(GE Copy)

Chapter 16: In “Clarity” (Part 2)

“As if a thousand years have passed, I simply awoke, as I am; for so long, I’ve missed you.”

Upon the gateway onto the courtyard, all was eerie but tranquil. He could hear the wind blowing through the leafs up ahead, and knew there was peace wherever there was sound. It merely seemed as a stone ruin now, with it’s history taken to time. Daylight was good, for now but Aaron couldn’t shake the ominous whispering of windy rock orifices and of the desolate land devoid of life.

He took his first steps past the threshold, wondering just how important destiny could be, or if that destiny was no more than a ransom disguised in glitter. With a single moment, Aaron felt he could finally reason, to abandon this course; but with the early life memory, at this quandary once again, he teared up thinking of what he missed when he chose to turn away. Reluctantly, he chose to move on. It was time to see that future he once shunned, and what awaited him by the overwhelming voice. The gate stretched past him, accepting his call. The wind blew a warning in response but Aaron would not hear it.

He could see a large building eighty meters past the front arch that blocked off all other routes from the commerce, as though it was meant to be entered in order to progress past the houses into the city centre. The door was wide open, and the spacious stair passage down was dimly lit by the ambient entrance occlusion. Not the welcome anyone could call friendly but there was still an echo to his feet and he could not be in too much danger as of yet. Aaron’s eyes adjusted to the dark and the stairs looked illuminated before him. There were passages on both sides of his descent into other parts of the administrative, but he could see a light below. It’s bottom step came onto a risen platform in the pavilion with an open chest high wall in front and three closed walls to the sides. The exiting fence had degraded, and the door out was wide, as the shallow wall was only a guide for people between the outer pillars. It was an opening where sun would shine into this pavilion much later in the day. Though the pillars seemed intact, Aaron didn’t feel overly comfortable with the state of decay on everything to let his guard down.

He left from the civilian gate of that building to find the city and commerce much larger on the inner side. Spanning a hundred meters wide, with two arms enclosing around most of the eastern city quarter, the administrative pavilion must have been important to the lives here when the traffic still flowed. He could see overgrown residential hillsides peeking up over the distant buildings, and this bowl had spanned a varying kilometre in diameter all around. It could house a few thousand people in it’s prime but not today, now it would only house death.

It’s walls of large fine cut stone were mossed over with every cause of decay imaginable oozing out from it’s cracks. A single flower blossomed in the hollow cut of a brick by his waist. It’s purple petals had all withered and was ready to seed amidst the dusty chipped fragments that fell from the layered stone beside it. All the buildings had a vine to it, that crept among the crevices, and choked the cobble of the corner stones.

Most the alleys were overtaken by grass, weeds, prickles and bush. The small ducts of running water only fed the overgrowth and he could see the petrified roots sprawl out from the small dried up passages. Every roof was pitted to fall if not having succumb already. Aaron could practically see a parade of merry peasants, prancing upon the city streets, but his imagination could not even begin to fathom what travesty had befallen such a prosperous ruin. To such a beautiful kingdom, it’s disarray was tragic, now looming as a deathly blemish upon the land.

Aaron pulled upon his ear. It seemed plugged but the silence seemed more deafening than muffled and Aaron could feel it’s presence. He slipped away from the moving null zone of sound, and brought himself into an ancient shop. There was a stone oven where ash and soot had eroded the surface and caked onto the pit like hard stone. They even found stairs that lead up but instead of more house, they found a small enclosed grove shared between other houses, and their doorways lead onto here also. Each with a large worn slab to face the eroded centre statue of unidentifiable bestial markings.

His snake came to the ground, inspecting the work. It seemed as though the serpent knew through the air, something intrinsic that Aaron could not sense. “Is it your voice?” Watching it’s body turn inward towards the far end of town that they had detoured from. Then, a quick jolt behind it, and Aaron noticed the silence approaching. The snake looked to Aaron, as though he were to have some answers but it slithered away from the deafening void. Aaron followed in behind but lost track of his frantic friend even as he climbed down the stairs into the open room of yet another house.

