Flame Touch

Chapter 30-Melody

Ah yes, Indian deserts. The heat. The sand.

The stink.

“How much farther must we walk, Sunny?” I asked, feeling so drained that I couldn’t help myself from taking another sip from our water supply, which earned me a glare from everyone in the traveling party. I had slowly been diminishing the water and even though everyone else wasn’t affected by the heat like me, they still drank water.

We had walked all that day and the sun wasn’t letting up. Everyone seemed unusually energized, even Sunny. I just felt like a walking nightmare. I needed a pool. Or some soda. Or ice. I focused on the sweat on my forehead and solidified them to form tiny ice droplets. It was effective, but too temporary and too risky. If it went wrong, I could have ended up freezing the blood in my head. That didn’t sound too fun. As I continued to complain, Sunny came to a sudden stop.

Oh crap, the last time she did that we ended up splitting the group and we got mauled by bugs.

“The trail ends here.” She said with confusion in her voice.

“It stops?” Taris asked as Sunny nodded her head in confusion, “Maybe the trail continues, underground or something.” Sunny shook her head and placed her hand onto where she said that the trail ended. As I watched, I saw a piece of rolled parchment come up from the ground.

“Well, that was definitely easier than last time.” I said as I took the paper from Sunny and started unrolling it.

“No! Wait! I don’t think you should-!” Sunny started, but I had already finished.

Sunny vanished.

The world went black for a moment, and when the colour returned, only Taris and I remained. The paper was still in my hands and Taris looked around for the others, “If this is a joke, then it’s not funny!” he yelled and tried to run in another direction. And smacked straight into an invisible wall.

“What the-”

I walked around the sides and saw that we were in some sort of box, “What the heck just happened?”

“What the hell did you do fish?!” and I just shook my head in bewilderment. I looked at the paper. It had a box and two stick figures on it. I poked the paper, but nothing happened so I stuffed it into my back pocket. I heard something bounce on the floor.

Plink.

My head whirled around to the source of the noise.

Plink. Plink.

“Is it raining?” I asked dumbly and looked to Taris for an answer, but he just shrugged his shoulders in frustration. His expression said “I want out. And I want it now.” A small puddle formed at the base of my feet and I saw that the water was coming from directly above me. It started coming down faster, and more like a pipe. The water was soon up to my waist, but I couldn’t see why this was happening, and what the point of the water was.

Then I remembered who I was with.

I ran/swam over to Taris, whose face was quickly turning pale, “Are you alright?” I asked hurriedly and followed his gaze to where he was looking at what seemed to be a shapeless lump of jell-o. “Taris? Hello? Earth to hothead?” I asked waving my hand in front of his face. The mound of jell-o separated into more blobs until I could finally make out their tentacles, “Don’t tell me you’re that afraid of jellyfish.” I said looking at the expression on his face.

Oh yes. He was that afraid.

The jellyfish started to advance on us as the water rose up to my neck. I felt one of them try to pull at my back pocket and I slapped it aside and grabbed the piece of paper that was in there. The drawing was now more than two figures in a box. The box was now filled with water and there were little cartoon jellyfish in the picture zapping one of the stickmen.

Taris screamed and I was dragged back to what was happening.

“Hold on Hothead!” I yelled as I fought my way to his side. He looked terrible and his pupils were dilated. We now had to swim to stay above the water, though it didn’t matter to me since I could already breathe. The jellyfish continued to ignore me and went for Taris and I felt an odd urge to just turn around and leave. I mean, I could swim underwater right? I could breathe. Why bother trying to help a snotty old Luminist?

He yelled again as the jellyfish regrouped and attacked as one massive hoard. I watched with a detached expression as he was hit again and again and eventually stopped struggling and went under. I looked at the paper and saw one of the little stickmen going down with little x’s in his eyes. I shrugged and entertained myself by folding the paper into a little paper crane, then into a crab, then a box. I unfolded the paper and looked at it again.

One of the stickmen was gone.

I felt something click in my head. What just happened? Where was I? What was I just thinking? Why is the paper folded?

Where’s Taris?

“Hello?” I yelled, now underwater, “Where are you?” I screamed and started to swim as fast as I could. The jellyfish must have finally noticed me because they decided to start attacking me too. I yelled for them to stop as hard as I could in my mind, hoping that being from the Pisces colony had its quirks. I couldn’t tell for sure if it worked because I was kind of in a panic, but I stopped feeling the tentacles on me.

“Taris?”

“Where are you?!”

I searched for what seemed to be hours, but couldn’t find a trace. When I looked at the paper again, the jellyfish were gone. The other stickman was gone. I was alone.

I screamed in frustration and ripped the paper in half.