Hello people of fanfiction! I'M ALIVE! So my brain decided to not work for this story for a while but, for the moment, I'VE FIXED IT! So this is chapter TWO! If it's confusing I apologize it will make sense later ^_^ so READ ON PEOPLE, read on.
Oh! And thank you to AlyssaRose369 for helping my organize my brainXD
UPDATE: I tweaked this slightly so it fits the format of the other chapters but the contents haven't changed.
Panicked eyes looked around the cabin as people shoved past Tay trying to get to their seats. Storm blue eyes darted every which way trying to identify where her assigned seat was. Tay inched toward the back, trying her best no to bump into the people attempting to fit their carry-on luggage in the overhead compartments. She slowly sat down in her window seat realizing, as the claustrophobia set in, that this leg of her journey wouldn't be as easy as she thought. Buckling her safety belt, she looked out the window, soaking in her last view of the ground for the next few hours.
The pilot announced over the intercom that they were ready for takeoff, so Tay looked away from the window and gripped the arm rests. The plane began its takeoff down the runway and as the wheels lifted off the ground, Tay felt her stomach drop; a sensation that was similar to the first drop of a roller coaster.
As the plane finished its ascent, her death grip on the arm rests let up. Tay looked out the window to gauge the plane's travel out of the states. Though, she came to regret that decision moments later when she saw that they were already well over the Atlantic. Slowly, she turned her head away from the windows, dug through her bag for her iPod and put her ear buds in once she'd found it. Tay closed her eyes and tried to sleep as she felt the claustrophobia ebb away for the moment. She realized it was going to be the longest ride of her life.
Tay awoke hours later to a robotically sweet flight attendant gently waking her. She had managed to sleep soundly all the way across the Atlantic, much to her delight. It took Tay a few moments to comprehend what the attendant was trying to tell her.
"Miss, miss, you're going to have to buckle your seat belt. We will be arriving in Ireland shortly."
"Oh, alright, thanks," replied Tay slowly, still half-asleep. She sat her seat up, turned off her iPod and looked out the window to see her first view of Europe. Rolling green lands greeted her as the plane descended. The claustrophobia she hadn't realized was setting in ebbed away as the plane neared land.
"Welcome to Dublin Airport and thank you for flying Trans-Atlantic Air," came the voice of the pilot over the intercom. The plane stopped and all the passengers stood up to grab their carry-on bags. Not having any carry-on luggage, Tay made her way through the aisles stuffed with people. Once she stepped off the plane, she took a deep breath of air. She made her way into the terminal, the immensity of the task she had set herself to dawning on her. All she had to go on was a few sites about Japanese hospitality. Cara had been looking at them for a few days, right up until she disappeared. So Tay was now on her way to Japan, hoping that luck was on her side.
Tay walked into the terminal to wait for her next flight. Her layover was a few hours long so she had some time to kill.
The Dublin Airport was rather large. There were multiple floors with multiple shops and food stuffs. Tay decided she would explore where she could in the airport, starting with finding the terminal where her next flight would be.
An hour later she finally found it. The terminal she was looking for looked like it was an addition to the airport that had almost been forgotten. It was shoved into the farthest corner of the airport, away from just about everything. Tay then decided that food was next on her list of things to kill time with. She walked away from the forgotten terminal toward the more populated zone of the Dublin Airport.
Once she lost sight of the forgotten terminal, it finally occurred to her why it was so far away from the hustle and bustle. And why the few beings that occupied the terminal felt strange to her. They were demons. Apparently demons had enough sway in this place to have their own terminal.
Tay put that out of her mind as she went to find herself food. She wasn't a very picky eater so she just chose the nearest shop. As she walked away with whatever food her stomach had persuaded her to buy in hand, her thoughts drifted back to the demon terminal. It was a strange thing for demons to have their own area. Even stranger was the fact that she had ended up buying a ticket for that terminal. Apparently fate was trying to push her in some sort of direction.
