The Eternal Dreams Trilogy (Most Imaginative Setting Winner 2012)

Chapter Five: Introductions (Part 1)

“Sorry for being mean back in the castle,” I finally spat out. I didn’t necessarily like saying sorry, but I knew when I was in the wrong. Cora smiled compliantly and put her hand on my shoulder.

“It’s okay,” she replied, accepting my lame apology. “I know you have a hard time trusting people. But we’re your friends Kail. If you can’t open up to us than who else?”

“I don’t know,” I lied. This had been an issue with me for a long time now and I doubt it would ever subside. It was a part of who I was now. Some memories just dug too deep. My memories were now engraved in me and not just a part of who I was; they were who I was. “Maybe I can’t trust you guys because I don’t trust myself.”

The walls around us were shortening as the ground began to incline, meaning we were getting close to level ground. Thalia and Adora had gotten off their unicorns and let them run free as Adora didn’t think it was fair to make everyone else walk. The animals ran off into the distance before fading out of sight. Thalia had told us that we would have to traverse through a forested area before reaching where they had woken up and met the man. From the sounds of it, the man seemed to be friendly; but looks could be deceiving.

“I trust you,” Cora said, her words sounding as genuine as words could possibly be. “We all do. You can’t live this whole life by yourself ya know? You have to let some people into that head of yours.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said, letting the thought fade away instantly.

Our heads were now poking over the tops of the walls, meaning we had escaped the depths of the chasm. Before us was a heavily thicketed forest, except for one straight area ahead of us. There was a dirt path right in the middle, with trees bending on both sides to create shading over the path, their braches interweaving and blotting out any light. It was as if someone had cut a hole right through the heart of the forest.

“It’s almost like it was expecting us,” Osias observed. The group stopped to examine the all too ideal path. A level of distrust arose from within me; it felt like a trap.

“I will go in first if everyone else is too scared to,” Kanoa proposed, bravely stepping forward and readying his weapon.

“You don’t have to pretend my friend,” Adora replied, looking to him somewhat tenderly. “We will all go in together.”

Kanoa looked to her, clearly restraining his embarrassment caused by the exposure at the hands of friend. “I’m not scared,” he urged through clenched teeth, “and I would prefer if you stopped doing that.”

“Don’t worry,” Adora said, paying little attention to Kanoa’s anger, “this is the way we got here. I promise that it is safe.”

“Looks like a trap to me,” I said, voicing my concern.

I looked around the forest to see if there was anything waiting to ambush us from within. The trees and shrubbery were heavily bunched together and I was unable to view much of anything outside of the main pathway. A white object caught my attention just off the path. I focused carefully and then felt my knees buckle when I realized what it was. I fell to the ground hard, my eyes transfixed on what I had seen. It stared back at me for a moment and then disappeared.

I was then removed from my friends; body and soul taken from me. I could see myself kneeling on the ground as I stood far above, my friends all around me. There was then a great pressure upon me, the air sucked out of my lungs, and the world as I knew it faded into a wisp. The forest, the chasm, my friends and the spaces in between had all been crushed into this small puff of air. The tiny dark plume then reached up to me and hovered before my eyes. It then began to swirl around my head, slowly at first, before gaining both speed and mass. Before I knew it, the wisp had formed a new world around me. It was a world I was sadly familiar with. It was the world of my childhood: The Holy Trinity Orphanage.