Chapter 2 - A World Awakes

A Chapter by Emily

Cela ventures through the doorway; the earth awakes.

What she was seeing didn't make sense. Cela stared, blinking against the wind, periodically turning to look at her surroundings just to ensure that they were still there, normal as they should be. The instinct to run warred with confusion and curiosity at the back of her mind, and Cela was only dimly aware of them as she just stared at this piece of unreality in the midst of her world. Suddenly she was taking one halting step forward, then she was still again, one foot awkwardly placed in front of her, unsure if she wanted to put her weight on it and be that much closer to this... thing.

Her mind snapped back into gear as another gust blasted her in the face, tiny particles of what felt like sand stinging into her skin; the pain finally causing her brain to start registering again. She closed her eyes and bowed her head into it.

What is this?

When the wind died back down again, Cela's curiosity won out, and she completed her half-taken step, and then took another, and another, bolder and bolder through the grass until she was at the door, a hand gripping either side of the frame. She stood at this odd brink, a stale, metallic-scented breeze blowing across her skin. She stood, looking, for some time. The ground at the base of the door was still the cracked, coarsely aged red paving, the bits of grass bending flat in the rough gusts, slowly being covered as rusty grey earth from beyond was beginning to invade with the wind. Looking to the sides of the frame was most disconcerting: it was like looking sideways in a doorway so that one could see two rooms, except the rooms were vastly different, and neither one seemed to end where there should be a wall dividing them.

Tightly gripping the frame, Cela took a deep breath and placed one foot on the foreign, bare soil. As she placed weight on it, the soft earth gave slightly, letting her foot sink about an inch into the dust, but held, and felt solid. She took another step, watching the ground, letting her fingers trail off the frame and hesitate in the air beside her; she now stood solidly in another world.

She let her arms drop to her side now, and took in her surroundings. Gentle red dunes rolled off into the distance, large red boulders stabbing out of the earth here and there, their vague violet shadows stretching across the desert landscape. Cela squinted into the dark haze at the horizon, her eyes getting the impression of mountains in the distance. The sun glowed, refusing to be defeated, through dull, filmy grey sky. She turned around to regard the door, its gritty, red stone frame seeming to grow out of the earth: it stood, arrogantly and obviously of this world. Her world now stood framed in the rectangle as though it were the thing that was unreal, the moving picture that shouldn't be there.

A thought crossed her mind, and suddenly she had to know what existed behind that door. She took hold of the frame again with one hand and walked around the door, only to find more of the rusty, barren landscape. Her eyes dropped back to the doorway and her blood ran cold as she was seized with panic; her world wasn't framed anymore. The door rested awkwardly open in a growing pile of dust, blocked from being pushed open any further by a rusty, gritty stone lying in the sand. The wind had shifted, blowing flat against the door, and it tapped worriedly against its restraint. She darted back to the other side and nearly fell to her knees as her world appeared safely in the frame, relief ripping sobs from her chest as she sagged back to the door, ready to go home, ready to face her mother, ready for anything as long as it made sense.

-------------------------------------------------------

As the girl stepped back through the doorway to her own world, a final gust caught her, whipping away the last of the grass seeds that had been clinging to the bottoms of her jeans. The girl closed the door behind her; time seperated itself with a shiver and rolled on, freed of its anchor, and the seeds blew, rushing over the ground. A billowing gust whipped them into a dusty vortex and then died away, ripped apart by other winds, and the seeds flew on, for miles and miles.

Stormy clouds rolled in and poured their waters on the dusty land, and finally the seeds found the earth. Violent raindrops pounded them into the soft red soil, which welcomed them into its lonely arms. The seeds sprouted roots and reached their blades to the hazy sun; they grew and spread, and over the seasons they began to cover the earth, growing lush and tall with no competition for nutrients or light. The earth welcomed this change, and began to live again.

prev chapter