sure I can do him justice. He is one of the most adorable people I have ever seen in my life. He’s pretty young, maybe ten, I think? He has all of this shaggy black hair sticking out from underneath a floppy cap, and in all honesty, I think part of the reason he wears it is to cover up a pair of cat ears. I base this on the fact that tucked into his belt, in plain sight (although it seems like he’s trying to pretend it’s a rope or something) is a definite tail. Also, I have truth vision. It’s becoming hard to hide stuff from me. He has the widest eyes, and they are a deep, ruby red color, so much that it’s striking. These eyes usually seem to be filled with excitement or scrunched up in a pout, from what I have seen of him. He doesn’t bother with shoes, which can’t be good for his little feet, but I’ll bug him about it later, and wears clothes that look like they’ve seen better days.
It occurred to me that we were told that the normal people of this land are called demons. When I thought about it, a tiny, telepathic dragon, a talking cat, and a red-eyed boy with certain suspicious extra features could definitely fit under that category. Instead of worrying me, this thought calmed me somewhat. There is an automatic negative connotation with the word demon, of course, and I’d been worried about running into them. But I had probably already met some, and they weren’t so bad.
The walk was companionable. Lin eventually woke up, and the two of us walked quietly like the day before. Alex, Alice, and Sylph seemed to have a conversation going, with Alex as a translator for her dragon friend. Aria was as bubbly as ever, and Robin as grouchy. Even Rafael perked up a little as the morning went on, and he kind of trotted along right behind Rothgar. No real surprises.
Things quieted down for a little while, before Robin burst out, “Do you /have/ to do that?” with her best death-glare. She was referring to Aria, of course.
Aria giggled. “What?”
“You keep giving the sky this terrible look of absolute idiocy. It’s driving me insane.”
With an all out laugh, Aria told us, “Oh, I was just keeping track of our friend!”
Everyone seemed interested now. “What?” Rafael asked.
“Back there,” she said, and turned around with a blissful smile on her face, waving. We all looked, and...
There was something there. /There was something there./ A single black crow, gliding high up in the air, somewhat silhouetted by the sun. It glided along after us.
“Okay, how long has that been there?” Alex asked her.
“The whole time!”
Allie stared at Aria, getting a strange look in her eyes, then squinted at the crow “Oh gosh, it’s some kind of devil’s spawn, or a servant of evil, or,” she gasped, “even worse! Some kind of crazy stalker!”
Rafael looked at Allie, exasperated. He is so expressionate, even though he’s a cat. Then he said, “No, I think that’s just-”
“He’s coming down!” Aria said, joyously.
She was right. The crow was banking down towards us. We waited apprehensively for a few moments before it landed. It seemed almost to hesitate for a moment, and I saw what was going to happen right before it did.
What happened was that, in a flourish of feathers, the crow transformed from the form we had seen into a teenaged guy. It seemed like he didn’t get enough sun, like he should be tan but wasn’t quite. He had jet-black layered hair that seemed like it was trying to float away from his head, and his eyes were deep brown. And as he stood there, with a multitude of teenaged girls staring at him in shock, he only seemed to get more and more uncomfortable. At least, until Aria said, “Hi there!”
“You’re the one who was in my room, right?” she continued. He nodded, barely perceptively. She grinned. “I was hoping to meet you!”
“About time you showed up,” someone said, and I turned to look at Rafael. “Everyone, that is birdbrain, and now let’s just continue walking because he’s not very important to this mission.”
Said ‘birdbrain’ glared at the cat briefly. Then Aria asked him what his name was, and his full attention was on her. He said something under his breath that only she heard, but she repeated it loud enough for the rest of us. “Shecayah?” she asked, and there was another slight nod. “It’s great to see you again!”
Shecayah gave a nervous glance to the rest of us, and just like that, he was a bird again. Aria kept smiling at him. “It’s great to have you on board!”
“Speak for yourself,” Rafael grumbled.
And we continued on our way without anyone making all that much of a fuss over our new companion. Who was a shape-shifting bird guy. My life is so weird.
Shecayah rode on Aria’s shoulder from then on, and she had a particularly one-sided conversation with him. I started talking to Allie, and we quickly shifted to the topic of blindness.
Her eyes sparked. “You too? Augh, that was /terrible/! And I had to have Eon lead me around /all day and night/, with no food and hardly any breaks!” I tried to ask who Eon was, but she was still talking. “What was up with that anyways? Did anyone else have weird stuff happen to them?”
Here, Rothgar inserted himself into our dialog. He’d moved back towards us, and had apparently been listening. “Yeah,” he told us, “you all had a side-effect.”
Lin looked at him. “What do you mean?”
“Didn’t you say something about a side-effect?” Alex asked Sylph from off to the side.
