Hey...long time no read, I'm so sorry. You'd think in my summer break I'd have tons of free time, but I seem to be busier than ever with work and home-work. So here, finally, a new chapter. Please enjoy!
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VI
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Tempest
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Kitty sat by the window and waited for the storm to break loose. The sky was already loaded with black clouds, the sea was molten lead.
"A storm is coming, eh Kitty?" her grandma croaked. Kitty turned and smiled.
"Yes. Everything's black and grey already."
The old woman nodded and closed her eyes. "There were no storms when your grandfather was still here." She smiled and Kitty knew that she was far away, on an orange coloured day. "He'll be happy to hear about you, girl." the grannie said. "I'll tell him how pretty you are when we meet again. At the blue borderline."
"Blue borderline?" Kitty asked.
The old woman nodded. "He'll come to me in time. I sent him a message."
Kitty nodded and averted her eyes. The first raindrops hit the windowpane. She remembered something.
"I'll be right back, grannie" she called as she put on her yellow jacket, grabbed a flashlight and ran out into the storm.
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I felt bad about taking the boat, I really did. He was a good guy and all. But I needed his boat, that much was certain. So, ste– eh, borrowing was the way.
He would be angry when he discovered the missing ship, but hey, he'd get it back the next day. That was my plan. Good plan? Sure. Couldn't fail. Ab-so-lute-ly foolproof.
...Mayyybe it'd been a not-so-clever idea setting sail at the eve of the storm, ((in the dead of the night on top of that)) but somehow I saw no alternative. You know, like now or never.
When I had made it halfway, Hell broke loose. The waves became black towers that wanted to crush me. The boat was a little ball the waves tossed back and forth, up and down.
I tried changing my form, but for one the water made me weak, and another form, I realized, wouldn't do any good. As a bird, the winds would blow me away, and heavy birds can't fly. A heavy guise in the boat would sink it at once. Abandoning it wasn't an option–I'd go under inevitably. I felt sick. Direction I had lost the moment the storm had begun.
Panic grew in me.
Panic, I ask you. I couldn't even remember the last time I'd been in panic. Probably never. All around me deafening noise, roaring black water, screaming wind and thunder that made my essence shiver. No horizon. I was lost.
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Finally her flashlight found him on the beach; from the distance she saw him fighting with his tent, and she saw that it was a lost fight.
"Hey" she screamed, the wind carrying her voice away. She ran as fast as the whipping rain would allow her. "HEY!"
The old man looked up.
"Leave it" Kitty called. "Come on! You'll drown if you stay here."
The man just looked at her. She didn't care about what she could guess he thought right then; she grabbed his arm and pulled him with her. "Don't you remember what I told you?!" she screamed.
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Suddenly...there was a light. A small light somewhere behind the deadly walls of water. The light danced, moved, and held still for a while.
A flashlight, I realized. Must be. Somewhere over there's the shore, and people with flashlights. Must be. Hope bloomed in me and suffocated the panic.
There was my lighthouse, my direction.
I screamed at the sodding motor to get a bloody move and summoned my strength to stir the boat towards the light. It moved again now, but I didn't avert my eyes till it disappeared from my view, and that was the moment my boat crashed at the shore.
As a giant bear I pushed the boat onto the beach where I flipped it over and finally, as a little fox, took refuge under it, waiting for the morning to come.
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"Please come in." Kitty gestured to the living room. "I'll make tea, my tea is great."
She stuck her head into her grandma's room. "Grannie, do you want-" she stopped.
The old thin woman sat up straight in her bed, her eyes stared into nothingness. "I had the strangest dream, Kitty" she whispered.
A loud bang and the sound of shattering glass prevented Kitty from rushing to her side; instead she turned and ran into the garden. "Hello?" she yelled. The storm was deafening. The noise, so much noise, she felt like losing her head.
"Kitty?!" someone called. The boy, soaking wet and ghostly pale, his face torn, ran towards her. "Everything's gone! Everything!" he screamed. "It's-"
"There never was-"Kitty tried, but what for? she realized before she finished the sentence.
"Kitty" the boy said. He looked so helpless, and she had wished she'd never have to see him like this ever again.
"Come in, calm down" she said, and hurried back inside.
The old man had found the tea bags. Water was already boiling. Her grandma still just sat there, unmoving, blind and deaf to the world. Kitty kneed down beside the bed and carefully took her thin hand. So thin and fragile, transparent. "Grannie, what happened?" Strain in her voice.
"I had the strangest dream" the woman said again. She sounded tired, frightened and terribly old.
"It was a sunny day. The trees were green and the larks were singing." Kitty briefly closed her eyes. She saw it right before her, as if she had been there too.
"And then a boy came. He was suddenly there. You know", she closed her unblinking eyes. "Out of the blue. Yes", she nodded "The Blue. Everything was blue then. Kitty..." Finally she opened her eyes again and looked directly into Kitty's wide and worried ones. "This boy was in danger."
The constant pling of dripping water behind her reminded Kitty of her neighbour who still stood unmoving in the doorframe. He stared at her as if he had a revelation.
"No, no" the grannie croaked "It wasn't him I saw."
Kitty looked from him to her grannie and at him again and it dawned on her and suddenly she felt terribly tired.
"Kitty" he said, "Kitty..." She looked at him and she felt so tired, oh God so tired. The voice screamed inside her. "DO something-!" and kept on screaming at her, "I can't-" and she felt like breaking down, like everything was too much right now; and now Kitty noticed the noise all around, and wasn't that what she had yearned for, noise, life? But it really was not, she knew that now, it wasn't, and suddenly -LONELY- she understood what she had to do- she really needed to do something---
"Kitty!"
"-yes" she said. "I know." He needed to know, that much was inescapable clear. "Come on." She took his hand and led him into her room. "I'll explain everything."
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"You see" she began. "When I was a kid, my grandma used to tell me legends, stories as old as the memory of mankind.
One said that in the old days, men and djinn and the dead lived together in one world. But with time the djinn became too mighty and the dead became too many, and the people feared them. So they banned the spirits to the Other Place, and they locked the dead in the mirrors.
But sometimes when…
Sometimes when we look at our reflection, they are there, looking over our shoulders."
He didn't move, just listened like children listen to a fairy tale- wide eyed, mouth slightly open, they just believe, they know it's true- and Kitty fetched a small mirror, hesitantly held it up for him to look at his reflection.
She whispered now. "And all the time there is a numb ache, a secret, subconscious longing within all three kinds…to be in each other's company again. I think here…might have happened something like this."
He stared into the mirror, and he understood. "I'm-"
She shrugged, nodded, knitted her eyebrows. Then he looked at her.
"Oh..."
"Yes."
Deafening thunder outside, and the rain slowly ceased to a silent mizzle. They didn't move for a long time.
The storm was over.
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oh the drama again! I can't do without it obviously^^ please review, and I promise the next chapter will come soon!