Ferra

Chapter Ⅳ: Mixed Emotions

Kaden

I'm feeling a lot of mixed emotions right now. I have this perfect image of my birth parents; that they're both these sweet loving and caring parents that love me no matter what. They don't care what I pursue my career in, as long as I'm happy. They're the type of people that put a healthy mind over good grades. They always welcome you with warm hugs and smiles. They're the opposite of my parents, my father for the most part.

Now that I have the chance to meet them, I'm afraid that this vision that I have for them is going to be wrong. That they might be the polar opposite of what I've imagined and they'll be disgusted by what they see in me. Ashamed of what they put into this world. What if they don't want to see me at all? They don't want to know what's become of me. Out of all the things I could be worrying about, that's what's bothering me the most. I just hope that when they see me, they won't be disappointed in what they see.

After a couple of minutes of strolling through the woods, we finally make it to Maplefalls' waterfall. The scenery around me is stunning. Autumn leaves of red, orange, yellow and all the colours in between are all around me. In the trees and on the Earth beneath my feet. The wind blows mist from the waterfall on my face, giving me a fresh gush of wind.

"We're here!" Adira announces excitedly. She throws her arms up in the air and turns to face us.

"Yes, we can see that," Mateo says, earning an eye roll from Adira.

I pull out my phone and take pictures of the beautiful world around me. When I get the time, I'll paint it. I'm thinking of using oil paint to capture all the warm colours together in a beautiful picture.

"Come on, let's look behind the waterfall," Lyra says, walking to the waterfall. I put away my phone and follow behind her along with Mateo and Adira. As we walk behind the waterfall, the misty air intensifies. Behind the waterfall is a wall of rock. No signs of a possible entrance to another world.

"See? Just as I thought. There's nothing here but rock," Lyra states. "We should head back since there's nothing here," Lyra turns around to leave, already giving up. She doesn't want to be here, and it's as clear as the waterfall behind us.

"Wait! We can't just stop here. There's gotta be something we can do. Maybe there's a hidden door and we need to say some magic words to open it or something," Adira says, trying to come up with a solution.

"Like what? Abracadabra? Come on Adira, at least we can say that we tried," Lyra says motioning for us to come with her.

"No wait, maybe she's on to something. We got to find a hidden door here somewhere that we can unlock with a lever. Or maybe there's another entrance around here," I say scanning my eyes around for anything that might stick out.

"Yeah, let's look around for anything magical," Adira says, waving her hands like jazz hands to express magic.

We all start looking around for anything out of the ordinary. Looking high and low, under stones and along the wall of stone. As I brush my hand along the stone wall, I see a faint golden light shining from within the stone. It's in the shape of a "T". I place my hand on the T and the shines brighter. I add a presser into my hand and push the stone into the wall. Nothing happens. I remove my hand and the stone retracts back out. I press it again but still, nothing happens.

"I think I found something," I call out to the group, beckoning them to come.

"What is it?" Mateo asks.

"A button it looks like," I say and demonstrate it.

"You know, when you push buttons, something usually happens," Mateo says sarcastically.