24: aftermath

ääk! kuusi päivää aikaa ja minulla on enää yksi valmis luku tämän jälkeen teille postattavaksi. sain kuitenkin tänään pakerrettua kuvistyöni valmiiksi joten nyt kun lähden tästä bilsankirjan pariin voin toivottavasti sanoa että saan huomenna kirjoitettua 26:nnen luvun. tässä kuitenkin teille luku 24 ja tuo kuvistyöni (ihmisen piirtämisen kurssin hahmosuunnitelma, jossa työnäni on yllätysyllätys Severina::D.)

Chapter Twenty-four

The sky over the woods was dark and starless, looming in the distance like a bottomless pit or an endless chasm of emptiness. Walking through the forest had been like diving through oil, feeling like there was ink dripping off my hair, leaving a trace of black behind me. Even though the four girls I acquainted with had been friendly towards me, I still felt uncomfortable walking amongst strangers: it had been impossible to shrug off the feeling there was somebody watching me.

When we finally got far enough from the palace grounds to warp our ways away, a dread so tremendous had taken over me there was no particular place I thought when the scenery around me whipped and drew me in like tentacles. When I finally fell on my knees on the hard stone steps of Severina’s palace I let a sigh of relief. Warping had its consequences, and in case I ended up somewhere far away, it could have taken me hours to recover my strength to warp again. I remembered staying there for a while, just steadying my breath and listening to the calming rush of the ocean. As long as I was there, I was safe.

But something had changed. For some reason I had always been very aware of presences and known whether someone was watching me. The very second I laid my eyes on the onyx tower I knew I was alone. The lights had gone out and the doors sealed shut, unlike ever before. With disbelief I dragged myself to them, pain jolting through me as I throbbed the steely gates. My hands were slippery and cold of sweat. My legs felt like lead as I dragged myself away, repeating a name unconsciously. I had to find the strength to get away, anywhere, and the shadows had already started to build around me. The world spun, tilting from side to side like I was standing n a boat. I instinctively reached for a railing to prevent me from falling down the stairs into the ocean. But all my hand could feel was emptiness…

The whole world tilted, and the earth fell away like a rug being pulled under my feet. There was a snap as my bones hit the ground hard and I lost my sight. The rush of the ocean became louder and louder and pictures flashed behind my eyelids like lightning. I lay halfway dead on the brink of the steps, halfway dragged away by the wind. The starlight reflected off Aurora’s palace as heat against my lids but I was pulled away before I could call her name. Something cold and flat clutched beneath my fingers, and there was a sound like rippling air or cracking flames, as my fell ended as abruptly as a dream.

I woke up to a shout, and it took me a second to realize it was me. Pain radiated up my arm and my whole body was wet of sweat, clinging my dress close to my skin. There were words all around me, not sentences. “Fuck! Hilary, stop! Stop screaming!”
I pulled a deep breath and the world became complete. I had fallen directly in the middle of Nolan’s bed, but I wasn’t on top of him – matter of fact, I saw him nowhere. But Rilla stood helplessly over me, her face as white as she had been drained of blood.

Words escaped from my lips as an indefinite slur. “My elbow – it hurts…”
Rillas fingers reached out to touch me, and I howled of pain. “It’s broken,” she said. “In the name of the Elements, how are you here?”
“My elbow? My elbow’s broken?”
Rilla’s eyes widened. “You’ve never had broken limbs before? Well, you will have. Lots of them.”
A shadow blocked the moonlight and a figure appeared in the doorway. His voice was recognizable, but a muddle. “How are you here?” Nolan repeated, and my eyes registered he looked wasted – his eyeballs were visibly pink in the dark light. “You can’t warp inside private buildings.”
I was very aware of that fact myself, but there was nothing going on through my mind then but the pain. “I don’t really think I warped,” I said. The fist of my working hand opened, revealing a used darkness token. The surface pattern had burnt itself on my palm as a circle of indefinable letters. “I used this.”
Nolan’s red eyes were wide. “I can see it,” he voiced, approaching the bed. “Show me your hand.”
“Can you heal it? I can’t really move it.”
Nolan’s tone was dry. “I am not an earth child. And I meant your other hand. The patterned one.”
There was a tug as Nolan lifted my hand, and I winced. “Why are you being such a bitch? What’s up with the ‘let’s leave Hilary alone and get wasted!’-attitude? I thought you weren’t drinking anything. And especially not running away now that there’s a forsaken maniac running free.”
Nolan gave me a chilling gaze, the kind of Circus gave before releasing a giant tidal wave. Rilla answered instead of him. “We thought you had left. We didn’t find you anywhere. And I had to take this fucking idiot off the grounds before he-“
“Apparently we didn’t search well enough,” Nolan interrupted, ignoring Rilla’s last sentence. “The party grounds were very full.”
“Stop the bullshit,” I uttered. My elbow had become number – perhaps of the touch of two fire children, but was still broken. “Severina’s gone.”
Rilla’s tone was unbelieving. “She too?”
“Something’s wrong,” I said, trying to get up. It wasn’t such a good idea: every gesture felt painful. “The guardians are gone. Half of the council have… disappeared.”
“Chyse,” Rilla whispered. “Who else?”
“Talia,” I said. “And Aes.”
“And Circus,” Nolan added. “Who of the guardians?”
“Severina,” I continued, “And Eua. Their palace is empty. And in the worst case, Aurora too.”
Rilla flinched restlessly. “We have to go to Hestia,” she said. “And call the other councelors.”
“Now?” Nolan asked. “It’s midnight.”
Rilla frowned with displease. “You’re just using your hangover as an excuse to ignore something as serious.”
To my surprise, Nolan fell silent. “All right”, he said after a short pause. “We will do it.”

