8: insomnia

muita kommentteja ei tältä päivältä kuin kirjoitin tänään kaksi sanaa: chapter twenty. :___D tulin siis kotiin n. tunti sitten enkä ehdikään enää kirjoittaa. nopeasti tein vain pieniä laskelmia. minulla on jäljellä noin kymmenen lukua, ja jos aion saavuttaa sanamäärätavoitteeni sanamääräni on oltava n. 80000. laskin, että 10 luvussa on n. 25000 sanaa. olen kirjoittanut nyt 53000. tiukille menee, siinä tapauksessa jos pääsenkin loppuun ennen sanamäärän ylittymistä... mutta se on myöhempiä murheita. postaan tänään vain kasiluvun, ja olisin erittäin, erittäin kiitollinen YHDESTÄ kommentista, olkoon se mitä tahansa!:)

this days comments: i wrote two words: chapter twenty. i came home about an hour ago and i don't have time to write anymore. i just made few calculations. i have still around ten chapters to write and to achieve my goal i need around 80000 words. i counted there are around 25000 words in ten chapters. now i've written 53000. in case i'll finish my novel before my word count gets to 80000... well, that's not to worry about now. i'll just post ch 8 and i'd be very, very grateful of ONE comment, be it anything!

Chapter Eight

Behind my dreams there rang a steady pulse, the rush of blood through my ears.

On Earth it was snowfall and empty streets. Beyond the streetlights there was always an electric hum. Light shone downward in innumerable colors. Always.

I felt me breathing as time around me slipped away.

The letterbox clattered, and I was awoken by the doorbell.

“Mamma?”
“No, it’s me,” Her voice was sensual and beautiful even after waking up. Nothing like the gargle I let out mornings.

I opened my eyes and Talia stood in the doorway in a sassy nightgown. Her hair was wild and free. The look she had on her face didn’t suite her. She was paler than usual, worried. Why?
I sat up straight, wiping dreams from my eyes. The room was oddly dark and familiar. Heavy curtains covered the windows, like I was inside a hospital for Goths. The humming fluorescents had changed to creaky chandeliers. Snow still whirled in my eyes.

Talia approached me cautiously, her almond eyes stared in awe.

“Don’t give me that look,” I warned her. “What’s it?”
“Don’t you remember?” Talia cooed. I answered with a blank look.

”What happened last night?” Her words took me back, but I only thought of my strange dream, a dream of a different world.

“I was with Severina at the council chamber,” I responded bluntly. “She taught me windbending.”
“And then?”
I rubbed my eyes as if it could help me see.

“I had a dream,” I replied wondrously. “I dreamt of Earth.”

Talia laughed, breaking the spell. “No. Before that.”
I sighed, remembering these sorts of situations. It wasn’t the first time. “Let me guess: I blacked out?”
Talia nodded, as if it would have been a touchy subject to me. I huffed trying to remember. It must have something to do with the wind sprites. The warping from one place to another wasn’t as easy as Severina had told me.

As I saw Talia close the door behind me and sit gracefully in her transparent gown, I instantly knew where we were. Somehow it didn’t feel like a good combination – mysteriously blacking out and waking up there. “I’m in Severina’s palace, aren’t I?”
“You’re not wrong,” Talia answered. “I was just worried about you.”
Her words made my cheeks tingle. Talia, this gorgeous, sexy creature, worried about me?

Jeez.

I think she noticed my curious look, and it made her full lips carve into a smile. “I know what you’re thinking. We don’t even know each other – we’ve seen once before. But it doesn’t matter to me. In case we’re going to councel together for, well, time, I think we have to trust one another.”
I nodded, leaning into her direction. “Point. Hilary.”
Talia took my hand and smiled. “Talia.”

I observed her for a while, just in silence. She was absolute beauty from head to toe – perfect. But somehow I felt like it was more in it than just the looks. Beauty was one of those things which wasn’t just on the outside. Beauty shone from within. To me, beauty was in the eyes, expressions, gesticulation. And little things.

 “How did you get here?” I spared her from the officials. I was still lost in her eyes, and with my words, something in them changed. Like something was missing.

“It's... not exactly clear to me. My past life is a mush to me. I suffered real bad insomnia after waking up."

Realized by the seriousness of her tone, my voice reduced to a mere whisper. "You were hurt."

"Something not good happened to me back there."

She pointed over her shoulder into emptiness, but I knew she was talking about her past life, about Earth. "Something had to happen to you too, to get here. Do you know how it happened?"

"Everyone’s told me it's about a tip in balance. But didn't see any tipping back there - more like tripping."

Talia smiled enthrallingly. "Tell me."

“My nemesis on Earth kicked my ass. It really tipped the balance of the worlds.”

“Sounds more like you losing your balance, not like the whole world's balance tipping over."

I let out a dry laugh. "Yeah, sure. It's like I'm Down Under."

