16: the vessel

olen kirjoittanut tänään 1000 sanaa koulussa ja tekstiä tuli aika tiuhaan tahtiin, huomisen hypärin voisin vaikka käyttää samalla tavoin hyväksi. ollaan jo yli puolessavälissä ja fiilis on hyvä, toivottavasti tuleva koeviikko ei lannista tunnelmaa. itseä on kuitenkin vähän harmittanut tuo tilastojen tila, päivässä täällä kun käy enää se 1-2 kävijää joista toinen olen minä itse:( millä tavoin saan teitä aktivoitua? alastonkuvien / kohtauksien postailu ei kuulosta minun tyyppiseltäni jutulta, joten kokeilen nyt tätä musiikkia jälleen kerran. tänään inspiraationani on toiminut hurts.

i've written 1000 words in school today and it all came pretty fast. i could use my tomorrow's empty hour to do the same. we're already halfway through and i feel good, i just hope the test week won't destroy the atmosphere. i've just been a little sad due the stats: there's only 1-2 readers here every day, one being me.:( how i can activate you? i don't think naked pictures or r-rated scenes are my thing, so i'll try posting music again. today i've been inspirated by hurts.

  PART TWO

EARTH

Chapter Sixteen

The rush of water was strong and steady in my ears. The surface beneath my back was hard but very smooth, almost like marble…

The world in my eyes was upside down and vertical instead of horizontal – light came from my right instead of upward.

“Where-“

I recognized instantly where I was. The Hotel Aqua stood there like always, just behind the Archives. The sun hadn’t moved an inch – it still hung low over the city pouring its golden light.

You’re not human, I choked into my own words. I could still feel the cold touch of the iron bars against my skin, the sweat on my temples and the lost feeling of touch in my feet. The afterimage of Fera’s eyes still burned my sight.

I lay still on one of the marble benches next to the hotel pool. Fera was there, at the waterline, his baggy clothes too big for a boy his size. The dangerous glow I had imagined in his eyes was gone – now all I could see was blankness, ignorance. My hands hung limp by my sides, and something in the mere sight of Fera made me feel tremendous hate. Tears of frustration watered my eyes. A helpless sob escaped beneath my lips.

The world was but a blur, but I could see Fera’s face going pale. His tone was incredibly distressed. “You… you are crying.”

I couldn’t help it, but I laughed. “Yes!” I shouted, feeling my body tremble with the power of my sobs. “You forsaken idiot. You’ve never seen someone cry before?”
Fera reached for the pocket of his pants, taking out something which looked like a Kleenex. “Well… yes, but never without reason.”

“Without reason?” I cried. My voice echoed off the walls around us. “Du bist der alle Letzte!”

“What?”
“It’s German, you shithead. Give me that Kleenex and give me a break.”
As I reached up to snatch the Kleenex from Fera’s hands, I felt a sudden urge to slap him just like Ashley had done. Maybe he’d go back to whatever demonic dimension he had appeared from. I could already feel the blood gathering into my fingertips, a daze in my head. If I would hit him, I couldn’t stop. It would lead me in a frenzy of blood and hate, only send me tumbling into chaos. I couldn’t.

“I saw you there,” I whispered, as the hate drained out of me, replaced by the same kind of emptiness I felt each time using my powers against Severina’s. “In my childhood home. There could be no other explanation. You’re a monster of some kind, aren’t you? A fallen angel, troll, demon…”
Surprisingly, Fera didn’t grow fangs or switch on his glowing eyes of doom. He only laughed – a simple, amused laugh, his eyebrows furrowing over his silver eyes. “Do I look like a troll?”

For some unexplainable reason, I laughed too. I forced myself into a sitting position, Fera’s Kleenex still in my hand, yet very dry. I never cried. And if I did, they were only small tears, nothing messy.

“You could be a troll,” I suggested cautiously. “A shapeshifter troll. It doesn’t matter,” I shrugged my shoulders. “Because you’ve been trolling me all this time.”
Fera’s expression twisted – into a frown that was so impossibly theatrical it could be the Greek persona mask representing the emotion frown. “Trolling?”
My yell of frustration was so pure, so genuine it made Fera startle back in horror and almost fall into the hotel pool. “You-“ he began, his eyes flashing of an emotion he was so masterfully restraining: anger. “You only had a bad dream. That is all. You can claim me anything, but it will all be only your imagination. Nothing but a trick of the mind.”

