18: fields are forgotten

eeppisen ja mitä kummallisimman twilight-aamunkoin inspiroimana olisi tänään tarkoitus lähteä kirjoittamaan suihkun kautta, mutta sitä ennen postaan tänne ehkä eeppisimmän luvun tarinassa tähän asti, miten sen nyt näkee. luvassa on ainakin jotain toivottavasti odottamatonta, otan mielelläni vastaan kommentteja toteutuksesta.

inspirated by the epic and most random movie breaking dawn i should begin writing today - through the shower of course, but before that i'll post here the most epic chapter until now, well, depending on how you take it. i hope you'll experience something unexpectable and i am glad to accept comments of the execution.

luku on nimetty ellie gouldinging kappaleen 'forgotten fields' mukaan. / the chapter is named after the song 'forgotten fields' by ellie goulding.

Chapter Eighteen

I felt terrible.

The feeling reminded me of the first time I had drunk and the whole world had spun around me as I lay euphoric on wet spring grass. This time it was different: after hours of a blur of sound and color the world started to settle. I sat limp on a closed toilet seat inside a blurred toilet booth, struggling to keep my eyes open. I had no recognition of time or place. The voices of the party were distant echoes, wavering and pounding inside my head. I heard someone rattle the bathroom door: a pair of high heels clacking impatiently. I got up with a groan, opening the door with great difficulty. The view unfolded, revealing me a distantly familiar female figure, someone with an oblong face and short hair the shade of wine. I hardly recognized her. She wore an almost masculine velvet suit and thigh-long boots with fishnet stockings. Her makeup was heavy and made her eyes shine like a pair of enormous emeralds.

Something in the sight of me made her jaw drop. “Whoa,” she uttered, her whole figure pulsing as if she were constantly moving. “Are you okay?”
“Hestia,” I stuttered, a pressure gathering in my throat as if I were to throw up. Behind her stood a woman in a startling turquoise palette dress with a fountain of blonde hair framing her feminine features. She pushed the door behind her shut, her mouth gaping open wide, reminding me of Ashley on my last day on Earth. The memory of her made me dash to the sink and bend over, trembling uncontrollably as I spewed up. My mouth tasted like blood. But instead of red it was gold.

The broken glass reflected Hestia’s worried expression. There was a flash in her eyes like a recollection. “You… you drank…”
But before she could finish her sentence, the room around me collapsed and I was sucked into a colorful chaos.

I was back home.

But there was something… Something different in the way the light scattered through the windows painted with vines and flowers, something in the way I saw things. Instead of the things I usually paid attention to: dust whirling in light, curtains whipping in the wind, I found myself watching how things attached to one another – how the walls and windows were separate things which yet grew together, how the rose-painted windows reflected flicks of green grass. I found myself counting my breaths, my heartbeat – a steady rhythm which was somehow disrupted… by another rhythm, rapid as the flutter of wings, somehow familiar, more familiar than my own heartbeat. This heartbeat inside me called me outside, yearned for the little strip of blue sky revealed in between the balcony curtains. There was no earth, only sky.

With anticipation I threw my feet of mamma’s bed, taking hold of a booklet with wooden covers, a familiar instrument in between my thumb and index finger – a pencil. The little heartbeat drew me towards the balcony which overlooked the city. It was a bright morning. I heard how the wind rustled in the trees, subsiding the city noise. Something in the way the wind whispered was unfamiliar to me. It was as if I had walked fields forever, listening how the gravel and grass rustled under my feet without the wind ever blowing the hair in my face. But every day the wind blew stronger.

A bright ray reflected off a bird’s shiny beak, or perhaps the treasure of a raven. The pencil in my hand had started to move, write lively letters which formed pictures beneath my eyes. A quiet sun rising from behind the trees, turning the world into a reckless carol of light and sound. Nature waking.

Love is like a bird…

I walked the quiet rooms of home looking for a passage out: all doors were locked, windows sealed shut. The arrangement of things, the colors, the dimensions, were somehow new. I took a turn towards the main doors, more running than walking…

…to imprison, too easy…

There was something there, something behind. I skidded to a halt, my breath heavy. My gaze shot from one door to another – there must be a way – a pair of eyes seeking ferociously for an exit, away – all was stone, iron, steel…

…to release, too difficult.

I plunged against the doors of iron; again, again. They gave way.

