A Rational Magic || ONC2022

Six || Collapse

"I don't know why I'm doing this."

"You didn't want to be alone." It's painfully obvious, whatever she claims.

"Excuse me, I'm perfectly capable of spending a day alone!"

"So why are you here?"

She doesn't answer, because there's nothing she can say to that.

It's surprisingly loud in the woods, despite the lack of other people around here. Leaves rustling in a slight wind is fine, but the sound of twigs breaking isn't as easily explained. There's nobody to be walking on them, and these woods don't seem to be particularly full of animals.

But that's not a big enough turn-off for either of us.

Anya's actually ahead of me, which may seem a little odd given her unwillingness to even be in here in the first place (and besides, I'm the older twin), but she's always been the one who notices things first.

Everything around us is painted in greens and browns, and we have an unspoken agreement to make a run for it if we see any other colours among the trees. Anya laughs at some joke she apparently just thought of -- or maybe it's a derisive one, aimed at me -- but otherwise we're quiet.

Perhaps it's to allow us to pay attention to our surroundings a little better. Maybe it's because it's mostly very calm beneath the trees. Or we're in some silent disagreement, which I honestly wouldn't be too shocked by.

There!

Despite Anya being ahead, I see the flash of something bright, something so wrongly bright that it acts as a warning flare of some sort to already-stretched nerves. I stop dead in my tracks.

"Lani...?"

"Look!" I hiss, gesturing to where I saw it.

"What, that..." She laughs, again, pressing a hand to her chest as she does so. Laughing so hard it hurts. "Bubblegum pink, Lani."

I can almost feel my face going a similar colour.

"It's probably just a little girl with her mum or dad, not a kidnapper!"

"Unless the adult kidnapped the girl," I point out, recalling what had happened at Ercaster.

"Unlikely."

"Is it, though?"

She fixes me with a hard stare, mismatched eyes both seeming to glow for a moment. Just a moment, though the green flickers away slower.

I already know she won't believe me if I point it out, so I don't. In such a scientific mind as Anya's, glowing eyes would probably have a normal-sounding explanation, but I'm not sure if I want to hear one. I don't know what she'd say, of course, but I'm definitely at least 90% sure that I have the gist.

And I don't want to hear it.

I'm a firm believer in science and magic being able to coexist, while Anya thinks the unexplainable is an impossible notion, because science can explain everything.

Planes fly because of science.

Those two-colour flowers are the way they are because of science.

The world exists because of science.

That's fine. I'm not trying to refute any of that (although neither of us quite understand the flower thing), I'm not trying to refute that at all. I can't not believe in science, since it's all around us, but there's so much we don't know about the world.

So that's where all the magic must be.

Oh, maybe I'm crazy to think so, or maybe Anya thinks I'm crazy, but I believe that. I'm almost certain of it.

We continue, making our way up a hill and pausing at the top. Several little stones go tumbling down one side, seemingly vanishing into thin air about halfway.

Anya moves so she's half a step behind me before speaking.

"Do... do my eyes deceive me," she laughs, but it's cold and forced, "or did they just disappear?"

So she saw it too.

I... I really don't like that.

"Must be mass hysteria," I say, because she's not going to argue with something that sounds plausible.

"More folie à deux, if we're being exact," she shrugs, inching backwards even so.

"Folie à deux?"

"Yeah, basically folly of two. There's two of us, Lani. Hardly a crowd."

Two's company, three's a crowd.

As the thought crosses my mind, the ground in front of me gives way, collapsing beneath invisible weight and vanishing into nothingness. I leap backwards with an uncharacteristic shriek, sending Anya into a panic.

"Oh God, oh God," she mumbles, again and again and again, words jumbling and blurring until it's little more than a senseless babble. Making noises.

Grounding herself, maybe.

We should have run. Anyone in their right mind would have run for it, but we didn't.

The collapse of whatever hill we were on had hardly been gradual, but it seemed an age before we fell. Anya's cries were almost silent compared to the sound of my heartbeat in my ears. Pounding away like this was it. Like it'd never beat again.

And who knew what was beyond the vanishing point?

Maybe it wouldn't.