My procrastinating days are over...yeah, right!
I can't remember what I have or haven't said about my book. I've scrapped it and started from scratch I don't know how many times now in the past two years. I've also jumped back and forth with trying to write Path's Unseen, and the Adventures of Pete and Sampson. So last winter I sat down and made a few decisions. One, until I'm done the first book, I'm only writing Path's Unseen (and the occasional fanfic). Two, I've nailed down the entire plotline and layout of the first book. Originally I made the goal of finishing the first draft before the end of the semester, which is still entirely possible, I'm just starting off late.
Well, according to my layout, the plan is to switch POV's between my three main characters every chapter break. I'm realizing now that's not going to work. I'm still going to follow the layout, but some sections have too many plot points for a single chapter. Oh well. first drafts are first drafts after all.
But hey! I've actually written something (after yet once again scraping what I had)! And because I'm all excited that I actually accomplished something, I'm going to post it. It's unedited, so ignore any grammar mistakes, please. I'm not letting myself edit until it's all done for fear that I'll intimidate myself into scraping it...again.
Also, since I'm serious about trying to publish I won't be posting much more than a few bits from time to time. Anywho...
Chapter 1 word count: 3935
Total word count: 3935
Music streamed through her player as she danced around her room getting ready for school. It wasn’t the kind of music her parents approved of, but it was the kind Brianna liked best. The kind who’s rhythms pulsed through her veins and made her mind race. The lyrics weren’t too bad, either, but it was the way the music moved through her with a vibration that felt like energy that she loved best.
To her parents it was just noise, but to Brianna Reah, it was like a living stream that flowed through her mind. It was an ever changing river of life full of emotion and energy and rhythm.
“Bri! Hurry up or you’ll be late!” Her mother yelled through the door, the call coming like a stone tossed into the river, upsetting the balance for a brief moment only to be swallowed up by the raging music.
Grinning, Brianna yelled back, “Almost ready, Mom!” She slipped on several rings and hung an assortment of necklaces around her neck. She looked at herself in the mirror above her dresser wondering if she should put her hair up in tails, but that look would only be good with color and she didn’t have time to streak her hair.
Like all Cathosians, Brianna’s hair was a white silver, and in her opinion a little too flat. Unlike most Cathosians, she’d been born with it that way. Usually Cathosians were born with colored hair just like the rest of the world, but with puberty it would change to the white silver. A very few rare people were born with their hair already changed.
Brianna smiled, humming to the music as she contemplated her look. She liked the white silver. She liked being different. Only a couple kids in her class still had colored hair, Wendi, with her mass of red curls -oh how Bri wished she had curly hair, and Chester who seemed aptly named he was so plain brown. There was even a rumor around school that Chester wasn’t actually Cathosian, but was from the somewhere in the Dragite Empire. Even so, everyone knew Brianna had had her white hair the longest.
She finally decided the rings and necklaces were too much, and took most of them off, keeping only her favorites. A silver ring with the four Great Animals engraved into the band and a necklace with a jagged heart pendent that read ‘Punk out.’ The mass amounts of bracelets she kept. They came in all kinds of colored metals, and she enjoyed the way they jingled as she moved her hands.
Perfect.
Pulling her boots on, Brianna was reaching for her school bag when the house suddenly shook so hard it knocked several pictures off the walls. The music jerked and skipped, the sounds running knives across her mind. The house shook again and this time Brianna lost her balance, falling back onto her bed.
“Mom?! Dad!” Brianna yelled out in alarm.
She tried to get back to her feet only to fall back again as the world spun about her, but she couldn’t tell if Aruna herself was moving beneath her feet, or if she was shaking so hard it just seemed that way. Brianna bolted for the door, her hands hitting it right as another shockwave seemed to hit the house, only this time it was accompanied by a deafening explosion of noise.
The force of the explosion didn’t just shake the house. It propelled her through the door, a wave of fire engulfing her.
Then, suddenly, it was cold again.
Stumbling forward, Brianna found herself not in the hall of her house, but in the hall of her school. Shaking and confused she looked around the darkened hallways.
Posters and signs covered the walls advertizing the last dance of the year. She was going with Samson. He’d been asking her all year, much to the envy of the girls in her class. Samson was the Captain of the Hopie team, and they’d had a very good year.
A banner hung across the hall from the ceiling, the bold school colors of black, purple, and blue, standing out even in the dark. The word ‘congratulations’ was written out in purple sparkling letters for those who were graduating this year. Wasn’t she graduating? She’d been accepted into the Institute of Communications. Her technical exam scores had been the third highest in her class. She was going to be a sound technician.
But something tickled in the back of her mind, some memory of still being young, and still several years away from graduating.
