Hiraeth

Chapter 24

Samara Shaw

I saw something.

I lost my grip the moment my fingers slipped off and what happened next was something I didn't understand. My attempt to hold on to something was barely successful. My palms were sweaty and couldn't grab the edge of the window. My balance was moving from one had to the other. I couldn't carry the weight of my entire body by holding on to the slippery bricks and eventually, I let go. It was only a glimpse and it barely lasted a second but the moment before I went down, I saw someone peek through the window and this person, although looked like Accius, was a completely different version of him.

Accius had very pale skin, something that was considered very odd in the world I used to live in but normal here. I always wandered how possible it was for him to look that way and even though there were people in the school that looked absurd, there was something about him that felt different. What I saw that moment was a different person and he had normal glowing skin, his hair was shorter and barely reached his nose, unlike the chin length I was familiar with. The clothes he wore became fitted, like he suddenly gained an evident amount of weight. He was Accius but a different version of the one I knew. It only lasted a second or less before reality set in. The Accius I was used to replaced the one I saw as I went down to the ground.

The light material of my clothes was weak and gave way to the wind, exposing my tender skin. I was going down fast and was close to the ground when I braced myself for the impact. The rush I felt was more than I imagined, even when I knew I wasn't going to die. It was a sudden pump of energy, something far from the ordinary effect of adrenaline, the readiness to land on my two feet. There was no longer fear of what would happen after.

All I felt was numbness when I hit the ground, from my feet up to my knees. It was as if the blood flow was cut off and my senses had been killed. Even though I stood firmly on the ground and my bones weren't separated, it felt as if something happened and I couldn't explain it. I didn't feel pain or the slightest trace of it, there were no tinglings or any feeling at all and even after seconds passed and I was till in the same position, I didn't feel a thing. I began to think something even worse than getting injured had happened. I didn't know what it was but in a place like this, there were a lot of possibilities, even more than my little mind could muster.

Accius was a few inches away from hitting me when he landed. Without wasting any more time, he grabbed me by my arm and quickly, we ran to the back of the building. He didn't worry about how I felt after pushing me down or if my legs could've gotten injured and I didn't mention a word about it either because it was during that moment I started to feel my legs again. The numbness faded in a matter of seconds and my system was back to normal.

I'd never experienced such in my life. Something I considered impossible happened right in front of me. No normal person could fall from a place so high and still have the ability to stand afterwards. There were a lot of odd things within these walls but that had to be the top on the list and it was something I felt myself. This made me believe there could actually be more to me than just being here. Seeing things, saying words I didn't understand, doing things out of the ordinary. All these happened just a few days of being here. It was barely a week and I, a young girl that had no experience of what the life outside my mansion looked like, had turned to a completely different being. I might not be the queen but I truly was one of these creatures.

"This should be okay" Accius whispered after finding us a place behind the building. It was a small compartment, nothing more than a box that could fit just the two of us. There were broken pieces of wood scattered around and a pile of it a few feet away from us. They were chairs, tables, things one could expect to be in a school and they were normal considered to the ones they had in the the classes.