Amentia

Chapter 7 - Being observed

Natalia landed on her back with a loud thump and a moan of pain. Before she could open her eyes, a deafening high-pitched ringing in her ears made her wince for a moment, and it stopped quickly and suddenly. Feeling calmer but without opening her eyes, she traced her thoughts back to the last thing she remembered. She was at the park with Santi. What had happened? She had seen a light that looked like a door and had gone in. She had faintly heard the scream of her friend as the light sucked her in. And it seemed now it had spit her out.

Her arms were stretched at the sides of her body, her fingers feeling a smooth surface, cool to the touch. She frowned slightly, thinking she had never touched any surface like this; it didn't feel like wood, and it certainly wasn't tile or ceramic because there were no spaces or lines between them.

When she opened her eyes, she found herself under a dark wooden ceiling, held up with a series of vertical and horizontal beams which formed a grid of perfect squares. The wood behind the beams was seamless and without flaw. Nati turned her head to her left to look at the floor, and learned that it was indeed made of the same wood, but it was no wood she had ever seen before; it didn't have any visible patterns or lines. The walls were made of it too. At her feet, the light she had come out of seemed to be at ease.

She sat up, rubbing the back of her head, as she had hit it hard when she landed. She rubbed her eyes and observed the arch under which the light rested. It was covered in strange symbols.

She turned around on the floor and nearly leaped to her feet from the surprise of seeing a man in the left corner of the room. Except it wasn't a man, strictly speaking.

"Welcome," he said with both hands in front of his chest, crossed forming an X, with the palms facing up. His voice traveled the room and reverberated in Nati's chest. It was the most soothing sound she had ever heard, apart from her cat's purrs.

"Thank you," Nati said, trying to keep her thoughts clear.

She was sitting in front of a man who looked like a fox. Or a fox that looked like a man. Had she simply lost her mind? Maybe she had fallen into a coma somehow and was hallucinating. Maybe Santi's screams hadn't been because she had disappeared but because she was hurt. But would that change anything? She was here, or at least her mind was, regardless if it was real or not. And so was this surprisingly gentle-looking fox-man.

"Trying to make sense of this?" he said, his voice deep and smooth.

Nati smiled despite herself. "I'm debating whether or not this is real. But I don't suppose you'd give me a satisfying answer."

The fox-man nodded solemnly. "Defining what is real is quite possibly the hardest task anyone can set out to do; any answer I give you will prove nothing."

It was like he had read her mind. Indeed, there was no point in trying to figure out if this was real, because what's to say what is? Reality is relative; there's no hard proof for it. For all she knew, the life she had lived in Córdoba so far had been a dream and she was only now waking from it. So, instead of purposefully driving herself crazy, she accepted this place. It felt real so, for the moment, it was.

"You do well in not pondering on impossible questions," he said, guessing her thoughts again.

Nati watched him curiously, wondering if he might indeed be able to read minds. Or maybe she had just been very obvious and had been giving away her thoughts with her facial expressions. Nati knew very well how communicative faces can be. But then again, this was a man that was half-fox, so reading minds might not be so strange.

He showed Nati a smile that said many things, and she wondered how old he was. The way he spoke clearly showed he was much older than he seemed. And a smile that said more than one thing at once was the smile of a person who has the wisdom of a lifetime. She wondered how many lifetimes he had lived. But that was all she could see; he was far too complex to figure out in a couple of minutes, not to mention see his name.