Brianna looked down at herself, but the signs of her youth were gone. No noisy bracelets adorned her wrists, just the silver chain Samson had given her when she had said ‘yes.’ She was taller now, too, wearing the latest in fashion that made her family look wealthier than they really were. In fact, there were many things about her that made her seem more than she really was.
Popular, smart, always being asked out but rarely dated. It was what she’d yearned for at the school, and she’d accomplished it. Because Brianna had a secret.
As if by thinking the very thought, eyes turned on her. Brianna looked up sharply, searching the dark halls for whoever was watching her, but the halls were as empty as before. The door behind her was closed now, locked. She jiggled the handle to be sure, but it wouldn’t budge.
Suddenly unsure and little scared, Brianna moved silently down the hall, wondering where everyone else was. A soft orange glow beckoned her and she unconsciously moved deeper into the heart of the school to see what it was. It wasn’t just dark shadows any more that kept her company. The orange glow moved, making living shadows of their own against the school walls.
It was getting hotter, too. Licking dry lips, Brianna wondered if she should continue or turn back while she could, but her heart told her it was already too late.
Then she found the source of the light. It was coming from under the door of one of the science rooms, the glow leaking out the way a pipe leaked water. Only this wasn’t moving like water, and the heat only got stronger the closer she got.
Still, unable to stop herself, Brianna reached for the door, needing desperately to see what was on the other side. Heart pounding, she slowly turned the handle. It wasn’t locked like the rest, but it didn’t open easily, as if some force were pushing against it.
She pushed back, feeling the heat scorch her hand but unable to let go. With a sudden cry she threw her whole body into the effort of opening the door and with a last push it flung wide open.
Brianna stumbled inside even as the back draft of flames engulfed her. The feeling was so familiar she almost cried, the sound cut off in the roaring tumult of noise suddenly surrounding her.
And then there was silence.
She wondered for a second if she had died, and looking down at her deformed feet, she did indeed feel dead. Falling to her knees on the hard stone floor, Bri covered her estranged face with her equally deformed hands and wept bitterly.
Wings as long as her body, and covered in the fine fur that now lay like patchwork on her skin, enclosed around her like a protective cocoon. They belonged to a stranger. They belonged to her.
Her worst nightmare had come true. She had been discovered, blended with a cat, as was the law, and confined to a prison they called a temple. But why? Where had she gone wrong?
Her sobs echoed loudly under her wings, each tear hitting the ground and sounding as loud as bombs in her ears. Then other sounds penetrated her hearing. Bombs. Real bombs.
Startled out of her misery, Bri slowly unfolded her wings, her now feline ears twitching to catch the distant noises. Was the temple under attack? But who? And why? Didn’t they know the oldest of the Great Cats lived here? The temples were sacred land. No one on all of Aruna would dare attack a temple.
But this wasn’t her temple. Looking around all Bri could see was dust and age, the walls weathered and old. The distant sounds of explosions continued. Confused, she moved cautiously down the hall. A door, she’d been looking for a door.
Some part of her subconscious mind told she’d found two doors already and wondered if she really wanted to find another, but draw to find that door was just as strong as it’d been before. And then ahead of her lay what she was seeking. The door looked even older than the halls, the wood broken in places and ready to crumble at a touch.
Like the door before, a red glow seeped through the cracks, the sounds of the explosions now so loud that while she couldn’t feel any repercussions, her mind insisted they were going off in the room beyond.
She had to see what was on the other side, and like a force calling her name, Bri reached out with an unbidden hand, intent on opening this door as well. She was barely a fraction away from touching the handle when a shadow drew her attention away. With a snap, Bri pulled her hand back in alarm. What was she doing?
Was this a dream? The thought came clearly to her mind and with a shake of her head Bri stepped back, away from the glowing red door. It had to be a dream.
And then the shadow played on the edge of her peripheral vision and Bri turned to look down the dimly lit hallway. There was no one there and the only tracks in the dust were her own, but the feeling that she was being watched was almost overwhelming. It sent ripples of shivers up her spine and she felt her fur rise up in warning. She couldn’t explain it, but every sense she had told her she was in terrible trouble.
Then just as suddenly the feeling vanished. Bri let out a long cautious breath, and then confused, she looked again at the door in front of her. She could remember everything now, as if her conscious awareness had come awake while the rest of her still slept. Bri didn’t know why, or how, but she knew she had absolutely no intention of purposely stepping through a door and into a bomb.
“I’m insane, but I’m not that insane,” she grumbled to herself.
