Hey everyone...remember me? It's been a WHILE, I know. As in almost (or about) a year since my last update. I do have excuses, though. To start with, last summer, my laptop's hard drive crashed, not repairable at all, and I lost everything. I had to get it replaced. That was pretty devastating, and the only reason I still have this story is because I'd published it here on fanfic (THANKGOODNESS). I lost my entire first NANOWRIMO, so that was heartbreaking, but at least I still have this. But I didn't get the new hard drive until late in the summer. And then school started, very little time to write. Then during winter break, well...I was having a lot of personal complications with a break up and my best friend and such drama, and I just didn't feel like writing/editing/posting. Then back to school, which brings us to spring break (now) and I'm dealing with putting my oldest and first dog (Shayna) to sleep tomorrow :'-( She's very sick and it's devastating. I'm going to miss her like crazy. But I decided, this next chapter has been edited for a while, and I might as well post one more new chapter while Shayna is still alive. I'll keep updating, but I have no idea how often. So...that's the story behind the almost year-long delay. SORRYYYY!!!!!!! I hope this chapter is enjoyable. I own nothing but the characters you don't recognize, and all that jazz. Please review? Provides more motivation for updates...and the next chapter is partially written. So, without further adue (Did I spell that right?) here we go...this chapter is dedicated to my dog.
Chapter Eighteen: Rock Hunt
I attempted to squint through the fog to see the other side, but it was too thick. Before I knew it, we were entering it, and my eyes and throat began to burn. I slammed my tearing eyes tightly shut and started to cough, gripping my throat with one hand. Peter must have noticed my discomfort because I felt his grip tighten around my hand and the wind speed increased around us. We were soon through it, where I could breathe at ease again. As I caught my breath and blinked my tears away, I saw Peter out of the corner of my eye wearing a smile that carried an apology. I gave him a half-grin to show that I was okay.
"I should have taken you around it. I forgot that you're not used to it, like I am," he said. He started to pull me down to our left and I looked ahead again to find an expansive field of rocks, varying in size from pebbles to boulders. My eyebrows shot up as we approached and I righted myself into a standing position as we landed, nearly falling as I tried to gain my balance on the rocks.
"Whoa…" I waved my arms as I attempted to straighten my stance upon the stones that moved beneath my feet. "Uh, Peter, why are we here?" Before he answered, something occurred to me. "Do you use these rocks to make swords?"
"Well, yeah, but not just any of these rocks can be used," he chuckled, perhaps at my ignorance. "You have to find the perfect one for you. The rock that's perfect for you won't be perfect for anyone else," he explained. So…I had to find a rock for myself? What a search!
"In that case…how do I know which one is, uh, the one? The one rock of power, the one rock to rule them all?" I joked, though not surprisingly he didn't catch my reference to The Lord of the Rings. Peter just gave me a weird look for a moment, then looked away shaking his head slightly, probably thinking again that girls are weird.
"You just kinda know," he said simply. That didn't really narrow down my search at all.
"Well, how did you know with your dagger?" I asked. Without meaning to, I stopped him short with my question. He was a few paces ahead of me, going towards what I did not yet know, and he slowly turned around and looked me in the eyes. His mouth was set in a line and his eyes became round with a deep warmth of some sort that I could not identify. Something had come over him. I hadn't the faintest clue as to what, but I saw something in his eyes that left a question of mystery lightly bouncing around in my mind. What did his expression mean? Something about his past?
"I just knew," he said softly. His eyes lingered on mine as he paused a moment longer, a moment that I didn't dare to fill with another question. Then his eyes trailed away and he took to walking forward again. I stayed put for a moment myself, the question still bouncing until I caught it and tucked it away for the time being, and then followed suit. I watched him pick up a random stone, a tad smaller than a kickball, and he turned back to face me. "Pick one up," he said. I hesitated. "Go on, just pick up a rock," he instructed again. "Don't worry, they don't bight." I snorted at the joke and bent down to choose a stone. I wrapped my hands around one that was a little smaller than the one Peter was holding, but it was surprisingly heavy. I lifted it up and looked at Peter again, waiting for further instruction. "Well?" he asked.
"Well what?" I returned flatly, perplexed. He rolled his eyes.
