Away to Realania (ONC 2023)

Chapter 2: New World, Warm Welcome

With a racing heart and shallow breaths, Angélio touched his head, face, chest, and arms. Everything seemed to be intact. He exhaled, feeling somewhat relieved, even though he still could not see any part of himself.

A twig snapped. Angélio whipped his head to the left. Footsteps crunched on dry leaves, growing louder with each second. Something was coming toward him from within the shady forest.

Angélio tried to back away but tripped on a root sticking out of the ground. A yelp escaped his mouth as he fell.

"¿Hay alguien ahí? (Is someone there?)" said a bass voice from within the woods.

Angélio didn't reply. He was trying to sit as still as possible. Don't breathe, don't breathe, don't breathe, he thought.

What stepped out from behind the trees made Angélio's invisible jaw drop. It almost hit the ground.

The figure looked like a man. It... or he was tall and athletic with short, straight ink-black hair, and tan skin. If he had been wearing a suit and tie, he could have easily been mistaken for Diego Moya's doppelgänger. But the creature was dressed very differently.

He wore a black shirt covered in tiny, gleaming silver dots with sleeves that stopped just short of his wrists. The pants matched his shirt and were ankle-length with small red feathers at the ends of each leg. A long white cape with a black zigzag pattern trim covered his left shoulder and part of his chest; it was secured by a knot above his right shoulder. And a white hip cloth with red trim was tied around his torso.

Its human-like features ended there.

Near the corners of his forehead were golden antennae that were thin to the point of near invisibility. However, they didn't stick up in the air and laid back over the creature's ears instead.

Most stunning of all were the figure's wings, which reminded Angélio of the stained glass windows he'd seen at church--especially how they shimmered when light shone through them. Now that he could see them more closely, he could tell that the wings looked like those of a male Swallowtail Cattleheart butterfly.

I must be dreaming, Angélio thought and rubbed his eyes. But the magical being was still there.

"Ouch," he pinched himself.

The creature looked in his direction and squinted its golden-brown eyes. "I can't see you, but I know you're there," it said. "And I want to help--if you'll let me."

Shaking, Angélio opened his mouth to speak. "I'm... I'm over... here," he stammered and patted the pillow-soft grass with his palm, leaving a handprint on the spot.

The figure started approaching and then stopped. "What kind of being are you?" he asked.

Angélio swallowed with a lump in his throat. "Human," he said.

In an instant, the creature's face softened. "That explains it, then." He stroked his sharp, stubbly jawline for a moment. "Oh, right--I have just the thing!"

The creature reached into his pocket and pulled out a red woven bracelet. The pattern on it looked like the illustration of a DNA string Angélio had seen in an encyclopedia once.

"Put this on your left wrist," it said, tossing the bracelet to Angélio.

When Angélio pulled the strings to tighten it on his wrist, he gasped. Slowly, but surely, his hands, arms, chest, and everything else reappeared.

"Un momento (one moment)," the creature said, flapping his wings slightly. "You're the boy that was crying in the human realm. I had no idea you followed me here."