Robbin

19. Left

When she had finally finished the warning, she no longer saw the same trees and sixteen year old young man. She was alone. "Demon," she spouted.

The necklace dangled from her deceptively frail neck, its silver literally turned ember from heat. She grasped it firmly in her fist. It did not burn her, but merely cooled slowly to a fine silver again.

She peered around disillusioned. It was a park at evening sunset. Not just a park, but an ordinary park, just abandoned by retiring families and left empty and inviting before Terra. It was the kind of park she would have gladly happened upon as a child: an Earthly neighborhood park, not abnormal for Michigan, but very, very abnormal for Carynthia. It had taken her back.

She felt an extreme loss of control. She hadn't even finished her warning.

Her immediate heartbreak left her completely defenseless to the emotional onslaught which followed. It filled her throat until it was tied in an overwhelming knot as if holding in the sob which wanted so desperately to fill her eyes with moisture. Her eyes, however, were left incredibly dry with shock. Her veins trilled with fear, and her mind ached with longing in the form of pressure aches as if missing a dear friend instead of a dangerous world.

Fairly numbed outwardly to these internal reactions, Terra could rationally label only one cause to the emotional uproar: Robbin's hands which had previously grasped her elbows were now far away in a far off land and she was left kneeling desolate in a now darkened park.

Why had it taken her back? She was appalled at the starkness between that question and the question she had continually asked herself ever since arriving in Carynthia: Why couldn't the necklace just take her back home? The dissonance left only one very real question at hand: did she want to be home at all, now?

The answer, in all honesty, was no, not in this way. Her heart was broken dramatically into two: one side being Carynthia, and the other, what she called home. She blinked bleary eyed at the misty children's park and missed severely Robbin's concerned face. Guilt immediately washed over her. How could she have left without warning him? How could she not miss him: his protective presence? How could she have left: so soon? Where was he, what was he doing, why was she here?

Demons. Terra buried her head in her hands in a sudden terror and excitement, shaking dramatically. When finally finished, peeking her eyes through her hands, she observed again the scene she had been dumped into by a deceptively harmless-looking necklace. There it was, the park, entreating her to get up and move about its premises. Its tranquility in dusk was so opposing to her inward turmoil, she sucked the view in as if inhaling it. She walked quietly around its length at least five times, her thoughts growing dangerously quiet and numb during that time. It was after five rounds she realized she should go home, that she was close to home, and that she knew the park decently well (the thought of getting home being somehow irrelevant to her until then). The park was in her neighborhood, in fact, as she had visited there at least twice during the initial move.

She paced from the grassy path she had been trailing and onto the sidewalk in the direction of home. Home was only three houses down, in fact. She found she was not far at all. Between the park and the first house she thought of how Robbin had grasped her in concern before she had arrived back on Earth. Between the first and the second house she thought of how he had protected her from the wolves. And between the second house and her home she thought of how he had protected her initially in the clearing, a complete stranger to her. Between the sidewalk and the doorstep she realized she might be in for trouble.

Her father answered the doorbell. At the sight of her, his big brown eyes filled with tears and he embraced her in a giant bear hug. Terra patted his back numbly. "Terra, I know I can't force you to stay. As your father, I'd like to think that I can, but there's only so much I can do, that the police can do. But please, Terra, come back home?"