Azriel Capoue

Chapter 2

"Azriel. . . Azriel, wake up."

Voices contended randomly in my head. Though either of them had its own particular pitch, they all sang the same song. And they sang for me while I floated in this long hazy never-ending dream, surrounded by pure, solid darkness.

"Azriel. . . Azriel, wake up!"

They kept singing.

I was confused about where I was, and how I got there. It seemed as if I was somewhere, though I thought I wasn't. It felt as if my eyes were closed, or opened maybe – I couldn't tell. I didn't know the difference. There were no eyes for me to open, or close. Or maybe there was nothing for me to see. Still, I couldn't tell. I was just. . . lost.

I felt some kind of numbness and heaviness all of a sudden - and all around. Just a few moments ago, I was like a suspended nothingness with hardly any consciousness, or self-awareness even. I was somewhere and nowhere at the same time, with no memory of how I got there, or why I was there – or where "there" was. The only reassuring thing about it was that - it was calm. Peaceful. Quiet. But it transitioned into something else. I felt this weird sensation, like something was being added to me – to my body. I felt my body materializing around the nothingness, housing it. Though I was absent minded and couldn't move before, It seemed like I was much lighter then. I had become heavier, and I kept gaining weight by the second. I felt my shoulders form, down to my elbows, then my wrists, and finally my fingers and its tips. I felt the processes perceptibly. And although I couldn't move an inch, I could point out what particular part of my body the magic was happening. I began to realize small bits of my body almost immediately after I felt like my entire body had fully materialized and taken shape. My right index finger shot up all of a sudden, and my eye lids twitched right after. My nerves had already started sending electrical signals throughout my body to check its responses.

It was... thick and niggling. It stroked the sides of my nose until it violently pierced right into my nostrils, and filled up my brain without hesitation. It burned my nostrils for some reason, though it smelled fairly satisfying. My entire face felt numb as if my nose had been struck with a fist blow. Not hard enough to make you start bleeding, but enough to make you feel like cutting off your nose and dumping it in the trash can.
I liked the fragrance – I knew my nose liked it as well, so I couldn't understand why it acted as if it didn't. It was ethereal in a way. It smelled like you would expect velvety plumes of fog to smell.
The scent composed a picture of my mom in my head. I didn't know why, but the sweet smell somewhat reminded me of her. The image of mom made heat creep up my neck. I felt extreme excitement in my chest and my heart made that evident – It kept pounding the walls of my rib cage, and the vibrations were enormous.
I felt like I hadn't seen her in ages. I'd missed that woman so bad. I'd missed how her gleaming, bleach-white teeth emerged behind her cherubic smile and petite lips, her pointy nose that made her smile even more electrifying, her vicious scarlet hair that made her stand-out in the entire town. I wished I'd inherited her scarlet hair as Azra did.

"Mom", I called.

I felt my lips move and I could faintly hear myself.

I opened my eyes; slowly.

The first thing I saw was the lazy spinning ceiling fan on top of me. My sight was blurry at the time, but I still could tell what it was. I closed and opened my eyes, and again, until my vision was cleared, which took a while. I slowly turned my head to the side and located the smokey aroma.
"So, that was it." I understood why the smell reminded me of mom. She used to light up incense in our living room all the time. We never ran out of incense, and our living room never ran out of the amazing scent. She never waited for one to completely finish before replacing it. It'd be about 85 percent done, and this woman would quickly replace it with the next one. She said the latter part of the incense didn't smell half as good as the initial part. That was the main reason Amanda, Mirabel, and the others always came to our house to play. They liked the sweet and pleasant smell so much, maybe even more than my mom herself – one could argue. If they weren't in my living room inhaling the scent, they acted like vampires who'd been deprived of human blood for more than a thousand years. They said it smelled like heaven – like they've ever been there –