Rothgar looked like he was about to explain, but instead Rafael was the one to say, “It was the transportation from your rooms that did it. You all had something different about you until the first time you slept in this world. Sometimes it’s obvious, sometimes it’s subtle. It can be relevant to your power, your personality, or... just random.”
“Alright,” I said, “so I have weird vision power, meaning that when I first got here my vision power was so intense that I couldn’t see anything that was real under all of the visions.”
“And I had a serious case of the giggles!” Aria added.
Oh, that was right, she hadn’t been laughing as much today as yesterday. So she hadn’t stopped laughing because she /literally/ couldn’t. Now the chronic laughter thing made more sense.
“Look, Rafael, the town’s getting pretty close,” Rothgar told the cat, changing the subject. I haven’t seen Rothgar smile yet, but his eyes are so expressive that it isn’t hard to tell when he’s happy. It’s like he’s trying to be more sullen than he is sometimes, although I don’t see why he would.
“Good,” Rafael replied.
At first, the small town was only a hazy object in the distance, but it slowly solidified. We came across the tracks of the train that we would apparently be riding and started to walk along those. As I could make out more of where we were going, I noticed that it seemed characteristic of somewhere you would find in this landscape. It had a real wild west look to it, like a ghost town from an old movie, only bigger and more populated.
When we started to really get close, Alex and Rafael both stopped walking. “What’s the problem?” Robin asked grouchily.
“Oh, I guess that makes sense,” Alex said.
Sylph must’ve been talking to her about it. The rest of us looked to Rafael for an explanation. He paused, as if trying to think what he should tell us, then said, “Sylph and I probably shouldn’t be seen around town. Black cats... have a bad reputation, and a dragon would attract unnecessary attention. Neither are very common around here.”
“Well, you aren’t all black,” Allie pointed out. “You have that white streak.”
It was true; Rafael sports a small tuft of white fur starting between his ears and moving down his forehead. He looked away and mumbled, “That only makes things worse...”
“Well, that’s just great! How are we supposed to get on the train if you can’t even be seen?” Robin asked accusingly.
“Sylph can just hide in my jacket,” Alex said, and, as if to demonstrate, she opened up her hoodie and let Sylph slip inside, presumably curling around her back, then zipped it shut. You couldn’t tell he was there at all.
“So now we’ve just got to hide Mr. Cat!” Aria said.
“Well, Birdbrain ought to get lost, too, but he can just fly around so he’s fine. Not sure what I should do, though,” Rafael told her.
Allie’s eyes lit up, as if she’d had an idea. “Ah, that’s elementary my dear Watson,” she said, grinning, and pulled her backpack off. “I’ve still got some room in here.”
Rafael’s eyes widened. “No way.”
“I have to agree with Allie on this one,” Alex said. I noticed Lin giving a small smirk.
Rothgar looked troubled. “They are right, Rafael, it’s all I can think of.”
“I am not going to get shoved into a backpack!” he retorted, but Robin grabbed the scruff of his neck.
“Oh, I think you are,” she told him. “You could’ve gone willingly, but you chose to be shoved and so shoved you shall be.”
It required the combined efforts of Allie and Robin, but after a lot of yelling from the two girls, a lot of actual, cat-like /yowling/ from Rafael, a lot of giggling from Aria, a lot of looking nervous from Rothgar, and encouragement from the rest of us, the cat was in the bag. I was pretty sure that the ca-caw from Shecayah right after that was laughter.
“Now stay quiet, you. Don’t be a baby,” Allie commanded. “We’ve got to get on that train, you’re the one who said so.”
There was no response, so Allie shrugged the pack on.
“Well, let’s get going then!” Aria said, and we walked the last stretch.
We came up to the train station, a little bit aways from the actual town. It was a beautiful building of white stone, and actually seemed a little out of place when compared to the rest of the buildings nearby. As we approached the front of the station, we saw our first tabby. She was walking out of a little cat door and didn’t notice us for a moment, but when she did she gave us what was obviously a smile and said, “And where are you girls all headed off to? You seem a little young to be traveling on your own.” I exchanged a look with Lin.
Aria announced, “We’re off on an exciting adventure to meet friends!” and pumped her fist into the air.
The tabby laughed good-naturedly. “Well, good luck with your travels then,” she said, and headed off.
It seemed like no one really wanted to be the one to comment on there being another talking cat. Instead, Alex led the way up to the door.
We went inside to see a man and two cats, sitting next to each other on a bench, and a lady behind the ticket counter. Alex strode up to her. “Six tickets to Hounsaday, please.”
The woman looked surprised. “Planning to travel all the way to the dog clans?”
Alex hesitated, then nodded.
