The Great War

VIII

"I fucking swear to you Lilium. I'm. Not. Joking." To get it through to her as the truth I used her full first name.

She looked a little surprised hearing me say it since I never do. "Alright... I believe you. But I cannot believe you went up there without me!"

I breathe a laugh and shake my head, "I'm sorry really. I was just doing nothing earlier, and curiosity took over." I mumble shrugging, she sighs and sits down on a chair leaning on the kitchen island, me standing to her left.

After that weird thing back at the school happened, I immediately phoned Lilium after leaving and she told me to come over to her place as soon as I could. So here I am, a full hour after leaving the school.

"You really saw her?" She questions after a moment, looking up at me.

I nod, chewing my bottom lip anxiously. "Honest, I did. It was like I went back in time, back to when she was in school... How old was Ophelia anyway?" Lilium looked at me briefly and shrugged, leaving us in a silence.

"You think she was telling the truth. Ya know when she told us she was a creature like in her stories." Lilium shook her head twice and let it fall to the countertop, "She didn't look that old, but if she was what she had mentioned she was, she may have been older." I said sitting down next to her. Who nodded and looked up at me.

"Books on the town's mythology?" I ask shortly, Lilium coming on board as soon as the words left my mouth, we nod to each other, and I grab my bag off the island and we both leave the house going to the town's library.

October 28th 2007—

I let out a giggle as I ran faster than Lilium and Theo, I let out a grunt as I slam into someone's legs. I fall back onto the ground and let out a cry rubbing the back of my head. I hear a woman gasp as someone's warm hands cup my elbows helping me sit up. "I'm so sorry sweetheart, are you alright?"

I look up and see a woman's bright blue and red eyes staring at me with worry. I nod with a smile, "I'm okay!''

She gives me a smile helping me to a stand, Lilium and Theo rush over to me, Lilium looking at the woman with a bubbly smile, Theo just holding my hand with a worried look. "Are you okay?"

I nodded with a happy smile, squeezing his hand. "She helped me!" I pointed to the strange looking woman.

She sat down on a bench and waved us over, "Come, come. Now as a proper apology, why don't I tell you a little story?"

We all nodded feverishly and ran over, dragging Theo with us. She helped us all onto the bench with her, she didn't look much older than my mom did. She pushed back her long brown and white hair behind her ears and looked down at us and began her story.

Present—

I walk back to the mini circle table Lilium sat at flipping through some pages of a Mythology book, one of this town's history.

"Okay so I went back to look for more, and I found this one that caught my eye." I explain to her setting down a book that wasn't that big, it was a hardcover, pure black with a leathery feel to it. The name was on the spine of the book, claiming to be all of this town's past. Hopefully.

I open it and flip to the contents chapter, scanning my finger and eyes down it for a name and page number. "Demons of Hollow; 450." I keep mumbling it over and over as I skip through to the written number.

"Okay, so she didn't seem animal like, so this has got to be the next best thing, right?" I question myself, and Lilium who leans in beside me. "Seems right."

I nodded and leaned in closer to the book reading down till my eyes land on a name, I read it out loud. "There was a family who had been in the Hollow for generations, I'd gotten into contact with one of them and she was an older woman, possibly knew more than my previous attempts at contacting family members of the Phosphorus'."

I took a deep breath and continued, "Her name happened to be a rare one, Ōphéleia, she had told me that she was born in this very town, in a cabin. One I wouldn't have seen in town, I questioned her, and she got up, and took me to this beautifully aged cabin in the woods, further from town then I had anticipated."

I looked at Lilium thinking the same thing as her and went back to reading, "She began to tell me that she was born here before monsters were accepted, and she met a boy when she was a young girl, a boy who she ended up marrying 10 years later when she was 19. Ophelia had ended up telling me she was born in 1720 to a devil and an angel, why she spilled this to me and hadn't tried keeping it from me spiked curiosity, but she never let me get questions in when she told me the interview was over and it was great to be a part of it. And with that I left, to say the very least that she and the others I've interviewed or did my own research on were extortionary is one way to say it."

Lilium let out a breathy laugh and pushed the book away from us, I look up at her. "Cabin?" She gives me a nod and we both got up and hurried out of the small library. It'd probably take us a long time to find the cabin, and it was already 9:20. God it'll be so late when we get back. Is this even a good idea?