This house however, seemed to be the residence of someone very prosperous. As he rattled the front door, it seemed stuck by a mechanism that he didn’t have the time to figure out. The windows were like bars, and he snuck in behind a lip in the wall, where there was a pantry. He cut his breathing to a silent huffing until his lungs no longer craved air and his breath became more stable at this lower rate. His eyes were vivid, still instinctively trying to pop his ears but they were not plugged. He could smell the rot of oil beneath him, how it had become soaked into the stone. Beside him was a toy, preserved from falling apart in the blackened oil. It was a doll. When these boards beside him must have been one, when it sat only a foot above his head, someone must have been hiding here like him. In fear.

To his side, he could see a script carved into the walls. He could barely make out the letters, as to pacify his nerves, feeling the silence seeming to emanate throughout the room outside this closet. From letter to letter, Aaron could parse it in his memories but each look seemed more indecipherable than the last. “We are as He is now, yet they unchanged have betrayed their vows... So too shall these things come to pass once more...” The illedgeable text seemed more and more vague “Don’t count yourself different.” Until it seemed as nothing more than the erosion along the rock wall and the silence nearly vanished.

Aaron peeked his head out, watching the last smoky fibre of the spectre slip through the wood of the front door and with it, sound returned immediately after. Looking up, Aaron could spot his friend peering out, then standing tall to ascertain their safety. It lowered, certain, and slithered out. Aaron quietly crouched towards it, and picked the snake off the ground. It was time for a quiet escape, but his footsteps seemed too quiet and behind him was the face of their recent guest returning for his coat. He could see it, the horrors from the day before, and Aaron panicked.

The snake climbed back up his arm, squeezing out of the tight grip Aaron had viced onto it’s tail and clung onto the safety of the fast fleeting boy. ‘Could it have known all along?’ He asked, wondering if there were some means of evading their senses. He could sense them, could they sense his heart beating?

Aaron left for the only path he seemed to know that would certainly lead him somewhere more than just a dead end at a locked door. He flowed from the front of the shop like water from a rushing creek and passed the central square where another, larger statue of another form was placed with similar stones of witness surrounding it on all sides. One arm of it’s soot blackened form had fallen beside a fire pit, as the other still held but a single finger of it’s upward tilt, and it’s horns now chipped unto harmless stumps. Even the rolling dust from it seemed frightening.

This place was an epicentre of evil.

Aaron seemed to have collected the attention of a few more guests, and he ran into an ally. He could feel the pressure of a grave nothingness pressing on his ears like a silence even greater than before. When he thought he knew true silence, there came an even quieter pressure that made his ears feel like they were taring themselves open to hear anything anymore. All there was, was the clacking metallic echoes of his footsteps bouncing off the walls ahead but never from behind.

He seemed to be gaining a distance on them, but more would always approach from the side. With all the horrors chasing him for the last month, poor, un-athletic Aaron, was getting rather proficient at sprinting. Turning the corner out of sight, he grabbed a chunk of stone and threw it ahead of him, taking a side path and doubled back around the meridian of houses; leaving them to follow the sound. He could sense the silence moving towards the clacking but it had not fooled all of them. Perhaps there was something to it after all.

Aaron ducked into a large open air basilica that weather had crept through it’s cracks to form puddles of moss and mildew. The hallway past the open chamber lead along side an emptied stone water bed, and beyond that, more voice eaters held at bay. Aaron couldn’t keep this up forever. He continued through the town, over the collapsed, raised flower beds, and under the tunnel waterway beneath the large stairs across the square. Stumbling over, and in between the large roots taking roost in here, Aaron squeezed his way through the passage. He spewed out into a narrow back ally, and felt the quiet encroaching like the evening tide. Aaron’s fast stead youth was running on empty and his pace petering out.

At the top of the flume, he found yet another statue, and it’s degraded form was even more unstable than the last. He gave it a shove, and a heave and wouldn’t you know it; the damned thing toppled over, rolling back into the centre of town. Crashing, smashing, loudly overtaking the sound of his footsteps, Aaron crawled into another nook then through the hole on the wall’s bottom. The ground felt comforting, like he could lay there to rest but he crawled until he slipped past the breach, and picked up his heels into another ally way. He could still hear the chaos past the muffling aura’s, crackling back off the walls. Three dark shadows moved past, having caught their gaze upon him and moved on towards the chaos. ‘I guess they are blind...’ Aaron pondered alone to his thoughts, and tip toed into the distance to rest.

