Chapter Seven

Before her lay a city, sparkling and shimmering under a luminescent orb, which spread over the ceiling. Reidar stepped next to her. “Impressive, isn’t it?” he asked softly.

“What is this place?” Riley asked dumbly.

“Crédere.”

“Crédere,” Riley whispered, still staring with wide eyes. The city stretched on for miles under the earth’s surface.

“It�" I feel like I’ve seen this place before.”

“This city has been here since the beginning of time. Few from the earth’s surface have entered. Fewer still have left. Those that have could remember only the dream of Crédere, holding fast to it until they no longer knew what was reality, and what was dream. They wrote of their memories, long since marred and mixed with their own imaginations. They wrote of heaven and of paradise.”

“You mean, people wrote of religion after seeing Crédere?”

“Life lost its purpose for them after Crédere. They sought to give it purpose; creating their own.”

“But what of the million others; historic figures corroborating at least part of their creation?”

“That is the power of Crédere. People cling to it. They believe.”

“What happens to me, now that I have seen it?”

“For now, you believe.”

“When I leave? If I do?”

Reidar smiled. “That depends.”

Riley opened her eyes once more, staring at Reidar. “Crédere is real,” she said, breaking the silence. Reidar nodded. “It is.” Riley bit her lip.

“All these years, I carried it with me. I wrote about it in locked away stories.”

“You wrote to escape reality, because life had lost meaning for you. You forgot what the true reality was.”

“After Crédere, everything else seemed fake. No answer satisfied my questions. A life with unanswered questions is torturous. So I made up my own answers.”

“That is what you thought. Even before Crédere, you had rejected all other answers. You were a believer before you knew it. That is why I brought you there. “

“Why did I leave?”

“You don’t remember, do you?”

“Only bits, and pieces; fragments.”

“Read your diary. You will remember.”

“There is nothing about Crédere in there.”

“I do not mean that diary.”

“But I have no other.”

Reidar just smiled. Images flashed through Riley’s head. Her mouth parted in a small gasp. “I buried it.” Reidar nodded as Riley leaped from her chair. She dashed out the back door, Reidar following wordlessly.

Panting, she dropped to her knees before the fallen tree that marked the foxes’ burial ground from so many years ago. Next to their grave, she began digging, her fingers soon scraping against the small metal box which held the diary. She opened it; then whirled to face Reidar.

“The last entry was two days ago.”

“Believers never fully forget. They just lose the ability to separate the two worlds sometimes.”

Clutching the diary to her chest, Riley followed Reidar back into the house. Reidar returned to his coffee, whilst Riley scrubbed the muck from her fingers. She sat next to Reidar, her fingers caressing the diary. “I think you need to read this on your own. I will leave you to it.”

He returned to his room, and Riley retreated to the arm chair in her bedroom, hugging her coffee cup as she opened the diary to its first page.

Reviews

[Jamie Lee]

I wonder if luminescent is the right word here? If I remember right, luminescent is a light emitted through low temperatures--it kind of looks like a glow in the dark type thing. I thought a word describing a brighter light might be a better fit because after reading chapter six I was under the impression that the light she was seeing was really bright and white. Maybe I pictured it wrong :x

I can't wait to read more. I'm already sad that I've read through it all!