Young Writers Society

It was like seeing the creepy version of three fairy godmothers in Sleeping Beauty. Instead of being fairies, creatures floating on the bed were lights. If it was bad seeing all of these in silence, hearing them make a subtle hum was worse. Azhar gripped the doorknob to bring himself standing. He swiped the trickle of sweat snaking along his chin.

“You - you bring friends?” he asked, aware with the slow tremble shaking his voice. Braving a step forward, he went closer to the lights.

The yellow one, the one that was with him last night, flew to him, leaving the other two on the bed. “Yes, I did,” he said, the slightly higher note of his voice indicating his cheerfulness. “The blue one is Azure while the green one is Emerald. They were the ones who helped me last night. Azure came up with the plan, of course. It wouldn’t be successful without Emerald’s help too. Oh, and my name is Flaxen.”

The blue light joined them. “Yo, what’s up?” he said. “I’m Azure. I figured out from Flaxen’s explanation that Farid guy was a jerk, so I thought some punishment was in line. How did it go?”

The green one, Emerald, went closer to the three of them. He hummed. “It wasn’t the wisest thing to do - some people might assume you were just faking it. There was a possibility you bypassed the guard’s two-times check around the house and went to sleep there without anyone noticing. Fortunately, no one could find a reason for why you would want to bring torture to yourself.”

“B-but,” Azhar said, stuttering, unable to take in impossible task was made possible by these strange entities, “I’m sleeping. How could you guys put me there? You don’t have hands or anything to carry me away, and what’s more, you’re all lights. It’s beyond comprehension.”

Azure chuckled. “Man, this guy is as anxious as you are, Flaxen. No wonder you came here. But I also came, which means there’s more to this guy than what he seems to be.” His spherical light seemed to spin by the blue line spiraling on it, addressing Emerald. “You came too, Emerald. This guy is complex.”

Azhar felt like his head was spinning - like the world was rotating around him. He was too dizzy he might as well faint. What was they were talking about? What was with them coming here? Why here? Why him? He had many questions weighing in his mind, and his state of disarray didn’t help his smoothen his thought process.

Flaxen seemed to notice his unstable state as he said, “You look pale. Come lie on the bed. I understand how seeing us is like being a sci-fi movie in which you encounter the aliens. Don’t worry. We don’t have creepy, green version of ourselves or antennas or something like that. We won’t even hurt you.” He floated back to the first bed, shadowed by and attached with the second above it.

“That’s Faris’s bed,” Azhar said, but his words came as a whisper. His vision was blurry as if he sank his head into a bowl of water, but he managed to tread his way to the bed and lie on it. He felt his forehead, aware of its cool, damp surface. He was sweating.

Azure and Emerald joined him, and they floated besides him now. Flaxen was at his right while the two of them were at his left. Their lights felt slightly warm against his body, and the gentle heat seemed to comfort him. They fell into silence, and perhaps watched him until his expression told them he felt better.

Apparently, Azure didn’t like to wait for that. “Okay, so let me tell you what happened -”

“Azure!” Emerald said, scolding Azure with his high voice. “Let him settle for a minute. This is too much for him to take in. It was just last night he encountered a light that could talk, and now you wanted to to tell him how we carried him to the living room while he was sweating with his pale face right there?”

Azure uttered a slow “sorry, sorry,” and they were silence once again. Azhar took time to observe each of them. He noticed their names were taken from their colour - Flaxen’s a grayish yellow, Azure a light blue, while Emerald was a vibrant green. No one would find it hard to remember their name, he thought. I wonder why they came to me. Arriving here just to help me seems to good to be true. They must want something in return.

After a few more seconds, he spoke up. “Okay, you can tell me now. I can’t imagine a possible scenario of how I ended up being there.”

As Emerald had shut Azure up, Flaxen was the one who explained. “I’ll tell you from the beginning. Actually, we had been around this house a couple of days before you met me - or before I let you see me, to be exact. I was the delegate who communicated with you, and you know the rest until you slept. I met them afterwards in a room belonged to an Indian guy with his light.

“I told them about your story on how your parents died while volunteering in a program, and how you didn’t want to be here. You should feel like that with the way Faris treated you. We saw how he gave you bruises on your stomach and your back while we were invisible. It was unfair. So Azure came up with a plan.

“You see, each of us light has an ability. In our world, the ability is limited. In here, it seems to be elaborated - stronger, because of the nature of your energy. So we made use of our abilities. I could fly very fast, so I went into the guard to make his second check faster that it should - it took barely a minute. But he didn’t notice it because he seemed to think he was moving at a normal speed when in actuality he moved thrice faster than that.

“Then, Emerald played his role. In our world, he could possess something as large as our size - which wasn’t much, but in here, he could possess something much bigger than him. He possessed you, and sneaked out to the living room. Faris was snoring loudly, so he didn’t notice. Azure was involved last. His ability was being invisible even from us, so he made you invisible every time someone went passed the living room to go to the toilet until this morning. No one noticed you were there, so voila!”

Azhar listened to Flaxen’s explanation, hiding his disbelief of the originality of it. But it made sense - no one noticed him on the floor. The guard, other kids, Mrs. Ana - they didn’t see him. These lights had helped him get rid of Faris, so he might as well repay them although he didn’t know how. He did know how to ask, though.

“Okay, so you’ve helped me. Thanks with that,” he said. “I know you want something in return. What is it?”

“It’s not what we want, Azhar,” Emerald said, representing others. “It’s what humans need.”