Flowers.
An object that typically catches the eye of a person before they die, was the first thing she laid her eyes on. But why? Why flowers for her birth? Was she truly that special or did a fate most somber already befall her?
The bright purples and lavenders of the fully bloomed Chrysanthemums reflected in her purple-blue newborn skin. Their thin green stalks reflecting her tiny frame. The stems sustained the blooms about as well as her body did her. She was a tiny thing, came into the world too soon, under dangerous circumstances. But there was hope. With parents like hers, she could be the strongest of them all.
The nurse spoke to the doctor in a near whisper, touched by sorrow, "What do we do with her now?" The other nurses in the room stood silently, eyes cast either to the floor or to their tasks attending to the baby.
The doctor stood silent for a moment, knowing that he is responsible for the fate of this new human being. He glanced around the room with empty eyes, already understanding the weight of the situation. The monitors that once proved that life had prevailed were now silent and the only sound was the piercing cries of the new-born child.
"Are you sure there isn't any other family?" his voice shook, knowing the answer before it was spoken.
A supervisor standing in the doorway replied, "No, the parents were orphans themselves and they did not agree to let any of their friends take custody. The only thing we can legally do is turn her over to the state and let them sort out a home for her."
He turned his head away from the others in the room "A damn shame. Her mother held on so long after the accident, but it was too little too late, in the end." He turned and left the door way with those words.
The doctor awoke from his stupor and called out the door to the departing man, "Did the mother leave any request for the future of her baby?"
The supervisor stopped in the hallway without turning around and spoke quietly, "Yes, a name. Albel." He walked away silently, leaving the doctor staring at the ground. He glanced at the flowers, left by the deceased mother's friends then turned and left the room allowing the nurses to care for the new child. The choked back the tears and kept his posture steady. This depression would stick with him for many years.
15 Years Later
Albel awoke, sitting up in her bed. With a yawn and a long stretch, she pushed the clothes in her way from exiting her bed into the floor. It wasn't early, but it wasn't late either. Despite her untidy room, Albel was a young lady of discipline and kindness. While candy wrappers littered the floors and clothing spilled out of drawers, she was calm and had already developed a strong sense of morals and firm priorities. She stumbled over her laundry washed the day before when she tried to stand too quickly. Albel Kirlsa was never a morning person. She drew the blinds, letting in the morning sun to reveal the colorful landscape you can only have when your backyard is a deep wooded area, found only when your home is located in present day Oak Springs, Tennessee. And by present day I mean October 15, 4751.
Much is forgotten about the past, as much has changed. A few centuries ago, there was a terrible war. Not the typical, this country against that country war, but an all out "fend for yourself" kind of war. This chaos was brought by the emergence of a power that was held deep in the heart of the earth. Released by deep ground mining, a spiritual energy erupted. While wielding this power, individuals could call upon forces to enact their will. A weaker fighter could convey the imaginings of their mind in the form of an illusion to confuse and cause fear in their enemies. An individual with a stronger mind could make their thoughts a reality. This power was achieved by a powerful expression of the light and darkness in a person's heart, granting terrible power.
Earthquakes toppled cities. Floods and storms bigger than the earth had ever seen, conjured from thin air, wiped away what the earthquakes left behind.
In the end, these powerful warriors destroyed themselves. The weaker of this new race carried on and now shared this power with all the inhabitants of the earth.
Albel was not an exception to this birthright. She was raised in a strict orphanage that preached safety and control over one's powers.
Despite her many charms regarding her personality, she was never adopted. This was due to her fire red hair. While her history was supposedly confidential to the world, all those who looked upon her were haunted by the stories of the past, stories of her parents. There was a rumor, a myth, that a certain man who had just passed away in this age, was able to conjure actual fire.
The myth follows a witness' report that she saw a horrible bus accident- the bus was engulfed with flames. The next thing she could remember was seeing the flames part in a tunnel shape from the rear of the bus and a young man carrying a very pregnant woman out from the inside of the bus.
"It broke my heart to see such a young family up and go through a terrible thing like that" she said the the news crew on the scene.
Albel is a growing young women, she is not slender and straight like other girls her age. She has full, but properly proportioned, curves in her chest, thighs, and lips. Her brown eyes shown gold in the sunlight and her red hair seemed to blaze with them. While there is still hope for another growth spurt, Albel measures in just slightly under the average height for her age. Covered head to toe with pure ivory colored skin, only made imperfect by the thin sweep of freckles trailing across her nose from cheek to cheek, almost invisibly.
She was not like children her age in other ways too. While kids around her in the orphanage cared about Pop albums and fashion designers, Albel reveled in the world of the past. Not the times of war and destruction, but the centuries before that, when people made things.