“Are you sure we should do this?”
“Don’t you worry,” Nolan reassured. “I assure you it will be safe.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Oh please,” Rilla snorted, sounding more like me than I did at the moment. “Just get it over with and stop sounding like you’re going to have sex.”
I couldn’t help it but I smiled, even as Nolan grabbed my arm and started bandaging it tightly. A little wince escaped from my throat, but the bandage helped. “I’m sorry we can’t do anything else right now,” Nolan said. “I could give you strength but not heal you. But it would drain my own strength.”
“Own fault,” Rilla shouted from the kitchen, and her voice drowned to the running tap. “No drinking means no drinking, you knew that?”
Nolan looked away. “We are done,” he said to me, walking us to the door. “Can you warp?”
The whole word sent a spasm through me, and I shook my head helplessly. Nolan pulled on a jacket and opened the heavy doors effortlessly. “Then stay very close to us,” he advised, rushing down the stairs. “It might burn a little.”

‘A little’ was a puny way to express how warping felt with fire children. For being used to wind warping I had expected for being somehow pulled away, but fire warping was like my whole existence were wiped away as heat hit my body and I dissolved into ashes. The pain, however, was over as fast as it had arrived, replaced by an odd bewilderment of what I was seeing. The ground below our feet was jagged, and the cobalt blue night was pierced with sharp edges I recognized to be mountains. The wind was warm, accompanied by the smell of burning. Suddenly I wondered why we had taken jackets with us after all.

But where was the palace?
“It’s inside the mountain,” Nolan answered as if he had read my thoughts. “Right close. Warping doesn’t take us as far away in here, because the palace isn’t as visible. It can be only found if known where to look from.”
And then Nolan looked down, sliding into the haze down the edge of the mountain, then disappearing.

“It’s down here,” he yelled from somewhere below. “Jump!”
Ignoring my pained elbow I leaped downward to unveil a curious sight. My feet hit the ground safely, and I could suddenly see the mountain walls carved around us like we were in some sort of valley. Rilla appeared from the haze, pointing towards a dark shape in the mist. “It’s there.”
“But this place…” I asked as the ground under us slid downward. “Where are we?”
“This is a dead crater,” Nolan answered. “But not all the craters around here are dead. Some are active and erupt every now and then.”
My eyes widened. “That explains this smell,” I sniffed the air. “Ashes.”
“And sulfur,” Nolan accompanied. “It’s not all safe here either. Now where’s the door… here.”
I wiped my eyes and could see the haze had faded, now revealing a gateway carved in stone, something ancient and savage. It lead into a dark pathway with fire symbols carved on the walls, and a single lantern burned by the doors. They were open, but it was oddly silent, and in the firelight of the hallway torches everything looked abandoned and cold.

“Hestia?” Rilla called, closing the doors behind us, as we entered a dark, circular hall which branched into several walkways. “Chyse?”
“They’re not here,” Nolan answered in a dead tone. “The whole palace… it’s empty.”
“How can you know that?”
“It’s too quiet,” said Nolan. “I am afraid Hilary is right. Something has happened.”

“What do we do now?” I asked.

Nolan’s tone was calming as he spoke. “There is nothing we can do in this situation but wait.”
In the torchlight Rilla’s face turned red, flames dancing in her eyes. “We have to find Chyse,” she said, her voice echoing off the palace walls. Looking at her and listening to the haunted silence made me wonder could I ever live in a place like that. “Now.”
“There is nothing we can do,” Nolan repeated as if the truth had been carved into stone. It was a tone he could have used in the council. “And as an answer to your question,” he said to me, “Now, we rest.”

And with the finality of his words he lead us to the leftmost pathway and past open bedroom doors. Without saying a word, he strolled into a single bedroom and closed the door before him, leaving me and Rilla together in awkward silence.

“I know what Chyse would say now,” Rilla sighed as she slumped next to the wall. “’Nolan might be a jerk, but he knows what the council wants.’ But this time I’m not as sure.”

“He’s been in Kaiya for a long time,” I stated as my back hit the stone wall. “He knows the principles.”
“But sometimes he follows them too much,” Rilla argued. “Times when the council books become the Bible and the guardians godlike creatures. It’s like… you can’t sacrifice an animal or a child in the name of the Bible just because the Bible does that. This is the same thing. You can’t just leave your friends in trouble because the council forbids you.”
Rilla’s words had a point, but somehow I understood Nolan too. Just being brought up in another world made his views so different they couldn’t be compared. “If all the guardians are gone, the council shouldn’t have much to say to this,” Rilla continued. “We have to find Chyse.”
“But what about Hestia?” I questioned. “Or Aurora, Severina and the other councelors? What about them?”
Rilla’s expression stretched, but she said nothing.

“If it wasn’t Chyse who was missing? If Nolan had disappeared, would you look for him too?”
Rilla’s tone was flat as she spoke. “Of course I would. Why are you asking something like that?”
“Because we do mindless things for the people who are important to us.”
Rilla huffed, leaning into the knees. “That sounds like something a guardian would say.”
An idle smile played on my lips. “If you had two options – to save Hestia, Aurora, Severina, Circus and Aes, but to save them you would have to give up Chyse, and to save Chyse but to save him you would have to give up everyone else, what would you choose?”
Rilla was silent.

