Succession at Seventeen

Chapter 7

They found that the mind fogging miasma was gone on that side of the wall, replaced by a wind that cut through and forced their minds into a sharp, painful focus. The trees they passed, sparse as the area was, seemed out of place. There were trees similar to evergreens that burst out of the snow but unlike evergreens they had big blue and purple blooms swaying in the wind. Next to some of those were some apple trees in full bloom and covered in a thin layer of ice that kept them rigid.

It was as though it was the dead of winter and the world just didn't care. There were even pools of softly glowing water and lakes that lapped at the snow on their shores.

Beside one of these was a beautiful white horse standing about 18 hands high and pawing at the ground toward them. It looked like it had just come from the pool judging from the water sluicing from its mane and tail. But the water never lessened and the rest of the animal was dry as a bone in the sun.

It watched them for a few minutes before a girl surfaced and locked eyes with Di. Electricity flashed through her and she felt an intense strange familiarity. "What is that?" she asked.

As Markus turned the girl and the horse dove into the water. The water looked like a tiny pebble was all that had broken the surface. "What?"

When she looked down at Jeremy he was looking around searching for what she was talking about. Neither of them saw it. "Nothing. I must have imagined it..." But she hadn't and she knew it.

As they walked Markus became more and more at ease. It was like he had grown up here the way he jumped onto trails that couldn’t be seen from where they were walking and he whipped around blind corners. And for all Di knew he had.

"Are we getting close to..." suddenly Di realized she and Jeremy had never asked where they were heading. What could they have been thinking? Maybe they hadn't. Maybe the fog had kept them compliant or made the aching need to know dull.

"Yes we are almost there. In fact you could almost see it from here if that were possible." He said with a smile as he ducked into a cave mouth that couldn’t have been more than four foot tall. Di and Jeremy exchanged a dubious look before she followed.

She ducked as she entered, feeling the scrape of rock against her back. The way her shirt stuck to her body under her jacket told her there was some fluid stuck to the cave walls but the tenacity with which it stuck said it wasn't water.

They lost Markus quickly in the dark and minutes after that she couldn't even see Jeremy’s white fur as she held him to her chest.

“I hear something.” Jeremy whispered.

Diana strained but no matter how hard she tried she couldn't make anything out. All she could hear was her own footsteps and their breathing. She could hear a nebulous something at the edge of her hearing but it wasn't strong enough to even leave her with an impression. “Guess I don't get super hearing.”

“What?”

“Nothing. I don't hear anything. What is it?”

“I hear talking. And it sounds like water falling too. It's hard to tell it's all echo-y.”

“Well we ARE in a tunnel.”

“No it sounds... like its losing some...strength? From... more echoing than that.”

She wasn't sure she understood how he could tell.

They walked a ways further and passed through a section of the cave that felt distorted. She tripped and fell because she expected the ground to be higher.“Did you feel that?” She asked after recovering.