Her eyelids flicked open. At first, all she saw was the flickering of a flame. She didn’t remember where she was -- but her eyes were drawn to flame. She sat up and looked around the dimly lit room, and she seemed to have a faint memory of what had happened, and where she was. It was all so surreal she wasn’t sure if what she was remembering was something she had dreamed, or hallucinated, or if it could be real. She started to get out of the bed, and the door opened.
“Ah I see you have awakened. Did you sleep well?” A woman standing in the doorway said with a soft smile-- the same woman from her dream of a memory of a night so unreal, her logic was having serious trouble accepting it as truth. “Who are you?” Said the confused and much conflicted Amaya from the bed. “Dear, do you not remember me?” She responded with a bit of sadness and confusion herself. She already felt so much for this girl; already had such a strong bond, she had thought. “Yes--” She said, but then stopped as if her mind would not allow her to finish her sentence. “B-but…” She stammered and then her mind halted again. “But what?” Diana asked, beginning to fear what the girl might say next. “But you’re not real!” She exclaimed as she jumped up and stood firm looking at the woman.
“Well… I certainly can understand why you might feel that way…” Her voice trailed off with a slight pain, and her eyes changed from their former strong but gentle protectiveness to a saddened and confused vulnerability. “But what you felt last night, when I was embracing you, was that not real?” The girl shook her head trying not to let her words get to her. Her logic had taken over and she saw this woman as either some sort of hallucination or someone who wanted to hurt her. “No, it was NOT.” She said as she tried to walk out the door.
The woman caught her and gently held her back. “There is something you don’t understand, love…” Her voice trailed off again, now she was the one who was conflicted. She hadn’t wanted to tell her yet; telling her now would be too soon, it would hurt her, she wouldn’t have time to make her understand. “What?! What don’t I understand?!” Amaya yelled at her, feeling frightened by how much she wanted to fall into her arms. “Please, don’t make me tell you yet.” She pleaded. “Please, I didn’t want to tell you like this.” Her eyes were now begging the girl, she wanted so badly to avoid causing her anymore pain. “Just tell me!!” The girl screeched as she fought to hold her thoughts, which were battling each other, together. “Will you come sit on the bed with me, and I will tell it to you?” She said, offering to the girl, not wanting to force her. “Fine, but you have to tell me.” The girl said with a touch of bitterness.
They sat on the bed and the woman closed her eyes and shook her head. She wished she could have held this off at least a little while longer, but she knew if she didn’t tell her now, the girl would find it on her own, and she might lose her. “Are you going to tell me?” She demanded. “Yes, yes… I am.” She took the girl’s hand and held it in her own two hands and looked soothingly into her eyes. “That night, in your room--” The woman stopped, it was almost painful to tell her, but she knew had to. “Yes… in my room, what?” The woman closed her eyes and opened them again, having found the strength to tell her, knowing that it was the only way. “The things you were thinking that night in your room, the image you saw…” She stopped again; she couldn’t bear to tell her. “The image you saw… was real.” She stopped and waited for the reaction out of the girl.
“What do you mean?” The girl said, even more confused now. “You remember what you saw, don’t you? What you were thinking of doing. Well, what you did do.” “No I didn’t…” The girl said, sure of her words as if Diana must be mistaken. “Yes, dear, you did…” Diana replied, not knowing how to get her to believe her without hurting her. “But I remember, I didn‘t, if I had… I wouldn’t be here.” Amaya tried to reason. “But you are here, and you did.” The woman said with a voice full of sympathy. “ I didn’t!” She said, now with a bit of alarm. “Oh but you did, love. You did.” She then pulled the girl’s wrist up and showed it to her, a long deep gash in her wrist just where she had remembered seeing it. I DIDN’T!!” Amaya began to scream at her over and over “I DIDN’T! I DIDN’T!!” She began to sob now, and backed slowly away from the woman. And then, a soft whimper of “ I didn’t…” Shaking her head. She then looked up at the woman with pleading eyes full of tears. “I know I didn’t. I remember. I remember. I remember what happened. And that-- that-- that did NOT happen.”
The woman pulled the girl close to her, now crying soft tears herself. “ I know I didn’t do it. It was all a dream, a vision, a hallucination. I would never do that, NEVER!!” “Then what of this, here on your wrist?” She said gently. The girl’s eyes widened. “I… don’t know.” She stood there, eyes wide in disbelief. “But how?” The woman, still walking slowly toward her said, “The reason, love, that you do not remember actually doing it--that you thought it wasn’t real-- is that I did that to you. I heard you calling out to me in those last few precious moments of your life, and I took your mind out of your body. That is why you saw it, and not felt it. That is why it does not seem real, but as a dream to you. I called your soul here to me. If you left now, you wouldn’t be able to find your way back to your home. Your home, you cannot reach on your own. And if you ever were to get there, you would not be able to live a normal life among the living as you had before.”
The woman was now standing just in front of the girl, waiting now for her to speak, and gazing into her eyes softly. The girl’s eyes seemed to snap back to her surroundings, and her eyes darted to those of the woman before her. “What would have happened to me if you had not… done what you did?” She asked the woman with an expression of sadness and wonder. “Well, dear… you would have gone to a very very bad place. You would have gone to where your soul would never feel anything but loneliness and pain.” The girl’s eyes seemed to be changing, as if she now was understanding and believing what the woman said. “So, you’re saying… I would have…done…what I did--regardless of your interference?” The woman moved closer to the girl and softly stroked her hair. “Yes, love. Only you would have experienced it as reality, and you would be in very bad place now.”
The girl looked down and shook her head. “Then what did you do once I was --” Her voice stopped, she couldn’t even say the word. “ Well you know…once I was…gone.” She looked into her eyes and softly said, “Well, love… I called your soul out of your body before you could do it, and therefore your soul, the important part of you, escaped from the fate of your body. I brought you to me. Everything you saw on the way here, was all what I created. I’m sure your next question will be to ask where you are now.” The girl nodded, as that was what she was wondering at the very moment. “This is my home, my own personal plane of existence. There are many more than you will ever be able to visit in your lifetime. I myself have been around for a very long time, and I have not even been to half of what is out there.” The girl walked over to the bed and sat, her logic was now trying to piece together this new reality--a new set of rules to think by.
“Well, where did you come from then?” The woman walked over and sat on the bed beside her, just a few inches away from her, facing her. “I came the same as you. There are many of us now, ones like you and me. No one knows how it began though. No one knows who was the first, if the first is still around, or how the first started this way of cheating death. So far, no one has found a way to escape for the mortal reality to this one without being led by one of us. Many have searched and searched. But none have ever found anything.”
The girl just shook her head and looked off into the dimness of the room. “I don’t even know what to say, really.” The girl stopped and then looked up into the woman’s eyes and leaned against her shoulder. “But thank you.” The woman smiled and pulled the girl into her lap and held her there. “Think nothing of it m’love. Think nothing of it at all.”
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