The Adventure BeginsA Chapter by Nicole
Inky Blackness. My whole world could be defined by those two words alone. Even my memories weren’t much clearer. As much as I tried, I couldn’t even recall my own name. Words and phrases came to mind, but none of them were names. At least, I was pretty sure they weren’t.
What I did remember brought questions. About what came before, and why I only remembered those things. I spent a lot of time thinking and formulating my own answers. Some of them gave me comfort, while others made it hard to stop crying. It wasn’t easy to accept that I might have simply ceased to exist and that was what non-existence was. It was even harder to accept that I may have never existed at all. Sometimes I cried so long and so hard that the tears ran out. I wanted to exist. To see something other than black. To feel something other than the cold grip of the void. It’s probably safe to say I was driving myself mad. However…. one day, I got my wish. It was a rather normal day at first. I had already used up a lot of tears and was getting ready to sleep. I nearly jumped out of my skin when it happened: a loud booming sound erupted through the darkness. White lines spread through the black emptiness before me like cracks, and soon, I was staring at a massive tear in my world. A gap that let light flow in like water, filling my world with something I never thought I’d actually see. My mind began to race as warmth enveloped me. The sensation was completely alien, but somehow had a familiar presence in it at the same time. My body reacted to it slowly, twitching a bit as I gazed down at my hands. It wasn’t long before I was crying again. Only this time it was tears of joy. There was warmth, and more importantly, there was light. They were real. I was seeing something different, and feeling something alien. I could hardly contain my joy. It felt like my heart might leap out of my chest. A thought occurred to me as I basked in this new feeling; What if it was a dream? The thought made sense. Why else would there be light in that void? The knot forming in my chest brought with it a new reservior of tears. I closed my eyes as they began to fall and curled into a ball, trying not to make a sound as the joy faded away. “This is real!” A voice cried out desperately, as if pained by my tears. My eyes shot open, quickly searching for the source of this new sound. I had never heard anything like it, even in my dreams. “Please stop crying, dear child…” “H-he...h-hello?” I called back, recoiling as I heard my voice for the first time that I could remember. “This is real!” The voice repeated, growing slightly louder. “Who are you?” I asked, still trying to process the sound of my own voice. “That doesn’t matter, just… please, stop crying,” it pleaded. “You’re… you’re free.” I quickly searched my memory for those words. “‘Free’? What do you mean?” I asked, beginning to focus on the tear. It seemed to me that that was where the voice was coming from. “You can leave here now! You’re not trapped anymore!” Another word I had to search my memory for. “‘Trapped’? I don’t remember anything like that. What is ‘trapped’?” “It... it means you’re stuck somewhere you don’t want to be. A place you’re not allowed to leave. Or incapable of leaving,” the voice explained. “I…” I began, trying to understand its words. “I don’t know what to think about that. I… I just…” Before I could continue my sentence, a gentle hand touched my shoulder, then pulled me into an embrace from behind. I couldn’t stop the tears from streaming down my face even more than they already were. The warmth of their embrace made the cold vanish entirely. It felt like the darkness was being pushed away from me, and replaced by a warm light. “This is real, Marceline. I can prove it,” the voice assured. My heart skipped a beat and my eyes widened. Marceline. Someone had just called me by a name. The warm feeling suddenly became more intense. My heartbeat began to pound faster and faster with each passing second. “Is… is that my name?” I questioned, looking for confirmation. “Of course! I wouldn’t call you that otherwise, silly,” it teased. Before I could question the voice further, the embrace it held me in faded, along with its warmth. A few seconds passed, and then a ball of light floated out from behind me. I reached out to touch it, and nearly cried out in surprise when it shaped itself into a person. A girl, the same size as me, made entirely of light. I barely had time to make a sound when it threw its arms around me, chasing the cold away once more. “Let me prove that this is real,” the light-girl pleaded, cupping my tear-stained face in her hands. “Alright…” I agreed, relishing her touch. The girl of light smiled at me, then twirled around behind me again. Without another word, she pushed me toward the tear. As I grew closer, the light seemed to reach toward me. The