Ariel's Daughter

Chapter 11

The car ride feels longer than it should be, and before it even stops I know we're here, at the lake. The place where I was born, where my mother left me, where my wonderful father raised me lovingly, and where I love it. Where all the memories retreat to, and I know that its home.

I race out of the car and follow my instincts towards the steps, letting my feet fly down the docks and to my cabin. I open the door hesitantly at first, then I smile and let it bang open and have to catch myself before I shout out for my father. I lose my reassurance that this is really home where my father is not. I crumple to the floor. I hear voices around me, worried. I don't answer, I feel numb, and I can't find the words in my mouth, in the place where they should easily set sail. But I find I cannot. I just stare into the cliffs of darkness, in a state of reality that my father won't return. That I am never home without him here. I feel an onset of extreme sadness, but no tears swim from my eyes. All I do is stare.

I think I wake up to feel the heat on my face from the rarity of summertime Alaska summer sun. I almost smile. Almost. The waves rock the docks and cabin, swaying with the beautifully rhythmic current.

I don't move. I'm not ready to get up, I won't. Yesterday was the day that my brain finally let on the storm clouds of shock of the event of my father. I had blocked it off as him being missing, but now, with him having been missing for almost two months, I can't help but feel too much emotion that I can't deal with things right now. I hear knocking on my cabin door but they don't enter. Because, I don't respond, because somehow deep inside they know what this is about.

I stare into nothingness, into the shades of darkness that always surround me. Sometimes I believe I see swirls or movement within the shadows of them, but think nothing of them, pushing them out of my mind. I want to see again, see like I have in my strange recurring dreams lately, just not with the frightening figures watching on as I drown, falling to the sea floor, where the sand can swallow up my pale feet. I shiver, thinking about the feeling in my dream; compared to the real feeling of sand when awake it's a beautiful light, soft and squishy feeling sucking on my feet, but in my dream, it's dangerous and dark, eating them like I'm a monster.

I sigh, and realize I've been a fool, or at least feel as if I had been towards my friends. I feel silly for abandoning them after worrying them for a month as I had been in a strange world filled with he still darkness and the remembrance of my dreams. I wonder what had caused me to go into an unconscious dark until I failed to wake up and was turned to sleep for a while. I wonder why I was supposed to do this, how it could eventually lead me to my mother; somewhere out there.

I finally sit up. My head pounds like I've been running for hours on end and haven't yet stopped. I feel about for my water bottle that always sits atop my bedside table. I find it and drink, gulping it down like it's the only thing I need to stay alive at the moment. I hadn't realized just how thirsty I was and actually smile when I finished and place the bottle back on the mini sized table.

I sit among my comforter and mattress for a while thinking. I wish I hadn't had done this, my whole life I've wanted to know the truth, but will it really get me that far? 'Ember, be free my special one.' I suddenly hear, and I freeze. I squeeze my eyes shut, blocking out any other possible words. Am I actually hearing her voice? Whose voice is it?

I suddenly feel an urge to free myself of my room's confines and slam myself into the front door, all too quickly. I had forgotten the screen. I groan, rubbing my forehead where I had smacked it upon the dock. "Are you alright?" Asks a voice, and this one is not familiar. I've never heard a voice so high and squeaky like a mouse, and yet so demonic sounding as this. Something about her, I think, trying to rid of the pulse in my forehead of impact.