The Chronicles of Sorataki: Lucid Wish

Chapter 1: Dragged through the threshold

Natalie

She was standing in the middle of a pitch-black everything felt as it was before excepted lack of fatigue Alarm and confusion caused her to look around franticly.

Taking timid steps upon the seemingly endless darkness forward and tried to rationalize what happened to her slowly grew.

I was with Andrew just a second ago.

She called for Andrew, her voice echoed onwards and upwards. Although she thought she was dreaming at first something about it felt off, a bit too real despite being aware of the fact, despite wanting to wake up from it. The muffled and very distant voice came back to her. Andrew, she knew, but it sounded like trying to hear him submerged under six feet of water. Odd and fairly muffled but even then it was enough to calm Natalie's nerves. Taking that as a hint that this oddity was happening only on her end she took in a small breath to compose herself.

Looking back around at the void of darkness she tried to study it. It was like trying to analyze the back of her eyelids. Everything a perfect black except her palms in front of her. That and the rest of herself came out clear as though a spotlight flashed down on her from on up high. Her hands were shaking she noticed.

Something's off about all of this, but what?

"Andrew, you still there?" she whispered.

Something inaudible echoed back. Although she could not make out a word of it she smiled she knew it was Andrew and that put the ghost of a smile on her face. Clenching her hands to fight back the shakes she felt from she gritted her teeth. With her initial fears in check, she was able to recollect something she experienced before. That sound of the whistling winds, shed heard it before. She'd seen the place it came from once a while ago. Things looked a lot different back then, that and she was not alone like she was now, she had company.

Turning around to the direction of those winds she saw it, a thin slither of horizontal light pure and bright hit the corner of her eye making her squint. And between that light stood a long flight of steps made of white marble, and a door of the same color bearing a golden knob. It stood there along, suspended in the air by nothing. No railings or support, nothing, and yet the white glow it gave off stood as a beacon, a focal point of life and light in this vast sea of darkness.

The suspended door standing upon seven pure white steps, where a whistling breeze whistles through the thin gap at the bottom of its frame.

All at once the familiar sensation of that bazaar sight washed over her.

It both made sense and yet baffled her at the same time, before laying an eye on it the first time Natalie first imagined it as the wind blowing through the floorboards. And even as Natalie saw where it was coming from, felt the steady breeze push the hair across her face as she gazed at it something about that first image always seemed more fitting.

Either way, seeing this sight along did confirm one thing she sure.

I'm definitely not awake.

The first and last time she saw such a sight she was deep in meditation, had that been the only thing worth noting then she would have stopped investigating right there and then but she could not afford to, not this time.

Something was definitely not right with this setup. The last time she was here the void around her was not black but was in fact white. Almost as white as the door itself.

She could not yet explain it but she felt that she was not safe in this black void.

She would have sought comfort within the light slipping out beyond the white door but even that warm glow held an unknown presence to it as tantalizing as it was. Like to step too close towards it would pull her past the edge of the world, she surmised this the last time she tried to ascend its seven white steps and twist the golden doorknob. There was also the small fact that there was a lack of presence from the other presence that she met here the last time. A young girl who wore the exact same one-piece white summer dress she wore the day the life she knew was taken from her.