25 June 2012
I watched Jensen hold my hand, his knuckles white, his face twisted into something between pain and anger. I looked from him to my body, lying on the hospital gurney, so still, so empty. The heart-rate monitor they had attached to me was nothing but a flat line, the long uninterrupted beep that went with it was loud in the silence. I looked between Jensen and myself, and I felt slow, because it took a moment to realize that I was watching from the in-between.
In-between life, in-between death.
I also realized that all the glamour, magic, that I used on a daily basis to make myself look human had faded. I looked to Jensen, and he looked human, his glamour was there, but mine was gone. My hair hung off the gurney, so blond it was nearly white and was long enough to pool in a pile on the floor. My skin had gone from humany pink to the color of the pale moon. I could see my ears peeking out from my hair, they were pointed, and though my eyes were closed I knew they were now as green as a cats. Jensen and I weren't from this world, we were from another world where folks like us, Elves, were the majority, and humans were the minority. We were from a world where magic lived and...technology...didn't. I cringed at the thought.
He and I had been thrown from or world into this one on a bad turn of luck. I'd say how, but, we hadn't figured it out yet. All we had known was that we were in our home one moment, and the next a great blinding light had engulfed the study where we had been, and poof, we were here. It sounded silly when you said it like that, but thats what had happened. We'd spent nearly two years here together, my brother and I, trying to find a way home, and now I was about to leave him alone in this strange place.
I was having trouble concentrating now, and watching Jensen was starting to be like watching a dream, fuzzy, not really there. A hand slid over my shoulder, it was warm, comforting. I turned to look at the cloaked figure behind me. The hood of the cloak hung low over her face, and what you could see of her face, you couldn't really see. You caught the glimpse of a young woman, but when I blinked I got a glimpse of an elderly woman.
The Goddess was a part of every woman, had a piece of every woman within her.
I turned fully, and knew before looking that the figure standing just behind her was her God, and that he, like her, was a part of every man, and had a piece of every man within him. They wore matching black cloaks as they stood before me, and I looked down at myself, at the white gown that had been draped over my body. It wasn't made of any material that I knew of, and as I brushed my fingers over it, all I could think was that it was made of air, of dreams, of light itself. I looked back up at the Goddess and I felt her smile. I didn't see it, but felt it, like a shifting in the air.
"You are at the cross roads, my child" she said. Her voice danced over my skin, like fireflies over the water, light and filled with life.
I looked at her, and to her God, "Where do I go," I asked, and for the first time in two years my voice felt, and sounded, as it was supposed to. She reached up, her hand young, then old, as she ran gentle fingers in a caress down my cheek.
She gently turned me back towards Jensen. I had forgotten he was there. How could I forget? He sat beside the gurney, beside me, holding my hand tightly in his. His face still harsh, scared. "You can't leave me like this Dani. You're so much stronger than this," he said, and I could hear the crack of tears in his voice. "I watched you," he continued, "I watched you rise up from the blood of your slain child, I watched you take command of our armies, armies that did not belong to us, I watched you lead over fifty thousand men into battle, and win freedom for our people. I watched you win for us, for all of us." His voice cracked, and he leaned over my body, his shoulders shaking.
The Goddess's hands slid over both my shoulders from behind and she pressed herself close to me, and the warmth of her body against mine was a comfort, like your favorite blanket during a cold storm. "Where you go is your wish, Damilia, you can stay, or you can go, you are at the crossroads." She said.
"Will you stay, or will you go?"
CrossRoads • Opuss № I