Beyond

Kei: What I'm Looking For

I'm sure there's a reason for everything. After seeing Adam and Seraina sort of realize how they felt together, it made me think a bit about myself.

I felt a small tug of envy at the fact that they had a relationship as a possibility but I quickly brushed my feelings away.

Your focus should be on getting home, idiot, I thought, mentally slapping myself.

There was just gray dimness around me, and I just waited for another portal that might take me to a new world, or home, possibly.

Fat chance.

I just stood on the invisible floor that didn't seem to exist bored out of my mind and pondering.

It's awful to let one's mind wander, but I did it solely to pass the time. Apparently waiting for a portal can be like waiting for sunlight back in my world. You can hope, but it's just not happening. Better give up now, before you waste your life away.

I guess that was one good thing that came out of the whole experience. I got to see what a sun might look like.

I hadn't known anything about that until now. Apparently sunlight radiates happiness and can make you feel like you're a walking smile. Sunlight giver energy, and it feels like someone lit a fire inside you, warming you up until you can feel it in your skin. It's sweet, like honey, and makes the clouds change colors. At sunset it becomes a giant orange-gold coin of fire, bleeding out its colors.

That wasn't what I had been pondering about.

My mind had been skirting along the idea until Seraina disappeared. Every time I came downstairs, Karen was sitting on the big staircase. She was usually asleep, with her head against the banister in a way that looked anything but comfortable. Yet she did that every night.

She was waiting, for someone or something, to come. Something to happen.

She'd been waiting three years.

I remember the first night I caught her on the stairs.

"Karen...?" I'd murmured, like I was afraid of saying her name.

"Oh!" Karen had sprung up so quickly that we bumped heads. We still do that.

"Sorry," I said, rubbing my forehead and wincing. "What are you doing?"

Karen held her mouth open for a moment, like she hadn't thought about the possibility that someone might catch her on the stairs.

"Waiting." She decided, and sat back down.

"Yeah? For what?" I asked, sitting down next to her.

Karen didn't answer, just stared at the huge wooden doors, waiting for the iron to light up from someone's touch.

That's what happened. I was twelve at the time. Karen was thirteen, and the day after that I'd learned what she was waiting for.

A boy who was about our age had left. He hadn't come back, and made people worried, but no one searched for him.

That was the weird thing about people vanishing. For us, it was normal. You didn't go looking for the vanished person unless you were looking to disappear too. No one was surprised.

Then suddenly it matters when Seraina disappears.

Or maybe it had mattered the whole time but no one cared. A sad thought.

It matched the bleakness of our situation. If we didn't come back, not one would come looking. It would just mean that disappearance was contagious and that's all.

That's all. Then people would move along. Karen's lead position would be replaced by someone else. My position as sort of her right hand and best friend would be occupied by some other.

We'd disappear.

That's all.

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Thanks for reading!

-ScarletHawthorne