You see, in a world where people have the power to create the image or sound or emotion of anything they want, there is no need for objects such as musical instruments, video players, or books. All anybody has to do, is travel to the location of the person who is presenting their ideas about music or art to experience it. As a result of this, people did not remain tied down to lavish homes, they did not need a space to hold decorations when they could create an illusion of them at will anywhere. This includes clothing, jewelry, friends and overall physical appearance.
Albel, however, is a collector of such things, searching every market for these rare items, stowed in underground shelters by those ancient people who were trying to preserve their culture while the world was being torn at the seems. The earth- is a very large world.
She is also famous, by those who are kind enough to believe that the old rumors are not connected to her, for being able to utilize items that others could not understand their intended purpose. Her most prized possession being her violin. She charms the orphanage children almost nightly with her self-taught skills on that violin.
Albel slumps down in her computer chair, computers were still necessary to send messages to people far away. An anxious, smile appears on her face as she quickly reads the email open in front of her, the last line sets off a fiery excitement in her eyes "New Antiquity Hold Discovered, Non-Auctionable Items Are First Come, First Serve. Opens at 11AM" The best things, in Albel's opinion, were the things that experts thought were worthless. She turns off the computer, Albel does not have any close friends that she could waste hours in front of the computer screen talking to. She looks at the time on her alarm clock-10AM. She jumps out the the chair and leans into her closet looking for an outfit.
October in Tennessee is like summer in the northern states, but it is customary for people to still wear fall clothing, simply because it is what's in style.
Keeping in mind that she will be spending the next few hours digging through piles of ancient junk and possible fighting off other collectors, she looks for something easy to move about in. After only a few minutes, she decides on a pair of close fitting, navy blue sweat pants with the draw strings tied in a bow on the front and a repeated print of pink and red roses with tiny green leaves sprouting from under the blooms. This was topped with an off white lace camisole under a button down, dark gray knit sweater with brown buttons and big square pockets on the bottom. She slipped on her brown, faux fur lined mocassins and headed towards the door. Catching a glimpse of herself in the bathroom mirror as she passed, she realized she probably should do something about her hair. She snatched a white, over sized beanie with a big white fur pom pom on the end and plushed it down on her head. She did not need to waste time with makeup, she had naturally long, dark eyelashes and rosy pink lips.
Some people could conjure an illusion to change their clothing, to make it look like they were wearing flawless makeup when they were not, but this required one to be constantly thinking about how they looked. This type of self-centeredness was not a trait Albel would indulge in. Although, however, if the occasion called for it, she would take the time to physically put on makeup and she was pretty good at it. Today though, she was in a hurry.
Running down the three flights of stairs in the orphanage was dangerous business, every couple steps one has to be weary of left behind toys or children sitting on the steps to color. The walls were peeled white painted cinder block and the railing was short and painted black. The steps themselves were made of aged wooden planks. The floors of the entire building were either wood or tile; children cannot be trusted with carpet.
Making a right turn at the bottom of the stairs, she entered the kitchen which could be completely described by it's tiled floors, tacky wall paper, and out of date appliances. There is an exit from the side of the house through the kitchen that she walked straight towards, grabbing an apple and egg sandwich their caretaker had prepared for them for breakfast.
Approaching the busy street, Albel hails a cab. The cab that pulls up is bright red with a strange, circular body shape, marked with a Chinese dragon that was alive, slivering around the car, breathing fire- an illusion created by the driver to attract customers. The interior was just as ridiculous with green scaled seats and purple carpet.
"Where to?" the driver asks with a northern accent, watching her in the rear view mirror.
"To the end of 162." she doesn't make eye contact with him.
"What's there fun to do out there?" he asks, seemingly trying to find some juicy rumor to lure costumers into another 5 miles out of their way to go see.
Albel is hesitant to tell him the value of the place, she doesn't need anymore competition.
"A dig site, with artifacts dated around 2010's." She knows nothing from this time would be highly valued.
"Aww, a bunch of junk if you ask me, people in that time thought so highly of themselves, everyone was a 'winner'" deciding that she was either boring or weird, he ignored Albel for the rest of the trip.
To her dismay as she exited the cab, a large crowd had already began to form at the site, which was found while remodeling an old playground that sat near the banks of a small lake. Hopefully, the majority would be there to bid on scratched CD's and other items that were only valuable because they looked cool to hang in a display somewhere. There was a small trailer set up filled with all the "non-sellable" items heaped in unorganized piles in a small room.
It was recognized, even by experts, that sometimes, items could be found that did not seem to fit with the other items they were surrounded with. It was as if these items had drifted from other times or maybe even other worlds and had fallen in place with other lost items in this world.
Two men stood in one corner of the room, digging through a pile and speaking quietly to one another about the poor quality of the items there. Albel scanned the room and came to the same conclusion- everything was junk. Each item was covered in the thick black mud that flooded the compound when the construction workers accidentally knocked down the concrete wall of the shelter. Anything of worth would be in a horrible condition.