Looking back down the hall, Bri wondered how she should go about waking herself up. Ever since her blending, nightmares had become a regular event, but this was the first time Bri had ever felt like she had any control in one. If only that made any difference. A dream was only a dream, after all.
For a moment, Bri wondered if she could take this dream backwards, to the time before her blending, but she knew that wouldn’t solve her problem. She had two pasts, now, not just one, and much as she might wish it sometimes, she knew she couldn’t sleep forever.
And then she wondered about the shadow. Had it been her imagination? Just some random part of the dream? There was only way to know for sure, but Bri wasn’t even sure her abilities could work inside a dream.
Jumping slightly as another bomb went off behind the glowing door, Bri murmured, decided, “Well, I’m not going forward, might as well go somewhere else.” And then forcing herself to relax, she reached out for the flow of energy. It was just like the music, a living stream that flowed through her, filling her with vibrations of rhythm, emotions, energy, and life. There were actually two streams, the anala energy stream that directly welled up out of the planet, Aruna, and the amuna energy stream that came from within, but when connected to Aruna was amplified a hundred fold. When the energy steams ran together the vibrations surging through her all but sang with perfect harmony. It was perhaps the only good thing about being blended.
Bri gave herself a moment to simply enjoy the pure bliss of the energies flowing through her. It was the only time things ever felt right again, but what she needed now was the anala energy. Concentrating, she reluctantly let the amuna energy recede, and focused only on drawing the anala energy from the planet. With that energy she had the ability to see the echoes people made as they passed, like trails of invisible light, each with their own look and feel.
Her own path was generally one as white-silver as her hair, and just as dull. It wasn’t visible now, and for a moment Bri thought that perhaps her ability was useless in dreams, but then the same sensations of danger filled her, just as they had before. Squinting, as if that might make her sight somehow improve, Bri stared back down the dimly lit hallway where she knew the shadow had been. And then suddenly she realized that her white-silver path was there as it should, only covering it, practically swallowing it up in its depths, was a trail so black and so cold that it seemed to absorb everything around it.
With a shudder Bri let go of the energy and both the paths and the feelings of dread vanished. Suddenly, the glowing door with its threat of incineration seemed a whole lot more inviting. “This is plain silly!” Bri suddenly chastised herself, furious for being so intimidated by a dream. Then, as if to prove it, she drew upon the anala energy stream again.
The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end in alarm as the black line appeared before her, but clenching her jaw Bri took several steps forward until she stood on the ominous path. “Well, it hasn’t sucked me up, too,” she remarked, trying to encourage herself onward. This was just a dream.
Following the black path she soon came to another door. It wasn’t any different than the rest of the doors in the empty temple, but at least it wasn’t glowing red, or better yet, black. Taking a breath to affirm her courage, Bri pushed on the door and stepped through.
There was a slight shift, like a sudden case of vertigo, but it was gone again in an instant and Bri stumbled forward into yet another hallway. At first she thought it was just another hall in the temple, but then she realized this temple was different. If possible, it seemed to be in worse condition than the last. The hallway she stood in was partially caved in and almost completely overrun with vines and plants. A hot sun shone down through the broken ceiling illuminating what was left.
Turning around Bri couldn’t even see the door she had stumbled through, if it was even there at all. But the black path was still intact, creating a shadow trail where shadows didn’t fall. “Now there’s really no going back,” Bri murmured.
She had to climb through several weaves of vines and carefully make her way around the obscured piles of rocks to follow the path. Not surprising, it seemed to lead inward, and pushing over a pile of rubble, Bri finally made her way into the inner recesses of the now ancient temple. For a dream, she was getting her fair share of scratches. Bri wondered if she managed to hurt herself enough, would it wake her up, but now that she had come this far, she wanted to know just where it was this path would lead her.
The further into the center of the ruins she went, the less the outside jungle had penetrated, making it easier to traverse until finally she came to yet another door. This door was the biggest door she’d ever seen, bigger than even the large doors made to accommodate the great animals. Odder still, was that the door seemed to be made of crystal, which was impossible.
Curious, Bri stretched her hand out to the door and received yet another shock. The door wasn’t just made from crystal, it was made from versalite. Most of the time, versalite looked like a clear translucent quartz, but when it was near those who could connect to the energies, than it, too, reflected that energy. The area in front of Bri’s hand had turned into a swirl rich with color and life. She hadn’t even had to touch it.
Bewildered and more than a little awed, Bri pressed on the huge door, feeling the flow of her anala energy seep into the crystalline door as they connected. The door swung open as if on its own, and Bri stepped into perhaps the most incredible room she’d ever seen in her life.