“Chyse, of course,” I proceeded. “If this world for some reason would end, he would be the one you would take with you. Even if choosing him over the whole world would cause you guilt for the rest of your life, you would believe he could take it away.”

There was a long silence; so long I thought Rilla had fallen asleep. When she finally spoke, her tone was drowsy, half-conscious.

“Sometimes I wonder why we have feelings at all,” she said. “They are our biggest flaw. Without them, we would be… perfect.”

Her head drooped and a musical snore escaped from between her lips. I sat next to her until I felt my own eyelids falling closed, until consciousness became a dream.

I had a dream where I watched myself and Fera lay side by side inside a hexagonal chamber of light.

The floor we lay on was decorated by a hexagon pattern with peaks for each element: wind in our feet, earth in our heads. We were only a touch away from each other, but neither of us flinched, there was movement only in our lips. My own eyes were vacant, but Fera smiled at me as if he could see I was looking at him.

“Sometimes when I was little I and mamma stayed awake at night to watch the ceiling,” I said. “We would just lay there for hours, hand in hand, count the overlapping lines and stare at them until they started to waver. And I would breathe her scent and lay on my place until I lost consciousness and drifted into dream, and I would dream of her.”

“Why?” Fera asked, his eyes on mine. “Why would you do that?”
I answered as if there had been nothing unusual about the question. “Because I loved her.”
“Loved?” Fera repeated incredulously, and I saw the smile fade off my own lips. My head started to shake slowly from one side to another, as if I had just realized the truth. “I can’t love her anymore. My mamma is dead,” I cried, but Fera looked at me through the curtain which departed my dream-me from the real me, and there was still a smile on his lips. “Shh, Hilary,” he cooed, his eyes like glass. “You lie,” he said, and suddenly I stood on the brink of an endless chasm, departing the world into two. And in the middle of all there stood a giant scale, my friends and Severina and Tristen weighing in the other cup, Fera in another.

“Choose,” Tristen spoke, and his voice was as familiar as I had heard it every day. There was a deadly smile on his lips – lips which were just like mine. “Choose.”
The scales were trembling, and every second I waited the earth ripped more apart, opening a gigantic emptiness, an emptiness void of all worlds. “Which will you choose?”
I could see right then, that if I would choose my friends and sister I would also choose my father, my father who would end it all, and lose Fera. But if I chose Fera, I could prevent the world from falling, by denying my father… But if I chose him, I would also lose everyone else, everyone…

“Mamma,” I said, my voice subsided by the howl of the growing emptiness. “If you were here, which would you choose?”

But there was no answer, and the world was any longer but an inky blackness.

I woke up with a spasm on a soft surface in a candlelight room. It took me a moment to register I wasn’t in the hallway anymore: that I had either sleepwalked or someone had carried me to the bedroom in my sleep. When I saw her my blood circulation froze and my expression turned as awestruck as hers. Hestia.

“Who is Fera?”
A jolt went through me and I sprang to a sitting position, my eyes flying wildly around to spot either Nolan or Rilla. Neither of them was there. “What?”
“You talk in your sleep,” Hestia said. She looked just like she had done when I had first caught a glimpse of her – she wore her long, scarlet guardian dress and the fire pendant, looking like a flaming eye. “You called your guardian by name. And in the end you cried for Tristen and Aurora. But no mention of me.”
I shook my head with bewilderment, wiping the last remnants of the dream off my eyes. “You’re not gone,” I acknowledged. “You’re here.”
“Of course I am,” Hestia said with amusement. “This is my home.”
“Where were you last night?” I asked, although I didn’t really know the time of day or how long I had slept. “And Severina and-“

I broke off  before blurting Aurora’s name. “Did I only dream it all? Is Chyse really okay? And Aes?”

Hestia forced a turned-down smile. “The guardians were in emergency council last night,” she began. “Patrols have been sent after the lost teenagers. We believe there are more than few missing. Some disappear always after the Elemental feast but are eventually found. This is a mere precaution.”
“It’s not the feast.”
Hestia’s oblong face twisted. “What did you say?”
“Chyse and Circus were gone even before the feast,” I said. “It’s something else.”
“Do you know something of these disappearances that the high council does not?”
Blankness hit my mind and I leaned onto my palm. There was a throbbing pain in my head, but my elbow had gone numb. When I tried thinking I only could focus on the ring in my ears and nothing came to my mind. The only thing I could finally say was: “You have patrols?”

“The regime doesn’t run on guardian power only,” Hestia laughed. “The police forces of Kaiya are very pleased to help us against a little fee. I am sure all will turn out well.”
“Whoa,” I breathed as I laid back and focused on the ceiling. All the rooms were quarried into stone. “You sound so much more official when Ariel’s not around.”
I sensed Hestia smile. “She makes me feel young.”
A thought came suddenly into my mind. “Does… does the high council accept that you and she are… together?”

In the corner of my eye I saw Hestia’s expression hadn’t changed – it was still very indifferent. “Most of the council members are very young. We are accepted well.”
But there was something behind her tone. “I don’t think it really is like that.”
“Are you afraid you will be treated the same way?”

Amusement flushed on my face. Hestia had ignored my question when it came to the negative sides of the council such as the older, more conservative members. But it wasn’t the topmost thing going on through my mind. How had she known?

“I don’t think I will become a guardian that soon,” I said quite clearly. “It’s not something I should worry about.”
“It wasn’t what I intended,” Hestia continued. “The boy at the tunnels… he knows that you are different, doesn’t he? That is why he left you so unpleasantly.”

