The Vortex: Rectification

Chapter Ten.

Chapter Fifty.

It's been two very blurry months since my wild trip back home and despite everything that I have done and all the situations I put myself in, it finally feels like things are improving this past week. There's no more residual pain when I move too fast, the pounding migraines that would plague me when they all went out for missions and I was left home to stress, are less frequent now.

The heaviness that used to make me feel like my body and soul were dragging across the ground every time I moved has lessened considerably and it doesn't feel like I am drowning in all my ideas anymore. Filtering through all my old research doesn't feel like being stabbed in the chest as much anymore either, there will always be that pang of longing for everything I have missed but what I have now is pretty close to perfect.

Yeah, there's a war and I've lost more people than I can truly understand or process when the threat is still so prominent in all of our lives.

Which is why I have decided that my self-appointed... though heavily encouraged- house arrest ends today. Is it the smartest thing to have someone who can't do magic right now, along for a trip into a supposedly abandoned cabin in the forests of Pennsylvania to look for information left behind by the Rowin family when the Secret Society had first come together.

Realistically I don't really see how anything we find in there will be impactful to the cause, after all this time I can't imagine them leaving anything important behind. If anything, I think we will just find creepy things that only continues to prove just how gross that family has been since forever.

"Are you sure you want to come?" Jamie asks, for the fourth time since I came downstairs dressed and ready to join them without an invite. "Because if you are pushing yourself to hard because you feel like you need too-"

"She's not that stupid" Lizzie interjects, spoon of multi-coloured cereal paused by her lips. "But we all know that if she spends anymore time reading her old notes that we all might need to take cover from when her brain explodes"

A bit graphic but as annoying as it is to admit, I do feel that way and this constant feeling of being trapped in this place might be driving me nuts. "I can't stay in here forever, I know that we have to keep me out of Dracius' radar, but I also need to be a person and being helpful with something that impacts all of us, I need that"

The fire in Jamie's eyes dies out the second I finish speaking, the tension coiling in his shoulders drops slightly but I can still sense the apprehension lacing his body. I can't blame him; I know what everyone else feels the same way but are just better at keeping it smothered.

Jamie wasn't always like that I don't think, he was good as everyone else keeping it inside and Alexander was always the one about to blow his lid. Well, him and Aleera were much of the same in those situations and out of everyone that has been worried about me these past few months I want her to be the one yelling at me.

As much as I love being around her, and the importance it makes me feel at doing things that help her while failing at bringing her back. If I don't acclimate back to the outside world, it feels like I am just waiting for things to get worse and then to be unprepared for it.

"I suppose going to somewhere we know is safe and you coming along isn't world-ending" Jamie sighs, slumping into the kitchen stool next to Elizabeth. "Truthfully, out of all the places we have had to venture into recently this seems like the safest"

"Aurora's coming out of the house with us?" Liylah asks, a bright smile on her face as she glides into the kitchen, her blonde hair curled down her back and arm sliding across my shoulders. "Thank goodness because I was thinking last night that leaving Jamie and I in charge of looking for anything important might have been a grave mistake"