It was the Great Hall. All temples had one. A large domed room with a circular sun roof at the center of its ceiling. It was where all ceremonies were conducted, and where she had been blended. In the temple back home the room was several hundred units across with large statues of the four Great Spirit Animals along the edges and four large rings of versalite interconnected and worked into the floor.
Here, Bri easily spotted the same four rings embedded into the marble floor, but quickly realized that not only was the door made of versalite but the entire door was somehow made from the crystal so seamlessly that when the door shut behind her it blended in perfectly into place.
There were no stature here, but their images seemed to directly reflect off the walls in passing flickers of light and color. The Cat, the Dragon, the Fox, and the Wolf. The four Great Spirit Animals that had saved Aruna, and destroyed her life.
But in a place like this, Bri could almost forget her doom. The sunlight coming in through the little hole in the ceiling wasn’t much, but it seemed more than enough, illuminating the dome with a sacred reverence. Perhaps because she’d been so caught up in the moment, but Bri only just now realized she wasn’t alone.
Sitting in center of the room was a young cat. Young enough that the cat’s back only came up to Bri’s. The cat was a calico mix of colors, wings stretched out to catch as much sun as possible as the cat lazily lay bathing in the beam of light. Even from her distance, Bri thought she could hear the soft sound of a purr.
And then her instincts came to life and Bri looked hard across the room. This cat wasn’t the source of the black path. Bri could see an aura like trail of colors as fluid as versalite surround the cat. The dark path that had led her hear moved around the edges of the room, as if stalking the cat. Bri still could see anything at the path’s end, but every time it moved the shadows moved, as if whatever monster could create such a dark trail couldn’t exist in the light.
And then the shadows suddenly moved towards the center of the room, straight for the cat. In alarm, Bri yelled out, “Watch out!”
The cat sat up startled, but the cat was looking at her, not even slightly aware of the descending shadow. With a power sweep of her wings, Bri jumped forward in a powerful burst of speed. Instincts surged through her both begging her to go faster and bidding her to turn away, but she couldn’t just stand there and watch. The cat sat up even more startled and not daring to slow down, Bri practically slammed into the cat, knocking them both to the ground. It was just in time and for brief moment Bri thought she could see through the shadows to a beast as black as the trail it left behind.
It snarled, and its large teeth seemed to miss them by a fraction of a unit, but it was the hate filled red eyes that burned into Bri’s memory. And then suddenly the world around her shifted. The vertigo last slightly longer than before, and when Bri rolled free she found herself on a green grassy plain. All sensations of danger were gone, along with any trace of the temple. Personally, Bri had had it with temples.
Next to her, the cat wiggled about, untangling wings and coming to their paws. “That was close!” Like with all great animals, the words came more as a direct impression on her mind, but everything about the young feline bristled with excitement. She was practically dancing on the spot with pent up energy.
“Close!” Bri exclaimed with exasperation. “Too close!”
The young cat instantly calmed and with real concern she asked, “Are you all right?” but then she opened her eyes and Bri suddenly found herself at a loss for words. The cat’s eyes swirled with emotion and the whole spectrum of colors. The cat’s eyes were made of versalite.
Bri shook her head in wonder, murmuring, “This has got to be the weirdest dream I’ve ever had.”
The cat suddenly sat back on her haunches and with a scrunch of her face she questioned, “Yes, how did you get into my dream?”
“Your dream?” Bri frowned. How could she be in anyone’s dream than her own? No. It wasn’t possible. This cat didn’t exist in the real world, she would know.
The dream cat just continued on with reasonable dream logic, “You aren’t a cog, and you aren’t a dreamwalker, so either you don’t really exist or you have a secret even I don’t know.”
Bri had a secret, but that wasn’t it. “I followed that shadow beast.”
The cat’s eyes swirled even faster and the cat sat up with excitement, “You can follow trails! Dream trails, real trails.” She bounced from side to side nearly knocking Bri in the head with one of her wing tips. “And do you know what I did? I brought us here, to this dream! I’ve never done that before! And here you are, talking with me. That’s new, too. Usually I can only talk to cogs, but most of them are boring.”
The cat dragged her last word out, emphasizing it with a sound that reflected just how young this cat really was. Bri remembered feeling like that when she was that age. Maybe that’s why this cat was here, in her dream, but the memory was too much of a reminder of what she had lost.
And then the cat pleadingly begged, “Will you play with me?”
Sadly smiling, Bri wished she could, but she knew it was time for her to wake up. “Maybe later. I should really get going.”
Sighing, the cat hung her head, but then said, suddenly sounding far too old for her age, “That’s probably best. Tomorrow is the beginning of the end of the world, after all.” Stretching forth a paw, the cat touched Bri’s silver-white hair.