Air escaped from my lungs as a long puff and I sat up pole-straight. “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation,” I huffed. “And I’m bi, by the way. It’s an all different story.”
“That changes things,” Hestia said in a slightly indefinable tone – I wasn’t sure whether it was apologetic or demented, like she had guessed things being as they were. “But does he-“
I lifted my both hands up in a repelling gesture, closing my eyes. “I don’t want to go through this conversation. I’m sorry. I know I owe you… my life?” I paused, “But this is not how I want to repay it. I’m very stressed out right now. All I would want to do is rest… but I just can’t.”

Hestia’s tone was motherly once again. “Why couldn’t you?”
“I can’t sleep,” I answered. “Some people say the stressing things they go through their days follow them in their dreams and they either run away from their problems or solve them. But all I get is more problems.”
Hestia’s expression was questioning, but there was nothing I could tell her. Helpless and devoid of solutions I jumped off the bed into my pink combat boots Hestia had apparently taken off in my sleep and strolled out the door into the torchlit corridor. The room I had been sleeping in was right next to a huge common room with sofas and a fireplace styled like Nolan’s home. The rooms represented each other so much I could have easily imagined the tiger pelt in front of the fireplace. But unlike Nolan’s home, there were no weapons there. It had to only mean one thing – Nolan had taken them all with him – or alternatively, there was an arsenal so large somewhere in the depths of the palace I didn’t dare to bring it in my mind.

Not knowing in which room Rilla and Nolan were staying, I started to explore the common room. Hazy daylight shone through holes in the roof like skylights, revealing me a glinting object in the almost exact middle of the round chamber. Close-up I could see it was some sort of hourglass filled with a strange kind of sand, almost like burning ashes with fiery specks. The glass had been engraved which the same type of rune-like letters which shone in different colors depending on the light like holograms. I recognized some of the letters -  each were engraved in their own elemental language. The darkness writings were just like the ones on my palm, the ones in the almost very top of the hourglass. But the only ones I could read were the ones in the bottom.

Wind letters were airy and curved like cumulus clouds, lightly and idly written. They shone an obscure shade of silver in a certain angle, forming very simply one word. MONDAY.

Suddenly I understood all the other letters too. TUESDAY. WEDNESDAY. The sand was almost halfway through, almost reaching Thursday, the day of water. The word SUNDAY had been written to the very top, and every letter shone in their own elemental color. Looking at the instrument made my head spin. Just like looking at the scales, I wanted to look away, but simultaneously couldn’t. Only Nolan’s voice snapped me out of the trance.

“Why are you worried?”
I whirled around so fast I was thankful the hourglass had been melted into the stone. “Nolan,” I said, studying his presence. He looked like himself again with the exception of how he was dressed – he had pulled on a tight, black tee which highlighted his burly shape. “All my clothes are at home,” he noted, noticing how my eyes were on his biceps. “I borrowed this from Chyse.”
So it looked. The two guys were very different when it came to looks – while Chyse would have walked naked on the streets only to show how good he looked Nolan hid his muscles under baggy shirts and pants – with reason. In Chyse’s tee he looked three times bigger than he usually did. “I knew I shouldn’t have dressed in this. It’s too distractive. Do you even remember anymore what you were worried about?”
I gave a laugh. “Gott sei Dank you aren’t Chyse. He would have finished that sentence with something like ‘I can see you are staring at my awesome abs. They can be distractive, you knew? Feast.’”

Nolan roared with laugh. “You’re like his female replica. You even have some of the same looks – the length, the hair… but not the eyes.”
I went silent, and Nolan changed the subject. “I called the councils this morning. Apparently there still aren’t signs of Circus, Aes or Talia. If I would have known there was something behind this I wouldn’t have left you alone last night.”

I waved my hand through the air nonchalantly. “It’s not all your fault. I wasn’t that careful either.”
Nolan’s eyebrows furrowed as if he had comprehended my sentence the wrong way. “I shouldn’t really ask this,” he began ominously, “But where were you?”
My response was blunt. “I didn’t go anywhere.”
Nolan let a suggestive cough, moving closer to me. “Or should I ask with whom?”
A sigh escaped from my throat. “You’re starting to sound like Chyse.”
Nolan shook his head vaguely. “It’s nothing like that, I assure you. I know you weren’t with Alex because he was with me all that time. And Aes had disappeared before that.”
But I could tell him, said my conscience. Nolan was my friend. A friend I had learned to trust a lot the last few days. Shouldn’t I tell him?

“With no-one,” I answered, not knowing why. “I just needed some alone time. Alex was starting to get on my nerves.”
“You were alone for long,” Nolan said suspiciously. “But you were on the party area, that’s the main thing. At least you weren’t alone in the woods.”
Actually, I was, my conscience spoke again. Or at least together with a stranger. A stranger who already was in my dreams…

“I’m glad you’re taking care of me,” I confessed. “It’s easier to talk to you than to Hestia. She’s acting too motherly.”
“Guardians are prone to that,” Nolan shrugged. “Now that she’s back, I could go home. I’m too big of a baby for her.”
“Then why are we still here?”
“Rilla,” Nolan answered silently, almost like she didn’t want anyone else to hear us. “She’s not in the mood to talk right now. She’s locked up in her room and hasn’t opened all day. I hope she will come out until Sunday.”
A trace of worry crept into my voice. “Are you sure she’s in there? That she hasn’t just… warped away?”
“You can’t warp inside buildings,” Nolan reminded me, then taking a quick look at my fire-branded palm. “Well, at least not inside guardian palaces. And she’s in there, I know it. When I try to come in she starts screaming and throwing things. Then she calms down and silences. Sometimes when I press my ear against the door I can hear her sob.”

