Cyré: A World Beyond Maya

Chapters One to Five

Chapter One

When her friend Tuluc had stopped mid-sentence and stared angrily at something in front of him, Filinia curiously turned to stare too. But it wasn't something, it was someone—a man. The springs of the couch creaked, shifting along with her, as Filinia started to observe the oddity of this man standing in the doorway to the back sitting room of the beatnik café known as Crimson Moon. Despite his broad and tall build with a predominant forehead and long, straw-like hair, it was almost comical with how much of a walking stereotype of either being a huge heavy metal fan or running late for a Comicon event he was.
Filinia for the life of her couldn't understand the absurdity of the trench coat the man was wearing over his worn grey t-shirt, ripped jeans, and combat boots. It was a little warm for any sort of coat or long sleeves. But that wasn't the strangest part... The strangest thing was how quickly the man went from comical to menacing as they noticed his cool green eyes seemed to glow an eerie, dangerous yellow.
Filinia's gaze drifted down to what was gripped tightly in the man's hand—a sword. A sudden glimmering reflection of the light came in from one of the windows, bouncing off the weapon and into one of the patron's eyes; though it didn't seem to bother the patron. It was as if the blaring light didn't exist to the patron— to any of the patrons, except Filinia and Tuluc. If that wasn't strange and menacing enough, the stranger yelled at the two teens, which sounded more animal than human.
The weight of the man's next two steps into the back room of the café shook and rattled everything. Filinia's fear rose higher when she momentarily turned to look back at Tuluc. Why did he look like he recognized this man? As if the two of them had crossed paths before...
"Where are they?" the man asked gruffly.
"I don't know what you are talking about," Tuluc said nonchalantly.
"Don't play games with me! Where are they?"
"What is this 'they' you speak of?"
Even with his eyebrows furrowing together and his stance ready for the strange man to make the first move, Filinia marveled with how cool Tuluc remained. She on the other hand was so scared she couldn't breathe, couldn't think. The palms of her hands became increasingly sweaty in conjunction with her racing heartbeat, despite how tightly she gripped the couch's velvet fabric. And that is what terrified Filinia the most; the way Tuluc just stood up and acted as if the three of them were playing Clue.
When Filinia saw the man was about to throw his sword at her, she quickly closed her eyes so tightly to regrettably meet what she thought would be to her death. But death didn't greet her back. The warmth of Tuluc's hands on her shoulders did. Cautiously, she opened her eyes and looked all around her. She looked over to where the man once stood, now lying dead on the floor with a knife protruding from his head. Filinia became so paralyzingly frightened she nearly fell out off the mustard yellow couch Tuluc and her were sitting on. And when the deceased psycho suddenly disintegrated into nothing more than bile of tarry mush with popping sparks like a dying electrical charge, she almost fainted.
Where did the sw—, Filinia started to think until the exposed metal of the sword's handle winked just above her head by the light of the sun.
"Filinia! Filinia! Are you all right?" Tuluc interrupted her thoughts.
"Wh—what the hell just happened?"
"I'm not sure I'm the right person to answer that... Let's get you home."
"What do you mean you're not the right person to answer that? Where did that knife come from? Was it from you? Since when do you carry a knife!?"
"Filinia! Fil, it's not safe for us to talk right now. There's a chance he will resurrect."
"But he disintegrated!" Filinia nearly shouted as she rushed after Tuluc, which was soon followed by the thought, I knew I should have stayed in bed today.
This has been a repeating thought that had crossed Filinia's mind since she woke up this morning. Something about today had felt wrong from the beginning. Especially with the weird things that happened even before she left her bed. But she couldn't have stayed there all day, could she? Not today, her sixteenth birthday.
The rich blues within the heavy fabrics of the night's blanket receded under the piercing rays of the mid-April morning sun. Even though the wicked humidity of the summer hadn't rolled in just yet, in Filinia's bedroom situated on the third floor of a Philadelphia row house, made it seem summer had already arrived. Despite her ceiling fan and the two rotating fans she'd grabbed from one of the guest rooms, Filinia slept on top of her covers.
When the annoying squawking of the first set alarm from her iPhone went off, she had a feeling that, despite it being her sixteenth birthday, today was going to be terrible and daunting. Truth be told, she felt this way about most mornings during the school year. But there was something about this morning that felt different. Why? Filinia didn't know. Perhaps if she stayed in bed a few minutes longer, the strange feeling would go away...
But by the fifth alarm, Filinia realized she wasn't going to be able to hide from whatever this feeling may unfold. Resenting the sun peeking through her hideous magenta curtains, she stretched her arms and pulled herself from the comfort of her bed. She rubbed her barely-opened eyes and reluctantly reached for her glasses on the nightstand. However, as she began to do so, both her phone and glasses flew across the room.
She quickly dismissed it to not being fully awake. Her curly white hair, which had unfortunately been this color since birth, swooped annoyingly across her face. She released a heavy exhale. Her mind, triggered by this swooping strand of hair, had decided in this moment to reflect on why she was so weird. Though her fair skin was tan enough to not categorize her as albino, especially with her grey eyes, it was just one of the many reasons she felt so out of place amongst her peers. Oh how she desperately wanted to hide behind a hat or cut it off but didn't think she had the right bone structure to pull off the latter. That said, she did try several times to dye her hair to make herself feel more normal. The results, however, were more unfortunate than her natural white hair alone. The dye would just simply wash out.