Talia's eyes glassed all sudden, as if she had just seen something terrible.

"Down Under," her voice was as haunted as the look in her eyes. "It reminds me of something."

I examined the feeling her words gave me, comparing it to how I had felt after waking up – all was very unclear, unfamiliar – but not frightening. It wasn’t frightening until realizing something important actually was missing.

“It doesn’t differ real much from being normal. You know the feeling you get from reading an old journal or looking at pictures? They are all connected to time, place, emotion. A memory. But what if there’s no memory? You see only pictures, nothing else. They lose their meaning.”
I knew how it felt.

I never really had a best friend. If there was one single person I told my secrets, my worries, it was my mamma. But after she was gone I had been very alone. I had started to see her in my dreams, imagine she was still there. Like she never really left me.

I pictured me forgetting over time how things were. They’d be there, but ever so distant. Aurora had told me she couldn’t remember much of her life on Earth. It hadn’t felt so bad for her – for she hadn’t noticed it happening. But for Talia, it had happened way too fast.

It was almost if I would forget the most precious things around me. I would be handed a photograph of mamma. I would notice she was beautiful and sad. But I wouldn’t remember her voice, her scent, her name.

“It doesn’t feel bad,” Talia said. “I know there were important things in my past. It’s a feeling which doesn’t leave me. But I can’t put them to words. It’s hard to miss something which I don’t have any memory of.”

“So… you don’t remember Earth, not at all?”

Talia shook her head helplessly. “Not a single thing.”
I sighed. “Then we’re in the opposite situations. You don’t know Earth, I don’t know Kaiya. Up to now, I’ve only been at Aurora’s and the council chambers – and Ariel’s lake, of course. I’m trying to map them inside my mind, but they don’t just feel connected in any way. It’s like there’s nothing in between.”
“Nothing,” Talia mouthed. “It describes it real good. “These locations… they don’t actually exist. Have you ever been to The Cities?”
Something in the word made me think of it with a big T and C, as if they weren’t just separate cities. I gestured Talia to move on.

“It’s a city complex in the very heart of Kaiya. It’s the home of earthlings here.”
She started to stir restlessly, like looking for something. “Severina once told me she has seen a map of it. But I have never found it here.”

“What’s this City thing all about? Where is it?”
“It’s… looking from here I’d say it’s overseas. It’s in the same dimension – in fact, it’s the dimension itself.”
“And everything around it… doesn’t exist?”
“You’re not wrong. It’s emptiness beneath them.”
“That’s why the guardians warp from one place to another,” I realized. I remembered my first look from Aurora’s bluff.  I could see forests, endlessly – and all around them only haze, like there really was nothing.

And the grayness covering the council skies, skies over Ariel’s lake. Like it was meant to be.

“How long has it been like this?”
Talia looked at me like I had asked a silly question. “Always?”
But somewhere beneath me my guts told me it was wrong.

“How is it possible to enter The Cities?”
Talia raised an arm in resistance. “It’s easy, just tell it to your element. Is it really darkness?”
Severina was my mentor – not my guardian. And my element was wind, she recognized it too. But why did she want it to be so? Didn’t a councelor of darkness need to have an ability to bend darkness?

Not sure should I tell it yet, I stood up, imagining the wind sprites showing up soon. “No, not yet!” Talia exclaimed, taking a foothold against the door – like she could prevent me from disappearing into thin air. “There are things you need to be aware of in The Cities. It’s a place of elements – their ways are dangerous. I don’t think you should go alone.”

For sure, in case I’d black out again.

“I’ll come with you. But we have to inform Severina first.”

Talia strode out the door and I followed her – knowing I had just woken up and thus looked like shit. My darkness guardian dress bared my skinny legs and scrawny toes – I wasn’t wearing any shoes.

Severina sat on a dark staircase under a stormy morning sky. Down below the haze merged into a salty blueness – the ocean. As she saw me in one piece she showed admiration. Why the hell? I had just blacked out and she’d carried me back to her palace.

“We’re going to The Cities,” Talia informed. “We won’t be for long.”
Severina’s expression was blank. “It pleases me to see you guide your fellow councelor.”
Talia smiled heartwarmingly, grabbing my wrist. My heart skipped a beat. “Is that a yes?”
Severina nodded approvingly. Somehow, looking at her and Talia interact, it was like me and Aurora: rules and restrictions – and a distant but overwhelming care buried somewhere underneath. With me and Severina it was different – subtle, mysterious. Meant to be.

The way she faced my golden eyes told me enough. She knew how I felt about this world and Earth. Not that she sensed it. It was different. She knew it, because she felt the same.

“Good luck,” she whispered as we took steps downwards towards a hazy beach. Her eyes told me the rest. Enjoy it while it lasts.

As I turned around and the wind spirits whirled around me, I took one last blink at her and her home, a dark palace which made my senses tingle, like I had seen it in another life.