Forbidden Enchantment (Book One)

Forbidden Enchantment: Chapter 38 (LAST)

My vision blurred as nausea took effect and I felt myself falling down . . . down . . . over the slope of jagged rock which hit into me at all angles. I no longer had the energy to scream out in pain as hammers hit my body at different lengths and strengths in all directions. One, two, three blows to the head and I knew that I was literally out of it; but before I was all the way there, I recalled the distinctive feeling of ending up in a soft texture, as opposed to the rock solid cave floor my subconscious was expecting.

 38 -- Running Faster and Faster to Stay in the Same Place

Were you ever out one cold, winter morning and there was nothing but fog surrounding you? No matter where you looked, there was always this hazy sense and you could never really make out what you were seeing. Only knowing the familiar and knowing the difference before the fog could guide you through the thick clouds around you on your way to school. It was cold, no doubting that, but the funny thing was that the cold was something that had never bothered me. I was accustomed to runny noses and looking nothing close to Rudolf and being wrapped up in my old wool scarf with my lips chapped from the fierceness of the wind. What really bothered me at those times was not how I looked, or the weather, it was the feeling of thinking you knew where you were going but never quite actually knowing if you really were where you thought you were. Call it insecurity or a lack of confidence in oneself, but no matter how hard I tried it was one feeling that I could never rally brush off. The worst thing, I suppose, was the fact that that feeling never truly left—not even since the third grade when one foster family thought I was old enough to walk through town on my own to get to school. Why am I recounting this tale? I suppose, to show that these nail biting insecurities are, in some sense, relative—in whichever way you wish to see it.

That same hazy sense was something that I was surrounded with then. It was like there was a fog covering my mind, weighing down on it yet there was nothing I could do to move it. I knew I was far, far down in my subconscious but at the same time I knew I wasn’t dreaming, everything was far too real for that to happen. It was sense of realness that made me think in such a way, even though it was rather difficult to explain, even to myself. In a dream, we saw things yet at the same time, we didn’t really see things, we imagined them, which was just my way of explaining things. Now, trapped in this dense cloud of fog, I could feel the hairs on my arms and legs prickling, and a chill slowly snaking around my back. The coldness made everything seem much sharper, and I could see everything so clearly, as if it was highly pixelated or something. It was like looking at a computer screen with very high resolution—so high, in fact, that it almost plain hurt to look at if I started examining it too much.

I began shivering then and rubbing my hand along my arms I realised I was in the midnight blue corseted dress once more. Ugh. This was just getting annoying. What was up with the unusually formal attire anyway? And why the blue? There was definitely some reason behind it—I was a proficient believer in the idea that everything had a purpose. Immediately, I couldn’t find any reason to it but there were other things to ponder on that took most of my attention. Such as: why was I here now? Being as silent as the atmosphere was, I couldn’t help but think of it as being slightly suspicious . . . although maybe it was even more than “slightly” on its own. It was like those horror movies where you just know that something bad is going to happen and the lack of sound is the basis for the premonition. In other words: things were very, very fishy at the moment.

Taking a step forward, I stopped suddenly, arms still by my side. Then, to confirm my suspicions, I took another step, on the opposite side. Amused at this rate, I began to move in a series of steps—backwards, forwards, side to side. It seemed that the clouds of fogs were moving with me, as if covering me from something. Lifting my hand up, I noticed the fog rush towards it, casting a protective sphere around up. I decided to sway from side to side then, humming an aimless tune when the fog too, began to sway in motions with me. There was no sound, however, and everything was covered in nothing but shell-shock silence. It was unnerving me more and more by the second as I struggled to decipher what was going on around me. I took it that the fog was somehow protecting me, yet at the same time the sense of entrapment wouldn’t leave me either. Again, the best word I could think to describe the situation as being, simply put—unnerving. It reminded me somehow of an overprotective mother and how they would always want to protect their child, yet at the same time, no one could say that that level of protection was always going to be what they needed. I had this urge to break free of it, yet becoming desperate and making my movements more sudden didn’t seem to make such a large difference. I was definitely going to have to try something else—and quick.