Brianna-Brielle came awake with a start, the remnants of the all too vivid, all too real dream clinging to her in a cold sweat. End of the world? What had the cat meant by that? It was just a dream, wasn’t it? But sitting up and running a hand through her hair she couldn’t stop shaking.
At last Bri finally decided, “I am going crazy.”
*****
Well, according to my layout, the plan is to switch POV's between my three main characters every chapter break. I'm realizing now that's not going to work. I'm still going to follow the layout, but some sections have too many plot points for a single chapter. Oh well. first drafts are first drafts after all.
But hey! I've actually written something (after yet once again scraping what I had)! And because I'm all excited that I actually accomplished something, I'm going to post it. It's unedited, so ignore any grammar mistakes, please. I'm not letting myself edit until it's all done for fear that I'll intimidate myself into scraping it...again.
Also, since I'm serious about trying to publish I won't be posting much more than a few bits from time to time. Anywho...
Chapter 1 word count: 3935
Total word count: 3935
Music streamed through her player as she danced around her room getting ready for school. It wasn’t the kind of music her parents approved of, but it was the kind Brianna liked best. The kind who’s rhythms pulsed through her veins and made her mind race. The lyrics weren’t too bad, either, but it was the way the music moved through her with a vibration that felt like energy that she loved best.
To her parents it was just noise, but to Brianna Reah, it was like a living stream that flowed through her mind. It was an ever changing river of life full of emotion and energy and rhythm.
“Bri! Hurry up or you’ll be late!” Her mother yelled through the door, the call coming like a stone tossed into the river, upsetting the balance for a brief moment only to be swallowed up by the raging music.
Grinning, Brianna yelled back, “Almost ready, Mom!” She slipped on several rings and hung an assortment of necklaces around her neck. She looked at herself in the mirror above her dresser wondering if she should put her hair up in tails, but that look would only be good with color and she didn’t have time to streak her hair.
Like all Cathosians, Brianna’s hair was a white silver, and in her opinion a little too flat. Unlike most Cathosians, she’d been born with it that way. Usually Cathosians were born with colored hair just like the rest of the world, but with puberty it would change to the white silver. A very few rare people were born with their hair already changed.
Brianna smiled, humming to the music as she contemplated her look. She liked the white silver. She liked being different. Only a couple kids in her class still had colored hair, Wendi, with her mass of red curls -oh how Bri wished she had curly hair, and Chester who seemed aptly named he was so plain brown. There was even a rumor around school that Chester wasn’t actually Cathosian, but was from the somewhere in the Dragite Empire. Even so, everyone knew Brianna had had her white hair the longest.
She finally decided the rings and necklaces were too much, and took most of them off, keeping only her favorites. A silver ring with the four Great Animals engraved into the band and a necklace with a jagged heart pendent that read ‘Punk out.’ The mass amounts of bracelets she kept. They came in all kinds of colored metals, and she enjoyed the way they jingled as she moved her hands.
Perfect.
Pulling her boots on, Brianna was reaching for her school bag when the house suddenly shook so hard it knocked several pictures off the walls. The music jerked and skipped, the sounds running knives across her mind. The house shook again and this time Brianna lost her balance, falling back onto her bed.
“Mom?! Dad!” Brianna yelled out in alarm.
She tried to get back to her feet only to fall back again as the world spun about her, but she couldn’t tell if Aruna herself was moving beneath her feet, or if she was shaking so hard it just seemed that way. Brianna bolted for the door, her hands hitting it right as another shockwave seemed to hit the house, only this time it was accompanied by a deafening explosion of noise.
The force of the explosion didn’t just shake the house. It propelled her through the door, a wave of fire engulfing her.
Then, suddenly, it was cold again.
Stumbling forward, Brianna found herself not in the hall of her house, but in the hall of her school. Shaking and confused she looked around the darkened hallways.
Posters and signs covered the walls advertizing the last dance of the year. She was going with Samson. He’d been asking her all year, much to the envy of the girls in her class. Samson was the Captain of the Hopie team, and they’d had a very good year.
A banner hung across the hall from the ceiling, the bold school colors of black, purple, and blue, standing out even in the dark. The word ‘congratulations’ was written out in purple sparkling letters for those who were graduating this year. Wasn’t she graduating? She’d been accepted into the Institute of Communications. Her technical exam scores had been the third highest in her class. She was going to be a sound technician.
But something tickled in the back of her mind, some memory of still being young, and still several years away from graduating.
Brianna looked down at herself, but the signs of her youth were gone. No noisy bracelets adorned her wrists, just the silver chain Samson had given her when she had said ‘yes.’ She was taller now, too, wearing the latest in fashion that made her family look wealthier than they really were. In fact, there were many things about her that made her seem more than she really was.