“Well, alright then,” the woman said shrugging. “I’ll be right back with what you need.”
She walked to a back room, and Alex faced us. “Allie, turn around,” she said, and Allie, looking a little confused, complied. Alex unzipped a small pocket in her bag and retrieved a coin purse. The worker returned with our tickets, and Alex paid the amount she asked using the strange currency. It was only then that I realized how useful it must be to have a knowledgeable, telepathic friend. Instructions are easy to come by.
“The train will be here at six and eight, so you can use those either time. Be careful out there.” Alex nodded, and we all gathered in a corner of the large room.
“It’s only 1 o’clock. Are we going to wait here all that time?” Robin asked.
“We’ve got to go buy some supplies,” Alex told her. “I mean, clothes, for instance. We have enough for that, right?” she asked, and apparently the response was not satisfactory, because she grumbled, “Sylph...” After a moment, she smiled and said, “It’ll be fine. Besides, it’s completely necessary.”
“I-I agree,” Lin said.
“So, clothes, and-”
“Food!” Allie called out. “We /definitely/ need some real food.”
“Do we have to keep carrying this stuff around?” I asked. “My shoulders are pretty sore.”
Rafael hissed, “/Do not/ leave anything lying around somewhere! Cats are notorious for thinking that anything unattended is up for grabs, /especially/ tabbies.”
“What if we left someone to look after it?” I suggested.
“Oh, /please/ let me,” Allie said. “I was walking for a day and night straight, and then again today! I can’t take anymore, I’ll just sit here for a while.”
Alex nodded, and it seemed decided. We all shrugged off our packs. She then said, “We should split up, to cover more ground. What if Lin, Naleen and I go find clothes, while Aria, Robin, and Rothgar go for food? Oh,” she turned and grabbed Allie’s pack, “You guys should probably take Rafael, too.”
“Oh, /heck/ no,” Robin protested. “I am not babysitting /three/ little kids. Nuh uh.”
Rafael started sputtering in anger, and Allie shushed him. “Quiet,” she said, “someone’ll hear you.”
I grinned at Robin. “They’re all yours.” I grabbed Lin’s hand and walked as quickly as I could out of the room, Alex following. I could hear Aria’s excited voice and Robin’s groan as we left.
The town was interesting. As far as I could tell, there were an equal amount of people and cats, and every one of them was a tabby. I could tell quickly enough that both the cats and the humans were equal citizens of the town, seeing as the clerks in stores were even cats sometimes (which is downright strange, when a cat asks what you’ll be buying today) but it took almost an hour before I realized what my special vision was telling me. Sometimes, out of the corner of my eye, it would look like a person and a cat were in the very same spot. I realized that they were not just equal; the people and the cats were one and the same. A while later, a lovely brownish cat was taking our change, when, poof, there was a human there, who gathered the money in her newly formed fingers and slipped it away.
We got the new clothes without a hitch, with Sylph guiding Alex through our transactions. We didn’t try anything on or anything, just got whatever seemed cheapest and most serviceable that was around the right size.
At one point, though, while I was examining a pair of brown cargo pants with a ton of pockets that I would have liked but were kind of expensive, I realised that Lin wasn’t holding my hand anymore. I looked around. Not there. No she wasn’t over there either. Well, where was she? I could feel the panic building in my chest. No don’t freak out, she’s fine, she’ll be somewhere close, right around here, you’ve just got to-
“Alex!” I called.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I can’t find Lin! I don’t know where she is! Do you see her? She’s gotta be here somewhere, right? Right!?”
Alex was kind of staring at me, and she shook her head. I nearly exploded. “I’ve got to find her!” I started pacing all around the small store. No, she wasn’t in there! I checked the bathroom, calling, “Lin?” No response.
I stormed past Alex, hastily moving towards the outside. “Not here,” I said. “Keep an eye out.”
Then I spotted her. She was right next to the store, looking at little statue of a woman’s head like it was the strangest thing in the world. “Lin!” I ran up to her and grabbed her arm. “You scared me! You have to stay close, alright? You can’t wander off like that.”
Lin stared at me for a second, then she pointed to the statue. “It’s the same...”
I blinked. “What?”
“T-there was a wanted poster. It had this person on it.”
I looked closer at the head. There was an inscription underneath proclaiming it to be of the town founder. “Lin, I think you’re mistaken.”
“N-no, it’s-”
Alex walked out of the store. “Oh, good, you found her. Well, let’s go guys, I think we have everything.”
Lin’s hand slipped back into mine as we walked off.
All was not well, however. We got back to the train station just in time to see Robin storm out of it. “She’s not there,” she hissed.
“What?” I asked.
Rothgar was scrambling after her. “Allie!” he said. “She’s gone, and so are all of our things!”
