|
“Then close your eyes,” she says. He closes his eyes. He feels the cold press of her lips on his shoulder. It sends a tremble down his back, making his stomach drop into the depths of his body. Gravity pulls him down. It cuts him apart, almost tearing him from limb to limb. He isn’t sure what is happening. Maybe he is flying. No, that’s not it. It cannot be that. It’s something else. But what is it? It’s too familiar. Too much of something he once knew. Oh, he has got it now. I am falling. But he doesn’t know where. The last time he had fallen like this was when his body fell in the world of darkness. It entangled him, trapped him in a hollowed dimension. It tore him apart, limb from limb. He felt himself in between two worlds. And now it was happening again. He is lost in the moment of these two worlds. A world of realism and dreams—it pulls him in both directions. He wants to be lost in in the middle of it all. Stuck between two worlds where no one can find him. Where the hunger can no longer reach him, where he does not feel the need to hunt. It is where the two places meet, where he can lose himself in the darkness and be forgotten. But he can never have what he wants. No one can ever have what they want. It did not work that way, not even in another world did it. Her gasp pulls him through the darkness. It begins to build the world around them two. The colors coming together as light and darkness work to form something, anything that it can grasp onto. “You said you trusted me,” she says, “Don’t go back on that now.” He knows he cannot. He won’t. “I won’t,” he promises. He doesn’t want to remain in a world where there is certainty and he is faced with the reality of where his life has come to. He wants to feel the life he once felt—a hunger for adventure and heart full of passion for the world and life. Finally, he opens his eyes. The small obelisk is the first thing he sees. It flickers between being solid and holographic. The images of places he once knew flicker in and out of his slight as he stares at the obelisk. They are memories of a life he once knew—places and people he once knew. It draws him, he answers the call. He fears it will fade away in an instant. “Come,” he says softly back to her. He cannot miss it. He wants go home, but where is his home? The red devil steps into the holograph. He isn’t sure how this works, but he cannot help to focus his thoughts on the place he misses most—the warm heat and the songs of the jungle. He wants to see his mother, his brother, and sister. He wants to see his father—someone he wishes he spent more time with. He wants to say he is sorry to Hakeem, to bring him back from the dead. He wants to make everything wrong he did into something right. But can he even do that in the dream world? Can he fix the broken things he destroyed in his life and in others? He doesn’t know. The world flickers around them. He instantly feels the warm heat of the sun. The sound of the jungle fills his ears. Rodrik smiles at the scene that unfolds before them. It is the jungle as he once had known it. “We are here,” he says with soft smile. It is a genuine smile, one that does not touch his lips in a long time. The smile is obvious that he is happy for the first time in a long time. “Tell me, niece, have you ever been to the jungle?” He turns to look at her with a smile and a gleam of joy in his hollowed, nutmeg eyes. |
@[Kagerus]
![[Image: lRJZ7qE.gif]](https://i.imgur.com/lRJZ7qE.gif)
