11: firelight

11-11-11

rilla's song

fire light, fire light, fire, little fire light

we won't get much sleep

reaching out to touch more than i should have

love my simple life

i will stay right here

Chapter Eleven

“You’re clearly not yourself,” I confessed, taking hold of Rilla the way Chyse had done, but this time she didn’t pull away. “You just experienced something paranormal. It’s not easy. And don’t think it was easy for us either. It was painful to watch.”
Rilla laughed wryly. “Painful? Definitely! I may not be physically hurt, but do you know what mental pain is? It’s as painful as being burned. I doubt you ever have experienced something like that.”
The sharpness of Rilla’s words hit me like stakes, but I held my ground. “You think so?” I snapped, a wave of guilt flushing through me. I couldn’t become a martyr. Rilla was the victim, not I. “I know what it’s like to be lonely,” I told. “It’s a physical pain of its own. I grew used to it. But some of the memories still haunt me.”
Rilla wiped her eyes, leaving a long dark trace across her face. “It’s not the same,” she muttered. “My pain wasn’t for myself, it was for the people around me. You don’t know how it feels, do you? For all this time I’ve felt sorry for things which weren’t my fault. If you don’t felt sorry for me, why are you here? You know none of it.”
Somewhere inside me swam a shadow of sadness. For sure I knew how Rilla felt. But what she called empathy was a form of anger. To me it reminded pity.

“When I met you yesterday, you told you felt for me,” I reminded her. Yesterday. Yet it felt like years away. “And I feel for you. It’s just… it’s not the same.”
Rilla blinked the tears from her eyes, listening to the water. I imagined her seeing it in another way I did, in a different way. The water had dimensions to it, more than just what we could see. Dimensions Rilla could never understand. She could never truly connect with the element.

“Listen to the water,” she whispered. I obeyed. Somewhere away from us Chyse, Nolan, Circus and Talia rejoiced, enjoying their evening snack. As I locked my gaze on the falling droplets, their voices erased from my consciousness. First I only heard a rush reminding me of a little waterfall. But the sound deepened, grew dimensions to it. Suddenly I understood what was behind it – the collision of millions of little droplets, their race towards the sky only to be pulled back to the ground. I couldn’t hear the water perfectly: it was overpowered by the steady hum of air all around us.

“It’s so calming,” she whispered. “Helpful. It eases the pain.”

Suddenly I understood how Rilla felt. “You’re afraid of fire.”

She was completely silent, astonishment in her eyes.

“That’s why you don’t want to use it. It’s inside you, but you shun it away. That is why your other abilities will strengthen instead. You will grow unusual strength and memory.”
I could see it from her expression. Though Rilla knew the gifts her essence had given her were honorable, she didn’t want to believe in them. Her next words were a mere whisper, so low I struggled to hear them. “But I wouldn’t want to…”

The rush of water fell silent at the peak of dusk. The fountains still danced in our eyes, somewhere behind them. “How did you know?”
“I just thought about it,” I breathed, trying to remember. Rilla had acted like it since we came. She had always run away when it came to her elemental abilities. “Does it have something to do with your past? It just can’t always been a part of you. Your element is fire, anyway.”
“I don’t know,” she buried her face in her palms. “I just don’t know. I’ve tried to explain it to myself since I came, but I have never understood it.”
“To understand the present and predict the future, one has to be familiar with the past,” I recited.

“What’s that? Poetry?”
I laughed. “No. Maybe. I’ve just heard it somewhere. But it’s definitely true. I didn’t understand anything about this world until I crawled into myself and found out the reason I’m here. It’s not completely clear to me yet and I don’t expect it to be. What did Fire show you?”

The traces of the bestial glow flared in Rilla’s eyes. “Traces of my past,” she remembered, looking through the pool of water like diving into her memories. “And alternate future. On Earth I was the singer of a band,” she began. “Ironically, our band was called Elemental. We were very popular in our city.”
Flashes of images flew past my mind, the way I saw things. I saw a club – a dark stage in the middle of a room filled with chairs. The room tingled with electricity as soon as the speakers were turned on. A spotlight ignited, glowing fiery red in Rilla’s stage-hair. Her voice was beautiful, angry, but also very upset…

“Our whole band used drugs,” an image of my mamma came to me. Her, clinging onto the medicine cabinet, a wild light in her eyes… “With the exception of me. I only drank once in a while. Being the single girl among boys isn’t always that easy. The band consisted of me and my three friends. We all had stage names representing our elements. I was always Fire,” Rilla laughed sarcastically, “Due my appearance.”

Rilla shook her hair wildly on stage, burning around her like an infernal halo…

“Of course it all ended in a way it shouldn’t. I had known them all for many years. Water the longest. I had a crush on him.”
“What happened?”
Rilla turned slightly red, but her tone was bitter. “He was gay.”
“Oh,” I exclaimed. I remembered how Rilla had called Chyse a homophobic asshole – between the lines, off course – just because the best friends she ever had were all gay. But she still loved them.

