Reminiscence

Chapter 8

I have no appetite for dinner, and the feeling of despair and hopelessness creeps up my spine like the frost on a window in the late months of the year. Matteo has gone, leaving me to wallow in my thoughts, tangled like the vines and roots of the mangrove forests. My mind is fogged, like the banks of the beaches and the bridges of the mountains. We must find our friend, the one who reintroduced me to this strange, bustling world. This world that I once called home and shall continue to do so, despite the lack of deities and the uproar of modern technology that intrigues me so. The world is an interesting place, full of mortals, myths, and monsters who call themselves lovers. The schools, full of children and adults, the teacher and the students. Streets, bumper to bumper with the working, eager person trying to make a living. This world, so fascinatingly big. Victorie, just one person, average to the eye, just trying to get around and make a living like everyone else.

The morning sun thrusts itself in my face, the face I peel off of my desk the next morning. My back aches from being slumped over so haphazardly on the wood. I look over at my bags, still parked by the door. I need to call Matteo because, in my semi-lucid state, I had written notes down. Things from my past rushed onto the pages like a waterfall. Like a spilled drink you can't fully clean up. You must understand, I am unable to fully comprehend what I have written as I have only just awoken, and I had written it in the delirious hours beforehand. The phone seems to ring and ring, endlessly in a loop for minutes before Matteo answers. He sounds like he hadn't gotten much sleep the night before either. His voice is pained, like he's sore. "What have you done?" I ask and he's quite quick to reply.

"About as much as you've done, Nesra. No one knows what's happened." He sighs and we arrange a time to meet back here, preferably after breakfast, although we can't wait that long. "Fine, meet me here, we can have Merra help us," and I hang up after that. Something wasn't going to plan this morning and I had no Idea what it was. I began to question whether he'd show up, but it was gone once he knocked on the door.

"We have to go back down to the room underneath the library."

"Are you crazy?"

"Nope"

"We need to find Victorie." I was desperate to find them, it's day three now I believe they are missing, and it's becoming increasingly more worrying that I've heard nothing. The remaining dust from the secret door falls to the ground when I open it, and I take the first step back down into the large space that is the main room I remember. Matteo comes all the way down this time, I sense the fear in him. I have to remind him I was down here, and I made it out alive and he would too, because he kept looking around the large space like it was going to crush us. I lead him down the hall to where the tables are, and I show him where the writing is. "I don't really understand it but okay. What do we need to do right now?" he asks.

"We need to look for weapons. Something that could give us more than what we see with our eyes at the moment." Matteo and I look at each other.