A cold shudder went through me as an old image of mamma came back to me – how I had sometimes came home from school and looked for her but she had locked herself up in a room and I couldn’t get her out. The worst in it was she made no sound at all, almost like she was already dead.

“Are you going to stay, then?”
“Rather not,” Nolan’s shoulders slumped. “Times like this Rilla wants to be home. I think home is the best place for us all right now.”
I thought of Severina and her onyx palace with its somber bedrooms and murky corridors, of Aurora’s crystal gazebo and the unbelievable safeness the place brought me. They both felt equally like home. And then I thought of the house of my past – or my family’s past, where I had always felt cold. But it, too, was a home.

“Do you think I should do that too? Go home?”
“Home is where you feel safest,” Nolan acknowledged. “It doesn’t even have to be a place. It can be a person, a state of mind. Where is it that you feel safest?”
“I don’t know,” I answered instantly, thinking of Severina’s. There I would be the safest, Aurora had said. Yet she was my link to my father, the person I feared most. And at Aurora’s… her palace was like a time trap, so completely isolated off the world I could stay there forever and the world would revolve around me. “Not yet. I have to call Severina, ask her if she knows anything about this. But I could follow you. If it doesn’t matter.”
Nolan’s eyes glinted with friendliness. “It won’t. As long as you wipe that expression off your face.”
“What expression?”
“It’s in your eyes,” Nolan said, verbalizing all the thoughts which I had been unable to explain to myself. “It’s like you knew you were next.”

20: i don't sleep

viime yönä pusersin kasaan kello 2:37 2700 sanaa ja ylitin siis 40000 sanan rajan. jos pidän tahtini yllä olen valmis jo neljän päivän kuluttua. valitettavasti koeviikkoni on nyt aluillaan ja lukusuunnitelmani mukaan minulle ei jää yhtään "tyhjää" päivää jolloin lukeminen jäisi vähiin. minulla on vain viisi koetta mutta kursseilla keskittyminen on jäänyt vähän vähiin, joten lukemista tulee sitäkin enemmän. lohduttaudun kuitenkin sillä että kirjoitettavana on enää 10000 sanaa ja pääsin juuri yhteen klimaattisimmista kohtauksista. olen nyt luvussa 26, toivottavasti ette saa minua kiinni::D.

tänään saatte myös vähän silmänruokaa ranskan- ja ruotsintuneilla toteutettujen flawless-sketchieni muodossa. vasemmanpuolimmainen sivu liittyy osittain tähän lukuun, osa räpellyksistä taas myöhempiin tai aikaisempiin. kuka onkaan kuka, sen saatte itse päätellä! :) mahtuuhan mukaan tietenkin vähän muutakin... :::D

 Chapter Twenty

With the assistance of Severina I managed to wind-chat with the fire councelors and arrange a meeting at The Cities. I explained briefly the situation, changing a few facts of course. I mentioned nothing of Tristen or Severina yet. In case I would, I would say it face to face. I had five days. Five days until Sunday – five days to stop whatever Tristen was up to, as if I somehow knew.

When I appeared at The Cities, I somehow mistook the elementals being merciful for me that day. I turned out to be wrong. Monday is the day of wind, Circus had explained. Apparently Wind wasn’t in the jolliest mood. Anyhow, I had been thinking about Pause – it was a very peaceful place on Mondays – at least on Earth. I ended up blocks away in between a chapel and video rental shop – the most unlikely combination. On Earth it had been a haunted place I had never felt myself comfortable in: on weekends it was full of pedophiles, or on the contrary, priests and senior citizens. They both treated me the equal way; the single moment they noticed my pink combats and bridge they acted like they had never seen me.

On Kaiya the place was crowded. Looking at the flocks of teenagers lounging around the chapel backyard I wondered if kaiyans ever went to school.

Pause was 30 minutes away, but I couldn’t risk losing the time. The elemental tokens weighed in my pockets and I found myself fiddling them subconsciously. Even though The Cities most likely had buses, there hadn’t been a bus stop nearby, not even on Earth. Even the cabs never drove over there, and well, it was pretty hard to call a cab without knowing their number, which of course (because it was Kaiya) was impossible.

Leaning against a lamppost I had taken out one elemental token and stared at the surface with concentration. My lack of understanding the language of darkness made the carvings look like indefinable runes. Only tell what you want, and these will take you there.

Without conscious thought I found my lips forming her name. “Rilla,” I voiced, and the world changed.

At first it looked as usual as clouds passing over the sun, darkening the daylight. Sooner I could notice it was something else. Somehow it reminded me of color splash photos of a desaturated world with one splotch of color. Except that in real life I could still see the colors, only darker, with the exception of an undeniable spark of light behind the shop, like the sun had peaked through the clouds only to set it on alight.

I could without hesitation tell it was the same phenomenon as with Fera and the tunnels. It had been very different with the frenzy of music and light. As I instinctively took a turn and followed the open door into a maze of tunnels, some of them in light, some in dark, I couldn’t help wondering if it really was Fera’s plan all along: to make me follow him, drug me, make me spill out my secrets and eventually lead me to the hands of his master, in which he had failed.

