Senseless

Chapter 10

That day, Morgan, one of the boys, brought a tiny bottle to the Traipen clearing. Inside the bottle was a light brown liquid, which Avery recognized as Portifayn juice. She'd never consumed any herself, but she'd seen firsthand the affects it brought to people. She knew better than to even entertain the idea of drinking it.

Portifayne juice was made from Egran seeds, it tasted sweet at first, but left a bitter aftertaste. It's addictive qualities made it fairly dangerous to those who drank it and gave them horrible smelling breath.

Morgan didn't open the bottle, he just let it sit at the table while the rest of the kids waited for Saige.

Avery kept glancing at the bottle with a judgemental gaze, but she said nothing. All the other kids seemed to be fine with it, but it made Avery a little uneasy.

Several moments later, Saige arrived with her shoulder bag full of Loreyalp leaves. She placed her glass jar in the center of the table and set the leaves ablaze like she had done dozens of times before.

The forest began to bubble and morph like it had done each day over the past several weeks.

This time, Avery no longer felt light headed, but she had grown used to the sudden change of her surroundings.

The trees vanished as the scenery began to morph into a large building. Inside were many desks all lined in a row and there in front of them faced a chalkboard.

The setting was much like a school of this world, but of that world, schools did not look the same way.

In the midst of the morphing, Morgan opened up his bottle and reached for the center of where the table used to be.

Avery's eyes shot open wide.

"What are you doing?!?" She demanded, but before she could get an answer, Morgan had dumped the Portifayn juice into the jar of burning leaves.

The juice sizzled and caused thicker smoke to come from the jar, but the flames continued to burn steadily.

The air around them was overwhelmed with a sweet taste, every breath was like eating a spoon full of honey.

"This is bad! Do you know what this stuff does to you?" Avery scolded.

"Have you ever tried some?" Morgan replied in a sassy tone.

Avery stood from the table and stormed away. She meant to be dramatic in her motions, but because of the hallucinations from the leaves, she was unable to properly navigate her way out, bumping into trees and nearly tripping over roots and such.

Several of the other kids followed in her lead, but still, a majority of them stayed.

Avery's struggle to leave was harder than she thought and frustrated her almost to tears. A wall was nothing but empty space, empty space was a tree, flat ground was a slope, and doorway were nothing more than bushes. She stumbled and trudged through her imagination, trying to escape it, but it remained in front of her and felt very real.

The farther she got from the Traipen clearing, the more fluid her delusion seemed to grow, switching from reality to imagination. Dual vision, unfocused horizons, underdeveloped sounds, and unreal surroundings.

This, of course, played with her mind and brought Avery to her knees in tears.

She just wanted it to stop.

She knew getting away from the clearing would provide fresh air, but the further she got from it, the hard it was to go on.

The taste in Avery's mouth grew bitter and the tears in her eyes grew dry.

She sat in her place and waited it out.

She decided she wouldn't move until her reality was clear as day.

She thought she had made up her mind, until she heard a faint cry.

It was the cry of a boy.

It was the cry of Wesley...