The Elements

Chapter 1 - The Day

My life had been ruined. That one day. Family, friends - all just a wisp of a memory. My life was different now. It's as if I can still see it. As the wind, so gentle then, cascaded through my hair during my birthday celebration, my eyes shone in delight as I blew out the last of my birthday candles. My family erupted into cheers, at the same time it happened. All of a sudden, the wind grew wild, howling like a pack of hungry wolves scavenging for food. It blew through our windows, blew at me, my parents. Inaudible yells filled the air as I screamed, clinging to my parents for dear life as they shouted at me to hold on, promising that it was going to be okay. But it wasn't.

I picked up the tattered pictures of my family on my eighth birthday. It was honestly a surprise how I managed to live like this for five years.

I lay back down in bed. No matter how many years it had been, I still wish, that my parents survived the tornado. I knew that was only real in my dreams. I stared at the ceiling blankly. My parents never left anything after their death. Somehow, everything they owned and all the money they had disappeared mysteriously after that day.

And that was only one of the interesting things that had happened to me. Well, if you could call it interesting. It happened one year after my parents' death, when I was nine.

"Rrrrriingg!" I can still remember how the shrill sound of a bell pierced through the air. I quickly made my bed and got in line with the other twenty or thirty girls from the same dormitory as me like the little soldier I had become and went down to the breakfast hall.

I sat down at my seat and munched on my bread, hoping that day would be over soon. Suddenly I felt something grab my shoulder. I looked around, surprised, and saw a man, right before he pushed me off of my seat on the bench and pointed at a door. I looked at him quizzically, expecting him to give me an answer, but he just kept staring down at me intensely that I immediately rushed to the door, knowing better than to disobey an order like that - even if it was a quiet one.

I closed my hand on the doorknob and pushed it open. All I saw was a small, dark closet. I looked back at the man again, but he had already disappeared. Everything that had happened since that morning had been weird, and I could not take any more of this strangeness. Anyway, I had all the time in the world at this orphanage, having nothing to do everyday. I took a step farther into the closet, and saw nothing but darkness. As I ventured deeper into the closet, however, it became clear to me that this was not a closet at all. Who would have such a king-sized closet anyway, and for what reason?

I looked at the endless shelves around me, filled with documents and papers. Suddenly, I caught sight of my name on a small sheet of paper. I picked it up, my heart picking up speed as I unravelled the small piece of paper- and then sinking to the depths of my stomach. It was only a document of the names of the people in my dormitory. But as I looked closer, I saw a star next to my name.

I started looking everywhere for anything that could tell me what that meant, why there was a star next to my name and my name only. I sprinted through the endless closet, knocking over many shelves in the process. But I couldn't bring myself to care. Suddenly, I heard the sound of the doorknob turning. I sucked in a breath, knowing what the orphanage did to those who went into rooms they were not told to go to. Technically, I had been told to- but that wasn't the point. I just didn't feel like I should have come into this place. But before I had another second to think about what I should do, I heard footsteps echoing all throughout the closet. I hid behind a shelf, panting slightly.

In no time, I realised that the footsteps belonged to two people, a male and a female.

"I can't believe they could've done this," the male voice said, "We did nothing wrong!"

"How dare they punish us for a crime we didn't commit!" The female voice came so dangerously close to the shelf I was hiding behind that I started quivering.

"Well, we're going to find her. Whatever it takes. Is the box ready?"

I peeked out from the closet just in time to see a man whose face was obscured by the darkness raise a wooden box high up. Blinding white light spilled out from the box, and when I reopened my eyes, the two had disappeared.

Coming out from my hiding spot, I saw the box lying on the floor. I picked it up, but before I could do anything else, I heard another shrill ring of a bell. Breakfast was over. I stuffed the box into my lunch bag and ran out, just in time to get back to my room.

As the familiar walls of my dormitory came into view, I shrunk into a dark corner, my mind swimming with thoughts. I pulled the box out again and looked at its every carving, when suddenly words popped into my mind.

The shadow pearl is the light. I studied the box again, more carefully this time. The carvings didn't even make out words, and here I was thinking I saw a sentence. But my heart was beating faster and faster. What if they were actually words? What if the sentence was real? What did the sentence mean? Why was my name in it, and was that only a coincidence? My hands were itching to open that portal, but I knew I couldn't do that among all the girls in my orphanage.

The next moment I found myself tearing through the corridors of the orphanage, to a garden behind it. Flowers lined the small space and bushes intricately pruned into shapes of animals filled the clearing. I scanned my vicinity. No one was in sight. I took out the box, about to open it, when footsteps rang across the corridor.

The next thing I knew a voice shouted, "C'mon, get to work, we haven't got all day!" I gasped, keeping the box immediately and running out from the garden. I ducked behind a flowerpot just in the nick of time to see three men carrying spades go to the garden. They started digging a hole in the ground. I watched on, as the hole grew bigger and bigger, and mud and soil flew everywhere. Suddenly, my glasses dropped, and I caught them just in time. I straightened them, and as the world came back into focus, the three men had all disappeared. I shook myself out of the mess I was in and walked back into the garden - well, at least it used to be one.

All the shrubbery had gone by now, and I saw no point in the digging. Why destroy a whole garden for no reason? I looked at the big hole in the ground. Without anyone to ask, I had no idea what to do. Should I just abandon this whole thing, and go back to living a fruitless life in the orphanage? Should I open the box, see where this whole affair led to? After some consideration, I made my choice.

I threw the box into the hole, and spent the rest of my day scooping back all the soil to hide the box, just like how I was trying to hide that day. Pretend it had never happened. That for one year, 27th of February, my birthday, never existed.

But, of course, from that day on, my life had never been the same.