Aaron could not keep himself silent, suppressing his coughs and wheezing as he reintroduced air into his lungs at a quiet pace. He felt his innards seizing up, dry and clenching. After five minutes, he had calmed down, and had been taken captive to the sight of sky overhead. His snake took watch, and slithered from passage to passage in this tiny obscure ten meter oblong back ally plaza. He noticed the tall, rounded roof and figured it had to be the basilica from earlier. He had run amok in this place for so long that the landmarks seemed to jump out at him. There was always somewhere new, crammed into this over crowded city and stuck somewhere in between it all. What a beautiful place it must have been before it’s fall.

Aaron sat up, shaking the blood back into his head. The silence had scattered. It was a sign of his escape, but patrol was no longer centralized, it was everywhere, spread out once again.

Watching his concerned friend slither from corner to corner, Aaron questioned himself, “Why does this desire pull me towards such a mistake... I wonder if it’s really worth it, like Kaylemen said, if me risking my voice for someone else isn’t just a giant mistake...” Just for the snake to dart again, and soon return past him. “Still... I’m here. I would be a coward to come this far and not to see it through... I have to, right?” Not entirely certain with the phrases he always told himself anymore.

Aaron rose, taking with him a pocket of heavy distractions and hoped that no one would catch on very quickly. He saw the stairs going up into the hillside, somewhere far from here: It seemed as though wherever he was, there was always an escape... but to his left stood the tall, tall roof of the most important place in town. After all, the snake had it’s eyes on it the entire time he was resting, and even now the serpent’s eyes were transfixed. It had to be the place. Aaron could feel the silence moving in from his side, just over the wall where he remembered being a rock garden. He threw a large stone from his pocket, over the wall and the silence moved to locate the clacking, away from Aaron. “Alright, if this isn’t it, I don’t know what is...” He muttered to himself, nudging himself carefully toward the treacherous and guarded building.

Inside the basilica was a main hollow chamber separate from the outside, as guarded by two decrepit doors that had already taken their rest from the hinges. Every footstep seemed to echo, no matter how soft he placed it but the patrol outside didn’t quite catch onto it yet. The snake turned to all directions, unable to pinpoint the location of what seemed to bother it. Aaron shimmied past the broken splinters of wood towards the door, and past the overturned seating. What happened here was reminiscent of an uproar, a state of panic, or upheaval from within.

Inside the large chambers, wasn’t much better off. If anything was still standing upright, it ought to be given a medal. Between the chaos of furniture, it seemed there had been a pool here from the cracks in the ceiling to the massive water damage on everything in sight. It was no wonder the doors had fallen out of their rusted hinges. No rocks falling from overhead, thankfully.

The snake slithered down to the ground, searching in ever crack it could find as though hearing something return to it and frantically it jotted about.

To his side, there was a crest of fine insignia and Aaron wandered near. It’s text of gold was engraved into the shield hung from the tilted fallen pillar. He could almost distinguish the font, and as before, it recalled from his memory “From whence we were wretched, now we betray even you...” Desperately trying to to find the text as it faded into a boarder script. “You stand, where... We...” And in a whisper he could hear it spoken, “You are just as guilty...”

Aaron noticed the approach of a malignant force from the side hallway. From his pocket, he threw the stone into his previous room, routing the charcoal phantom in behind him unnoticed. Aaron preferred the carpet in this room, dampening his pace to a silent saunter along it’s elongated pathway. It came onto a large table as would fit a minister and behind it was a cracked panel of wall. One directly behind, like a hidden chamber, with the snake squeezing in behind. Brilliant.

Aaron stepped towards it but felt his footing squish down beneath him. Well, that was odd. He heard a crack that echoed across the entire room and wondered if anyone had heard it. Determined to assess his predicament, Aaron slowly turned himself to leave the softened trap. He moved to step out from the place, but having lifted his leg, he heard it even louder and beneath him gave way under his weight pressed upon a single standing leg instead of two.

