Ilna - Chapter 4

"Bert, tomatoes?"

"Mmh, yes please."

"Here you go."

"Thanks! Tomatoes good for the baby?"

"Um... probably?"

Laughter. There were two voices: a male one and a female one. "I hope so, anyways." The female one continued. "Here, pass them to me."

What followed was a very loud squelshing sound. "Ew!" the male voice cried. "Who knew tomatoes could be so disgusting..." Followed by more laughter.

"I've got juice all over me!" the female voice called back. "And the sound it made..."

For a while, only small talk and laughter. Then, the scraping of a chair, and the male voice spoke again: "Well, what a delicious indoor picnic! You sure know how to make one."

"Aw, Bert, you sure know how to flatter me!"

"Not flattery, dear, the truth! Now, I must get to work."

"Yes, me too."

The scraping of another chair on the floor. The two voices were chattering away, but the sounds were blurring, and mixing, and everything was melting together and then muting -

Ilna woke up. But was it really waking up? It didn't feel like it. Instead of tipping from dreamworld to awareness, she felt as though her dream had been thrust into a blender, everything mixing, muting, blurring, being compressed into a single, 2-dimensional sort of thing, then her mind had spinned up and down and up again, stopping only as she suddenly sat up, eyes wide open, concious again.

But had it even been a dream? Ilna barely remembered anything. Everything in it had sort of fused. She was rather certain that there had been no images, only sound - or maybe a kind of light, reddish pulsing, all around her? Or had it been blue - wait - everything was starting to slip away! Even the rough memories Ilna still had were slowly disappearing, like water through her fingers. Like a dream.

After a moment, she had forgotten everything. All she had were her thoughts from right afer waking up, but out of context they didn't make much sense. 'Red, or maybe blue, pulsing'? 'No images, only sound'? Nothing made sense. But after all, it had only been a dream.

Finally, her vision focused on what was around her. She was sitting up straight, body leaning on her arms and hands, which she had behind her. She was on a bed, made of wood and with red blankets and pillow. Around her was the largest bedroom she'd ever seen.

Ilna Salisbury hadn't seen a lot of bedrooms in ten years of life at Montsally-On-Hill. However, she could tell that this one was out of the ordinary: it stretched out for a minimum of a hundred meters in length and fifty in width. The ceiling was rather high too, around five meters; it was decorated with an assortment of pale yellow chandeliers, though they looked quite cheap after a second look. The walls were light blue halfway up, then returned to white all the way to the ceiling. The latter was also blue, but in places the paint peeled off to reveal the original white tone underneath.

Everything looked as though someone without much at hand had tried to make it the best possible, and only half-managed. But to Ilna, who had always been poor, it was awe-inspiring. Her bed stood amongst a cluster of five: a yellow, a blue, a green, a purple and a red one, the last hers. They were grouped near a corner of the room. A few meters of bare floorboards away stood a few bookshelves and a cushion. Beyond that, Ilna glimpsed a work table with a set of drawers, a couple of cupboards and a stack of boxes, each in their own little island, seperated by long expanses of completely empty floor. This was, Ilna reflected, an enormous waste of space. She probably could have planted a very large garden in all that emptiness between the bookshelves and the boxes, she thought. But maybe whoever had made all of this had a good reason for keeping the floorboards clear.

This thought made Ilna sit up even more attentively. Why was she here? Was this a dream? Had the other one been a... dream within a dream? But she felt wide awake. How could - and then it all came back to her. Her unknown father, leaning over her in the dead of the night. Telling her to come with him. To abandon her mother. To follow him to a special place because... what was it? Ah, yes: she was a 'special person'.

Ilna looked around again. Was this that special place of which Authbert had spoken? The last thing she remembered was him grabbing something in his pocket and bringing it out. There had been half a second, before everything had gone black, where Ilna had known: the man's face had given it away. If she did not come of her own free will, then she would not have a choice.

And now, Ilna was here.

She did not know what to think of it. Of course, she was terribly angry at Authbert for kidnapping her and bringing her against her will; she missed her mother just as much, and felt slightly guilty for not stopping the man. But while all of that spun around in her brain, she did not know what to make of the fact that she was there, sitting in this bed, inside this incredibly large bedroom. What should she do? What should she think? She had never been in a situation like this before. She missed her mother worse than ever.

