Torn

Chapter 1

It all started when I fell off the tree that I climbed to recover Dona's ball, I hit my head so hard that I thought I was going to have a concussion but instead I drifted into nothingness.
I woke with a light breeze at the back of my neck. Thinking I was still in my back yard where I had fallen, I stood up quickly to run into the house but there was no house. I started to panic, I took in my surroundings and noticed that I was not at the backyard  anymore. The sun above me was noticeably not as far away as it always seemed, the trees around were a bright orange and the sky a distant pink. I soon got uncomfortable standing at the position I fell, so I started roaming around until I got to a street with houses of different sizes. I walked up to one and knocked on the door that was open ajar, nobody answered so I let myself in. It might seem like a normal home from the outside but inside is a whole different world. I looked around and realized that the place I walked into was a jungle that look dangerous and I definitely wasn't hanging around there so I started for the door but it was gone.                                               
                                                                                                        

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up and I felt a presence, I ran to a nearby tree I spotted. I climbed the tree to a safer branch at the top. I was at the top of the tree for a couple of hours until I started dozing off. I snapped back to consciousness and noticed bright yellow cat-like eyes staring at me from a distance in another tree. Afraid that I was going to get eaten by this animal, I began to climb back down the tree but slipped and fell to the ground very hard and once more I returned to that blank space of nothingness.  I woke up after some time thinking I was back home, I opened my eyes and found a pair of bright yellow cat-like eyes staring back at me. My instincts told me to run but my body did not agree so I just lay there and did not dare to move. That’s when the animal reached out for me and I thought at that moment that I was going to die, that it was finally the end for me. Instead the animal scooped me into its arms and carried me off running at a fast speed I feared it might drop me. Everything blurred because of the speed until finally we stopped.

We got to a cave and it dropped me down. The cave was lit by lanterns and had barrels full of water, some blankets packed in a corner and symbols scraped all around the walls of the cave. Confusion clouded me at that moment because I kept wondering what an animal was doing with all of these items. The animal stood a distance from me on its hind legs and a bright light shone around it. The brightness of the light hurt my eyes so I looked back, the light consumed the animal and I could not see it anymore.                                                                                                                       
                                                                           ∞

When the light dimed down a figure of a woman stood in front of me. She looked to be in her late forties, a little younger than my mother who is almost fifty. My mom had me when she was thirty-one. She says that I am a blessing to her and she named me Suzanne. The woman stepped closer and squinted her eyes like she was observing me. "What is your name?", she asked. I just stared at her because my throat was too dry to speak. She walked to the left side of the cave where the barrels were and took water into a wooden cup that was beside it on a wooden table and brought it to me. I took the cup from her and drank the water greedily. When I was able to speak again I cleared my throat still not sure if I should answer her. "My name is Suzanne and who are you?", I asked. She looked confused like I said something absurd. "Well Suzanne I am Gazelle", she said. "Nice to meet you Gazelle", I said. "May I ask a question?", I asked. She took a while to answer but she said, "Yes of course, anything. "Where am I exactly?", I asked. "Why, you are in Alahan dear.", she said. " Alahan?" , I asked confused. "Yes Alahan, do you want anything to eat?", she asked. "No thank you I am fine, all I want is to go home", I said. "Home?", she asked, "you are at home dear, Alahan is your home", she said. "What?........no, no, no you must be mistaken because, I am from Ontario Canada and I live with my mom and my two little sisters and I need to go back.

"You are from Alahan dear, here have more water.", she said as she went to fetch me more water but I did not take it from her so she placed it on the floor next to me on my left and bent down to sit near me at my right. She said " You really don’t know who you are? I do know your father died when you were just an infant", she said. "What do you mean?....are you saying you know my father?", I said. "Yes I know your father and I also know you", she said. "You don’t know me", I said, a little harsh than expected. "Yes I know you but you have forgotten who you are. You are the princess of Alahan and you have come to take your rightful place on the throne as prophesied ", she said. I stared at her in disbelieve and my heart pounding in my chest with the thought of never going back home.