warm feeling never faded as it enveloped me completely. All the blackness was gone, and replaced by an endless white. Before I knew it, I was no longer floating. Gravity returned to me all at once and I collapsed onto a seemingly non-existent floor with a thud. The impact didn’t hurt much, but it still took me a moment to get to my feet. My limbs felt weak and I lost balance more than once. When my legs finally remembered how to walk, I turned to give the light-girl a triumphant smile… but she was gone. Everything was gone, save for the warm feeling brought on by the light. I hesitated to move forward or backward. I was alone again, but I could feel something pushing me forward and pulling me back at the same time. It was a very unsettling feeling. But with nothing else to do, I obeyed the one pushing me forward and continued further into the white. It didn’t take long for me to notice that the white was becoming more pronounced. It was easier to tell that there were walls and a roof. Even the floor became easier to see. The environment slowly developed into a long, narrow corridor. As I walked, the corridor seemed to get smaller. Just before it became small enough to touch the ceiling, an object morphed itself out of the white on the left wall. Shifting and changing until it resembled a rectangle. At first, it didn’t seem like anything so I decided to keep moving, but as I took my first step I noticed something out of the corner of my eye: color. The object was becoming covered in colors. As soon as it finished, I realized what it was: A painting. One of the few words I remembered, and could define. It depicted a girl standing in a bed of white roses. A castle was on a hill in the background and a red moon shone brightly overhead. The girl was small, like me, and her shoulder-length hair was a bright shade of yellowish-blonde. Her eyes were glowing red and she was wearing a beautiful white tunic. In her right hand was a long, perfectly straight stick with a crystal on the top end. I stared at it for little while, trying to take it all in. Everything depicted in this painting were things I had never seen before, but I knew what they were. How was that possible? After I was finished taking the whole painting in, I decided there was nothing more to see and turned to continue down the path. I was once again stopped by something I noticed out of the corner of my eye. Another shape was forming down below the painting. This one was smaller, and was shaped like a diamond. It too gained color, but instead of another painting, a shiny plaque appeared. My name was at the top of it. “Marceline, the Void Princess,” I began reading. “A heart poisoned by vengeance, and a mind poisoned by darkness were the crimes of her heart. Here she lay, trapped in a prison of her own making…. like a work of art.” This sent a chill through my body. I didn’t know what this meant, but I suddenly wanted to get away from the painting as fast as possible. Without a second’s hesitation, I turned and continued down the path as quickly as I could. My mind swam with questions. What was a “void princess”? Could that have been me? What did it mean? Those questions went to the back of my mind when I noticed another splash of color in the distance. It was small, light blue, and a bit circular in shape. I didn’t care what it was, I had to see it. As I grew closer, the corridor became smaller. So much so that I had to start crawling, but that didn’t stop me. As I reached it, I was blinded by a bright flash of light. When my vision returned, I cried out in astonishment and leapt up from my spot on the ground. The white was gone. The corridor, the blue object… all gone. I was now somewhere completely different. There were large, towering sticks with many smaller sticks sticking out from their sides everywhere. Colors danced to and fro as the wind blew through the area. Leaves fell from the smaller sticks and brushed across my skin. I was feeling so many things at once. The warmth of the breeze kissing my skin brought on confusion, joy, and comfort…. All I could bring myself to do was twirl around, basking in the sensations and looking around at everything with a huge smile on my face. This really was real. Then I noticed something. Something that made my smile vanish: There was a bed of white roses where I initially stood up. © 2018 NicoleFeatured Review
Reviews
|
StatsAuthor
NicoleSacramento , CAAboutHi. My name is Nicole. I called myself Amy before on this site. People probably don’t remember me since it’s been three years. XD But I figured I’d give this site a chance one more t.. more..Writing
Related WritingPeople who liked this story also liked..
|
![[send message]](https://www.writerscafe.org/images/mail.png){kind=small}
![[befriend]](https://www.writerscafe.org/images/friend.png){kind=small}
Share This
Email
Facebook
Twitter
Read Request
My Library
Flag Writing