The stone collapsed, splitting the decrepit carpet like paper and Aaron clung to the floor at his side. Having it all slip within he landed on top of the large stone rubble, rolling off the pile that fell. “Well, they heard that one...” Running from the scene, his snake caught up, slithering for dear life as more large dangerous debris fell from hole above it. They had come onto an underground chamber, who would have guessed, right? It was much smaller, only about fifteen feet wide but twice that in length. The degraded pillars were shaped like bold stoic men that had chipped away. As Aaron fled from the scene they came onto a set of twin stairs, parallel, separated by the meridian of a particular stone railing and it descended into a flooded circular sanctum.

Everything this far from the windows was blackened dark and without the light they were out of their waters. The snake wriggled forth from Aaron’s sweaty neck and from it’s mouth secreted a glowing liquid, like the tears from it’s eyes. It sprayed a stream that mingled with the water and dimly illuminated the room like a weak glow stick lantern.

The centre piece was raised above the sloshing water and Aaron could feel the silence whaling overhead through the cracks in the mortar above him like blades of void cutting his ears. There were five exits in total, all past the flood but one; one where a fallen stonework bridged a thin walkway towards a raised seating, like a spectators stand for royalty. Aaron danced across the wet surface, slipping on the smooth slick that formed and dropped into the drink for a sixth time.

He crawled up to find a new set of ears hovering the room but the delicious ranchasm of noise bounced from every wall. Aaron withdrew a stone from under the water, prying it from it’s bindings, but the silent suppression of the water seemed to only magnify the sharp noise of the rock breaking free. Aaron slowly emerged from the surface, and chucked it past the spectre into the opposing hall. It turned but heard the trajectory whiz pass near it’s head, and followed the ruse back to the dripping caster.

Aaron split, taking the hallway out past the podium chairs, feeling his way through the dark passage and came onto a wooden door. It refused to open, and Aaron had put the fear into his shoulder, colliding with the ancient wood until it gave way. He stumbled, feeling the silence begin to surround him, narrowly dislodging from it’s grasp as the fog slipped from his skin.

Unable to see, Aaron stumbled from object to object, evading only what he could feel surround him. There was a crack of light from high on the wall. Aaron climbed for it, dragging down the cloth holdings and the curtain fell from the wall over top of him brightening the room only to see his impending doom.

He felt his throat being pulled out through his skin, like every cell of his Adams apple slowly became dead. The feeling of having it crushed tasted like the breath in one’s dream and the terror fell deep into his flesh; trembling, shaking. Aaron’s hands could not grasp the predator above him, and he howled out having the words devoured from him before they could escape Pleasuring itself on the rich taste of sound from Aaron, it’s long claws peirced into the stone beneath him, revelling rhythmically. A fire burned within him, unable to accept it and Aaron cried with a shattering roar that deep harrows shook the walls “I will not be silenced!” rattling even his captor. It peeled away from him, agonizing and the silence had ended but it’s malice did not. The athearial monster spun, spewing a runny tar, as though vomiting profusely. Aaron lifted himself from the dresser and flew through into the next room, hearing an armada of silence locking onto his location.

Aaron coughed but it was pitifully quiet. Groggily the sound seemed to fade more and more. He could not believe what had befallen him and could only hear the gasping of air that entered him. If there were some way he could free anyone’s voice, it would have to be now. To his right, there were more coming in from the side passages, that routed themselves onto him. Aaron tripped on the disarray of decayed furniture, crawling back to his feet. He ripped the snake from his shoulder, holding it before them as a shield that coiled frantically around his arm like a stick; but the two serviced sow before the slaughter had already been sucked silent and the boy and his snake were ignored for the halls where promises of hollers had happened moments ago. Like vultures and hawks, they swooped in the distance for the long fled sign of pray who still spoke offences against them.

Aaron took his leave and fell back from the atherial murder of crow, and turned his gaze to other exits. He came onto a room at the end of a long hall. His friend seemed to be frantic to take a right at the passage just before, but a certain light that poured in through the crack in this door seemed to call to him like a long lost colour of pale; but when he opened it, he found a dead end chamber.

