A Thousand Year Obsession ✔

45. Be Confident; Be Brave

45. Be Confident; Be Brave

I could hear voices, urgent, panicked, scared, but I couldn't see anything. I couldn't feel. All I was was thought. Weightless thought hovering in a void of blackness. I tried to push out the voices, but they kept shoving their way back in, persistently destroying my silent tranquility.

"Wake up, Morgana, please wake up. Why isn't she waking up?"

How come I recognized that voice? That tone. It was as if, sometime long ago . . . something I'd forgotten . . .

"She's not supposed be be out that long . Something must've gone wrong."

I could feel a cold, smooth textured surface beneath my fingers. It distracted me, dissolving my previous notion. I could feel. Touch.

"Well fix it! I'll never forgive myself if she dies."

An electric current swept up my arm and flew across my skin, flaring my nerves back to life. Suddenly, I could feel everything. The icy surface beneath me. The soft, thin fabric of a dress across my skin.

"It's not your fault, Merlin. You did what you had to to protect her. She'll understand. She, of all people, should know how unpredictable magic can be."

I smelt the icy winter air, tinted with the scent of tree bark and pineapples. And there was something else, a soft, almost unreadable willowy scent, like broken promises and flowers, forgotten tears and maple leaves.

"But if she--if she--not now--not when I've just found her-- "

There was an awful sticky taste in mouth like I'd been forced to eat molasses. It was a little sweet, but sour, old and tainted with saliva.

"She'll survive. I can already tell she has your same spirit. And if she's really as powerful as they all say she won't need my magic to bring her back from the brink of death. She'll do it herself."

I pulled the voices closer to me, confused and curious as to what they were talking about. I wanted to hear more, understand, so I clasped onto them and pushed myself up out of the groggy half-consciousness and back into reality.

"Did you see that--! Elli--Elli--I think she moved!"

I knew that voice. I knew that voice. And there was something--something untraceable--some little intuition in the back of my mind that told me--I'd always known that voice.

I opened my eyes.

The boy stared down at me, the boy that they'd taken, with the shaggy black hair and translucent grey eyes, the boy that made me feel this strange recognition that I couldn't place a finger on. But his lower eyelids were pink, the rims swollen and the blood vessels bulging. His cheeks were red and blotched, and his eyes, his eyes were glistening, glowing, sparking into an unexplainable relief when they caught on mine. He flung his arms around me and embraced me as if it were the last time he'd ever see me, as if I meant something to him, as if I'd known him more than the minutes we shared that understanding, that connection. But then he let go, quickly, too quickly, and I found myself longing to be back in the warm, comforting embrace. I didn't even know this boys name and yet . . . and yet he made me feel something no one's ever made me feel before.

Safe.

I don't know why. I want to know why. I want to know the answers to all the questions running rampant through my head, but I also knew that if I got the answers--the truth--it's not going to be anything close to what I'd have wanted it to be. And this boy . . . this boy won't be who I want him to be, who I have this strange irrational gut feeling that he is.