The Seven Keys of Areid **COMPLETE**

Chapter VIII: Speculations and Distortions

Drifting.

Adalira was absolutely lost, adrift in a sea topped off with swirling clouds the color of the spectrum. The sky was a dull charcoal, and loomed pretentiously over her head. These clouds were thick, and Adalira could not see through them. She waded through the frigid chest deep water, holding her arms high above her head, trying to clear the smoky vapor in the air. This was to no avail; the clouds sneakily swirled away and crept back within a moment. She trudged through the slow moving water, trying to find some form of land, a place where she could rest. The sea of clouds seemed never ending, and Adalira presently began to feel quite flustered. This dratted sea could not go on forever, could it?

After what felt like forever trudging through the dark waters, Adalira began to hear a sound other than her erratic, jagged breathing and the sloshing sound of walking through murky waters. A voice, a young soprano voice, echoed off the water.

"Mama," it cried, worry clear in its tone. "Mama, you fell asleep, and you didn't wake up. So I helped you. I'm bringing you towards the last Guardians so you can be free."

Adalira looked around wildly for the source of the voice, her mouth forming a silent 'O' as she recognized the young voice of Mora. The water rippled irritatedly as she turned every which way, her water soaked dress abstructing her movements.

"Mama," the voice echoed, "Just walk straight and you'll find your way out! I love you, don't do anything silly."

These last words reverberated horribly in Adalira's mind, the exact words Mora had used to tell her mother goodbye before she lapsed into the void. Her voice, seemingly  blocked, finally agreed to work.

"Mora?" she called,  her voice raspy and hoarse. Looking around still for the young girl, Adalira cried once more, "Mora, where are you? Please, where did you go?"

A distant giggle, eerie in the otherwise silence, laughed at her sweetly, and then Adalira was abandoned once more in silence. Standing there shivering in the cold water, Adalira exhaled sharply. Mora kept calling her 'Mama', but both had died clearly. Melanche, Adalira knew, was Mora's real mother. And Mora had showed her the scene where Sverre had explained how Guardians came to be. 

Adalira continued to tread through the water slowly, her dress touching her ankles in an uncomfortable way that made her feel as if fish were biting at her ankles with their toothless gums as she continued mulling over the confusing knots of information she had to untangle.

"So," Adalira recounted to herself aloud, "Mora calls me her mother, although Melanche clearly is the true mother. She showed me...what did she show me? How Guardians were made..." Adalira scratched her damp hair, saturated with cavern water and sticking to her face and neck. "What does it mean?" she wondered. Soon after, she lapsed into silence to think.

Why did she call me her mother? I do not understand. Did the moments with Sverre have any relevance? Then the scene of Mora's death... Adalira shuddered at the pure thought of the subject. That vision had been a terror, and she did not want to think about it for one more second. But as minds do when you don't want to think about something, suddenly the vision was all Adalira could think of.

The rage Adalira had felt terrified her. As she had grown and matured, Adalira had vowed to herself never to make any romantic connection with any of the men who entered the tavern, to never get married and have children. Romance seemed like a joke. The subject had been beaten and abused to the point of no return. And children were out of the question. She barely had enough food and money to support herself, and a child would go unfed, unattended to, and as he or she grew older, they might endure the same fate as Adalira had. Adalira would never wish that upon any children of hers. Her eyes traveled from the questionable land mass in the distance down to her seemingly flat stomach, distorted  by the water.

A bolt of connecting the dots flooded through Adalira's mind as the water flowed around the path she walked.  

Mora. Sverre. Creator. Melanche and her significant other. "Mama"?

Adalira stopped abruptly, unsteadily. No. Impossible. 

The water formed miniature waves against Adalira as she swayed precariously, her hands rising over her stomach. How could this have happened? Adalira's face flared bright red as she realized it wasn't by any means impossible, but wouldn't she have known by now? 

The water continued to become shallower as Adalira resumed her walking, her face frozen in a mask of confusion and shock with only a dash of fear. As the water receded from her torso height and shrunk down gradually so it only brushed her now chilled ankles, Adalira saw, with horror, that her stomach was not flat, as she had thought, but slightly protrusive, in a strange way that did not appear burly or fat. This could not be.

But it was.

Stumbling dazedly out of the murky seas into a clear, fogless little path leading into a black obsidian cave, Adalira considered fainting. It seemed to be an apropriate way to escape, to think, to come to terms with...whatever was happening to her. But her conscious refused to let her; she was alert, her eyes blinking with no sign of droopy hesitation. Staggering only slightly, Adalira followed the open path, welcoming the  blackness of the tunnel that gave her nothing else to see or consider.

(if you liked it, vote! If you didn't, or you liked it so much you have something to say, or you have something to say, drop me a comment! If you have any questions, let me know and I will answer it in "The Areidae Historium", which you can look up via the 'Discover' bar up at the top of the page.)