In the small amount of time Tay had been gone, the terminal had filled quite a bit. As she walked further in, she looked at the place with a new eye. Now that she knew what she was looking at, Tay could clearly see all the demons, particularly those that felt comfortable enough to not hide their true forms. There was an especially blatant demon to Tay's left that was being so obvious it was laughable. He had a head of flaming red hair, pointed ears and pointed teeth. But that wasn't the laughable part. He was sitting cross-legged against the far wall and was floating a good foot in the air.
'Obviously,' she thought to herself, 'he's a wind demon, and not one to be trifled with either.' She came to the second conclusion when she saw him playing with the wind he controlled.
Tay wasn't exactly thrilled when she saw that the only open seats were near the red-haired wind demon. She sat down, put her bag next to her and leaned down to pull out her every-trusty iPod and book in an effort to look busy. Too bad the floating one felt the urge to speak before she could pull either of them out.
"'Ello lassie," spoke the pointy-eared demon. Tay eyed him warily wondering why this demon was talking to her. "You know…you look rather familiar."
"Um…thanks," Tay responded, not knowing what to say. 'This guy keeps getting stranger and stranger,' she thought to herself.
"No seriously. You remind me of a girl I met a few days ago. Tall, blonde hair with eyes greener then the hills of this place," replied the red head floater. Upon hearing the description of this curious girl, Tay stopped and faced the red head straight on. She stared at him for a few moments trying to gauge how well she could trust him. After weighing her options, she decided she had no choice and said to him words that almost killed her inside.
"My sister's alive?"
The remaining time in the terminal was a blur for Tay. The wind-demon, who had introduced himself as Jin, told her the full account of his encounter with Cara. At the end of his tale, they announced boarding for the flight to Japan. It turns out that fate had meddled with her life again, for Jin was in the seat beside Tay's for the flight.
They boarded the plane without issue. Though, as they found their seats, the distraction of another clue to Cara couldn't outweigh Tay's claustrophobia. Once she was in her seat and buckled in, Tay stared out the window to burn the image of the outside world into her head. Jin looked over at Tay, about to give words of encouragement for her search, when he saw her white knuckles clamped to the arm rests.
"I take it, that you have a case of claustrophobia comin' about ya?"
Tay answered in a shaky voice, eyes never leaving the window. "You could say that." Suddenly she felt a slight breeze on her face. She slowly turned to face Jin, a curious look on her face.
"Close your eyes and dream of the rolling hills of Ireland."
Tay followed his direction. She closed her eyes, but she didn't dream of Ireland. She dreamt of the open hills of home.
*~*Flashback*~*
BEEP...BEEP…BEEP!
"Oh will you shut up already!" Tay shouted at her alarm clock as she tried to find it without getting out of bed. When she was finally conscious enough to realize her clock was on the other side of the room, she opened her eyes of royal blue. Surprisingly, her face space was Cara free. Usually during the school year, her sister woke her up before her alarm could even think about it. But since the new school year had begun, she hadn't at all.
Tay pondered that thought for a moment longer, before finally crawling out of bed. She ate breakfast and got her stuff together before finally piling into Cara's car. The ride to school was unusually quiet. Cara was just focusing on the road, not bothering to comment on anything like she once had. After a thought, Tay realized that her sister had been uncharacteristically quiet all week.
When the pair arrived at school Cara tossed the keys to Tay and hurried into the building. Tay watched after her sister with a worried glance. Something was defiantly wrong if Cara was handing over the keys to her car. Tay glanced at the keys once more before she headed into the school.
She worried about Cara all day. Ever since that day on the beach with the blue-haired woman, her sister hadn't been herself. The rest of the summer involved Cara avoiding time alone with Tay. There was either a friend to go see or an excuse to be used. The new school year saw Cara being the quietest she had ever been.
Before the end of the day, Cara found Tay and told her that she was going to catch a ride with a friend, leaving Tay to drive her car home.