That was when Ilna, to her own embaressment, started to cry.

It startled her - she wasn't expecting to. Ilna was a girl who didn't cry often. But once it started, she couldn't stop.

She cried and cried, tears streaming down her reddening face, eyes turning puffier by the second, snot dribbling down her nose, her hair a mess. She felt a horrible, drooping feeling in her stomach, and curled into a ball. She the strength being drained out of her by some invisible hand, and started to howl.

She screamed and screamed, gulped for air and screamed again. It wasn't a high-pitched, long scream; it was a pitifull, plaintive moan, interupted here and there by sudden bursts of jerky breathing. Her long hair stuck to her face in wet and messy strands. Her eyes leaked tears like a broken sink. Her wails echoed accross the room.

After a very long moment, she stopped. Her struggle for air started to ease down, she stopped screaming and her body only trembled now and then. Another long moment later, she pushed the hair out of her face and sat up again. If she wanted to find her way back home, she would have to be strong.

That's when she wondered what she was supposed to do. No one had come to get her, and apparently no one had heard her crying, either. She rubbed her red eyes on her shirt and stood up. The bookshelves seemed most inviting. Her mother had taught her how to read and count, when school wasn't available. Slowly, Ilna walked all the way over, sat down on the single cushion, and opened a book at random.

Properties of the Good Visionist, it was called.

Introduction

As the title gives the reader to wonder, the properties belonging to the good visionist are following a track of one's innermost and spiritual lines of guideline, introduced in Lines of Guideline - Follow your Inner Trail of Ink. Wondering is as wonderer follows: guiding through the guidelines is essential. As one delves deeper into the visionist's center, it becomes clear that the properties are the sole result of one's center, but not without the guidelines. But is it the guideline's lines, one might wonder? Based on what has been stated above, guideline and property intertwine with the wonderer, which is the very first step to understanding the visionist. As the visionist's properties are many and alter on a series of planes, it is important for the wonderer to depict that image. But is the property, after one has been introduced to the concept of speaking about the properties as singular (see Chapter 23 for explanation) naturally implemented, not including the guidelines and what has been stated above, the property of the good visionist? For only when one has understood...

The text was very dull, and Ilna did not understand a word of it. After forcing herself through a whole page, she gave up. Who in the world would ever read this?

That was when Ilna remembered the other beds. She wouldn't have to sleep alongside an adult stranger, possibly an elderly person... would she? She did not think that other children would like this as a bedtime read.

But the thought of sleeping next to other children frightened her just as much. She knew nothing of them, after all. Maybe they liked to read this? She felt tears in her eyes again, and just barely stopped them.

Ilna placed the book back, and picked another one: it was entitled Lily and the garden bugs.

Lily is a little girl. She loves butterflies.

One day Lily goes to the garden. She wants to find a butterfly to play with.

"Are you a butterfly?" Lily asks the ladybug.

"No, I am a ladybug." Says the ladybug.

"Are you a butterfly?" Lily asks the cockroach.

"No, I am a cockroach." Says the cockroach.

Every two lines, two pages were occupied by a large illustration, showing Lily, then Lily and the ladybug, then Lily and the cockroach. Ilna read on. She could only imagine this book in a toddler's hands, and started wondering about her roommates again.

"Are you a butterfly?" Lily asks the fly.

"No, just a fly." Says the fly.

"Are you a butterfly?" Lily asks the beetle.

"No, I am a beetle." Says the beetle.

Lily visited another dozen bugs and simmilar insects, until the book ended with:

"Are you a butterfly?" Lily asks the butterfly.

"Yes, I am a butterfly." Says the butterfly.

Lily is very happy. She wants to play with the butterfly.

But the butterfly is very selfish. So Lily goes away.

Lily goes back to all the other insects.

"Can I play with you?" Asks Lily.

"Yes!" They answer.

And so Lily played with all of the insects, and it didn't matter that they were not butterflies.

Ilna liked the book, even though it was very childish. She found it strange that this book, made for children, had much more meaning and moral than the dull book from before, made for adults. Maybe it was because most adults hate to be lectured in books, Ilna thought. Small children were much more sensible in that way. Ilna missed being a toddler.

Finally, Ilna found her perfect book: it was thick but not too heavy, and it was fiction. Ilna hated non-fiction. She cast Properties of the Good Visionist a dark look, then opened her book and started to read.