Paige and the Lost Library of Atlantis

Paige and the Lost Library of Atlantis Chapter 19

Chapter 19

The first thing Paige noticed was absence. The absence of pain and the absence of light. It was so dark she couldn't see her hand in front of her face. She didn't know where she was, but she almost didn't care, it was such a sweet relief to not be in agony anymore.

She sat up and noticed a faint light in the distance. Standing up, she brushed herself off and spun in a slow circle. The soft light was the only thing she could see. She started to walk towards the light.

The light didn't get any closer. The further Paige walked, the more it seemed to move away from her at the same pace. She tried to run towards it, but it was as if she was running on an invisible treadmill.

She yelled out into the ether. "Hello! Is anyone there?"

She didn't get a response. Frustrated, she sat back down on the ground. Or was it the floor? Where the heck was she anyway? The last thing she remembered was pain and straps. She had been strapped in a bed at the Library of Atlantis. They had found it! Maybe she was still there, and this place was in her mind. Empty because of her memory wards.

There was that light shining in the distance. The only problem was that she couldn't get to it. She tried to calm herself. Maybe she had to stop trying to control the situation.

Taking a deep breath, she tried to clear her mind. She did her best to let go of her need to control what was happening and allow. As soon as she stopped trying to get to the light, it came to her. When she opened her eyes, the glowing light was within arms reach.

Her breath was shaky as she stood back up. Tentatively, she reached her hand out towards the light. It seemed to respond in kind, moving closer to her. She cupped the light in her hand, and all the blackness around her disappeared.

Memories surrounded her in a 360° panorama of images. They were all from her 'current life', memories of Billie, and their adventures. Memories of working at the Parkerville Public Library, and a few vague memories of her high school and where she lived, but that was it. None of her parents, or her childhood. It was as if all of her memories before Billie before she worked at the Library were fake.

As hard as she tried, she couldn't remember anything else. She couldn't even remember getting hired at the Library. This fact scared her more than anything else had so far. Who was she? What was so bad that she had to be forced to forget everything?

Instinctively, she knew she could enter any one of the memories, simply by reaching out towards one. As much as she wanted to relive some things, especially some Billie things, she knew she had to dig deeper.

She watched as the memories circled her, looking for something, anything, that would lead her where she was supposed to go. The memory of her house stood out to her. It was vague, almost blurry as if it was out of focus. She had lived there, she assumed with her parents, but she seemed to have little knowledge of them.

They had been kind, she thought. She didn't feel any attachment to them, though. She hadn't once since her adventure with Billie had started, even thought of them at all. It never occurred to her to think of them. It seemed, as she began to suspect there might be more going on in her life than the status quo, the role her 'parents' had was over. Now she wondered if they had even been real people, or maybe actors or something.

Well, there was only one way to find out. She embraced the thread she was pulling at, and reached her hand out towards the hazy memory of home, or maybe it wasn't home, but just the place she had slept for a while.

As her hand brushed the light of the image in front of her, the scene around her changed. One memory, in particular, swirled around her vision. It felt very real, as if she was standing in her yard, in Parkerville, Massachusetts.