Popular, smart, always being asked out but rarely dated. It was what she’d yearned for at the school, and she’d accomplished it. Because Brianna had a secret.
As if by thinking the very thought, eyes turned on her. Brianna looked up sharply, searching the dark halls for whoever was watching her, but the halls were as empty as before. The door behind her was closed now, locked. She jiggled the handle to be sure, but it wouldn’t budge.
Suddenly unsure and little scared, Brianna moved silently down the hall, wondering where everyone else was. A soft orange glow beckoned her and she unconsciously moved deeper into the heart of the school to see what it was. It wasn’t just dark shadows any more that kept her company. The orange glow moved, making living shadows of their own against the school walls.
It was getting hotter, too. Licking dry lips, Brianna wondered if she should continue or turn back while she could, but her heart told her it was already too late.
Then she found the source of the light. It was coming from under the door of one of the science rooms, the glow leaking out the way a pipe leaked water. Only this wasn’t moving like water, and the heat only got stronger the closer she got.
Still, unable to stop herself, Brianna reached for the door, needing desperately to see what was on the other side. Heart pounding, she slowly turned the handle. It wasn’t locked like the rest, but it didn’t open easily, as if some force were pushing against it.
She pushed back, feeling the heat scorch her hand but unable to let go. With a sudden cry she threw her whole body into the effort of opening the door and with a last push it flung wide open.
Brianna stumbled inside even as the back draft of flames engulfed her. The feeling was so familiar she almost cried, the sound cut off in the roaring tumult of noise suddenly surrounding her.
And then there was silence.
She wondered for a second if she had died, and looking down at her deformed feet, she did indeed feel dead. Falling to her knees on the hard stone floor, Bri covered her estranged face with her equally deformed hands and wept bitterly.
Wings as long as her body, and covered in the fine fur that now lay like patchwork on her skin, enclosed around her like a protective cocoon. They belonged to a stranger. They belonged to her.
Her worst nightmare had come true. She had been discovered, blended with a cat, as was the law, and confined to a prison they called a temple. But why? Where had she gone wrong?
Her sobs echoed loudly under her wings, each tear hitting the ground and sounding as loud as bombs in her ears. Then other sounds penetrated her hearing. Bombs. Real bombs.
Startled out of her misery, Bri slowly unfolded her wings, her now feline ears twitching to catch the distant noises. Was the temple under attack? But who? And why? Didn’t they know the oldest of the Great Cats lived here? The temples were sacred land. No one on all of Aruna would dare attack a temple.
But this wasn’t her temple. Looking around all Bri could see was dust and age, the walls weathered and old. The distant sounds of explosions continued. Confused, she moved cautiously down the hall. A door, she’d been looking for a door.
Some part of her subconscious mind told she’d found two doors already and wondered if she really wanted to find another, but draw to find that door was just as strong as it’d been before. And then ahead of her lay what she was seeking. The door looked even older than the halls, the wood broken in places and ready to crumble at a touch.
Like the door before, a red glow seeped through the cracks, the sounds of the explosions now so loud that while she couldn’t feel any repercussions, her mind insisted they were going off in the room beyond.
She had to see what was on the other side, and like a force calling her name, Bri reached out with an unbidden hand, intent on opening this door as well. She was barely a fraction away from touching the handle when a shadow drew her attention away. With a snap, Bri pulled her hand back in alarm. What was she doing?
Was this a dream? The thought came clearly to her mind and with a shake of her head Bri stepped back, away from the glowing red door. It had to be a dream.
And then the shadow played on the edge of her peripheral vision and Bri turned to look down the dimly lit hallway. There was no one there and the only tracks in the dust were her own, but the feeling that she was being watched was almost overwhelming. It sent ripples of shivers up her spine and she felt her fur rise up in warning. She couldn’t explain it, but every sense she had told her she was in terrible trouble.
Then just as suddenly the feeling vanished. Bri let out a long cautious breath, and then confused, she looked again at the door in front of her. She could remember everything now, as if her conscious awareness had come awake while the rest of her still slept. Bri didn’t know why, or how, but she knew she had absolutely no intention of purposely stepping through a door and into a bomb.
“I’m insane, but I’m not that insane,” she grumbled to herself.
Looking back down the hall, Bri wondered how she should go about waking herself up. Ever since her blending, nightmares had become a regular event, but this was the first time Bri had ever felt like she had any control in one. If only that made any difference. A dream was only a dream, after all.
For a moment, Bri wondered if she could take this dream backwards, to the time before her blending, but she knew that wouldn’t solve her problem. She had two pasts, now, not just one, and much as she might wish it sometimes, she knew she couldn’t sleep forever.