No bird flies without wings…

The grass felt familiar under my feet, the dirt warm and wet beneath my toes. She was there – safe – alone between the trees, the way she always was. Somehow she escaped through locked doors at night, wandered the woods and returned at dawn. I knew there was something wrong with her, he saw it too. He watched her, measured her, weighed her as if to find a reason, why her hair was so white and yet she was just like me…

…such as love without balance.

I called her with a name of life and joy rather than sadness and she responded with a smile. Her dark eyes narrowed as she laughed, running towards me. And she threw herself in my arms and I whirled her around, each turn like a new photograph of him, as he approached and observed me with a look of satisfaction and perhaps, relief. I knew he was ready.

The scenery slipped between my fingers, and I lapsed being myself again, thrown into a tide of names and pictures – one name I forming on my lips…

And my eyes flew wide open, someone bending over me. In my mind’s eye I still saw the outlines of the man, the girl and her mother on a forgotten field, gifted with names I couldn’t repeat, because then, they would be real.

 “It’s her,” I repeated, somewhat in a daze, Fera’s slender figure blocking out the bright lights. “E.M… it’s her.”
“Hilary, shh,” Fera cooed, his long hair draping around him like dark tendrils. “I’m here. E.M… who is she?”
“Hestia,” I mumbled, suddenly aware of how close Fera was to me; of the hard, sticky bathroom floor beneath me. “Hestia… where is she?”
“She and Ariel are waiting outside,” Fera said in a reassuring tone. “When you ran into the bathrooms, I knew you were feeling sick. I’m so sorry I offered you that-“
“Don’t talk,” I told him, pushing him out of the way as I sat up against the toilet booth. “Hestia. Why isn’t she here?”
“I called her off when you started spilling out truths. I thought you would rather-“
The blood I vomited wasn’t blood, I thought, a faint image of it still in my head. It was gold. Just like the water in the fountain of-

“What did I say? What did I tell you?”
A jolt of suspense went through Fera – he went rigid all over, his eyes silver and wild, just like in my nightmare. I wasn’t even sure whether it was a nightmare anymore. “Secrets,” he answered.

“Not enough,” my tone was sharp. “How much did you hear? Where did-“
Then there was a polite knock on the door – Ariel, I thought; nothing like the infernal racket Hestia made. Or maybe she just had to pee. “You should let them in,” I commanded, surprised by the roughness of my tone. “Ariel is a Water guardian. She should know something about healing.”
Fera obeyed me, standing up and reaching out to the door, his eyes never leaving me. They shone no more: he had turned blunt, expressionless. “I was with you all this time,” he reminded me, his voice shaking. “I knew you weren’t feeling good, so I followed you. I thought you let me because you trusted me like I trusted you. Now you can forget it.”
The door opened with a click and Fera stormed out, leaving Ariel and Hestia staring bemusedly into his direction. Ariel shrugged her shoulders in a petite manner, closing the door behind her and kneeing down next to Hestia. The open neckline of her shimmery dress revealed me a great deal of her chest. I tried hard not to look at them.

“He looked displeased,” Hestia remarked, nodding over her shoulder at the door. “Not anything like he did five minutes ago.”
“He was dying to get in,” Ariel filled in. The tone of her voice was nothing like I had imagined – it reminded me rather of a little girl than a grown up woman. “We had no other choice. Is he someone special?”
“Yes,” I responded, somehow unconsciously, so surprised of my own answer I covered my mouth. “Or no. I’ve seen him before.” My face flushed bright red. ‘I barely know him,’ was what I intended to say.

Hestia seemed to notice my embarrassment. “You drank of the fountain of Truth,” she explained in a motherly tone. That was a common feature of the guardians: they all managed to sound motherly no matter how young they were. “It tends to have that sort of effect.”
“You got experience?” I blurted, noticing I was even more careless than usual.

Hestia frowned. “No, good grace. But I am a guardian.”
“Fera told me it’s just a legend,” I said, taking support of the sticky booth as I struggled to get up. I decided it might have been wiser to stay down. “I believed him.”
“But it is one,” Ariel chimed in, pulling a blond curl behind her ear, revealing stunning diamond earrings the size of tiny fans. “It is wiser not to believe in a legend that dangerous.”
“Dangerous?”

There was an uneasy glow in Hestia’s emerald eyes. Sweat trickled her forehead, and as she wiped it away a long streak of makeup lined her cheek. “Small doses of the fountain water work like truth serum – it doesn’t harm more than the psyche. But the larger the doses, more likely they are to be lethal.”