At the very end of the path anyone could have said they had gone wrong. The light had ultimately ended me into a dark corridor behind a large, wooden door painted a grayish blue. Behind me the path had gone dark, but the elemental token in my hand pulsed like a beating heart, sending jolts of warmth and safety through me. There was something distant in it, too – the element darkness, perhaps. “Is this it?” I found myself whispering, reaching towards the door. To my surprise, there was no knob. My careful attempt of leaning towards it and listening failed miserably from the very beginning; I tripped into my own feet and crashed painfully towards the door.

“For the sake of the Elementals,” a familiar voice cursed behind the door. “Someone’s trying to break in.”
“Weird way to come in,” someone shrugged – Chyse, undeniably him. “Should I open?”
“Do it,” I heard Nolan command, and the door exploded in my face.

“Anybody out there?” Chyse shouted, his head peeking outside. I saw him scan towards every direction with the exception of mine, lump his shoulders and sigh. “No-one. Maybe it’s just some prankster again.”
The blow of the incoming door had knocked out the breath of my lungs, squeezing me painfully in between the door and the tunnel wall. I hadn’t had any time to yell, even less utter a little ‘ugh’ to notify I were somewhere in there. “Menaces, those are,” Chyse phrased, pulling the door back, removing the weight off my chest. But before he managed to close it, I hurled myself between the door and him.

A yell erupted from Chyse’s throat and I felt myself collapsing against him, knowing what were to happen: soon we would roll across the room tightly compressed into a ball. “What’s there?” I heard Nolan exclaim, and the next thing I knew was I lay atop of Chyse on a tiger pelt, something cold and sharp against my back. I managed a cough, and as I turned my head, Nolan jerked his hand back, his face chalk white. An ethereal chandelier hung atop his head, his coffee brown hair shining like a halo. “Hilary,” he gasped, something silvery glittering in his hand. A loud gulp forced down my throat. “Is that a knife?”

“Actually, this is a machete,” Nolan corrected, examining at the slightly curved blade. “It could have sliced you in two. What was all that about?”
“Chyse squeezed me against the door,” I whimpered, my gaze scanning the room around me. Each wall was different: one covered in an ancient wood panel, another coated with an Asian ruby red wallpaper. There was something familiar and something foreign in the place simultaneously. The topmost I was taken aback by the bizarreness of the place: it looked like some sort of sick combination of a hunting lodge, a drug lair and someone’s home.

“Excuse me,” someone muttered under me, his breath hot against my ribs. “But you are squeezing me.”

Her face embarrassingly red, Rilla reached out a hand to pull me up, freeing Chyse from his pain. He lay half dead on the tiger pelt as if he had fought a 48-hour infernal battle and finally slain the beast. “That… that is a tiger pelt,” I managed to utter, still confused where I were. “But they’re endangered.”
“In Kaiya, they’re extinct,” Nolan notified, sticking his machete in a stand atop his table. Next to it was a Chinese cabinet which looked like a trophy showcase.

“Don’t say you killed the last one,” I said, staring bewildered at the machete. It wasn’t the only weapon in the room. “What’s up with all the weapons? Suddenly everyone’s carrying two-edged swords and crossbows like shopping bags. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a lightsaber or a revolver laying somewhere around here. Where am I?”
Nolan sighed, exhaling deeply as the color flushed back on his face. Even Chyse showed signs of life – his fingers twitched. “Weapons are here only in case. The culture of Kaiya is really pacifist: they are only relics of the past. Most of these are from the Fire castle,” Nolan explained, his hands pointing all around. “I received them as housewarming gifts as I moved here.”
My eyes widened. “What strange things to give as housewarming gifts. I myself received a wine bottle.” There was a pause while my eyes rested on a pair of light blue doors, just like the ones I had came through. They had clouds painted over them rather artistically, nothing like the 5-year old sketches I made. “Wait a sec. You live here?”
“Yes,” Nolan said. “This is the City of Fire.”
“We were just leaving,” Rilla began, her distressed gaze never leaving Chyse. “When you stormed in. How did you find it here?”
The darkness token had slipped from between my fingers as Chyse and I tumbled on the floor, but it hadn’t rolled far. I picked it up under the dead tiger’s paw and raised it up high, the dim candlelight reflecting off the glossy surface. “A darkness token. Severina gave it to me.”

With my words Chyse somehow forced himself up, staring curiously at the token in between my fingers. I could notice that now, after use the carvings on it had worn out as if a layer had been scrubbed off, the token now being a blank mineral disc. “So this explains why you arrived through the back door.”

I gazed behind me, but saw nothing more than the blue doors behind me.

“But… that’s a closet.”
“But also a door,” Nolan explained, “A door to a dangerous world. There are many levels to a world. The tunnels are one of Kaiya. The doors are hard to find and reveal risky things of this realm.”
That sounds serious, I thought, staring incredulously at Nolan’s severe face. Chyse however didn’t look as grave. “The tunnels are a gateway to virtually anywhere, if you only know where to look. They are a world completely of their own. It’s like the nightlife of Kaiya – once you get in, you’ll never get out.”
“Hestia often goes to the tunnels with Ariel,” Rilla mentioned. “The party down there never stops.”
“I know,” I blurted, somehow subconsciously knowing I couldn’t hold back for longer. “I saw them there.”
“Does this have something to do with your situation?” Chyse asked, walking across the room to a zebra-patterned couch. “We’re all here, so why not talk things through whilst we still can? We don’t have to leave anywhere.”
I shrugged, following Chyse to the couch. I noticed he had laid his feet atop a coffee table built out of human bones. A shudder jolted through me. “I guess,” I swallowed painfully. “If someone sits in that armchair over there. I don’t want the tiger staring at me while I confess my deepest secrets.”

