Rated 21+ for fantasy and violence.
When Anna woke up, she was surprised. She sat up a dizzingly rate, staring around in her frantic confusion. She thought for a few seconds, then wiggled her toes and turned her head from side to side before pinching herself rather lightly on the forearm. She realized, with a sigh of relief, that she had not fallen into a dream again, but she was rather straight back in the fields with the lions and Magic. She couldn’t help but feel quite pleased with herself, though she had done nothing to prevent her dreams.
Her dreams, however helpful, seemed to be tormenting her, as well as the thought that was spreading, like black ink onto a page, into her mind her barely conscious mind:
Darell is dead.
The words still stung, but not with the extremity it had the day before. Perhaps she was too tired of crying, perhaps too weary of letting her heart be ripped apart again and again. Perhaps it would get better as time went on. She had a feeling it would, but a part of her wished she’d never forget, because forgetting the feeling of losing Darell also meant forgetting the feeling of having him, and she never wanted that memory to fade.
She rubbed her eyes wearily before feeling, like a tap upon her shoulder, Magic’s gentle touch signaling she had awoken.
‘Oh, you’re up. Good morning!’
Anna could not return the cheerfulness in her voice, and Magic felt that with awkwardness.
‘Right, yes. Sorry.’
Anna, refusing to respond, cast her eyes upwards, where a golden sun was infiltrating the sky. A dry yet mysterious air swept over the land as the sun threw shadows over the tan grass. Anna rose to her feet slowly, and ignoring the lingering lightheadedness, headed back towards Sympa and the others. She was walking for a whole of five seconds before she realized that Sympa and the cubs weren’t in her vision anywhere.
Weren’t they just right here? Anna could remember even thinking how close Sympa was lingering to her as she was mourning over Darell.
‘Yeah . . . weird.’
What do you mean, weird? You didn’t see where they went?
‘When you’re asleep, I’m asleep too. I can’t see anything beyond your eyes. Well, I can, but . . . it’s complicated, and I don’t want to go through it right now.’
Anna understood. Last time she said ‘it’s complicated,’ Magic had responded with an entire narrative.
She sluggishly dragged her feet along for a while, sighing and looking around as if Sympa and the cubs would magically appear (and with her newly found powers, she didn’t find that much of a stretch). As per usual, she spoke for no other reason than to speak, to fill the silent air. “Where are they?”
‘As I said, I don’t know.’
“And you can only see what I see?”
‘Well . . . yeah.’
“How unhelpful.” And she went on, for she had nothing better to do than to patronize Magic, “What if, in the middle of a battle, there was a man coming up behind me with an axe and I died because you could ‘only see what I see’?”
‘Well, I’d be in battle mode, so that would be a totally different thing.’
“Battle mode?”
‘I’d have to show you again.’
Both Magic and Anna knew how she felt about that; Anna grimaced. “Yeah, let’s keep looking for Sympa.”
They trudged along for quite a while, Anna looking for Sympa almost uninterestedly. In all actuality, she hadn’t had much hope in Sympa from the start. In Anna’s mind, she was just a lion, an animal, a mere-simple minded creature who could hardly understand a thing. Suddenly she remembered, in a flash, Darell’s words. His voice, clear, crisp, yet sudden, came to her head: “He said that when the time came, he’d pass on his powers to me, and I’d be automatically teleported to somebody who could help me.”
“Well how is an animal supposed to help me?” she burst out loud, but she knew Darell would not respond. “How is a lion supposed to help me become a better Magical?”
She sighed and sat down on the ground lazily, ignoring Magic’s words of confusion and staring up at the sky. It seemed as if it wasn’t as blue as it had been the last time she looked at it, as if it had dimmed some, and she knew exactly why without even thinking too hard on it.
When she was a child, such a young thing, her purpose was to be an amazing daughter who did whatever her mother and father said. After she was a bit older, from the age of five or so, her job was to go to school and get good grades. As she entered into her teen years, it was her job to become certified as a nurse. Then it was her job to be a nurse, quite simply, and after that she met Darell and it was her job to keep Darell company and to be his--well, to put it plainly--lover. Now was the first time in her life she had absolutely no purpose. “Well, I suppose,” she murmured to herself, “my purpose is to be a Magical. But I don’t even know where to begin. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”
Anna had never been more powerful in her life, but she had never been so useless either.