An echo of Fera’s smooth voice rang in my head. It’s just a legend… If thoughts could be secrets, I could use it to retrieve my memory. Or in prospect, it could drive me mad.

“You were lucky to stay sane,” Hestia stated. “I am only intrigued by what made you drink such thing. Who offered it to you?”
“He did,” I answered bluntly. “I drank nothing else tonight.”
There was a trace of amusement on Hestia’s long features. “I doubt he offered it to you knowingly,” she spoke. “Even he must not have known what it was.”

I could still feel a steady pounding inside my head; hear a voice which was like a tiny drill in my brain. The music had somewhat faded – I could still hear speech and feel the bass, but more calm than before. “I will purify you, if you allow me,” Ariel announced, slowly raising her hand as if she were to bless me. I nodded and her palm touched my forehead, cool and soft. Her fingernails shone like underwater pearls. She closed her eyes and began a low chant as Hestia watched carefully. I paid attention to the curious way she looked at Ariel – a loving but somewhat teasing gaze.

“I feel… light,” I described as Ariel quit her chant. Nothing unusual had happened (meaning I didn’t glow bright blue or turn into a mythical creature of some kind), but the pounding in my head had ceased, my whole body feeling suddenly… detached. I suddenly understood why. My mind was clear.

“Ariel purified you,” Hestia explained, rising back on her feet and helping me up. “Your mind should be free of worries now. But it will take a few days for the effect of the water to wear off. You might be spilling out uncomfortable truths for the next couple of days. I suggest you to watch what you say.”

As if I didn’t do that casually, I added, forcing a dry smile. “Thanks a lot, by the way. I wasn’t doing well before you two appeared.”
“Our pleasure,” Hestia and Ariel answered, almost monotone. “You will be going to that boy of yours now, won’t you?”
“No,” I answered Ariel, staring at my own reflection. Talia’s dress was sticky all around, and my hair – but I seemed to be mentally all right. With the exception of one.

“I guess I’ll just be going back to my guardian,” I continued forcibly. “See you at the next council meeting, I guess.”
Hestia’s face spread into a sudden smile. “I knew I recognized you somewhere,” she gave a laugh. “You know my council. They have spoken much of you.”

Really? “That’s… great,” I announced, my tone somehow in conflict with my feeling. But I was happy. Or was I?

“The next council summoning is in three weeks,” Hestia continued. “I still remember my own days as a councelor. Somewhat easier than nowadays. The high council summons every week and both of them together only once a month. We will look forward to seeing you.”
“It was a pleasure to meet you,” Ariel remarked, flashing me a radiant smile as she offered me her hand. “Ariel.”
“Hilary,” I answered, reaching out my hand. We exit the bathroom doors together, and I could only hope the sink had no traces of my golden vomit.

It was early morn as I warped on the shore of Severina’s palace. The upcoming dawn lit the haze in the horizon, but I didn’t see the ocean. Ariel’s purification spell had really worked on my mind – my goals were clear, nothing was in my way. Physically I wasn’t as fit. Even climbing up the stairs seemed like hell after dancing the night away with a stranger who almost managed to poison me. Finally I managed to reach the castle doors to find out – Gott sei Dank! Open. The lanterns were all out. The least thing I could have expected was-

“Just where do you think you were?”
I felt my heart jump and my body jerk wildly, my eyes only trying to adapt into the swallowing darkness.

“Mein Gott, Talia. Thank goodness it’s you. What are you doing here in the dark? Could you at least light a lantern or something?”
“No,” she refused sternly. “I am a child of Darkness. Unlike you, I doubt I need one.”
“Talia…” I began, desperation creeping into my voice. “Please. It’s a long story. The only thing I want right now is to find Severina and go to bed.”
“Go to bed?” Talia snorted – an ugly sound nothing like her. “I’ve been trying to go to bed for… the last eight hours without success only because… dang, Tristen’s after you, and-“

I felt my heart drop. “How do you-“
“Of course I do,” Talia spat. “Severina is my guardian, in case you forgot.”

Something in her tone displeased me, made me even sad. Maybe it was only in all I had been through. Maybe it was just me, but she was really getting on my nerves. “What’s up with the jealous attitude? This isn’t anything like you!”
“I’m not jealous”, Talia declined, already somewhat visible in the morning light. There were dark circles under her eyes. “I’m just being protective. Where were you?”
I knew I should have lied, but the water apparently still had its affect on me. “The City of Light.”
Her expression turned chalk white. “The City of Light? There’s a maniac out there looking for you who just happens to be the guardian of Light. You’re real smart, you knew that?”
“I didn’t go there myself. Fera took me.”
…and maybe I had just made the greatest mistake of big time. There was a pause, and Talia looked at me as if I had just announced I killed her puppy dog. The last straw to break the camel’s back, I thought.

