Rainfall Chronicles: Amelia Reinhart

Chapter 5: My Encounter with Fate

Amelia: Chapter 5 — My Encounter with Fate

With a heavy heart, I turn the corner...

The light in the distance is dim, but bright enough to force me to shut my eyes from the sudden shift in brightness. As I open them, however, I'm more drawn to the walls of this underground temple. The illustrations on these ancient walls have drawings... is hieroglyphs the right word?

My eyes merely dart all over the place. There were so many symbols around this place that I'm sure that there's a hidden story behind this, but I could barely analyze them for a second before my eyes finally wander towards the center of the room.

From there, I see the source of the mumbling I listened to earlier... there was a figure or a creature of some sort hiding under a ragged cloak...

There was a bright source of light in front of the creature. It was small, yet it was shining brightly — it looked like it could be a candle, but no candle could shine as brightly as it was.

My intrigued expression quickly vanished, turning into anxiety. The atmosphere around me was filled to the brim with tension; the air felt dense, making it harder for me to breath properly. It was that and my already-pumping heart that was making me slow and careful in my approach.

As I do approach, I tune my hearing to focus on the sounds coming from the person ahead of me. It looked as if they had their back turned away from where I was approaching. Thank goodness... I really didn't want whatever it is to see me coming.

As I walk closer, though, the mumbling begins sounding a little more coherent. The "mumbling" I heard turned out to be some form of gibberish... that, or some foreign language I don't understand. Then again, this doesn't sound like any modern language at all.

The words I'm hearing did not sound like they were coming from a man. If I were to describe it, it'd sound like some kind of dead language, long forgotten as time naturally flowed on. The talking doesn't stop. Analyzing it even further, it sounds like they're speaking some kind of text written on the wall... were they reciting a prayer embedded into this temple?

I was freaked out. Leave it to me to find some ritualistic cult buried within a centuries-old temple. This felt so surreal to me. Moments ago, I was wandering around a forest, admiring the scenery. And now, I'm in some mysterious, ruined building with a person who I'm not even sure IS a person praying in front of me.

Get it together, girl... You're okay — nothing here is going to hurt you.

Now that I'm in this situation, I'm beginning to wonder that if all those stories about the children-abducting monster were true. There was absolutely no way in hell. This is real life! This isn't a storybook, or the beginning of some new journey for me... I'm just me: an average, runaway who has no significance...

But then again... my story hasn't felt average at all. I said this before, but I feel like my story is much bigger than what I make it out to be. First, my ability to manipulate water, and now I'm in some ancient ruins only God knows where it came from.

But, even after coming to an ultimatum about my story, I begin panicking. A rollercoaster of emotions are burrowed within me. Everything I had known and learned about the world and how it works was shattering right before my very eyes.

I never believed in aliens or monsters. I never believed in ghosts or spirits. I never believed in the supernatural... but this encounter was almost too much for my brain to handle. It was way too much! All I wanted to do was go to the library and tell the old librarian tending to the library how scared I was.  She's the only person who gets me...