'This weirdness has to end,' Tay thought to herself as she pulled up on an intersection. Seeing no one else through the open fields and hills, she took her foot off the brake. Tay gently accelerated through the intersection, leaving time to admire the brilliant orange leaves of the nearest tree. Suddenly her car stopped on its own, completely shutting off. She attempted to turn it back on for a few minutes before she saw something out of the corner of her eye. Tay tried unbuckling her seat belt in her frantic attempt to get out of her frozen car.
The thing she had seen was car, hurtling toward her, making no attempts to stop. As it got closer to her, she could see the driver and passenger. In the driver's seat was the blonde hair and green eyes of Cara. However, as the car got closer, Tay could see it wasn't the Cara she knew. Her face held no emotion. In the passenger seat was a boy of medium build with red hair. Even when she knew she should be finding a way out of the car, Tay thought of all the strange things she saw in that car. One being that this strange boy was defiantly not one of Cara's friends and another being that mystery boy was wearing a pink uniform. Tay, both astounded and scared, was frozen in her seat. Everything turned to slow motion as she watched their car crash into her's, metal screeching like nails on a chalk board. After that everything went black.
The doctors had told her she was a walking miracle. She had walked away from a major T-bone collision with only a few minor scrapes. Both cars had been completely totaled. Cara and her passenger couldn't be found, but people assumed that even if they'd walked away, they were probably dead by now. Tay didn't believe that.
The last night Tay was to spend in the hospital, she spent it tossing and turning. She replayed the crash over and over in her head. Tay wondered why her car had stopped, why the other car didn't stop and why her sister had run off. The sun had risen before she finally closed her navy blue eyes, falling into a troubled sleep.
*~*End Flashback*~*
"Lassie, lassie, wake up," said a somewhat familiar Irish accent through the inky blackness of her nap.
"Jin you can stop shaking me. I'm awake," replied Tay.
"My apologies lassie. Just seemed to me that your dream wasn't as pleasant as you had wanted it to be."
"It's alright Jin. It was just my sister."
"She's got some kind of effect over you doesn't she? Even after she's left."
Tay sighed. "Yeah Jin, she did, does….gah! I don't even know anymore. She was my older sister my best friend. When she left, my world turned upside down. And when I was told she was dead, I just couldn't believe it. So that's why I decided to leave for Japan. I was hoping to find Botan. She's a spirit guide who was in contact with Cara." And as she related to Jin the events that led up to Tay leaving home, she closed her storm eyes and pictured that day. The day that initiated her journey.
*~*Flashback*~*
"Tay, honey, it's time to get up. We have a visitor." Her mother gently shook her from the cat nap she was taking on the couch. It was the only form of sleep she had been able to get since coming home from the hospital two week previous.
"Fine mom, I'll be in my room," Tay said with a sigh.
"Sorry Tay, you can't play anti-social with this one. He specifically wants to see you." In an effort to emphasis her point to her sleep-deprived daughter, she pointed her finger at Tay.
Tay paused for a moment. Visitors had become a common occurrence at their house since the supposed death of her popular sister. But someone coming to see Tay was a definite surprise. All her friends seemed to have forgotten her existence since she had come home from the hospitalit was as if she was invisible.
Tay pulled herself into an upright position as her visitor walked in. She looked at the questionable stranger before saying anything. The visitor was taller than the average person, with vibrant red hair. His strangest feature was the pink uniform he was wearing. And that was when it finally hit Tay. She then did her best to put the couch between her and her visitor. Thankfully her mother had left the two of them alone or else there would have been a lot of questions later.
The stranger, smirking slightly at her reaction, sat down on the opposite couch and answered her unasked question.
"My name is Kurama and yes, I was in your sister's car the day of your accident."
Dun, Dun DUUUUUUN! So that's chapter 2! Hopefully chapter 3 comes out before my brain decides to dislike this again :D