Insight (13 page)

“I have a feeling that Drake knows more about what’s going on with this Blue Moon than you and I do,”
Landen thought. I felt his anger rise. He wrapped his arm around me, and we began to stroll through the string.

All at once, I could see a purple haze on the right side of the string. “It’s turning purple!” I shouted.

My tone scared him, he jumped at the sound of my voice. I realized that talking to him without words would serve as a beneficial tool in the string. Laughing at my excitement, Landen pulled me closer.
“Okay, purple is good. This is a natural path.”

“Do you know where it leads?”

“I do,”
he thought as an amused smirk emerged on his lips.

He wasn’t going to tell me. I was learning that those two words were code words that meant ‘figure it out.’ We walked for at least fifteen more minutes before we reached the purple haze. The color resembled a summer sunset; it was so breathtaking. I felt like I was standing on a rainbow.

“When you come to a passage, always step through it with caution—you don’t ever know for certain what you’ll step into.”

A wary look came across my face, and my curiosity was piqued. As he took the first step into the haze, Landen pulled me close, and a tingle teased my skin as the haze surrounded me. I then felt a burst of humidity in the air and heard a loud roaring noise. Fearing that we had somehow found our way into some horrible danger, I focused my eyes as the haze fell behind us. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing: a vast waterfall. It was the most amazing thing I had ever seen.

“Where are we? Niagara Falls?”
I asked completely humbled by this display of nature.

He grinned.
“This is Victoria Falls.”

“Where is Victoria Falls?”

“Zimbabwe,”
he thought, ducking his head slightly to catch my gaze, clearly wondering if I realized how those few steps we had taken in the string had moved me across the globe.

I knew that the shock on my face was apparent. I couldn’t fathom how we’d gotten there.
“It’s beautiful…so big…”

“It’s over a mile wide and very old.”

“How old?”

“One hundred and fifty million years. It’s a powerful natural source of energy, and that’s why it was so easy for you to see. We passed several other passages before we reached this one,”
he thought, studying my face for signs of understanding.

I could see that I had so much to learn. I knew that I didn’t ever want to be alone in the strings. I was sure to be lost.

“Are they all this beautiful?”

“Everything that you see will amaze you, even if you’ve been there before. Each place has its own story to tell.  If you listen, you can hear it and feel it.”

True. I could feel this place. I could feel that all those who knew it, loved it, and respected it. The waterfall itself knew it was powerful…it was a life force all its own.

“Can you see your way back?”
he asked.

I looked behind us, but there wasn’t a purple haze or a wave in the air.

“No,”
I thought in a worried tone.

He didn’t seem surprised by my answer. He stood behind me, wrapped his arms around me, and held me tightly.

“Close your eyes and remember the way you came…remember the feeling you had as you passed through… find the energy.”
He thought as his hands moved up my sides.

I giggled like a ridiculous schoolgirl.
“I can only think of one thing when you are touching me like that.”

He leaned his shoulder back so that he was able to see my expression, then he gazed into my eyes. My lips were but a breath away from his.
“Would it make you feel any better if I told you that it was killing me to be a gentlemen right about now?”

“No, It would make me ask you how long the storms are going to last. I want to go home.”

There was that look again, the one filled with wonder and utter devotion.

His hand smoothed across my stomach daring to edge toward my chest. When he reached the flesh above my heart, he splayed his fingers as his lips met mine.
“My home is right here. As sappy as that sounds, no matter what worlds I traveled to, where I laid my head at night, this has always been my home.”
His warm tongue just barely grazed my lips as he pulled away.

“I wish I knew you were real before yesterday.”

“You doubted that I was?”
He asked as he turned me in his arms. Concern was masking his playful image.

“Deep down I believed you were, I really did. There was always a lingering doubt that I had fabricated you to get me through each day. It was so exhausting to feel so much, to see what I saw for no reason, and not understand it. Closing my eyes at night and seeing you made it worth it.
” I made a face.
“I’ve always been a bit of an introvert. Not really living, going through the paces, just waiting.”

I ran my hands across his arms.

“Don’t get me wrong. I’m independent. I’m not one of those girls that needs a boy to define her. I’ve just always felt like I was missing something, like I was late for some big deal in my life. Only I didn’t know what it was. Out of place basically.” I paused. “Then this happens. I had a bad dream. That one dream turned my life upside down. It scared the hell out of me when my parents came out and told me I was basically in hiding. But through that I kept telling myself that it must mean you were real, if Drake was real you were real. I told myself if something as crazy as being from another dimension was true, then I could have really found you in my dreams. That no matter what I would find you. But all of that happened, like, this week. Before, before I was trying to get out of going away to school. I was watching movies with my friends, and every once in a while they would convince me to go to the lake or something.”

Throughout my confession his emotions varied, under it all he was mad.

“I cannot believe they let you struggle like that.”

“I hid it well.”

“They never talked to you about your insights?”

“No, but I never asked either. They were worried enough about my sleeping patterns.”

That didn’t help his mood at all. My hand reached for his chest. “
You’ve always been my best friend. Even though we never said a word, I felt like you got me. And it was so easy to feel only your emotion, you always had such a calm. I mean, I love my friends back home, but only couple of them ever knew the real me.”

