Chapter 6:

There is magic in the air.

I know

Do you feel it?

I feel…nothing. I sense…

What?

I do not understand.

Not understand?

NO! I don't KNOW!

What do you think you sense?

Voices…and touches at the same time.

You don't understand this?

No. I only hear and feel…sensations…at the same time.

Embrace it.

It is…uncomfortable.

But natural.

But natural.

Can you feel us?

My body is…gone!…I…

You are here.

I feel with no body, hear with no ears!…I DON'T understand!…

You are here. Embrace…

I…I CAN'T!

You will. You must.

It is hurting me.

Embrace us.

Why?







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Cryn opened her eyes to a confined darkness. She tried to lift her head, but bumped into something like stone. The resulting ache was almost forgotten in her astonishment. She wriggled around, exploring her enclosure. Both her hands and feet stopped inches from their resting place. Panic started to set in.

"Help!" her voice almost a whisper. "HELP! Help me, please. Someone…help." She briefly yelled, but could feel the air running out on her. She forced herself to calm down. Her breath was ragged, her flight response taking over. She couldn't see anything.

'I…where am I?' she thought. Her mind screamed 'GET OUT!'

She tried not to think of bugs and crawly things that might inhabit confined and dark spaces. She closed her eyes to fight the strain. 'I was by a stream and I…I probably fell asleep. I didn't just beam somewhere.'

Just as she gained control and cleared her mind to think, the walls suddenly began to move…inward. There was no sound, only the gentle but steady pressure of the cold brick against her limbs.

Her heart momentarily stopped. Her mouth hung open in a silent scream turned gasp. Once again her reaction to flee broke her mental control. Though she didn't flail about, her body did violently contract. At the brink of passing out, her subconscious finally took over.

'Embrace it' her mind told her.

She felt her body relax and mind reflex. It was an odd sensation. It seemed like a natural impulse yet still foreign. She couldn't believe the consequences of her involuntary impulse. She couldn't believe that it even worked, and work so powerfully. Feeling the inclosing pressure, she shattered the wall with an outward heaviness. In her mind it was like moving a limb, but not having to consciously think about it. Only a notion, a feeling, it hadn't even developed into a thought yet. It was automatic.

The shards of wall continued to fall back to the ground, and she dumbly sat up and looked around her. It was now night with a brilliant full moon, curiously larger than previously seen, and crystal clear stars. 'What just happened?' Her lungs gulped in the sweet night air.

She cocked her head to the side and looked at an adjacent wall. She stared at it for a few minutes, furrowing her brow in concentration. The wall stayed intact.

"Okay. I think I just broke out of a wall. I don't know how and…" she started at the wall once again, "I can't do it again." She sighed a dramatic and drawn out sigh. "Did I unknowingly take some acid?" She looked around and for a moment believed that there was a little something extra in that tea Grandfather had given her.

A surge of frustration rang out through her body and to her mouth.

"WHY!" she yelled into the night. "Why can't I be in some UNDERSTANDABLE situation?" she bit out each syllable as if such scrutiny of her native tongue would help the situation. "Why must I be thrown into these…these impossible riddles?" She grabbed a clump of grass in her tantrum and threw it randomly. It really didn't make her feel any better.

She forced herself to calm down. A trick she'd perfected while living with her impossible and offensive parents. As the beating blood drained from her ears, she noticed the new and totally encompassing silence.

"Wait a sec…" she looked around again. There was no bubbling stream and no sign of her back pack. 'Well that's no surprise, I doubt a wall just grew up around me. Someone put me in there, or it was just a dream.' She picked up a broken piece of brick on the ground. 'Nope, I did just break out of somewhere.' She looked up at the sky again and tried to find the some basic frame of reference, either the Little Dipper or the Southern Cross. She could see neither.

She felt a strange thrill electrify her spine. "I am…somewhere else." Her tired, but still lovely face broke into a large, genuine smile. Her face muscles faintly protested at the underused act.

"I am not on Earth." She mused aloud while gazing at the alien Moon. She could see no crators that she recognized. She contemplated this for a minute, her smile morphed with a touch of a sarcastic twist. A dark chuckle escaped her inner throat. "Wow, you really wish for something and it does come true." Her grin faded as she wondered if she really wanted what she wished for.

"But I didn't wish for this!" She once again stated aloud.

'Oh you didn't?' her mind shot back.

"Well, this certainly does explain some things." She thought back to the talking creatures at the beginning of her little journey. 'I can't believe I didn't have this little revelation before.' She thought back to the day's other events. Or at least all the events that transpired the last time she was awake. She had no idea how long she had been in that…prison? She shuddered. 'No, it was just an enclosure.' She didn't want to believe anyone wanted her forgotten or dead. How could anyone? She knew nobody here. 'Where ever here is.' But the day's events could never have happened anywhere on Earth she had ever been or heard of.

Her thought pattern broke at an observation, "What the...." She gazed at the surrounding walls while getting off the ground. They were different than the ones she had fallen asleep to. She grabbed a shattered piece of brick off the ground and examined it in the moonlight. Yes, it was the same make as the walls she originally saw, and different than the ones that now surrounded her. "What does it mean?" she whined. Her head hurt from all the new riddles and situations. "Labyrinth…" she muttered. 'That's what that Arth… whatever, guy said.'

"It certainly is living up to its name." She grunted in annoyance.

'What else did he say? He's been lost for as long as he can remember?' She shuddered again, though not entirely because of the concept. It was quite chilly.

She crossed her goose bumped arms across her thin, but long sleeved shirt. Her pants were roughly the same thin, cottony material and gave little warmth retention. She looked down at her tennies. Her feet were cold due to sweat and no socks. It was not a happy position to be in.

The moon seemed to be reaching its high point, but there was no telling what the orbit was like. She was almost surprised to see only one moon.

Setting off in the direction of the only opening in the surrounding walls, Cryn set a brisk pace. The new walls looked softer than the others. They seemed more organic in design and color. She touched a particularly curvy wall. It was soft, but firm, and… warm. The wall was WARM!

She hoped it wasn't alive, or at least had no toxin defense attributes, like some plants she read about in school or have some other booby trap, and leaned her back against it. Warmth soothed her backside and she turned to warm the front. She smiled at her impression of being a shih-ka-bob.

As she turned again to switch sides, her eye caught an object in the distance. Not more that a mile away was a towering structure. There was a huge outer wall and at the top grew a castle of sorts. It was a sharp castle, with spires and an odd mixture of soft and hard angles. It defiantly contrasted with the current walls around her.

She decided to try and reach the structure. And after one last warmth leaning, she headed off towards the castle.