I immediately felt sick to my stomach. I had removed my sword, thinking that it might not be the best thing to carry around in public. Now it might be gone, forever... I couldn’t handle that. And what could have happened to Allie?
“Alright,” Alex said, “We’ll search the town for her. Together this time, so no one else gets lost.”
Robin just kept moving on past, so the rest of us followed after her. That was how we continued to spend the next several hours. Trudging through the town, checking every store, with a few of us pausing every once in awhile to ask a local if they had seen a girl with glasses and a long ponytail, rushing off quickly whenever they asked what her cat form looked like.
At 7:30, we gave up. Robin was still seething, and Aria’s attempts to calm her were only making things worse. We walked back to the station, opened the door, and-
“/There/ you guys are! You took forever! You’ve got to help me with this stuff before the train gets here, or we won’t be ready. Who even know that it was possible to shop for that long?”
We stared. Every one of us. Finally, I choked out, “Where were you?”
“What do you mean?”
Robin exploded. “You were /gone/! The stuff was /gone/! None of it was /here/, so where did it /go/!?”
Allie looked offended. “I have been here all day! I didn’t let any of this out of my sight! I even dragged it to the bathroom with me so it wouldn’t be unattended!” She gestured to a bathroom door a few feet away.
It really must hurt to smack your face as hard as Robin did just then. Aria giggled and patted her back. “It’s okay, we all thought she was gone, too!”
I went straight for my sword and grabbed it. I wasn’t ever leaving it alone again.
Rothgar sighed and sat down. The poor kid looked ready to drop. Luckily, when I sat next to him I was facing the right direction to see an approaching speck in the distance. Through the wall. Because that’s the way things work these days. I patted Rothgar’s back, and he jumped a little. Then I announced to the still bickering others, “Hey, we should pack up, the train will be here in a few minutes.”
“There’s still a quarter of an hour left,” Allie told me.
I shrugged. “It’s a little early.”
Some people looked a little sceptical, but either way it’d be soon enough, so we all grabbed our things. In just a little bit I heard a rumble and a whistle, and when the train arrived seven minutes ahead of schedule we were ready for it.
The train was sleek and black; it looked like new. Also, it was spewing bubbles instead of smoke.
Aria mentioned that they were quite colorful. Alex told us (I’m guessing that Sylph told her) that the train runs on soap. I decided to ask how that was supposed to work later.
We found an empty compartment and claimed it’s seats as our own, spreading all of our things around and splitting up the new stuff.
After we got settled, Robin wasted no time in calling out Rafael. “Alright, so what the hell is up with these cat people? So far, it seems like all of them are somehow people and cats, at the same time. Add that to Rainbow’s stupid bird buddy pulling a transformation thing, and I’m gonna assume that that’s how the residents of this stupid world work. So why did I have to get all scratched up forcing you into that stupid bag if you could’ve just /not/ been a black cat instead? Did it just not cross your mind?” she sneered.
I hadn’t really thought about that. It did make sense. Robin had impressed me today. She was not only extremely intelligent, but also seemed to have a lot more control than I would have given her credit for. No matter how mad she was, not one thing had blown up. That had to take some serious work, to keep a power like that under wraps. Well, it might always be that her limiter was just working really well, but still.
There was silence. I noticed that Rothgar looked nervous as we all waited for a response.
Finally a voice came from Allie’s backpack, and I don’t think that one person was expecting it to say, “Rothgar and I are actually brothers.” Out of all of us, the small boy in question was the one who seemed most shocked. Was Rafael not supposed to have told us? “We’re a little... different. You see, our mom isn’t a cat. She isn’t even a demon at all; she’s human. It kind of messed us up a little. We’re both in our current forms permanently, with me being all cat and Rothgar as a human with accessories. I don’t have a human shape.”
Our group was silent after that, mulling over this revelation. All except for me, I guess. I was thinking about something else. Because, as Rafael had been speaking, I had distinctly seen an image of a tallish guy with a white streak in his black hair. I wondered if Rafael was lying to us, or just didn’t know himself. Whichever it was, I decided to keep quiet for now.
“What about Sylph?” Lin asked quietly.
Alex blushed a little, and mumbled sharply, “No, I am not repeating what you said!” before telling us, “I already talked to him about that. Apparently dragons don’t ever turn into people, since they’re mythical creatures, I guess.”
With that all sorted out, things got quiet as everyone either prepared to sleep over our long trip or started writing in their journals. And I guess I’m in the present now. The sounds of the train moving are actually quite pleasant, and even though the smell of floral soap is a little overwhelming I don’t really mind. I’m also exhausted. I’m going to say a quick goodnight to Lin, then be done for the day.