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White light blinded her. When her eyes adjusted, there only was a faint silver glow where the light had come from. She looked around, but didn’t look around. She was still asleep. Then how am I here? Am I dreaming? Do dreaming people know that they are dreaming? There was a faint creak behind her. A woman, tall with a fine, white tiara and white robes entered the room through large, elaborately decorated wooden doors that the girl would have sworn were not there a moment ago. Looking more closely, she saw the woman was amazingly beautiful, seeming to have come from heaven, an angel from above. Am I dead? But I’m still conscious! Suddenly the woman stopped, and stared straight at the girl. Emerald green eyes held the girl’s in a deadly strong hold. The girl tried to look away, and found she was immobilized in an icy cold hand. She was frozen to the spot. She found that this woman was not a friend, though she had never seen her before, but she was terrible to see again. If this is a dream, how is it so cold? Why is she staring at me? Why can’t I move? She’s so scary. Why can’t I remember anything? How did I get here? What…What’s that pain? It’s sucking everything away…my memories…my feelings…it hurts…
Suddenly, the woman did completely the unexpected; she laughed. The girl screamed as the invisible, icy hand wrenched an ocean of memories from her head, her mind, her heart…memories that she did not even know that she had before now…but it was pain beyond pain crushing her…choking her…killing her…blackness engulfed her…what happened to all the white…darkness poured down her throat…I can’t breathe…
The woman laughed again as the unconscious girl fell to the cold marble floor, wrapped in a cocoon of darkness with her body immobilized, breathing heavily.
“Foolish Terra,” the woman sighed. “Did you honestly think you could hide from me for that long?”
A dark spark flew from the woman’s index finger to her captive’s forehead. The girl’s body raised about six feet into the air, and was released from the darkness, before she fell limp into the woman’s waiting arms.
~*~
“Goodnight,” called Amber, for the tenth time, or what felt like it to her weary twin and friend.
“Man Amber, would it kill you to say ‘goodnight’ just once?” asked Karen, stifling a yawn.
“Not if you guys keep moaning every time I say goodnight, then I feel that it’s my duty to say goodnight again as a final word, but then you guys start moaning again,” Amber replied quite frankly.
“Can you believe I get any sleep at all at home Karen?” asked Jenna.
“Nope. If Amber were my twin, I’d rather sleep on the couch.”
“We ARE sleeping on the couch Karen.”
“You are Amber! Jenna and I are on the floor, if you need reminding!” retorted Karen.
“Stop arguing people. Morning and the chocolate-chip pancakes will come quicker if we could just go to sleep you know.”
A brief pause, then…
“Goodnight then,” said Amber.
The other two groaned. Karen checked her glow-in the dark watch…12:33. This was going to be a very long night, just like every other sleepover that the girls had before.
~*~
Ouch, my head really hurts. Was it really a dream? Maybe the fire gave me a hallucination. A very realistic one…Do hallucinations hurt? That one really did. Was it a hallucination at all? Wait a minute…all my memories are back, but they were…I don’t know…wrenched out of me? Then how come I remember all of these memories? Most of them aren’t even mine! Or…are they?
I don’t want to open my eyes. I want it to all have been a hallucination. The fire, that horrid Lady, these weird memories… I need to move! I need to get out of here! This is too much! What’s happening? I’ve got to move! Wait a minute…I can’t! What’s going on? I can’t move at all!! Am I alive?
Fear, and Panic.
Calm down. Are you breathing? Yes. Can you hear your heart? Yes. Can you hear yourself think? Well, not literally of course, but yes. Then you’re alive. What’s wrong with my body? Why can’t I move? I can’t even feel my body at all. Everything is so black. Well, of course it is, your eyes are closed! But deeper than that; I should be able to see colors in my eyelid from light outside, but it’s just black. What happened to white? This is too much! I DON’T WANT IT!!!!
Despair
The Lady of the Land looked into the ball of Darkness thoughtfully. She could hear the girl’s thoughts echoing within the ball, as well as read the thoughts written out by a feathered pen on an endless scroll of cream colored parchment, that was writing all by itself.
“Why did you run away? You deleted your own memory so you would not be found, and here you are. You stumbled straight into my castle, having wandered into the one place you did not want to come. Your powers are too great for you to control now, because you deleted your memory. That must be reversed. By forceful means, if necessary.
Oh don’t worry Terra. Your sisters will be joining you soon.”
~*~
“Amber?”
“Yeah Karen?”
“Don’t say goodnight anymore. Let’s just go to sleep.”
Silence, then…
“Why’s everybody so tense?” a questioning Amber asked.
“Because we’re waiting to see how long you can hold out on saying goodnight,” drawled Jenna.
“Okay, let’s just go to sleep then,” said Karen in her don’t-argue voice.
“Yes Mother,” said Jenna, in a honey-sweet little child voice. Karen wasn’t offended, because Jenna was always a little bit stingy when she was tired.
A brief pause, then…
“Goodnight.”
“AMBER!” exclaimed the other two girls.
It was 12:56 by Karen’s watch.
~*~
Finally, following about six or seven similar scenarios, at about 2:30 AM, the girls were asleep.
A dark hole appeared next to the sleeping bags, and something crawled out. It made a fast hand signal to whatever else was inside the hole, and then the hole vanished into thin air.