"Well, how does it feel? Hold it in each hand, toss it back and forth. Does it fit your fingers snugly? Is it comfortable?" 'Comfortable? What the heck is he talking about?' I wondered, but followed his instructions, tossing it back and forth with difficulty due to its weight, and feeling how it fit (actually, didn't fit) into my hands. Peter watched me the whole time. I looked back at him and shrugged my shoulders, not knowing what answer he was looking for. "Yep, I didn't think so. Definitely not," he said, turning his gaze to the hundreds of thousands of surrounding rocks.
"What do you mean you didn't think so? Peter, I'm so confused," I said, a little frustrated with the lack of answers to my questions.
"It doesn't fit you," he said like it should have been obvious to me. "It's not right for you." When I continued to stare at him with a look of exasperated confusion from not knowing the first thing about what he was talking about, Peter tossed the rock he still held, threw back his head, and laughed loudly. I huffed and waited until he was done laughing, apparently at my expense. When his laughter trailed off a little, he noticed the look of annoyance that masked my face, and said, "Rebecca, your confusion is just so funny!" He laughed again and I began to tap my foot loudly.
"There wouldn't be any confusion if you'd just explain to me what's going on," I muttered. Peter's laughter filtered down to chuckles and he looked at me again. "I can't really explain it. You just know."
"Peter! Just know what?" I nearly shouted in frustration, but he held up a hand.
"Rebecca, trust me. You'll know." He turned away again, and continued to walk, leaving my thoughts to scramble themselves into eggs. I took a breath and followed him, abandoning hope of a better explanation of what I was supposed to be looking for. "Pick up another one and see what you think," he called over his shoulder. I sighed to myself, glancing around my feet, and picked up a rock that was a little bigger than the previous one. Bigger, but lighter, and I wondered what materials were within the rock that made it so. I didn't bother to ask Peter; I doubted he knew much about geology and elements, but I couldn't help wishing that I had memorized more from my geology class instead of just forgetting it all after the final exam. Then again, I had never been a science person. I studied for the tests and then forgot the material and moved on to more literature and writing, and arts that I loved. Just then I nearly dropped the rock, finding that it was quite difficult to keep a grip on it. "That one's wrong too!" Peter called back to me, not even turning around.
"Wha…?" I started to ask, and then decided against it. This one was wrong too, huh? I tossed it aside.
"Don't give up, just keep searching and trying out new ones," Peter said, perhaps noticing my frustration. I shook my head and continued on, this time not picking up any rocks surrounding my feet. I followed Peter at first, and picked up several small rocks along the way, all of which he said were wrong for me (for whatever reasons I could not deduce) and I tossed them aside one by one. After a little while of this, I trailed off to the right on my own, away from Peter, though I was headed in no particular direction. My foot caught on a rock that had begun to roll away and I tripped, my hands waiting in front of me for the coming collision. "You okay?" Peter called after hearing my hands slap the rocks beneath me.
"Mmph," I groaned, rubbing my hands together to sooth them and looking back at the rock that had caused me to trip. It was a jagged rock, dark, almost black, speckled with spots that shone gold and silver in the sun. It was rather pretty. I went to pick it up, ignoring Peter's call to me not to do so. As I lifted it, I swear I felt a slight tremble in it, almost like it was trying to escape, and as I held it in complete shock, it began to heat up. "What the?" I said in complete surprise. Was something living inside of it? I looked at the bottom to make sure that I wasn't holding the home of some sort of crab, but it was solid at the way around. As I turned it, studying it and feeling it grow warmer by the second, I heard Peter's fast-approaching steps.
"Rebecca, put that down," he said.
"But…but why?" I asked, completely naïve.
"Just put it down," he repeated. I continued to stand there stubbornly, holding the heating rock and looking back and forth between it and Peter. "Drop it!" he said again, more urgently. I was about to ask him why again when the rock suddenly grew hot, and I jumped with a gasp. At that, Peter came forward and quickly knocked the stone from my hands just as it was beginning to scorch my fingers. Shaking my hands to cool my skin, I watched with wide eyes as the rock somersaulted through the air and hit the ground. It didn't break, but there was a single loud crack and smoke began to rise, seemingly from within it. Peter grabbed my hand, blowing on his own fingers which had touched it, and pulled me away before I could watch it any further. "Why didn't you drop it like I said?" Peter asked me, annoyed and shaking his head. Now, my confusion was still present, but also mixed with having a better idea of what was going on.
