Kósmima

Chapter Ten

As I walked by beside Leah, I felt something was wrong. It was more of a gut feeling than a guess. I looked around me, the thick forest, the fog that surrounded beyond the road we walked upon, the graying sky, the gloomy song of the birds, and the footsteps that echoed muffly on the ground as we walked. It wasn't the things here that were wrong.

Suddenly, I felt my bag on my back weigh heavily slowly as I walked another step. There was something in it that made me drag my feet. Leah noticed it, and stopped the two brothers that were ahead. I shortly heaved a sigh.

"What's wrong?", she placed her hand on my shoulder lightly and grabbed the strap of the pack off my shoulders. Her eyes widened at the heaviness of it. She glances up at Tyson. "How many things did you put in her bag?!"

Tyson looks confusedly at Leah and I, raising his hands in surrender. "I didn't put in that much. Most of the things that are heavy are in my pack." He pointed with his thumb towards the pack on his back.

Leah placed the backpack down the ground with a loud thud to which Tyson heard and quickly came to our side and opened the bag. The look on their faces was unreadable when they looked at what was inside. They both looked at each other before they glanced at me with a serious face. I furrowed my brow at them. "What?", my eyes darting from both of them. I took a quick glance at Mike and back to the both who was standing beside the backpack I carried – walking towards them, my gaze slowly shifting from what was inside the bag. There lay the book that transported me to this world. My heart beat in fear.

But that was the oddest, why would I be afraid of the book before me? Why would I be afraid of the thing that led me to escape my reality? I glanced up to Tyson and Leah, who also looked back to me, waiting for me to do something.

I didn't know what to do. Should I pick it up? Should I just let them pick it up? Or do I wait for something to happen? There was a gut feeling in me that if I picked up the book, I knew what would happen. I didn't know how I knew it, but I just had this feeling in me. Maybe this was what was bothering me since earlier when we packed up our stuff from our first camp. The thing that I kept thinking about something being wrong or out of place – this was it.

My hands hovered above the shining book in the bag. There is definitely going to happen once I touch this. I wouldn't be surprised if I get teleported somewhere once again. I sighed loudly and defeatedly and lowered my hand down on the side. "What do I do?", I asked, whilst looking at the two who were anticipating what I would do. I mean, it was basically useless to ask them since they were waiting for me to do something obviously.

They looked at each other and back at me. I could hear the storm from a mile away now judging from the wind that gushed through us, and a few hundred leaves flying, the clouds slowly graying as we came closer towards it. Unfortunately, according to Tyson, we can't go around it since there was a place that we shouldn't come across no matter what. Couldn't we just have dealt with the ogres if that was the case? We have powers, and I doubt the ogres could be that bad, right? It's like fighting Shrek – or at least that's what I imagined it to be.

Like a silent lullaby that only I could hear, the glow of the book made me feel drowsy the more I look at it intently. I wasn't sure if it was just me feeling this drowsiness or if it was just the effect of the book finally taking its toll on me after that teleportation back when I arrived the second time. I didn't really feel any side effects back then, so maybe this was it?

I stood up albeit almost stumbling down, Leah who has a good reflex, caught my elbow and stood me up straight. No pun intended. "Thanks.", I shook my head off from the drowsiness, but it seems to worsen it. I could no longer feel the essence of the storm ragin beyond the path we were going to take, or the strong winds that howled so loudly the more we walked deeper into the storm – nor was I even able to feel Leah's warm skin on mine.