His hands squeezed my waist
. “I may have felt peaceful, but I swear to you that was only when I laid eyes on you. I struggled, too. I’ve always been treated differently. They look at me like they know something I don’t, but at the same time like they think I know some cosmic secret. I can’t tell you how many times I ran away, searching for a way to find you, searching for answers to questions I feel in my soul but cannot understand enough to clearly ask them. I’ve been out of place, too. Only I was watching the clock, I was searching for a beacon. I never doubted you were mine, that I was yours. But I fought the course of time. I fought every rule they put before me.”

I don’t know what would have been worse, not knowing without a doubt we were more than just dreams, or knowing and not being able to do anything about it.

“How worried do I need to be about us right now? What secrets are they hiding? Do you really think they kept me hidden because of that dark dimension? I mean, are they expecting something out of us?”

His jaw clenched, he glanced away.
“Chara can be just a superstitious as any dimension. I’m more worried about how our dimension is connected to Esterious, what Drake wants with you.”

“Is it really wicked there?”

“It’s a place that has always haunted me. Wicked doesn’t begin to describe it.”

A shiver ran down my spine.

He wrapped his arms around me.
“I’m not going to let him hurt you, or our home. I swear that to you. We’ll figure out what our souls are trying to tell us, one way or another. But right now, I want to enjoy these precious first moments. I want to hear your voice
.” His hand moved in small circles on my back.
“I want to feel the heat of your skin.”
He tilted his head
. “I want to gaze at that wonder in your eyes. I want to awaken you to all that power in your soul.”
He blushed ever so slightly
. “I want to make up for all these years when you thought I was a dream.”

“You are. Right now you are,”
I thought as I glanced longing at the massive waterfall before
I turned in his arms.
“Okay, I’m remembering how we came here, what the passage felt like,”
I said as I closed my eyes.

“Focus on that for a second or two.”
He swayed his hands against my arms.
“Now open your eyes,”
he thought.

When I did, the wave was there again.

“I can see it!”

“Okay, you lead the way,”
he thought as he laughed aloud.

I walked slowly through the wave. The roar of the waterfall was gone, and the air was perfectly still again. Only the haze remained behind us.

“How come it wasn’t there at first?”
I asked, looking back at the haze daring to reach out and feel the color of the air.

“It was there—you just were never taught to see it. The strings are all over every dimension. You’ve walked by more than you could ever know. Our eyes can see them. You just have to learn to call on what you were born with.”

I looked around the string, and to my right I could see an array of colors that seemed to stretch out for miles in every direction. They looked like they were blocking our path.

“I can see more colors, is this a wall?”

“This is where the string divides. Focus on the hazes, and you’ll see that the more dominant hazes are framing different paths.”

I studied what I thought was a wall in front of me, and as I stared, I could see that the darker hazes outlined three passages. The colors of the three passages were so bright; they spilled out of their paths and joined the others. It looked like every color that existed was blended perfectly together. They flowed on the gentle current I was feeling. The glow of the white passages reflected on the hazes, looking like diamonds. I was humbled by the beauty before me.

“Three paths,”
I thought softly as I stared in awe.

Landen grinned. I could sense the excitement rise inside of him.
“The storms create these paths. More passages are created with each aggressive flow of energy. When our parents were young, storms were rare. They only really occurred once a year. Around the time we were born, they were so fierce that only the most experienced travelers were able to navigate through them.”

“My father said his passage to my mother closed. Is that normal?”

His eyes told me no, and I could feel his mystification.
“In our entire history it’s only happened to your father. My grandfather, August, told me that everyone searched endlessly for the gifted healer.”

“That’s a little scary,”
I thought.

“I just wish they would have brought you home when they did find you,”
he thought with disdain.

We began to walk. I wasn’t sure, but I thought we were going back the way we had just come. I searched the glow all around us, looking at all the hazes that had been absent to me before.

There were little speckles along the sides of the walls of the string. They were all different colors. Some small as dust, others as large as a doorway. We stopped before one of the large yellow doorways.

“I told you that purple was a natural path. Why do you think the color to this one is different?”
Landen asked.

It was like being in a classroom. He was making me think, teaching me.

“Well, yellow and purple are both calm colors. Could be natural, just not as strong maybe?”

Landen held his arm out, indicating that he wanted me to lead the way. My steps were cautious. He may have known where it led, but I didn’t. For all I knew, I could have been in Australia, and a big scary snake would be at my feet when the yellow haze left me.

When the haze passed, the same tingle as the last was there. The feeling was growing more familiar to me. As the haze faded, we stood on a rocky cliff overlooking a beautiful, deserted, white beach, the water was so clear. Suddenly, I heard a loud noise, and I turned to see water crashing through a hole in the rocks. As I stood in absolute astonishment, I could feel the energy leaving as the water fell.

“Do you want to stay here for a while?” he asked, laughing at my reaction.

I did, but I was hungry for more. Feeling proud of myself, I pulled Landen back into the string. Feeling the pride coming from him, I knew I had done well.

“You’re quick. It took me almost ten times before I could find the string alone.”

“I’m sure you were only a little boy. It’s not the same for me,”
I assured him.