Tatum Gibson and Ian Shimura find themselves to be the only survivors of an airplane crash, leaving them stranded on a strange, deserted island. With her secretive past, and his desperate need to return home, their relationship is strained, but they...
Tatum learned that there was always something in nothing. A whisper in her ear invading the silence. A tiny pinprick of light in the darkness she floated within. A faint memory crumpled like wadded up paper in the corner of her empty mind. Something was there, nudging her to open herself up to everything she seemed to avoid.
Remember... a voice urged. A soft, silky melodious pitch she hadn't heard before. A voice neither masculine nor feminine, yet both, nursing her consciousness until it found the strength to rise and take hold.
How many times had she been trapped in the realms of her death? Days, hours, months, or years? And why did the voice wish for her to awaken? Why return to such chaos when nothingness brought about desperately sought-after peace? Who would prefer a life of war to an existence of blissful dark nothingness?
Not her.
If she had to replay her final moments one more time, trapped in her past thoughts, she didn't know what she'd do. At least here, she didn't have to experience the terror.
You're safe from all of that. You pulled yourself out of it when you noticed the shadows. You broke the spell's hallucinogenic rhythm. Now wake up and face the rest. Seek the wisdom of who you are, Tatum. Ignorance will only keep you drowning in the mortal madness. You're more than that. So much more.
She was captivated by the sweetness of the voice. The incessant pull of its rich timbre and needed to follow it through the void and into the light. Her eyes fluttered open and the aspects within her shuttered with relief. She stared up at the ceiling of the cabin, uncertain how she came to be there. And he spoke from her bedside, not the owner of the mesmerizing whisper which woke her, but the hot, body shaking murmur of the fallen angel she once saw in a dream.
The one who was bonded to her original.
His eyes were orbs of fire, flickering through the shadows of the room. The ceiling and walls were almost too small to contain such a massive being and his coal black hair seemed to blow from his face by a wind she couldn't feel. He was something out of a fairy tale. Or a nightmare, she couldn't be certain which.
Yet, despite his frightening appearance, there was something tragic and vulnerable about him. Like a child lost in a store, racing from aisle to aisle in a frantic quest to find their parents. She reached out to touch his hand, so close to her face, and found his skin to be unnaturally hot.
Once she made contact, his expression turn to one of anguish, and his fingers closed into a tight fist.
"I heard your confession, cat. I heard you announce your love for the weak one. That immortal will only disappoint you. I saved you both from the confines of his mind and brought your body here. But this is where I must leave you."
So, the wretched screams behind Ian in that hot blackness had been Lucifer's cries of pain at hearing her admissions. She winced, for she never wanted to hurt him. He moved his hand from her, trailing his feverish fingers down her cold cheek, his sadness clear in the tear swimming in the flames of his stare.
"I have done all I can. If you cannot defeat her, she will send you to me, and I will have no choice but to let you burn this time. It will destroy me to hear your suffering, my love, but listen to them I will."
Tatum trembled at his words, fighting to temper her panic as memories belonging to her original pounded through her brain, making her head throb.
Burning in the fires.... screams of the tormented drowning out her own. The scent of burning flesh and hair, the agony caused by the raging inferno...
The original released a shuddering breath, her trembling experienced by all. The fallen angel turned away, but not before whispering in his dark, thick tone, words meant to educate her on lost memories.
"The witch isn't all she seems. Find the bone and expose her for what she truly is."
"How? I'm no one. How will I defeat her?"
The angel scoffed, glancing at her from over his broad shoulder.
"Unite all of you as one and you will see that you are most certainly not 'no one,' Tatum. You are the one. Come to terms with your true self and she cannot win. She was always weaker. The son will guide you... if you let him."
With that, the angel waved a graceful hand, causing an unseen force to open the door, he moved soundlessly into the light before becoming a small, vibrating orb, vanishing up into the heavens, becoming camouflaged by the stars glittering through the wintery clouds.
Clouds which had returned since she and Ian had separated.
Tatum lay there, allowing the bite of the approaching cold to fill the cabin, which no longer looked or felt the same. Now that Ian wasn't with her, everything seemed so much darker, emptier.
The murmurings of the past drew her into a sitting position, and she reached under the bed, searching around for the box she'd hidden there the day after they'd found the cabin. At once, she'd believed it had been too mysterious and crazy to show Ian. Now she believed, as she thought about it, that it was instructions from the past aspects who came here and failed before her. She would read them and take heed. In order to beat the hag in red, she would need all the answers.
She found the old brown shoe box with blind fingers and pulled it from under the bed. With trembling fingers, she opened the lid and gazed down at the loose sheets of paper laying with in and her aspects urged her to read. And she did, following the stories of the two aspects before her and after the original. In the end she found they all relayed the same warning: There will be no reprieve if she failed, Not for her and not for Ian.
( Any clues on who Tatum really is yet? Or do you need more to help you decide? Let me know in the comments!)
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