"I take it that rock was wrong for me too?" I asked. Peter shot me a look that said I was pretty stupid if I couldn't figure that out.
"Um, yes, that rock was wrong for you!" he exclaimed. Under his current gaze, I felt quite judged, and I looked the other way, my cheeks flushing heat.
"Sorry," I said softly.
"Well, didn't you notice how it was reacting to you? It didn't like you! It hated you, wasn't going to work with you at all!" Peter told me.
"What do you mean it hated me? I don't understand this…am I looking to make some sort of a connection with a random rock?" I asked, still considering the idea insane, except that what had just happened proved it to be apparently possible…or at least possible for a rock to 'hate' me.
"Yeah, basically that's it. I mean, it's gotta feel right to you and you've gotta feel right to it," Peter said. It was perhaps the best explanation he had given me thus far, even if it did sound crazy. Then again, fairies exist, so who says that rocks can't…well, feel in a way? With this in mind, I nodded, much better aware of what I was looking for.
"Should I have a specific size of rock in mind?" I asked, already starting to look around me again."
"You can if you want, but you'll know it's right when you find it," Peter said for what felt like the tenth time. But it was the first time that I really trusted his words and better understood what he meant. Now that I thought about it, remembering the questions he had asked me about the rocks feeling comfortable in my hands, that last rock had felt the opposite. When I had picked it up, it was uncomfortably, almost painfully spiky against my skin, and my fingers hadn't really fit into its natural crevices. I looked at my hands and saw that they had small red spots all over the palms. Yep, that had definitely been the wrong rock, no questions asked.
I looked anxiously at Peter with my palms raised, but when he saw them he just waved the matter away and said that the spots would soon disappear. He also said that if I had held that rock any longer, it could have burnt holes in my hands. I gulped at that. If something similar happened again, I resolved to drop the rock immediately. Peter was walking away ahead of me again, and this time I ran uphill, passing him and causing him to race me and snicker. Soon he was far above me. I had wanted to get a better view of the rocky slope, and once I reached a reasonably high point, I turned around and looked in the direction of the sea, scanning the stony ravine and wondering where to look next. How was I supposed to find one special rock out of all of these lying in front of me, to my sides, beneath me, behind me…
"How long is this going to take?" I said to myself.
"As long as it has to!" Peter yelled down to me from his much higher stance. How he heard me talking to myself, especially with my back turned to him, I'll never know. I was to quickly learn in the future that he had exceptionally good ears, as he had told me the night before, and my they would come in handy in what was to happen on the island. I turned around to locate him and found him perched on a ledge a good 20 to 30 feet above me…or something like that. I was never good at estimating figures, but he looked a fairly far distance away. I estimated based on the indoor rock climbing walls back in the gym, which were 20 to 30 feet in themselves. He shrugged and smiled at me.
"Oh boy…" I muttered low enough to be out of earshot, even of Peter. Again, I looked at the vast expanse of 'feeling' rocks around me, and picked one up by my feet just for the heck of it. Somehow I got an odd sensation inside my right ear and in my throat, like a dull burning, but I quickly took that as a no and tossed the rock. This one did not smoke, but rolled a little ways away from me and I wondered how much of a mind of its own it had. It was becoming clear to me that all of the rocks in this quarry had minds of their own in a very strange way. I took a deep breath, attempting to suppress the nervousness bubbling from the overwhelming chance of finding one single 'right' rock on this place. With careful footing, I stepped backwards to my right, still just observing the view in front of me, which was quite beautiful.
There was the island and the extension of forest to my right, with the edge dissolving into the ocean and the waves taking the trillions of grains of sand back and forth. Then the steam from the running lava plumed into a rounded cloud so that it looked like a large, gray circular patch against the sapphire sea. And to my left, more mountains and volcanoes that climbed out of the surf, which seemed to extend forever into the glowing horizon. Fascinated and awed by the horizon's mystery, I found myself walking off to my left, headed roughly in the direction of the feet of the mountains. I didn't know why, but I felt like I was being drawn that way somehow, and I was suddenly more comfortable climbing over the rocks, not stumbling as much now, and liking the feeling of heading somewhere more specific. I was just entranced by the site before me and I felt the urge to pursue it. I just hoped that Peter wouldn't stop me to bring me back to my frustrating rock hunt.
