Inbetween - Book 1 of the Guardian series

Chapter 16- The return of Leucothea

A/N: Highly recommend you play the video with this chapter. It'll trip you out a little. 

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Frustration was all Amelia could feel as she sat there in the ruins. Stared at the garden. Huffed. It wasn't even hurt now, although she was sure she could feel it if she concentrated on this too much, it was just anger and frustration.  

She tried to re-build the house. It didn't work that well. Amelia's instruments were still broken and when she tried to 'use her mind' it ended up being a fairly pathetic attempt. Too shaky looking for her to try entering into it, much less 'living' in it. Amelia had ended up letting it go and it'd collapsed into sand and dirt so fast that she was glad she hadn't been inside it. Something about the older house, the ruins she'd re-created, she just couldn't create it again. It somehow meant too much to her. Was that because it was already apart of her world before she'd started to heal? 

Amelia guessed so. She ended up trying to make the ruins into a shelter instead, which did work, the trees growing across the sides. It was kind of beautiful to watch these trees rise up along the side of the ruin's still open sides, vines spread out from each trunk to criss-cross into a wall, leaving arched 'windows' where they gently curved into shapes. These vines didn't have flowers or leaves, she noticed, they were just dark brown vines. That was okay by Amelia.

The trees acted as protection from the rain. Six giant willows on each side of her ruins, the swaying green branches acting like curtains of green. They prevented the rain from coming in the 'windows' and filtered the light. Not that it needed it right now- it was darker out, the clouds muting the light already, and the rain just made everything outside the ruins look depressed and wet.

Amelia flopped onto the bed and sat there in the now completely protected ruins, legs crossed, staring blankly out the window at the swaying willows. 

 "Pretty boring weather." A voice commented lightly from the doorway. Sol rested there, leaning against the doorway, his warm glow lighting up the inside of her ruins, "Pretty dark in here too. You waiting for him to come crawling back?"

Amelia hadn't even thought about how dark it was in there. She shook her head. "Not really. Apollo can wander around with a stick up his bum if he wants." It hurt though, she had to admit, go deeper into Amelia worse than she liked. Much worse. "Why would I?"

"Apparently you did that with a prior lover." He replied and stood up, striding in. Sol tugged that couch back out, it seriously looked as if he'd just yanked it out of a pocket and inflated it on the ground, before flopping on it. "Good on you."

"Who are you?" She asked. Amelia knew he was 'Sol'. But he kept popping up now. 

 "Sol. Roman god of the Sun, Prophecy, Healing. In the living world I'm Apollo, and he's me. We split our roles. I suppose we're like brothers now." He replied, relaxing, feet going up on Amelia's bed. Sol did look a little like Apollo, when she looked, that same blonde hair, glow, except that Apollo was tenser. Unhappy. Sol just looked relaxed. 

"You seem more..." She wasn't sure what the word was. 

"Modern?" Sol grinned. 

Amelia nodded. That was it. He talked different, he dressed differently, and Sol seemed to have this thing about that couch he carried around. "Yeah. Modern."

"I spend more time in the living world. It amuses me and there's always something to do. I even did a quick appearance on one of those reality TV shows for the hell of it. Something about surviving. Pretty easy." Sol shrugged as if that was nothing. Amelia hadn't ever watched it but ... wouldn't he stand out? "I think the three old ladies want to speak to you. If you gave the right answer. I'm pretty sure that one was the right one."