“I was so sure he loved me too,” Rilla said, emotionless. “And he did. But he could never love me as much as I did. I was very depressed that night. We had the gig of our lifetime. My words poured with emotion; hatred, love, fear. We set the night on fire. But I had never been as sad as I was then.

“We played on the most popular club of the city. Outside it was a snowstorm, the visibility wasn’t that good. We were leaving, but depressed, I wanted to stay for a while.

The guys smoked some, some of them trying to still persuade me. I resisted at first, then remembering Water’s words. They shattered my soul.

“Heartbroken, I tried some,” Rilla, sitting in a dark storage room with his friends, the surroundings only a blur of color. “I couldn’t stop. The guys had some pills with them, too. Not caring whether I lived or died I took them with alcohol. The club was still full of teens – the music dazed my senses. The bass thumped in the rhythm of my heart. It was all light, energy, life. They waved their hands and brushed my skin. They called my name,” Rilla’s eyes glassed.

“The next thing – I awoke from the bathroom floor, my heartbeat the only sound. It was everywhere. The club was empty. My senses were a blur. They all ran into the room; Wind, Earth and Water. They bended over me. Snow whirled in from the open windows. Before I drifted into unconsciousness, I heard the wheezing of breaks, like an enormous car crash – ambulance sirens, saw the flames. I smelled them. Felt them.”
Before I could say anything, Rilla already went on, in a trance. “Fire showed me an alternate. If I would’ve taken only pills and no alcohol, if I we’d left the club straight after the gig, if I’d never told Water I loved him. If only one thing had happened differently, we’d all ended in a pile-up and died in flames.”

My senses were blank, nothing but fire and cinder. As I sharpened my gaze, I saw the sun set behind the Hotel Aqua, the whole building glowing with a bright aura, like afire.

“Why?” Rilla cried, her nails tearing bleeding wounds into her palms. “Why, I asked Fire. I had almost started to forget, the pain fade. Now it’s back again.”
I didn’t know if my words were the most comforting, but they were the truth. “Fire is your deepest essence, everything you are. Your emotions, your thoughts, yourself. It’s behind them all. But it doesn’t mean it controls them. You don’t have to be a friend of Fire to understand your element. What happened wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t Chyse’s, Nolan’s, Circus’, Talia’s, nor my fault. It was only the truth. The truth is your death on Earth saved balance from swaying, it saved your friends’ lives.”

Rilla raised her gaze, all redness gone, now only glowing a deep, clear shade of blue. “How come you know so much of the Elements though you just came?”
“I don’t,” I answered. “I just say how I feel. It’s about time I listen to my heart.”

In the distance I could see the figures of Chyse and Nolan, chattering to each other, their bodies turned to our direction. The sky turned over us, painting from orange and red to purple and midnight blue. “I think they’re waiting for us,” I notified.

Rilla smiled: a smile full of light and relief. “Yeah,” she breathed, wiping the last tear off her cheek. “Is my face all snotty?”
“Not at all,” I notified, slowly walking towards the guys.

“What’s up?” Chyse tried to sound cheerful, but there was worry in his eyes. Rilla shook her head carelessly. “Couldn’t be better. You got any of that delicious earth-cake left?”
Chyse frowned, showing Rilla his empty wrappers. “Hey, I know you’ve had a hard time. You don’t have to wear a mask all the time.”
Rilla huffed, turning her back stubbornly. “I am so not wearing a mask!”

From the corner of my eye I saw a little smile crawl on her face.

“Hey, where’s Circus?” I asked. She had left as fast as she arrived.

“Gone to Ariel,” answered Nolan. “Giving a report of this, I think.” Rilla’s eyes widened. “But don’t worry, she won’t tell we entered the archives. Maybe just something about summoning Water and it draining her strength to the minimum.”

Rilla wiped her forehead relieved. “Great. Where you guys heading?”
Chyse’s eyes blazed as he bored them onto Rilla’s. “We’re not going absolutely anywhere. After something like that we have to take you to Hestia. You’ll tell her what you saw.”
In the past Rilla would have shaken her head and ran away, but this time she let her shoulders relax and Chyse rest his hands on hers.

“All right,” she announced. “Let’s head to Hestia’s. But I’m not sleeping there for more than tonight. I’ll come with you to the City of Fire.”
Talia turned to my direction, facing my confused expression. “It’s called ‘The Cities’ for a reason,” she laughed. “It’s just not visible here. This is the central.”
An image of a city divided into six hummed in my mind. Somehow I painted them in different colors – the Fire City red, Water blue, Earth green, Wind silver, Light gold and Darkness black. The colors of the guardian dresses, pendants and rings. I looked wistfully forward to the day I would meet every guardian of Kaiya, each councelor and join them together in a meeting in the behalf of Balance.

I lifted my head towards the sky, looking at the stars as if I’d point out the same constellations as on Earth. My mind was a child’s, ignorant and innocent, free of all worries.