And then she wondered about the shadow. Had it been her imagination? Just some random part of the dream? There was only way to know for sure, but Bri wasn’t even sure her abilities could work inside a dream.
Jumping slightly as another bomb went off behind the glowing door, Bri murmured, decided, “Well, I’m not going forward, might as well go somewhere else.” And then forcing herself to relax, she reached out for the flow of energy. It was just like the music, a living stream that flowed through her, filling her with vibrations of rhythm, emotions, energy, and life. There were actually two streams, the anala energy stream that directly welled up out of the planet, Aruna, and the amuna energy stream that came from within, but when connected to Aruna was amplified a hundred fold. When the energy steams ran together the vibrations surging through her all but sang with perfect harmony. It was perhaps the only good thing about being blended.
Bri gave herself a moment to simply enjoy the pure bliss of the energies flowing through her. It was the only time things ever felt right again, but what she needed now was the anala energy. Concentrating, she reluctantly let the amuna energy recede, and focused only on drawing the anala energy from the planet. With that energy she had the ability to see the echoes people made as they passed, like trails of invisible light, each with their own look and feel.
Her own path was generally one as white-silver as her hair, and just as dull. It wasn’t visible now, and for a moment Bri thought that perhaps her ability was useless in dreams, but then the same sensations of danger filled her, just as they had before. Squinting, as if that might make her sight somehow improve, Bri stared back down the dimly lit hallway where she knew the shadow had been. And then suddenly she realized that her white-silver path was there as it should, only covering it, practically swallowing it up in its depths, was a trail so black and so cold that it seemed to absorb everything around it.
With a shudder Bri let go of the energy and both the paths and the feelings of dread vanished. Suddenly, the glowing door with its threat of incineration seemed a whole lot more inviting. “This is plain silly!” Bri suddenly chastised herself, furious for being so intimidated by a dream. Then, as if to prove it, she drew upon the anala energy stream again.
The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end in alarm as the black line appeared before her, but clenching her jaw Bri took several steps forward until she stood on the ominous path. “Well, it hasn’t sucked me up, too,” she remarked, trying to encourage herself onward. This was just a dream.
Following the black path she soon came to another door. It wasn’t any different than the rest of the doors in the empty temple, but at least it wasn’t glowing red, or better yet, black. Taking a breath to affirm her courage, Bri pushed on the door and stepped through.
There was a slight shift, like a sudden case of vertigo, but it was gone again in an instant and Bri stumbled forward into yet another hallway. At first she thought it was just another hall in the temple, but then she realized this temple was different. If possible, it seemed to be in worse condition than the last. The hallway she stood in was partially caved in and almost completely overrun with vines and plants. A hot sun shone down through the broken ceiling illuminating what was left.
Turning around Bri couldn’t even see the door she had stumbled through, if it was even there at all. But the black path was still intact, creating a shadow trail where shadows didn’t fall. “Now there’s really no going back,” Bri murmured.
She had to climb through several weaves of vines and carefully make her way around the obscured piles of rocks to follow the path. Not surprising, it seemed to lead inward, and pushing over a pile of rubble, Bri finally made her way into the inner recesses of the now ancient temple. For a dream, she was getting her fair share of scratches. Bri wondered if she managed to hurt herself enough, would it wake her up, but now that she had come this far, she wanted to know just where it was this path would lead her.
The further into the center of the ruins she went, the less the outside jungle had penetrated, making it easier to traverse until finally she came to yet another door. This door was the biggest door she’d ever seen, bigger than even the large doors made to accommodate the great animals. Odder still, was that the door seemed to be made of crystal, which was impossible.
Curious, Bri stretched her hand out to the door and received yet another shock. The door wasn’t just made from crystal, it was made from versalite. Most of the time, versalite looked like a clear translucent quartz, but when it was near those who could connect to the energies, than it, too, reflected that energy. The area in front of Bri’s hand had turned into a swirl rich with color and life. She hadn’t even had to touch it.
Bewildered and more than a little awed, Bri pressed on the huge door, feeling the flow of her anala energy seep into the crystalline door as they connected. The door swung open as if on its own, and Bri stepped into perhaps the most incredible room she’d ever seen in her life.
It was the Great Hall. All temples had one. A large domed room with a circular sun roof at the center of its ceiling. It was where all ceremonies were conducted, and where she had been blended. In the temple back home the room was several hundred units across with large statues of the four Great Spirit Animals along the edges and four large rings of versalite interconnected and worked into the floor.