Regardless of this constant reminder of oddness, as Filinia pushed her hair away, she became suddenly aware of how clear her vision was. Was she imagining things? It was no secret she hated wearing glasses because it made her look like an even bigger geek than she already was. Katryn, her mother, had offered to get her contacts but the thought of touching her eyes made her squeamish. But this! This was too unreal.
Filinia gently patted her eyes to be sure she hadn't already put on her glasses without realizing it. They weren't there. She looked at the corner of the room where her phone and glasses now laid. Should she be relieved that neither had been damaged? She wasn't. If anything, she was at a bit of a loss.
She looked around her room to see if anything else was out of the ordinary but saw nothing unusual. An eternal toddler's room with very lame attempts at an imaginary coolness. Music and old movie posters pinned side to side from the baseboards to the ceiling. And what bit of wall wasn't covered in posters hung various sized paintings she had recently done. Paintings of a far off place she kept seeing in her recurring dreams that were inhabited by mythical creatures and a magnificent castle with a king, who looked a lot like her estranged father, Mikael.
Now her main reason for trying to cover every square inch with posters and paintings was the bright pink wallpaper with dancing unicorns that lie underneath. When Filinia was four, she had become obsessed with unicorns after watching Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Looking back, she was aware of how weird it was, especially because the mythical creature was dying and wasn't in the film longer than a minute. The Cerberus named Fluffy, though way cooler, had scared her.
However, after the release of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban a year later, she turned her love of unicorns to hippogriffs. Her mother was thankful hippogriff wallpaper wasn't available. Even if it had been and this was her stance, in the years that followed, Katryn would refuse to have the dancing unicorns painted over or removed, no matter how many times her daughter pleaded.
The furniture in her room—bed frame, dresser, nightstand and desk were all white with a simple tulip design painted all over them. With her new perfect vision, Filinia stared at barely pulled off stickers, a remnant of her elementary school years. After a few more minutes of looking around, she pulled herself out of bed.
As she made her way to the doorframe marked with her change of height throughout her life, which led directly to her closet, she felt a mixture of sadness and joy. She had never like having to wear glasses; it was just another reminder of how much of a loser she was to Julia and those fortunate enough to be in the "in crowd." Yet, she was still just herself, and glasses or no glasses was not going to change their perception of her. Filinia was ever resolved to the fact that her life was boring and the sudden change of not needing her glasses wouldn't change this aspect of her life. Not having the shield that was her glasses hiding the pain in her eyes every jab to her self-esteem was also not going to change how ordinary she was. Well, the part of her esteem that wasn't always repaired by Tuluc.
From her closet, she pulled a black t-shirt over her head and grabbed a pair of black shorts from the dresser. Filinia rarely wore bright colors, especially during the school week because the popular girls were fond of spilling their diet sodas "accidentally" on her. Though her best friend, Tuluc, would always magically show up to stand up for her each time, she still wore dark colored clothing.
Moving forward, back to the morning of Filinia's sixteenth birthday, Filinia went to the bathroom to tie her hair halfway up and apply product to the other half. As she finished applying her dark eye shadow (her reasoning for wearing it that she would always tell her mom, every time she was asked, was to appease her artistic sensibility and the goth 'secretly' hiding within), she heard a muffled, yet familiar masculine voice greet her mother before hearing the weight of his feet bounding up the creaking stairs towards her room. As a joke, Filinia rushed back into her bedroom and under her covers, pretending to still be asleep. Though she had done this many a time in the past, to which it didn't fool Tuluc in the least, she nonetheless kept trying from time to time. A slight rasp on her door and the creaking of it opening, Filinia tightly squeezed her eyes shut as Tuluc peered in.
"Happy birthday, Filinia," said Tuluc quietly, as he crept further in.
"Mmm..." replied Filinia. She felt the weight of him getting into her bed, felt his elbow gently poke the top of her head, and the comforting smell of his cologne. When Tuluc starting humming The Beatles' Birthday song, Filinia couldn't help but giggle and turn herself over to place her head on his biceps.
"So, how does it feel to be sixteen?" asked Tuluc.
"The same lameness of being fifteen," grumbled Filinia.
"But now you can drive ...so that's a bonus."
"Yeah, I guess so."
"Now get your butt downstairs and eat some breakfast or we'll be late for school."
"Oh great!" said Filinia sarcastically.
"Hey! You know what Gable says..."
"Frankly darling, I don't give a damn."
"See ya downstairs," Tuluc said with a short chuckle.
Giving a few pats to the doorframe, he closed the door. School? On this 'oh-so-glorious' April morning? She circled the 20th on the calendar by her door, then brushed her teeth, all while re-checking her makeup and hair in the mirror.
This is as good as it gets, isn't it? Filinia thought before making her way downstairs.