Amortal Song

4. Death's Waiting Arms

Calypso

"Meet...with me?" I steered clear of the word us, convinced it was a slight slip of the tongue.

Arden sighed, the journal clutched so tightly in his hand his knuckles were turning as white as the goose feathers, "And that's the problem."

"Why? This is great and if it means I finally have a chance at living!" Excitement coursed through me at the idea of being immortal and staying in this world and not...not having to be in a new life every year.

That would be the start.

And just the idea of starting somewhere, to have a choice of something once in my life, made my heart soar a bit further.

But the look on Arden's face brought me crashing back to reality.

A slight catch in my throat caught me and I forced it back down, "What is it?"

He visibly cringed and shifted on his feet, "My father. He demanded we join him in Umbeunter and-"

"Umbeunter?"

"The Elven underworld and where the problem begins."

I felt my stomach curl into a tight knot and I forced myself to choke out, "The problem?"

He nodded grimly and I felt myself grow faint in the head, thoughts of horrors unexplained, worse than the nightmares and shadows that lurked in the corners of my mind. Silence followed in a choking way, suffocating and seeming to swallow all of the words between us. He furrowed his brow and looked at the oak grains on the floor, shuffling his feet before saying, "My father...can be difficult and I have a feeling what I know his request will be."

I tried to look on the bright side and wondered, "How bad could it possibly be?"

Arden swallowed hard, "Bad. Very, very bad. Whatever you think of how it could be, it's so much worse." I noticed the tremor in his voice and a sour taste filled my mouth, bile slicking my throat at the thought of what the underworld, Umbeunter as Arden called it, was like.

"Does-when does he want to meet with us?" How sinister could that Underworld be? The elven world seemed so bright and lovely, the peaceful place with its buttery sunshine and tender dawns, promising the hope of a new day. Wouldn't Umbeunter have that same beauty but in a toned-down, darker style.

Now I knew I was tricking my mind if I thought a place that seemingly struck a gripping fear in Arden would be a dark, but still meditative place. I let out a giggle that turned into a fit of laughter at how desperate this situation seemed and how stupid I was being, the stress cracking down on me.

"Enough, Calypso! You don't know how much you'll be risking by meeting with my father." I looked at him through my laughter, seeing his nervous expression and mussed hair from his desperate hair-tearing.

I gasped for air, chest heaving as I let out another laugh, "What am I going to risk? I don't have a reason to live anymore because before you know it," I fluttered my hands in the air like birds and then clasped them together quickly, adding, "everything is taken from me."

The words soaked in and I found myself muttering, "Taken, taken, taken, Everything will be taken, has been taken."

I had enough of my consciousness still intact to know a breakdown like this was tipping over the edge. Even after every life, I had never gone this far as to shed a few tears over another lost life. Maybe I had been on the edge for a while and had just...not thought about it, pushing it away and pretending it was a glaring fact written in bright red letters.

Sometimes cracks form and they can't be healed, no matter how many times you try to fix them, no matter how long you give the cracks to recover- they're a part of you.