The sudden emotion which his words gave me almost made me believe he was right – I had been only dreaming; after all, visions never came when I was awake. I was still at Hotel Aqua, just like before. Yet the episode at my old childhood home had seemed so real. I had plenty of things to say, questions to ask, just like how did you get there and above all why? But nothing else came from my mouth except helpless stutter. “You’re an amnesiac,” I managed to blurt. “How could you warp?”
For a swift second Fera’s expression was genuinely confused, even furious: had I looked like that when I first met Aurora? As soon it was replaced by blankness. “Your friend Talia told me few things,” he spoke, pacing back and forth ahead of me, so the sun behind him blinked on and off. “Things I almost remember. I know I have been here before, that this is my world. I just cannot remember anything else.”

You’re not from Earth after all? Well, of course you’re not. You’re some forsaken thing from another dimension what just happens to look like human. And who is incredibly persuasive. “There must be something you know. Like… the most important things. The names of your parents, your element…” Why the hell was I asking things like these? IN CASE the guy was a demon troll from Hell he didn’t have any parents. Except the witch-doctor who created him. Or what if…

“Maybe I can try to awake your memories,” I proposed with enthusiasm. Fera forced a solidarity smile. “Does a Tristen ring the bell?”
Fera blinked twice, but nothing in him twitched. He refused point blank. I was tempted to ask him more, even accuse him – of course you know him – he summoned you! But what if… what if Fera was right? If he really couldn’t remember anything and I had only imagined the episode at my old home? It had all seemed so unreal. Nothing had been like before. e. + l. = w.? Or possibly d.?

“I just thought you’d know him. You look like him,” I lied, trying to remember Tristen’s face. I was sure he had been in at least one of my visions, but they were all so unclear, slipping away…

“Maybe you don’t remember names, but locations. Like the place we found you from.”
Fera’s expression was dull. “I was not very awake at the time.”
“Just like I wasn’t awake at my old home,” I shrugged. “If you say it’s a trick of mind, it’s better to forget it. Just remember I’ll be watching you. You’ll grow those talons any second.”

I almost expected an arrogant gesture – an eyeball roll or at least a raised eyebrow, but Fera only smiled, as if he truly found me amusing.

“Come,” he motioned, waving into the distance. “Let’s take a walk.”
His words seized me, as I thought of the spinning razors in his eyes. “I don’t think it’s smart.”
“You don’t trust me?”
Of course not! What do you think?

“I was only thinking about my friends,” I responded idly. “Talia, Chyse, Nolan, Rilla – oh, and Circus – where did they go?”
There was a pause before Fera replied. “I am sure they are all right. Let’s take a walk.”

A gesture which was half unconscious, half conscious made me rise up and face his eyes with expectation. He answered with no emotion. I couldn’t exactly say Fera was cold. He just seemed very lost. How could I consult someone who was more unsure of himself than I had ever been? All he knew of himself was his name. Just like I had been feeling – I just knew to be Hilary – nothing else of me mattered here. I had nothing but all of me.

“Will you come?”
I nodded blankly, following him.  “I guess so. Just promise me it doesn’t involve morphing into a Hilary-eating monster.”
“Hilary?” Fera repeated, tasting my name on his tongue. I had forgotten to introduce myself. “It does not. That, Hilary, is a promise.”

As his lips carved into a cold smile, I thought I could still feel them on mine: a dizzy, strange feel of being unattached. External vision, Severina had told. Elemental messages from the outer world – letting them take control of me instead of mastering them myself. And for swifter than a second I thought I finally understood my meaning. Kaiya is the soul of Earth, Aurora had told me, in a voice like breaking crystal… Like Earth was the vessel Kaiya communicated through. Things in the scenery stirred, like tiny particles of the air, as the thought occurred me. What if Wind is the very soul of me?

“Isn’t this… somehow unnatural to you?” I asked, as we took a turn in the corner of two buildings I had known as a health center and a small mall. Before I had truly walked the streets of The Cities I had seen them exactly like they were on Earth. But they were different. Little things had changed. The kids on the mall corner had Elementals painted on their boards, such as the cabs were a silver I didn’t know, a silver like Fera’s eyes. And how everywhere was somehow more quiet, more unreal.

