Disguised In Stardust ✔

Chapter Fifteen

We both froze for a minute. His eyes were locked on somewhere lower than my eyes, while I could feel lava bubbling behind my face. Faelin eventually took a step back to give me room.

The same floaty feeling swam around in my head for a moment; the little nauseous flutter clouded my vision in pulses. It was like this before, when we were making our way back home. I prepared for the worst, and I noticed Faelin did too.

When my vision cleared, I found the both of us in another reality. Again.

"God, what is it this time?" I grabbed at my head as if to steady the spinning floor, but that didn't cut it. I looked around, belatedly realizing that the house was completely different. Moss crawled through the gaps in the window panes, cobwebs littered every corner, and the walls were covered in a thick layer of dust. Everything around me was strewn about, as if a tornado had come through.

That seemed like the problem, though. What happened in this reality? Was this the future, or the result of a disaster that never occurred in the original reality? My head hurt just thinking about it.

Faelin was standing in a small pile of soft ash, his feet making imprints in it. He stepped away and wrung out his feet one by one, watching in disgust as thin ashen strands poured onto the floor.

"Oh... I thought the side effects would go away by now." he muttered, mostly to himself. He looked around the place, pulling his eyes to the floor as he swept his feet along the piles of ash that accumulated throughout the room. The couch was ripped to shreds, not to mention the knocked over refrigerator and every little trinket now smashed to pieces.

"How long are they supposed to last?" I asked him. He shook his head, carefully avoiding each piece of broken furniture.

"Not long.. Assuming I made a minor mistake, they're supposed to relent for just a few hours."

"Not even an hour has passed since we got home." I shrugged, to which he turned to me and gave the most dubious gaze.

"Are you prishing kidding me? We'll have to withstand this for another hour or so? Universe be damned." He crossed his arms almost petulantly. I approached him warily. I knew he was stressed; who wouldn't be, in this kind of situation?

"Look, maybe it's not so bad.. Maybe we can learn something from all this." I gestured to the broken house around us.

"Yeah, to be more careful when applying an alchemical ingredient. That's what I learned." he snapped, though not directly at me. His eyes never met mine, as if he couldn't muster the courage to do so while using that tone.

As if today wasn't weird enough, the ground began to shake, sending all the ash and dust into a rave at our feet. A mix of small wires and long vines dangled from holes in the ceiling, swaying back and forth with the ruckus. I dashed forward to grab onto Faelin, and I held on tight.

The floor sunk below me while rumbling booms were heard from outside, muffled by the walls. "Meteor showers," he faltered, stumbling on his footing with each impact on the Earth. "Why didn't I find out sooner..?"

"What do we do?" I goaded, to which he pulled me by the wrist and ran for the safest place of cover. He hurriedly looked around for a minute, then ducked into the staircase to the basement at full tilt.

It looked like it'd seen better days.

From what I could see, thanks to the sunlight filtering through the thick windows at the top, the basement was just as wrecked as the upstairs. A broken alchemy set crumbled in the corner and shattered vials were thrown all over the place. Ingredients, some wilted and devoid of their glow, were nearly covered in ash.

"What.." I started. Was he working down here at night? He had all his things down here, at this little nook in the basement. Why didn't he tell me?

"I'm sorry." Faelin hesitated, gazing sorrowfully at the wasted alchemy ingredients. "I didn't want to be a burden, so I took a head start on my way home. I'm halfway there, we just need to find a way back to the first reality... which will only happen by chance. If we're not back within one hour," he took a breath.

"We'll be stuck in another reality forever."

_

We were safe in the basement, but that didn't calm me one bit. I knew what he meant by being trapped in another reality, but for some reason I could barely wrap my head around the thought. I was so distracted by everything else that I forgot...

I still had a towel on.

Cursing under my breath, I paced around frantically. My feet crushed dead flower petals while I walked into so many spider webs I might've had to take another shower. The weight of my skull lifted again, as if to take off without me.

I didn't have enough time to get to Faelin, though, as he was on the other side of the basement sulking. I ran for him but I tripped over a piece of fallen furniture before I could reach his hand. My sight blinked, then it clouded over with inky black.

I bolted upwards when I felt my senses sharpen again.

Immediately, I searched for Faelin.

I was in my normal basement; however, the alchemy set was completely gone, as was the ash, dust and cobwebs. I quietly shuffled out of the basement after a moment of waiting. The house was empty and lifeless, no sign of life flowing anywhere. The only sound throughout the house was the cracked, static TV screen, flashing a plethora of colors before switching to a news channel.

"The alien specimen found last month is said to be malleable enough to experiment on. Scientists say this is an excellent opportunity for the advancement on extraterrestrial studies." A woman stated blankly, gently placing a stack of papers down on her desk.

The station flickered to a view of Faelin's pod, which was completely intact with a familiar unconscious alien curled up on the inside.. His eyes were closed blissfully, as if I'd never met him in my life.

Two men approached the pod and pried the gellatin substance apart, pulling back to find the stuff sticking to their tools like a virus. The men continued to dig him out. Faelin opened his eyes on the inside while parts of his naked body were surfaced.

His wings swept along the inside, slowly, thickly, as if he were caught on a sticking fly trap. He craned his head on the inside to look at the men recovering him, and simply closed his eyes again.

I was frozen in shock.

This was what they were going to do if I hadn't met him.

__