As I came closer to the corner where the last mountain kissed the sea, though it was still far away, I felt a warmth pooling in my stomach. It was quite comfortable, and I rather enjoyed it; a smile tugged at my lips and they expanded. I began to run. It hardly occurred to me to be careful about running over the quarry, so I suppose it must have been the tugging feeling, like something wanted me to run and get there faster, that kept me from slipping, because I didn't fall even once. I leapt over larger rocks and twisted my feet among the smaller ones to keep my speed and balance, and I actually found myself increasing speed. I ran faster, swinging my arms by my sides, now headed directly towards the foot of the last mountain. It was still quite far, and that's when I felt another hand take hold of my right hand and pull me up. I was feeling very happy, so I had no trouble lifting into the air.
"Where is it?" the boy asked me with a knowing smile. I look confused for a moment, but felt even more of that tugging feeling, and I smiled, suddenly clued into what was happening.
"There," I said softly, and pointed to the foot of the last mountain.
"Let's go, then," Peter said, and we were off, flying quite fast. But just as we shot forward, the tugging feeling decreased, and I lost some of the urgency to get there.
"Wait, Peter!" I said loudly against the sudden wind, and tugged back on my hand. He looked back at me, confused. "I'm losing it," I said, assuming that he would know what I meant, and then stifled a giggle as I thought, 'I really am losing it, losing my sense of sanity. I'm being pulled to a rock!' "I want to go back down to the rocks," I said, hoping that he would understand. I was still tugging against his hand, and he let me go, shrugging. I descended, landing less than gracefully, but right side up nevertheless. I looked back to my destination, and the strong tugging was back. I took one step forward, and the tugging increased. I grinned, and broke off into a run again. It would take me a little while to get there, but maybe the rock that I was apparently pursuing wanted me to get to it by myself, and without the help of flying. Maybe I was somehow earning my right to it more by doing so. These were the thoughts that skipped about in my mind as I shortened the distance.
I was startled to notice that I was running faster than I thought I was capable of doing. In fact, I almost felt like I was flying on my feet, though they were still touching ground with each step. But it was as if I was running along some sort of path carved by a force that was lifting my legs and feet fast and high. Like I was running on hands that were passing me along as fast as they could. 'If only I could race my brother right now,' I thought to myself with a grin. He ran both track and cross country in high school, and was a star runner there, but I knew that I was running faster than he ever had.
With my mind racing against my feet, I hardly noticed as suddenly the distance was drawing quickly to a close. There wasn't much farther to go; all I had to do now was run along the rocky bank at the bottom of that last mountain to get to the very outside corner of the island. I became slightly nervous about running straight across the wet stones that were slicked with the sea, but that was where I felt tugged to, and so much so now that I doubted I would be able to stop if I tried. But the tugging also kept me safe, and my feet seemed to barely skim along the surfaces of the slippery rocks. I was rounding the last bend.
And then I saw it. I knew it was my rock the moment I laid eyes on it. I saw the shining surface of it glinting in the sun, somehow rising above the waves although it was several feet out into the sea. But not a single wave conquered its top. The light upon it flashed brightly, as if it was winking at me, calling me to it. And I went as fast as I could. Once I reached the very edge of the island, I lifted into the air without any hesitation and flew just over the water, reaching out to my rock with open anxious hands. The moment before I was directly over it, I dipped my fingers into the sea and smiled excitedly as I felt my rock seem to rise from the ocean and slip right into my hands. My fingers instantly found a perfect fit within its comfortable crevices, which somehow felt rather soft beneath my skin and seemed to hug my hands all around. I moved it about, turning it around, tossing it between my hands, testing it out for fun, and the entire rock seemed to be molded exactly to fit my fingers no matter which way I held it. It was about the size of a basketball, slightly smaller, and was heavy enough for me to grip it properly, but light enough for me to hold it very comfortably without feeling weighed down. I sat in the air, hugging it to my chest, noting that a sort of feeling of attachment to it had replaced the tugging urge. It was mine and I belonged to it in turn.
Perhaps this chapter seems incomplete, but it was actually part of the next chapter, and I cut them in half due to length. PLEASE REVIEW AND NO FLAMES!!!