A bug climbed on Amber’s sleeping bag…or what looked like a bug at first sight. If you looked closer, there was a tiny person, about five inches tall, hidden in the shadows. She was dressed in odd clothing: brown trousers, brown short-sleeved shirt, no shoes, and a funny Santa Claus brown hat without the little white puffball at the end. Her ears were pointed, and her hair was as black as the night sky, reflecting little lights, like stars. She was looking around carefully, as if digesting her surroundings, then found Amber’s sleeping bag was really slippery. She slid down, and landed face-first on the itchy carpet. She swore into the carpet. Standing up and rubbing her back, she saw a thin rope that lead up to the black head. (It was nighttime, so everything looked like black and white.) She seized it and began to climb…or tried to.
A scream that almost made her go deaf sounded, and the next thing that she knew, she was imprisoned in a large hand.
Karen turned on the lights, while sleepily rubbing her eyes.
“Wonderful Amber,” she muttered, “just when I was about to win the National Fencing Tournament. Your timing couldn’t have been more perfect.”
Jenna’s response was to wiggle her way deeper into the sleeping bag until her head was covered.
Amber was staring as the little person in her hand mutely, while Karen came to see what she was staring at, and nearly screamed herself.
“Oh my gosh Amber, what is that thin—“
A light clicked on at the top of the stairs, before Karen’s mom called out, “What’s going on down there?”
“Nothing Mom,” Karen called back. “Amber had a bad dream.” And I’m not so sure myself that I’m having a bad dream as well. Well, this is sort of a good dream, I think. Do people know that they are dreaming when they are dreaming?
“Alright. Try to go back to sleep girls. Goodnight.”
The light on the stairs turned off with an unnaturally loud click.
“Jenna?” Karen whispered. “I think you better come see this.”
Jenna didn’t move.
“C’mon Jenna, I’m not kidding.”
Jenna didn’t move.
Karen got annoyed, and poked the lump under the blanket. Jenna didn’t move. Karen poked harder. Jenna didn’t move. Karen poked even harder. Jenna still didn’t move. Karen lost her patience and slapped the bulge that was Jenna’s head. Jenna squealed, and a voice under the blanket groggily said, “Gee Karen, you didn’t have to do that.” The voice was husky and carried a sleepy tone.
“C’mon Jenna, be serious. Amber found a really weird little –“
“I don’t want to see the ‘really weird little’ thingie. I want to go to sleep.”
“HEY!” yelled a shrill, indignant voice. “I, for your information, am not a ‘really weird little thingie’, I am an elf, and proud to be one. I am not an animal to goggle at either,” the tiny being stated hotly, pointing this last comment at Amber. “And now if you will let me go, I will explain why I am here…in the morning,” she added as an afterthought when a loud yawn came from inside Jenna’s sleeping bag. “Humans have such odd habits.”
“Wait a minute, you don’t sleep at all?” inquired Karen.
“No.”
“Do you at least eat and drink?”
“What do I look like to you human? A fairy? Man, those jerks really do get on my nerves. They eat alright, but only every other day, and that’s only if they’re not fanatic that day about their shape.”
“A…what?” asked Amber.
“Fairy. They’re really annoying, and think their so ‘all that’ with their flashing neon colored wings. In the day of course, their wings become transparent, like ours, but at night, shesh, they glow so brightly, it lights up the Hollow like full daylight.”
“Huh? You have wings?” said a disbelieving Karen. All this sounds fishy, like something out of a fairy tale.
“Yeah, but we can hide them, if they’re going to be in the way.”
The elf put her hand on her hips and carefully looked Karen over. Karen felt as though she were being x-rayed.
“You don’t believe a single word I’m saying, do you human?”
Karen flushed, and replied sharply, “And if I don’t? This could all be such a big dream that I’m having. I really think that this is a dream, even if it’s a good one. And for the record, my name is not ‘human’, it’s KAREN.”
Amber stared at Karen. It wasn’t like her to be so sharp.
“Karen huh? That’s sort of a pretty name. That reminds me, we never got a proper introduction. My name is Anaticrui of the Bansani Hollow, or for short, Rui,” said the elf, giving a little bow.
“Hi Rui, I’m Amber.”
“You already know my name,” said Karen with a small smile.
“Who’s the big talking boulder?”
“What boulder?” asked Amber, confused.
Rui pointed to Jenna’s form concealed in her sleeping bag.
“Hey!” yelled Jenna, popping out of her sleeping bag. The way she did it reminded Amber of the Whack-a-Mole game. “For your information, I am no more a boulder than you are a ‘weird little thingie’. And hi, my name’s Jenna.”
“Jenna, Karen, and Amber,” said Rui. “Pleasure to meet you, and Amber,” she said, pointedly rubbing her ears, “please don’t scream like that again. It really hurts a person’s ears.”
Amber laughed, as Jenna heaved a big yawn.
“People, I’m loosing my beauty sleep hours here,” said Jenna, trying, and failing to cover another huge yawn.
“Since when do we ever sleep during sleepovers?” asked Amber.
Rui shook her head. “Humans have confusing rituals.”
“It’s not a ritual,” explained Amber, as Jenna wiggled back into the comfort zone of her sleeping bag. “It’s what humans do in order to be energized and awake when the sun rises.”
“Oh. What was that really odd sound you were making?”
“What do you mean?”
“She means your snoring. You were doing it tonight, for the first time since I can remember,” called Karen.
“Ha Karen,” retorted Amber, covering her flush by throwing her cow-face pillow in Karen’s face.
“Well, you have about four hours until the sun comes up. You better…what was that word again?...oh right. You better go to sleep,” said Rui. Jenna was already fast asleep. Amber got into her sleeping bag, and Karen threw the cow-face pillow back in Amber’s face, and closed her eyes.
Amber sighed, completely oblivious to the pillow on her face, and said, “I wish I could sleep like Jenna, and then I’d be in Heaven.”
“If you were in Heaven, you’d be dead,” replied Karen.
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