“Unnatural?” Fera questioned, his hands rocking steadily on his sides. Something in his whole being was very temperate, even calming. “No. I have grown used to this world, unlike you earthlings. You think everything different is frightening because you have made it all a myth.”
A voice inside my mind screamed - how do you know so much of earthlings? But Fera’s calm gaze seized me. “Now don’t tell me mythical creatures actually exist.”
“In some realms, perhaps. There are things you should acknowledge of amnesia. It is not like forgetting the whole world. Only the things familiar to you will be that no more. You will not remember names or faces. You will lose your memories. But not the very essence of you.”

But memories were what made a person themselves – memories of places and feelings, how we thought of things. What if I forgot who I was with the exception of my name? I couldn’t tell my age, where I was from. I would be hurled into a new world, and if I ever came back, the people who used to know me would know me no more.

“Something in my essence draws me to this place,” Fera explained, examining at the buildings around him. We had walked for a longer time than I thought. We were starting to enter a part of the city I didn’t know so well, a part of it I couldn’t even remember. Maybe it was only the setting sun, but everything had a hint of gold: the reflective roofs, window frames and street tiles. “I just know this place. I feel it.”
My next words were a lapse: a thing I was never supposed to ask. “Just like you knew me?”
Fera’s expression enlightened, as if his expression were lit from within. “We’ve never met before,” he smiled, “But it’s something in you, in your eyes…”

His pupils reflected mine: silver against gold. Something sudden cut his words, as if he were choking onto them. His gaze was frozen into something between the two streets – a Jugend-styled towerlike building with golden walls. There was a flash in his eyes. “What is it?” I asked, filled by a ghost of the unknown protection I had felt for Fera in a dream. “Do you remember?”
The light in his eyes died, and he continued his walk. “Nothing.” Then he flashed me a blinding smile, handing out his palm. “Now, come with me. I want to talk to you.”
My teeth gnashed together as I truly looked at him. He was as much a stranger as Aurora had been as I woke up in her arms, gesturing me to come with her. But this time was different. There were things I knew of the world around me: dangerous things. I had a choice.

Without reaching out my arm, I continued to follow him through the slender alleys, noticing as the city deepened they truly turned more gold, the amber shade of my eyes. The afternoon had turned into an evening – the sky above us curved and was painted deeply aquamarine. Yet the streets seemed to bathe in direct sunlight, even the narrow spaces in between the buildings. The ground beneath our feet had changed from a dirty pavement into crystallized sand which gleamed like diamonds. Fera came to an abrupt stop.

“When I acted like I remembered nothing than my name, I lied,” he said without raising his gaze. With a swift moment he had grabbed a firm hold of my wrist. A jolt of electricity exploded in my veins – the concoction of adrenaline and endorphins made my head spin. Reflexively, I took my free hand back and aimed a punch in Fera’s face, but he seized the blow. Instead of what I had been expecting – turning into a three-headed monster of some kind, his grip loosened, and very gently he pulled me into the light.

We stood in the edges of a square. Matter-of-fact, it was more of a circle – all around the houses seemed to bend backwards to make way for a round plaza bathing in the last rays of the sunlight. A great fountain stood in the middle of it all, and the children running past it painted only shadows against the running water – but what was it that made it look so much like something else? Something thicker, almost like liquid gold…

I stared soundlessly at Fera, who was still holding my wrist. The light of the fountain shone from his eyes, and his lips parted, as of awe.

“You said you lied to me,” I reminded him, somehow faintly aware of the fact his unfamiliar touch burned my skin. “Was this what you could remember?”
“This is the fountain of light,” he stated. “Is it said, that one who drinks of the water is to reveal all their secrets.”
It only took me seconds too long to understand it all. Suddenly it came clear why the city shone like the sun and the streets like diamonds, why the fountain was of solid gold – that the fountain was of Light with a capital L. This time I jerked my hand back, taking faltering steps like waiting for Fera to peel off his protections. “You brought me here,” my voice trembled. “You-“

But Fera sealed my mouth shut with only a gaze. As the ring in my ears stopped, I became aware of the voices around us. Footsteps on the streets. The joyous screams of the children as they ran through the square, and the water, how its ripple was like singing, the voice of the angels. I know no-one spoke, but I could hear a foreign voice inside my head. Light is not evil, it told.

“This is not what I lied to you of,” Fera said, approaching the fountain slowly. He sat on the brink of it, golden droplets raining in his hair. As they touched his head, for a mere second, they looked like flicks of gold. “I lied, because my own name wasn’t the only name I could remember. There was another name.”
“Was it my name?”
Fera shook his head slowly, pulling wild strands of his hair behind his ear. “No,” he exhaled, looking at me through his lashes. “Severina.”