“Of course,” she hissed in a way I never could have imagined her. “I knew it. I saw the way you looked at each other. And the ‘I think I know you somewhere…’ was he your Earth boyfriend or something?”
I raised my hands as if in surrender. “Stop, Talia, just stop. Just seeing wet dreams of me doesn’t give you the right to mock me like that. I have majorer things to deal with. You shouldn’t worry about this much.”
“Not much?” Talia exclaimed, her eyes glimmering. Had I made her cry? “I’m just worried about you. I don’t trust him.”
“But I do,” I announced, not knowing whether I would have ever said it without the influence. “And if you only are here to lecture about my miserable choice of friends, give me a break.”

 “I’m not trying to hurt you,” she whispered, lowering her head. “I never tried to do that. But now you have hurt me.”
And with her words she took off, her long dress flowing behind her like a riff of smoke. I stood alone in the dark doorway. The tides flushed against the shore behind me, their rush subsiding the ring in my ears. Somewhere in the depths of my mind I could hear Talia sob.

I found myself cursing under my breath as I climbed the stairs in almost complete darkness. I had never been afraid of the dark, but tripping over every three steps made me rather frustrated. There was a flicker of light in the distance, somewhere above. The library, I thought. Tumbling into my own feet I finally managed to reach the familiar doors. They were open. And in the middle of the darkness I could see the outline of Severina’s platinum hair.

“Jeez,” I cussed, leaning against my knees. They were bruised once again. “Don’t you ever use lanterns?”
Severina’s figure didn’t twitch. She sat at the very same table as the day before. One single candle flickered next to her. I was sure I hadn’t seen it outside. Had she known I was coming?
“You aren’t meant to walk around at night,” said Severina. She raised her gaze off what she was reading: a thick book with indecipherable runes on the covers. She was holding something in between her fingers – a thin slip of paper…

“Darkness children,” I huffed. “You and your night-sight.”
Severina frowned. Something in her looked different, almost fragile. It took me aback, and for a swift second I was again on the forgotten fields and saw everything from a different angle. I was her, the woman with long hair like dark coffee, bright eyes like ebony.

“There’s something…” I swallowed, looking curiously at the empty chair against Severina. “Something I need to talk you about.”

Severina’s eyes were blank. Her jaw tightened in an unfamiliar gesture. As I walked to her, the candle on her table went out. The letters on the little slip in her hands were unreadable in the darkness, but I knew what they said.

Close up she bore even more resemblance to the girl of my vision. Something in her had always been distantly familiar, like seeing a stranger in a crowd and mistaking them for someone I knew.

Liebe ist wie ein Vogel.

The poem had been written on a card with mamma’s picture on it – a picture of when she was young. As if rummaging through my room inside my mind; the dusty corners and the base of my bed, her picture cleared. I had always paid attention to mamma only – the rest of the picture was out of focus, just like photograph backgrounds usually were. I had paid so much attention to her the two figures beside her had completely slipped of my consciousness.

Their expressions were blurred, but full figures recognizable. The young girl had long, fair hair, eyes like dark stars. She was holding hands with a man I had only seen in my dreams. He hadn’t changed any bit.

“E.M,” I whispered, my voice trembling. Severina blinked, as if she couldn’t understand the words. “What does that stand for?”
Severina didn’t face my eyes. She stared absently at the open page of her book. “It stands for Evie,” she said. Her fingers traced the patterns of the paper figures. “It’s been long since I heard that name. Where did you hear it from? It’s what my mother used to call me.”

A jolt went through me, my fists crashing into wood. My mother once told me I was born at midnight. I had the most beautiful dark eyes.

“A vision at first,” I answered, the tremble now gone from my voice. I felt my fingers going cold, my blood circulation stopping. “And then I drank of the fountain of Truth. I saw it all.”
Severina had no time to react to me drinking of the fountain water. She only looked at me with some sort of odd relief, the same kind of look I had seen on Tristen’s face before she took her and left Earth. I have known for long, it told. But is this really how you wanted to find out the truth?

