The Soulmate Curse

SANDALWOOD (for divination) - Part 2

It seemed like Finn had been asleep forever when she finally woke up. The riverbed was beautiful from this angle, with her standing on a large boulder in the middle of it. The water sparkled, crudely dammed up to go around the boulder. Strange. She floated down to the riverbed and squatted to study the pretty pebbles on the side. The crystal-clear water ran over them like shimmering gossamer with little rainbows in it. So pretty. Suddenly, she stood up and listened. There was a call. Not a sound. A pull. She looked up into the azure sky. The sun swallowed her vision and when she finally looked away from it, she was no longer at the riverbed.

She was in the woods. And she was not alone. There was a girl on her knees in between the trees. Her dark hair was falling forward and covering most of her face. Her incredibly gaunt face. Finn floated over and knelt in front of her. Even though she was clearly exhausted, she was gorgeous. Somehow, Finn knew that behind the closed lids, her eyes were a bright beautiful bright brown.

"You should help her," said a voice beside Finn.

Finn turned to the one speaking to her. "Who are you?"

"You're the one who's in my home," came the reply. The voice belonged to a shimmering mirage made up of rainbows.

"I'm sorry," Finn said. "I didn't mean to intrude."

"It's okay. You feel... good," said the amorphous shimmering form. "I like having you here."

Finn turned back to the girl. "Will you help her?"

"I was going to, but I'm not now."

"Why?"

"Because she has you."

Finn tilted her head at her new friend. "Me?"

The sparkling, shapeless creature nodded, even though it didn't technically have a head.

"Who is she?" Finn asked.

"I don't know," came the reply. "A traveller."

"Is she hurt?"

"Closer to dying, I presume."

"I don't want her to die," Finn whispered. She reached out to touch her face...

"No! Wait..."

Finn touched the girl's face. It was like the girl had been struck by lightning. Her head shot up and she looked around in a confused daze. She fell back and moved crawled away backwards. The abruptness of her actions caught Finn off guard, and she'd shot right up into the air. Into the trees.

"They get scared when you touch them."

From the canopy of the trees, hiding behind some branches, Finn looked back at the girl and watched her slowly get up, one knee at a time. Every movement was incredibly slow and deliberate. Once up, the girl swayed on her feet and looked ahead. She looked spent. Without hope. Her eyes empty. Then she looked up. Directly at Finn. No, not at her. Through her. Finn watched determination leak into the girl's eyes. She took a sip of water from the bottle she was carrying. Her only piece of luggage. Then she staggered forward. Each step became stronger. More purposeful. Soon, she was running. Fascinated by this turn of events, Finn followed the girl, floating after her through the woods, curious where this girl would lead them.

"Where is she going?" Finn asked.

"Where she needs to go."

Despite her previous burst of energy, the girl was slowly getting fatigued again, stumbling forward rather than running. Her hand went down to her left leg, to a bandaged wound, and when she drew it back, there was blood on her palm. Finn watched as the girl's eyes kept closing as she pushed herself beyond what should have been possible. In horror she watched as the girl staggered towards a rock that would trip her and cause her to fall onto a log with an old dry stubby branch sticking off it that would spear right through her torso, killing her.

"No!"

It was like Finn was plugged into an electric socket, every single one of her senses amplified so that colours and scents and sounds felt vibrant and tangible. She raced towards the log like a bullet from a gun. She smashed into the log and it shifted just as the girl tripped on the rock and fell right where the log had been just a few seconds before. The girl hit the soft, sandy ground with a loud thud, beyond exhausted, but alive.

Still vibrating from the energy surge, Finn shot up to the sky, elated beyond belief. She was so alive! So powerful. So... she looked down and saw a well-trodden trail and a little girl and her dog skipping along it. The girl on the ground was just a few meters from the trail. All she had to do was take a few more steps and she would meet with the little girl. Finn knew that it was important they met. She wasn't sure why, but she was certain it had to happen. She floated back down to the girl lying face down on the ground, slipping in and out of consciousness.

"How do I help her?" Finn asked her glittery friend.

"Talk to her."

"And tell her what?"

"What she needs to hear."

"Zhen, you have to wake up now," said Finn. She looked back at the sparkling form. She'd said words, but she didn't know what they meant. She didn't understand the words.

"What did I say?" she wondered.

"What she needed to hear," came the reply.

The girl on the ground moaned.

"That's it, Zhen, wake up," said Finn. The words were still strange to her. Unintelligible. But the girl was responding to them, so that was okay.

"Zhen."

"No more," the girl whispered.

These words were strange and foreign too, but they upset Finn.

"What is she saying?" Finn asked.

The shimmering entity shrugged, even though it had no shoulders.

The little girl and her dog would soon pass by and they wouldn't meet the girl on the ground. This made Finn terribly upset, even though she didn't know why. She could feel the power build up inside her. It grew and grew and grew, peaking to the point where Finn thought she might burst. And she did. All that energy suddenly exploded out of her in one single word.

"Zhen!"

The head of the girl on the ground suddenly shot up. She groggily stood up and looked around, her hand on her chest as if to try and keep her heart in place.

"Walk!" said Finn, the words coming to her as whispers in the wind.

The girl obeyed, even if it didn't look like she could.

"One more step."

Suddenly, she was on the trail. Her eyes fell on the little girl and her puppy. The exhausted girl fell to her knees and spoke. "Are you real?"

More unintelligible words to Finn.

The little girl nodded. Her little dog came over and sniffed around them. The little girl suddenly looked at Finn and then back to the exhausted girl kneeling in the middle of the trail.

The little girl pointed at Finn and asked, "Is she real?"

The words sounded so strange to Finn, but she found herself smiling at the little girl. The exhausted girl turned to face her and asked, "You can see her too?"

The little girl nodded and smiled at Finn, who waved and received one back.

"My friend," said the older girl, her voice shaky and weak. "She needs help."

The little girl held her hand out to the older one. "Let's go find her some."