Here, Bri easily spotted the same four rings embedded into the marble floor, but quickly realized that not only was the door made of versalite but the entire door was somehow made from the crystal so seamlessly that when the door shut behind her it blended in perfectly into place.
There were no stature here, but their images seemed to directly reflect off the walls in passing flickers of light and color. The Cat, the Dragon, the Fox, and the Wolf. The four Great Spirit Animals that had saved Aruna, and destroyed her life.
But in a place like this, Bri could almost forget her doom. The sunlight coming in through the little hole in the ceiling wasn’t much, but it seemed more than enough, illuminating the dome with a sacred reverence. Perhaps because she’d been so caught up in the moment, but Bri only just now realized she wasn’t alone.
Sitting in center of the room was a young cat. Young enough that the cat’s back only came up to Bri’s. The cat was a calico mix of colors, wings stretched out to catch as much sun as possible as the cat lazily lay bathing in the beam of light. Even from her distance, Bri thought she could hear the soft sound of a purr.
And then her instincts came to life and Bri looked hard across the room. This cat wasn’t the source of the black path. Bri could see an aura like trail of colors as fluid as versalite surround the cat. The dark path that had led her hear moved around the edges of the room, as if stalking the cat. Bri still could see anything at the path’s end, but every time it moved the shadows moved, as if whatever monster could create such a dark trail couldn’t exist in the light.
And then the shadows suddenly moved towards the center of the room, straight for the cat. In alarm, Bri yelled out, “Watch out!”
The cat sat up startled, but the cat was looking at her, not even slightly aware of the descending shadow. With a power sweep of her wings, Bri jumped forward in a powerful burst of speed. Instincts surged through her both begging her to go faster and bidding her to turn away, but she couldn’t just stand there and watch. The cat sat up even more startled and not daring to slow down, Bri practically slammed into the cat, knocking them both to the ground. It was just in time and for brief moment Bri thought she could see through the shadows to a beast as black as the trail it left behind.
It snarled, and its large teeth seemed to miss them by a fraction of a unit, but it was the hate filled red eyes that burned into Bri’s memory. And then suddenly the world around her shifted. The vertigo last slightly longer than before, and when Bri rolled free she found herself on a green grassy plain. All sensations of danger were gone, along with any trace of the temple. Personally, Bri had had it with temples.
Next to her, the cat wiggled about, untangling wings and coming to their paws. “That was close!” Like with all great animals, the words came more as a direct impression on her mind, but everything about the young feline bristled with excitement. She was practically dancing on the spot with pent up energy.
“Close!” Bri exclaimed with exasperation. “Too close!”
The young cat instantly calmed and with real concern she asked, “Are you all right?” but then she opened her eyes and Bri suddenly found herself at a loss for words. The cat’s eyes swirled with emotion and the whole spectrum of colors. The cat’s eyes were made of versalite.
Bri shook her head in wonder, murmuring, “This has got to be the weirdest dream I’ve ever had.”
The cat suddenly sat back on her haunches and with a scrunch of her face she questioned, “Yes, how did you get into my dream?”
“Your dream?” Bri frowned. How could she be in anyone’s dream than her own? No. It wasn’t possible. This cat didn’t exist in the real world, she would know.
The dream cat just continued on with reasonable dream logic, “You aren’t a cog, and you aren’t a dreamwalker, so either you don’t really exist or you have a secret even I don’t know.”
Bri had a secret, but that wasn’t it. “I followed that shadow beast.”
The cat’s eyes swirled even faster and the cat sat up with excitement, “You can follow trails! Dream trails, real trails.” She bounced from side to side nearly knocking Bri in the head with one of her wing tips. “And do you know what I did? I brought us here, to this dream! I’ve never done that before! And here you are, talking with me. That’s new, too. Usually I can only talk to cogs, but most of them are boring.”
The cat dragged her last word out, emphasizing it with a sound that reflected just how young this cat really was. Bri remembered feeling like that when she was that age. Maybe that’s why this cat was here, in her dream, but the memory was too much of a reminder of what she had lost.
And then the cat pleadingly begged, “Will you play with me?”
Sadly smiling, Bri wished she could, but she knew it was time for her to wake up. “Maybe later. I should really get going.”
Sighing, the cat hung her head, but then said, suddenly sounding far too old for her age, “That’s probably best. Tomorrow is the beginning of the end of the world, after all.” Stretching forth a paw, the cat touched Bri’s silver-white hair.
Brianna-Brielle came awake with a start, the remnants of the all too vivid, all too real dream clinging to her in a cold sweat. End of the world? What had the cat meant by that? It was just a dream, wasn’t it? But sitting up and running a hand through her hair she couldn’t stop shaking.
At last Bri finally decided, “I am going crazy.”
*****