“How long have you known?”
Severina shook her head as if the question was too difficult. “I never thought I had a sister. You weren’t even born before we left,” she began, the words sending electric currents through me. Sister. I could still see mamma, my childhood home. She had been pregnant then. And the iron bars inside my room, like the walls of a yet unbuilt crib…

“I never even thought of such thing. I was too young to understand. But when I saw you at the council hallway, I knew it was you. Your eyes…”

“What about them? What about my eyes?”
Severina’s words were a barely hearable whisper. “The eyes I saw were my father’s. You are like the reflection of him. I saw you with Aurora then; ignorant but curious. You reminded me of myself when I was your age. It all came suddenly together, and it was only a matter of seconds I could save you.”
There was a long silence I used to watch vaguely how the blackness of the walls had started to turn to morning blue. The barred windows reflected dimly my dirty blonde hair and amber eyes, just like Tristen’s.

“What are you thinking?”

Well, a sigh filled my mind. What did I feel? Happy? Confused? Angry? How I should have felt? Well, I repeated, gathering my thoughts together. I just found out Severina is my sister I had never heard of before. My mamma hadn’t mentioned a single world of her. Not a single word. But now she was there – she had always been. Relief?

Oh, I added, still staring at myself from the looking glass, trying to find which of my features were my mamma’s, which of them my father’s. Severina’s father, who just happens to be the malicious Light guardian, also happens to be your father. He’s known of you all along: yet he disappeared even before I was born leaving no trace of him whatsoever. A situation I definitely should have been angry in. Or at least frustrated – I felt like Luke Skywalker from Star Wars. But no. The only feeling which took over me was an inexplicable emptiness, washing over me like a tide and wiping away my existence. It was the exact same feeling which had taken over me when mamma died. I had not cried. I had only felt like I could crawl away and find myself again somewhere else, somewhere where the world didn’t matter. It would be only me.

Struggling to get myself back together was like trying to climb the completely vertical walls of a slippery well, or knit a difficult pattern with insufficient thread. The loose ends came to me and I reached them, but couldn’t attach them together. I remembered how Severina had explained my external vision. It gives parts of information, like hidden puzzle pieces, and unless the ability to put it back together they are useless.

“I was just thinking… about my visions,” I began. A familiar tingle felt in the back of my head, the same kind of feel I got when I got the hang of a difficult equation. “Since I came to Kaiya, I’ve had hunches when something is or isn’t right. And then I’ve been having the visions… they’re all connected somehow. I think I understand…”
My very first vision flashed behind my sight: the tumbling onyx tower and the two figures in the council chamber, one in darkness, another in light.

“It’s you,” I breathed. Severina raised a dark brow in curiosity. “It’s you my vision was about. Well, not completely about you,” I corrected. “But you were in it. Since I’ve been little I’ve had a dream of flying. The night before I came to Kaiya the dream changed. It began with the Earth."
Severina’s expression hardened. In the morning light she looked like a statue of a Greek goddess – beautiful and terrifying. Then I told her all about it – the Earth being empty and unnaturally quiet, the throne room with Severina and his father; balance shifting and her palace tumbling down. I only left out the part with Fera and the ravens – they were the only things I couldn’t yet understand. And it all ending with an eclipse, a symbol for the two elements: the moon being Darkness and the blazing sun Light.

“Father,” Severina breathed, a sudden exhaustion draining the strength off her voice. “He denied me. He’s wanted it all this time. He’s wanted to overpower me.”
As I spoke, my voice was cold, tone expressionless. “He’s been wanting it for years, hasn’t he?”
“Decades,” Severina phrased. “Since he first entered this realm with me. The single moment he denied mother caused balance to shift and open the veil between the worlds.”

Severina's words took me back to my first days on Earth, when everything was still blurry and simple. I had never seen father – not a single picture until my eighteenth birthday, in which he was nothing but a colorful spot in the background. To be blunt, I had never thought of him too much – not even the reason why he had left us. Maybe my birth had caused it - knowing he would have to manage with another daughter which would make his life difficult. Or maybe he was one of those chauvinist shitheads who wanted to have a son and decapitated their wives the moment they heard they would have a daughter instead. But there was Severina…

“Severina…”
She raised her gaze, now warm and alight in the morning sun. Inside my head I could still hear the music of The Cities, how it had made me feel like nothing else mattered. How I had laid dizzy on the bathroom floor, just like when Ashley hit me…

“Have you ever been to The Cities?”