Beautiful Darkness

➵My Only Rival is Within

My emotional stability is wavering. I am trying to piece together the broken fragments of my past. The dreams have continued for the past two days. I have shut out the world around me. Everyone has surprisingly given me my space. I think they are conjuring battle strategies in an attempt to ease my stress. Sometimes I hear murmurs in the dining hall at night but have had no motivation to investigate. Perhaps they are moving on without me.

'Time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future.' The voice whispers into my pounding skull. Its tests and inner observations have coursed through me nonstop for days.

'Stop speaking in riddles, I don't understand.' I snap at it. I cannot take its mental assaults for much longer.

'What might have been and what has been point to one end, which is always present.'

"I don't know what that means!" I bite aloud. My voice echoes loudly out my normally silent room.  I curse to myself. The others undoubtfully heard it.

I drag my thumb across my bottom lip as I pace the room. Everything is connected.

I reflect on the most recent dream I have endured.

Darkness is all consuming. No reflections or strands of light pierce through it. I feel the cold floor beneath me as I rub a steady hand against it. My palm follows its texture until it is met with the vertical structure of metal bars. I'm in a cell.

"Who are you?" I call to the nothingness. The voice is not my own yet is distinctively familiar. Strong footsteps echo in all directions. I bite down the fear within me; for all it will do is deter me. I ache to call for those I love yet I feel inevitably doomed. An awareness that I will never see them again has settled deep within the remnants of my soul.

A sly chuckle responds.

"What do you want from me?" My lip quivers.

The steps draw closer as my heartbeat thumps in my throat. Its pounding is all around me. It is all I can see; all I can feel.

The sound stops directly in front of me. I take a deep breath and slowly raise my head to meet a pair of eyes I will never be able to burn from the etches of my memory.

"Everything," The entity before me purrs.

Its voice still draws an inward shiver from me in the present.  I feel as if I know it. I can't remember. I ache for the visions for in them I can see again.

"Why can't I remember?" I yell to the voice aloud once again. I scold myself internally. Everyone will think I am crazy.

'You hear yet do not listen. We are getting nowhere!' The voice's anger directs back at me.

Just as I open my mouth and thoughts to respond a voice cuts me off.

"Arailia?" A soft voice calls from the other side of my door. I twist to stare at the direction it came in. What do I do?

'Get rid of it.' The voice pushes. Its urgency becomes my own.

"I'm busy," I reply. The pressure for them to leave is laced in my words.

"Can I come in?" I recognize the voice as Ruelle's. I hear the knob begin to turn as her hand grasps it. I lurch to the door and push it shut just as it opens an inch.

"I said I'm busy," I sound harsher than I intend to. Her initial gasp of surprise is clouded by uncertainty. I lock the door. Ruelle hesitates for several moments before I hear her footsteps linger away. More voices can be heard in the hall but I turn to block them away.