“You’ll get used to this surprisingly fast,” Chyse continued, spacing out as Rilla sat next to her to the corner of the couch. “With all the skulls and animal heads staring at you all the time.”
“Tea?” Nolan asked suddenly, carrying a terracotta tray and a Japanese tea pan. I answered with an instant nod. “I know we won’t be drinking this the traditional way, but I would prefer a chair instead of the floor.”
Nolan passed me the pan, and as I poured hot water in a huge, green cup (hopefully not made out of bones), I felt the truth on the tip of my tongue like it could spill out any minute soon. “It’s going to be difficult to explain this,” I began, the scent of green tea dazing my senses. “It’s really not that complicated, but… hard to digest.”
Nolan tilted his head with interest. “Well, go ahead. What is the point?”
Instead of words the truth came out of my mouth as a mush of syllables.

“What?” I heard Nolan exclaim, and someone choked onto their tea. “What did you say?”

“Severina is my sister,” I repeated.

Rilla coughed, staring blankly at my fingers. “Hilla,” she croaked, her face red. “Your hands are shaking.”
I lowered my cup thoughtlessly. Next to me Chyse stared into emptiness.

“What does this have to do with anything?” Nolan asked, his fingers rubbing his chin like they would stroke a beard. I sighed, sipping my tea. “Let’s do it the other way around. I think I’ve found an explanation for what’s happening in Kaiya.”
“What’s it, then?” Chyse asked his face still expressionless. “What do you think is happening in Kaiya?”

But before I could answer, Rilla had already opened her mouth.

“A change,” she began. “Elemental imbalance.”
“Yes, Rilla,” I continued, slightly taken aback. “And I’m here to explain who’s to cause it.”
There was a clink as Nolan’s cup clashed with the coffee table. His expression was official, the same kind of which was permanently glued on Circus’ face. “Are you here to accuse a council member of treachery?”
“Not to accuse,” I corrected instantly. “But to testify. I know the things are just like they are,” I said, naming all the issues of Kaiya I could think about: the haze, the Elementals, even mentioning the break-in into the old Archives. “There is someone behind all these events. And this is not all. There is more to come. They’re all part of some greater plan.”
Nolan’s tone had gone blank, devoid of all emotion. “Hilary,” he warned, his eyes burning like dark coals. “You are making a serious accusation. I am not the right person to accept an accusation of this severity. You must stand by the council and explain the situation there. And be aware that when you say the name, you cannot take it back.”
“But I’m not making an accusation,” I said from beneath my teeth. “I’m only speaking the-“
“Without proof any accusation is futile.”
I felt anger in my toes, my fingertips. “Will you stop being such a shithead and listen to me for a second?”

Nolan fell silent, his hands as white as his face. Without saying a word, he took his cup of tea to his mouth and swallowed it with a few heavy gulps.

“Better,” I sighed, my voice still shaking. “It’s not that easy! It’s not been long since… Well, Aurora told me there’s someone behind this. She told me no name, but hinted somewhere in that direction. Then I saw this vision of a man on the desert and-“
“It’s Tristen,” Chyse interrupted, now completely present and awake. “Isn’t it?”
“And he was controlling souls,” I continued briefly. “Severina told me it’s him, and that… well – I’m not really a child of darkness. I think you guessed it. My element is wind. It’s just… Severina took me under her protection, because she knew his father would be after me.”
As the pieces seemed to click together I saw the expressions around me stiffen. Even Nolan had fallen dead silent: a sign that something was wrong. “But if Severina is your sister…” Rilla began, her blue eyes boring onto mine. “Doesn’t that make Tristen your father?”
“I hate to say it, but yes.”
Rilla’s eyes were wide as she scanned me from head to toe. “Now that I look at you, you and he look a hell a lot alike,” she said.

“That’s how I guessed it’s him,” Chyse added. “You’ve got the same eyes.”
“That’s also what Severina – uhm – my sister told me. I just hope there’s nothing else alike in us than the way we look like.”
Chyse and Rilla forced smiles on their faces, whereas Nolan looked only very thoughtful. His eyes flickered, a battle raging within, whether he should follow his heart or his mind.

“Let’s all hope that,” he finally said, and as I buried my gaze in my cup of tea, my amber eyes reflecting of the surface as pieces of gold, a voice spoke inside my head – my conscience – and instead of mine, the voice was Fera’s.

Oh, but there is, he said, and in my mind I could see the razors of his eyes flash.

“There are things in my father’s past which I have to find out,” I said after a long pause, stirring a spoon absently in my tea. “There is something I have to seek for: a notebook. This… mein Gott, this is more complicated than I thought. I don’t have time to explain it all. But there’s one person I need to find to get it back. It’s Fera.”
“Fera?” Nolan leaned forward in his chair. Behind him the frowning tiger head seemed to laugh at my despair. “The amnesiac boy from The Cities?”
“Honestly, I don’t know what he is.”
Nolan’s expression was anguished. “Why haven’t you told us these things before? Does anyone else know?”
I answered with a shake of my head. The gesture felt hard, almost forced, and I could feel my muscles going limp.

“We should inform the others,” Chyse suggested. “At least Talia. She seemed to be very worried of Fera the last time.”
“Actually, there’s one thing you should know…”
But before I could explain it all I felt my vision going black and my head droop down, falling involuntarily into the unconscious state of dreamless sleep.

