A MAN WITH NO HOME
Tell me, sweet stranger, do you know the story of Normant Lumensky, the man from a mystical land universes away from Earth? Making an ark out of his chains, he turns from a prisoner of war into a fugitive.
A WOMAN AGAINST THE WOR...
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FOR AS LONG AS I COULD remember, I had been partial to the wind—that evergreen and eerie force of nature. I did not know if it was a good thing or not, for while the wind was always there, caressing everyone's cheeks, it still had no one to return the kind gesture. It was always there, in the background, like the lame reality shows I put on TV to keep me company at midnight, knowing everyone's secrets but having no one to get to know its secrets in return.
Nevertheless, there was something deeper than serenity settling in me as I hovered by the open window of the hotel room, staring out at the forest. The zephyr blew gently, and I clung tightly to the present moment, embracing the peace that came with it.
Jasmine and I had returned to the hotel almost an hour ago. I had not been in the mood to go to the club by myself, so I had chosen six hours of undisturbed sleep over a night of mingling with strangers. Jersen had been in the bathroom, struggling to create a portal to the Gap World, his face flushed with effort and rage and despair. But no matter how hard he tried, there were no sparks flying around the room.
Traditionally, opening portals was something that only those who possessed the power of water could do. Jersen's magic was made of howling wind—the magic of the healers. He had still mastered the art of opening portals to other lands through sheer determination and practice. He had been working on it for two decades before he had actually achieved it. But the energy he needed to open a portal was now almost depleted. Not completely, though. He could still use parts of his magic to open portals to nearby destinations. Opening a portal to another universe was a completely different thing—and the only thing he wanted.
He had gone to bed shortly after the tenth failure. I had done the same.
Yet my languorous breaths turned heavy righy when I was on the brink of drifting into the mystical land of dreams. It was a vision that had me clasping the bedsheets and gasping for air. A vision of my childhood friend, Denfer, who still lived in the Gap World; a vision of him and I sitting on the front porch of his countryside home, engrossed in conversation, just like the old days. The vision vanished as quickly as it had arrived, but it left me restless nonetheless. How could I calm the wavy ocean stirring within my soul? I did not know.
I could only think of Denfer and how he had always been the one I looked up to. He was calm and strong, never begging for mercy, always trying his hardest, yet still loving so deeply, carrying around an open heart for all who needed it, even when his own bore wounds. Meanwhile, I found myself secretly judging Jasmine for being out there, partying and dancing, when her mother was buried six feet underneath the ground. How could someone thrive when they were responsible for so much pain and suffering? Had it not cost her anything?
And behind all that lay the evergreen question: had I meant nothing to my mother as well? Had that been the reason she had handed me out to a poor family with anger issues? I had never met her, never spoken to her. And that's what drove me to the edge of insanity. Had she never cared enough to want to know how I was doing? It should not have surprised me, though. Loneliness and I had become trusted friends since childhood. Thankfully, Denfer had been kind enough to introduce me to his own group of friends, making me feel like I was one of them until I had actually become one of them. He had never let me go.
