The Reconnaissance Clock

CHAPTER 16 TIME AND REVELATIONS

The leaves rustled with the wind. The sun barely peered through the bottoms of the trees that bent with a force that seemed unnatural. Flora admired the hilly forest of Nvahnir with its rivers making its way through the trees surrounding her. It was a place where she felt ambivalent. She was young with blonde hair and pale skin, but she did not remember anyone calling her beautiful when she was younger. She had no more friends, but when she did; they saw her as a god due to the certain unusual circumstances that caused her to leave the forest for so long. She thought that this created even more of an alienation among her and her friends. She had followers once, but she was alone now and he had been away from home for a while. It was a day just like any other now, every day seemed like a routine. She relaxed in her humble self-built tree house with the rain drilling down above her. She peered through the window of her bed room and saw something in the distance, or rather someone. She immediately recognized it as the figure of Casper Blackstone. He was walking towards her in almost angelic like movements. Flora gulped and had not prepared her home for a visitor in some time. She scrambled to pick up trash and began putting trinkets in their places. As Flora stepped outside and Casper came closer, she could see the enthusiastic smile on his face.

She had not seen him in ages. Casper glared with the wrath of one thousand lions and said in hushed tones, "Where have you been?". It seemed like he was angry as he was approaching her by the look on his face. Flora looked back at her house, even more concerned and fingering a weathered book that she had removed from her pouch in the anticipation of him coming. As he approached closer, she lowered the book and gazed back at him. They each seemed to have delighted feelings with each other, yet he seemed unconcerned about how she felt. She was a lover of Celtic music and it began to hum in her head. She was grateful for a friend to be arriving and she was not at all noticing his anger.

"I have been here all along" she said with a delighted grin. Casper looked surprised at how grateful she was to see him. "Come in" she said, "for a nice cup of tea. We have much to discuss". She nervously invited him in and he sat down at the makeshift bar that she had put together past her doorway. He sat comfortably and looked at her questionably with something in his eyes that she was not used to seeing. "You left me here to die" he said while he took a sip from the warm tea. He felt uncomfortable and looked around to make sure nobody was coming to harm him. "This planet..." she began, "is so foreign to all of us. The forerunners have no idea...". He glanced up and put his drink down. "Yes, I know" he started, "we are part of the birth of this place. I wish it wasn't so, but we had no choice. I honestly want to thank you for forcing it on me." He said.

The wind continued to blow and Flora grabbed tightly on the arms of the chair that she was sitting in. They both looked above them as a creature with wings that spanned over a mile into the distance both ways passed above them. "Dragons..." Flora said. They admired the beauty of the beast and both continued to drink without fear. They could feel the wind from the beast pound down on them. "Kvasir was a better choice for humanity" he said to her. She listened but struggled in the thought of the manuscript. There are people all over the universe, but there are demons too, she thought.

Prirmenha awoke in an unfamiliar place. She looked around and saw intricate carvings worked on the concrete walls that surrounded her. The art on the walls displayed many ancient depictions of the fall of Valefar and how he fell from the Higher Realm during his previous attempt to overthrow it. The last thing she remembered was being in the meadow and fighting off the great demon and she had never seen anything like this before. She walked along the hall with lights illuminating the designs on the walls. She rubbed her hand across the wall as she walked along it feeling the carvings against her hand. She looked up and saw the blackness and void that she was in. The sky looked as if there was a hole in it and the sky around the hole looked a lot like the sky she recognized from the Dark Realm. What a horrible place, she thought. She wondered if she were in the Dark Realm and then reached down to feel the dirt at her feet so she could determine if this was a dream or not. She realized that she recognized more than she would have in a dream. She looked around and pondered for a bit, she wondered where Flel was now. She wondered about what she could have altered in their timeline. The lights along the walls faded into pillars that held the lights around her. The pillars peered above her and seemed to turn into arches above her.