When I woke up the light had turned from afternoon red to midnight blue. It shone dimly through the heavy curtains of a single window. It took me a second to identify my location and the time of day. The coffee table had been cleaned and the chandelier hung unlit above my head. Very slowly I allowed my eyes adapt to the darkness, correcting my fetal position, causing a loud snap erupt from my joints.

“That was the most absurd scenario of falling asleep I have ever seen,” Nolan said, his voice ringing lonely in the dark.

“Really?” I laughed, my muscles still rigid and sore. “What time is it?”
“Around midnight,” Nolan answered, something sparkling between his fingers – one of his weapons again? “Though it doesn’t really matter.”
There was a curious absentness in his moves – he circled the room like a tranquilized tiger ready to become a pelt. As he walked past me, I could hear what had originally awoken me – a silent hum beneath his lips – a song I could well recognize.

“Where do you know that song?” I asked as I rose up from the armchair with a yawn. Nolan cut his hum abruptly, right where Madonna had sung you made me feel shiny and new.

“This? It’s a song from my childhood,” Nolan answered, now frozen at his tracks. “One of the few things of Earth I remember.”
There was an amusement in my tone as I spoke my eyebrows upraised. “Isn’t that song kind of inappropriate for a kid of your age? Like a virgin! Touched for the very first time!”

Nolan’s eyes widened. “I never paid attention to the lyrics,” he shrugged, humming the remnants of the chorus – when your heart beats next to mine. “I just remember it, just like someone remembers their very first words. What is the song called?”
“Like A Virgin,” I vocalized. “A song by Madonna. Is there anything else you remember?”
Nolan’s tone was blank. “All the Earth bands I know are centuries old. I doubt you know them.”
“I doubt you know my favorite bands neither,” I leaned against the couch. “Coldplay, Snow Patrol…”
Nolan nodded as if of interest, but there was a blank lack of expression on his face. I could see he hadn’t slept. Chyse and Rilla were both gone. What was he still doing there?
“You didn’t wake me up,” I found myself saying. “Why?”
“We didn’t bother,” Nolan answered. “After what you have gone through… it is understandable to lose your sleep. I am experiencing the same phenomenon right this second. It’s about Circus.” There was a short pause, and I could hear Nolan exhale heavily. His hair was tousled and he hadn’t shaved, making him look older and… different. “I have been trying to contact her for hours, but there has been no answer. She must be busy.”
Nolan’s heavy eyebrows furrowed over his eyes nervously, and for a swift second I thought I could understand. “Is there something between you two? You’re always so… close.”

Nolan smiled vaguely. “No. We are just really old friends.”

“Are you gay?”

There was a loud clink of metal against metal and a flash, as a set of knifes arranged according to their sharpness and size hit the wooden floor and pierced it like butter. A set of double doors in the distance opened, and Chyse stormed in, dressed alone in his boxer shorts. Rilla followed him drowsily, her thick hair an auburn explosion around her face. She, thank goodness, was wearing a nightgown.

“For the sake of the elements,” Rilla cussed, rubbing her eyes. She still had her makeup on, and it smudged around her eyes making her look like a raccoon. “What’s happening here? It’s one AM!”
“Just an accident,” Nolan answered, his eyes not really focused on anywhere, but I couldn’t help speculating whether he would have wanted to look at Chyse’s six-pack. “We’re sorry we woke you up.”
Then Chyse looked at me, and inside my mind I tried to imagine him wearing at least some pants. “You’re awake,” he said, and I stared breathlessly at Nolan whose chest heaved as he focused to restrain his emotions. “How did you sleep?”
“Well,” I answered, but not as well as you did.

Rilla had been very silent all the time, maybe due her drooping eyelids and swaying figure, but now, her eyes adapted to the darkness around her, she struggled no more to stay awake. “Any news? Of Talia? There was something you were to tell about her.”
“Yeah…” I breathed, taking hold of Nolan’s armchair to keep up my balance. “Let’s just make it simple. I’m a shithead,” I announced, my arms wide. “One forsaken shithead. The single one shithead in this universe.”
Talia’s expression told me more than a thousand words: What. The. Hell?

“I went saying some bad things to Talia. Very bad things,” I added. “Now she’s angry at me. I haven’t seen her in a day.”
The silence hanging between us was awkward, disturbing – the kind of silence I knew was wrong. “Does she hold grudges?”
“We don’t know,” Chyse answered, his teeth gnashed. “We’ve never seen her angry.”

 “What kind of things did you say to her?”
“Basically,” I answered Rilla, “I accused her of being a jealous shithead who interests me as much as hell. Oh, and I claimed her of having wet dreams of me.”
A sharp noise escaped between Chyse’s teeth. “Ouch. That is badass.”
“That is fairly badass,” Rilla complemented.

A scream of frustration escaped beneath my lips and I threw my hands up in exasperation. “But I hate being badass! All the people I’ve hated have been somehow badass. And I don’t want to hate myself.”
You will, a cold laughter tingled the back of my neck. In the end, you will.

The floor was clear yet again and Nolan’s knives had been placed neatly in their stand. As I watched him, I tried finding traces of anger or fear, but none showed. He could have even smiled if he wanted to. “It’s up to the three of us now,” he said. “Talia and Circus… neither of them seem to answer.”
“How much time do we have?” Chyse asked, raking his sandy blonde hair.

Rilla yawned loudly, her arms drawing circles in the air. “Enough time to go back to sleep,” she said, throwing herself on the couch. “Five minutes.”

5760 minutes, 96 hours, four days.

And each second of the night as I watched Rilla, Chyse and Nolan sleep around me, we were losing time.

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.