It hadn’t occurred to Anna to ask Magic for help until that very moment. Even as she tried to form the question in her mind, she felt Magic gently retreating, as an uncertain student might back away from a difficult problem.
‘I’m sorry, I don’t know more than you do.’
In that instance Anna felt fire leap upon her heart with the intensity it had had once so long ago.
“What d’you mean, you don’t know?” she shrieked. “Isn’t that why you’re here? To tell me what to do next?”
“No.” The voice scared Anna half to death; she spun around in her seat, the grass crunching beneath her, to face a wary Sympa. The lioness went on, her head elevated, “But apparently, that’s why you’ve come to me, isn’t it?”
Anna opened her mouth, perhaps to say something, but her words were lost, fear devouring her.
“Who were you talking to?” Her voice was so curt it clipped Anna right out of her shock and into a bad mood.
“No one.”
“Don’t lie to me.” The lioness held her head a bit higher, letting the sunlight catch it and shine just behind it.
Anna only frowned. “It’s none of your business.”
Sympa glared an icy glare, bending her head down to stare into Anna’s eyes directly. There was a long silence, so patronizing Anna wanted to look away but at the same time knew she couldn’t. She could hardly hear Magic’s voice, guiding softly like a conscious, telling her sweetly to let it go. You must be coming into your character now, she heard herself think, but couldn’t recall forming the thought in her mind. I would never be calm about someone threatening me.
The two stared at each other for what felt like an eternity. Then something changed, so quickly and obscurely that it took Anna a few moments just to realize what had happened. Just as swiftly as her dreams had once come, the area around her disappeared. The world had suddenly changed into a white room of mist. Sympa, along with the rest of the world, had faded into nonexistent oblivion, and Anna sat there alone, watching the world progress as one might enjoy a movie.
All she could see through the surrounding mist was a small white staircase, only visible because of the blob of darkness racing over it. It was not the girl who was dark, just her hair, and her emerald green eyes cut through the fog and looked around frantically for a savior. Anna noticed, her chest growing tight, whom it was, and knew why the agitated child could not see her within a moment.
After a moment’s reprieve, the child heard the sound of footsteps again—consciously glancing behind her back, she ran again, stumbling across to the other side of the room where she’d only race up more stairs and back down again, the restless chase never ending . . .
As obnoxiously briskly as it appeared, the world disappeared into black, as if an ink well had fallen somewhere and covered the canvas. The real world, the world with Anna, Sympa, and Magic, glided back into place, presenting the colors once again, bright and crisp. It took Anna a few moments to get adjusted to the switch, but once she did, she desperately searched Sympa’s face in the terror that Sympa had seen exactly what she saw.
Magic’s voice confirmed that at least Anna hadn’t been the only one to see it. ‘What just happened there? Who was that?’
Hush, will you? Sympa seemed to be slowly retreating from a daze. She took a glance or two at the sky, and then back down at Anna, who still had terror still etched upon her face. Immediately Sympa straightened, and shaking her nonexistent mane, began to walk away. A slight tip of the head indicated she wished for Anna to follow her. She did.
Anna half expected her, as she struggled to her feet and slowly fell in step with, her golden body gracefully moving about the land, to ask about the vision that had just awkwardly flashed in Anna’s eyes. She was unsure whether or not Sympa had seen it, but surely she had, and surely she would comment on it.
She didn’t. Instead, Sympa’s eyes found the sky once again, ablaze with the beautiful colors of the rising sun.
“Have you ever seen a sun rise so beautifully?” she asked softly, her voice holding none of the venom it had once possessed.
Anna couldn’t even glance at the sky. “Guess not.”
Silence.
Anna hated silence—she always had and she always would. She tried to focus her ears on the small noises around her. She heard the grass crunching underneath her feet like bugs, she heard Sympa’s low, gentle, deep breathing, and very faintly, she heard the sound of crickets rubbing their legs together tentatively. There were two other sounds, sounds that couldn’t be described in any way—the first was the sound of the wavering heat devouring the air, and the second was the sound of Magic’s presence, of her listening into Anna’s world, as if she were a child leaning against the door to her parent’s rooms, trying to hear the discussion behind it.