Not wanting to waste the trip, she unenthusiastically started poking through the rubble. Everything was in bits of muddy pieces, and the collection was so unorganized, and the dig so careless, it was hopeless to try to find all the pieces of any single item.
Finally, a bright piece of shell caught her eye, peaking out from underneath an old stained t shirt. Pulling it out, she was immediately surprised by its brightness and beauty. Like the rare items, mentioned before, it did not fit the setting. Most of the artifacts present were from what seemed to be a shelter during the early years of the Great War; it was littered with clothing and cans that once held some kinds of food. But this- this was made of shinny pure sea shell, from the ocean, a hundred miles away from this place. Albel was immediately impressed with a sense of intuition, that this item was greatly important to someone, somewhere. This item had value.
It was made of thalassa shells that are pale yellow toward the center and pale pink toward the tips. The shells are held together by gray, X-shaped bands that bound together five shells, forming a star shape that held in its center, a dark brown crown shaped token. A funny, simply drawn face was hand drawn onto it.
"Wayfinder..." she mutters to herself not knowing where the word came from, as she placed it into her sweater pocket and left the building.
Still trapped in thought, she walked a way down path towards the main road where she could get another taxi to continue home. Her hands in her pockets, she fiddled with the shell artifact, stroking each of the five shells between her thumb and forefinger not entirely paying attention to where she was walking.
Shaken by a set of loud splashes from the lake, now about half a mile away. She followed a trail of smoke rising upward from the water to see many more objects hurling downwards.
A meteor shower.
Standing frozen in place, Albel was amazed and delighted at the rare chance that she could be this close to such an event. She was always enchanted by starlight and space exploration. The rocks fell in many shapes and sizes but none to large to cause a threat to her until one object falling was distinctly different from the rest. It was small and thin with what seemed to be some kind of fiber ruffling in the wind at one end. To her horror, she realized this was not a foreign object, it was a human being crashing down towards the earth.
Albel ran full speed towards the lake, nearing the banks just as the person made contact with the water and disappeared under its depths. Diving in full force, her beanie floated away from the force of the splash and she searched for any sign of a person in the murky water and only by chance saw a hand sinking downward into the darkness. Already tired from the run, she struggled to swim any deeper and fatigue was an approaching danger.
"I can't give up, who ever you are, I know you need me right now." Deep inside, she had an awful feeling that the truth was really that she need them. The need for oxygen was too strong and she could not push down anymore. As her strength waned and her body began to rise to the surface, Albel reached her hands down towards the figure that was slowly sinking away into darkness in protest of her weakness.
Closing her eyes, she decided she would rather drown than fail. Still reaching downward, she felt her whole being was passed through her finger tips with her last ounces of strength. She imagined that both could be spat out the lake and be saved. That's when she felt a rush of water. Bubbles were rising from the depths of the lake and the water above was splashing rapidly in strong tides as if in the throws of a powerful storm. Albel opened here eyes in time to see the mystery person raising towards her and with a sudden rush, the lake in the water formed a powerful spout, spinning up towards the sky and ejected both from the depths of the lake onto the shore.
They landed with incredible force on the rocky beach, knocking the breath out of Albel. She laid, eyes closed, for a few minutes trying to handle the sharp pain of the fall. Her mind was spinning, how could this have happened? Could she have...? No, those powerful warriors of old were all wiped out...and the rest was just a myth...
Coughing a few feet away made her come back to reality. She rolled over and sat up, looking at the body near her. It was a man. Or maybe just a boy, really. He had incredibly spiky brown hair and smooth tanned skin. His eyes were still closed but he also had very thick dark eyelashes. He wore a strange outfit that was some kind of blue and black overalls with yellow straps and a black vest. A thick chain necklace with a crown shaped token hung around his neck. She knelt over him after he coughed up water, but still lay nearly unconscious.
"H-hello? Are you OK?" Albel said hesitantly, trying to get his attention. He responded by slightly opening his eyelids to reveal deep ocean blue eyes,then immediately closing them again. Albel blushed for a reason she didn't understand, he certainly wasn't beautiful but there was something that seemed ...valuable. He groaned in pain from his many falls that day but Albel was eventually able to help him sit up and the coax him to his feet, with her supporting him.
"We're not far from town, I will take you somewhere safe." He gently opened his eyes, this time almost half way and gave her a trusting expression and nodded in approval. She lead the way back down the path but they both need to rest after moving for a few minutes. Seeing a small meadow in the surrounding forest, she lead him towards a patch of grass.
He gently laid down on his back and she sat crossed legged above his head, staring down at his face. His rest was not painful or a struggle, he laid as if in a peaceful sleep. Albel did not break her stare. She was intrigued, looking down at this stranger, hands once again fiddling with the shell artifact she had found earlier that day- that morning had seemed so far away. The grass in the meadow was littered with small purple flowers. The beauty of it all entranced her the way the stars did.
The boy laying in a bed of purple flowers.