𝒜𝒻𝓉𝑒𝓇𝓂𝒶𝓉𝒽 | 𝒟.𝑀.

13 | ﴾ Enemies ﴿

Late at night I laid in my bed, pondering the odd cat that I had found in the hallway hours before. I couldn't help but wonder if there had there always been a cat in the Manor that had simply avoided me with exceptional duplicity, or was it a new inhabitant, and if so, in what circumstance? The Malfoy's were certainly not the type to own pets as none of them seemed to be terribly fond of affection save for Draco, who did everything he possibly could to mask it. Even the elves, who were highly sentient beings operating at the same degree of mental awareness as humans, were treated with terrible respect.

I let the notion slide away. The cat had confiscated my scrunchie and even tried to stalk me to my room, and perhaps I would never see it again if it had already been there for years. The week had been long and exhausting, and I had struggled to keep up with the complex English dialect administered by the professional council that I worked with.

I gradually drifted off into a quite restless sleep and from the moment I shut my eyes, I kept falling backwards through my bed and sat straight up as if I had sunk through a horizontal mirror. The world was the same in both massing and presentation, yet vastly different in hue and energy.

I noticed immediately that I was back in the terrifying realm. Blobs of black sludge were collecting on the floor of my bedroom and drifting upwards as though the laws of gravity were reversed. I carefully pulled off my covers and walked tepidly across the room in my long blue night slip, taking in the dark colors of the false reality. In real life my room was painted a gorgeous, light blue tone with golden accents in the furniture and items, but this plane permitted only sullen and gloomy colors, simply opting to swap out what didn't work for it.

Around my ankles sprouted low, leafy plants that could not possibly belong on the fifth floor of the Malfoy Manor. The walls were partially invaded by the presence of deciduous trees, branching across the ceiling in a disturbing display. One could possibly argue - based on my newest surroundings - that I had come to consciousness in an abandoned building, long overtaken by the weathering of time and nature's cruel consumption.

I heard her voice before I saw her. "Edana," Ascelin purred deeply from the doorway of my room. My eyes lifted to her glowing, purple orbs. She practically floated there in the frame of the passage, her long nails curling in towards herself to beckon me. I followed her celestial form as she commanded the door open and drifted through.

Outside of my room the hallway was also bizarre, and barely recognizable. In some sense it resembled more of a forested pathway. I walked through the black foliage with an oddly slow pace. The atmosphere and gravitational quality had somehow been adjusted to that of a denser planet. Every step was a fight to move ahead in the thick air, which forced me to move forward like a bride slowly crawling down the center aisle in a dramatic fashion.

At the bottom of the stairs she proceeded to morph straight though the massive front doors of the lobby. I reached for the spindly handle to obediently follow, but was struck by an odd sense that something was detaining me to my left. Heat, gentle and worrisome, was flaring towards me in the darkness of the realm that I was trapped in. Much in the manner that dark matter operates, I could not perceive the source of the warmth that did not want me to open the door, but it was there, I was certain of it. And just like lightning, once my eyes had lifted to search for it, it retreated.

I pressed on in it's absence, out into the chilly evening. The world I was in provided a mystic interpretation of the Manor gardens. Fog clung low to the gravel pathways. Above in the sky, mesmerizing swirls of shimmering blues and purples danced amongst the stars. I wove between the many intricately designed pathways that looked nothing like they did in the dimension I normally existed in. Glowing pebbles dug sharply into my bare feet and tiny inspects hummed past my hair.