So like Anna usually did, she decided to make it worthwhile for Magic to listen to.
Glancing at Sympa, whose eyes set like stone ahead, she asked bravely and almost rudely, “Where have you been?” At Sympa’s sudden and cutting glance, she added, “I, uh, couldn’t find you.” Anna wanted to explain that the only reason she had wanted to find Sympa was because apparently she needed her help, but she couldn’t say that without spilling her secret, which she didn’t want to a stranger. However, Sympa’s following words seemed to tell Anna that she wasn’t the only one hiding something.
“It’s not safe for my family to stay in one place for too long. We move every night, even if it’s only a few miles away.”
Anna was intrigued. “Why is it dangerous for your family?”
Sympa seemed to be playing the same game Anna was. With her lips pursed, she continued straight ahead.
Anna looked away, hiding the shadow which had just come over her face. When Anna was interested or intrigued, she found out what she was curious about. Always. She wanted to ask Sympa again what was wrong, but knew she would only frustrate Sympa and potentially ruin her chances of finding anything out. So, once again, she remained silent, tuning her ears into the nearly silent radio of the savannah.
It wasn’t long before they came to the resting place. The savannah was as flat as a sheet of unused paper, so from far away Anna could see the specks residing on the horizon which were Brassin and the cubs. They soon came closer, and within a matter of minutes Magic, Anna, and Sympa had arrived at their new home.
If Sympa hadn’t told Anna that they had moved, Anna wouldn’t believe they had. The grass was just as dry, the trees just as wilted, the area just as large. Anna turned to scan the horizons, looking for any noticeable difference. She spotted one, but it was very far away, and hardly visible. It was a large blob of black, stretching across the plains threateningly as if it were a storm.
“It’s a forest,” said Sympa very flatly at her look. “Closer than it looks, too. However, it’s impractical. It leads back towards civilization.”
“How is that impractical?” Anna immediately spoke up, turning her eyes away from the hammock. “How do you know I wouldn’t want to go back to civilization?”
Sympa didn’t respond, but only gave her a wary glance. She walked over to her husband, whom lay asleep on the ground, his paws crossed over each other, his eyes closed, his head dropping. She nudged him gently, and he slowly awakened. At first his eyes were dull, but then they caught sight of Anna, and they started to burn with a sudden fire. Sympa leaned in, whispered a few words in his ears, and after his stiff nod she turned and ran off, leaving Anna alone with her angered husband and her clueless children.
Anna sighed and looked around at the cubs. Lynaira and Astorial were to the left, arguing over something, while Cyladminnie was wandering as aimlessly as usual, her eyes fixed upon the bright morning sky in both interest and confusion. She looked so young and innocent, stumbling about, her head in the clouds. She had the kind of spirit that Anna had once innocently obtained as a child. But unlike Sympa and Brassin, her parents had stomped it out vigorously. A sort of awkward warmth spread about her as she thought of the days when she was a child, when she sat underneath the tree by the lake, eating apples and throwing the seeds in the pond just to simply watch the water ripple and waver underneath it. She thought of dinner time, hearing the bell ring, and could still hear her little feet race across the creaking boards as she dashed to the wash bin, trying to get there before Celine, Eliott, or Robert. She could still hear her mother’s scoldings as Robert used his long legs to get to the wash bin first: “You let your siblings in before you, Robert!” If he ever even considered complaining about that, her sharp response was, “You shouldn’t even be here! If I told you once I told you a million times, you are to be out of the house by nineteen. How old are you? Are you out of the house? No.”
It was true, very true—the deal was for Robert to find a nice girl and move out. It was custom, tradition. It was just what was done. But Robert hadn’t found any girls suitable enough for marriage, and the job he had paid very little. His low wage was not enough to support himself on his own, never mind a family.
But as for Eliott’s moving out, for he had come to that age—it was never talked about. Eliott lived with his mother, his two sisters, and his big brother, and that was that.
Part 2