There was a long table, like the kind where a server would set a platter, and light the candles before her master. In the corner, by the bookshelf stood a tall chair with a purple upholstered backrest and darkly stained wood. It bore an insignia reminiscent of the one above, of a sideways dragon cloaked in laurel. It was made of brass with a single sapphire for it’s eye, it was embedded on the upper bridge and upon it’s left arm rest of the wooden seat. Aaron wandered backwards, taking in the paintings to the charters and treasures from around the world laid upon the masonry. It seemed more like a waiting room made to impress guests than a kings suit. From the fur rug in it’s centre, to the chimney that three hooks for hanging tools were empty, and one, rusted red, had been dislodged from it’s holds. Aaron felt dissy and knocked over a challis that bounced, unscathed, glimmering a golden light as it flickered in front of him and fell aside overtop a wine stain.

Aaron fell out of the room, staggering instinctively to the passage that lead to the underground balcony of a deep skylight pit. He had moments ago believed it was sunny out but the blackened clouds shot gloomily over top the statues and planters of the overgrown garden bottom. He could not place this location, nor the fine aristocratic architecture, perhaps it was Greek in concept. Aaron wondered if this too was a new realm in and of itself. At the bottom was a stone slab, holding a pedestal, and upon that another challis like the one that was knocked over, held high above the fountain. This one however, seemed to glow with a liquid of conquered souls. He could hear a howling of wind overhead, but below, it was a different kind of sound.

Aaron clung to the vine to descend, falling from his frail grip as a pressure stacked upon him and he clenched his chest from the it as though he were dying. He was frantic, not knowing why; swaying left and right, fighting something within as he got near, swinging into the air at nothing. His mind raced faster than he ever remembered possible and in ways he couldn’t comprehend. He knew the spectres were onto him, he knew they were there to surround him and he climbed up to the cup. He tried to speak, but no longer would he escape more than a few metalic coughs. His eyes widened, seeing a world expand around him, both lush of green and of blood. He saw men, looking down from the balconies, dressed in fine garments, and the flicker of torches in the moonlit sky. It was the place where someone was meant to die, with his friend behind him.

The serpent slithered up to him, injured, having been hurt upon Aaron’s fall to earth. It slithered and he heard a voice call to him. Aaron could hear it like a mother’s soothing song, or the blissful sound of grace from a young girl’s heart “It could have been like this from the start...” As the seduction of voices overlapped. He saw the dream that morning, and returned the voice that he took from her. But, that was only a dream, now wasn’t it? The snake looked up, and Aaron lifted the soul from the golden vestal. As though with a second hand, he could feel a lifetime pass through his fingers. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this, was it?... But I do love how seasons change in times of our desperation.” Feeling himself weaken as the voice fell from his touch like melting ice, completing the cycle. “It is what makes us undoubtedly alive before the face of Gods...”

A bright spark ignited, flickering a purple ark throughout the garden. There howled the screaming echoes that pierced the ears and rattled beneath the skin. Then the light took on a new colour and it was like the ocean, green like the isles, yet tranquil like the shore. It was like the scales of the snake haven been shed. The image danced like a mirage before him. Her form was summoned from the skin, as she walked wearily up to him from the bottom of the balcony. He saw clothes of the same colour, made in frills and ribbons. Like a tight vest tunic and short silk leggings with a skirt, it seemed fused like fins to her pale sun voided skin. The electricity ran through her, stitching together the broken dislocated shoulder like thread, and the cuts along her face to fuse. The ground lifted like her long hair, under the pressure of the power that was coming into being, and the rocks trembled at it’s sight.

With a noble cry, there came a voice that echoed it’s authority beside him, “For the retribution of my soul, I shall degrade myself to this form...” It’s roars swallowed by the onlookers. The beautiful young woman withdrew a vapour from her hand and from it’s evanescence forged a long and slender blade by the air that was drawn to her. “I will not be stricken a second time, and the dark will yield by my voice!” But they did not. “I said! When my hallows shall piece your soul... So shall you know such shame as I; betray your lust and be as ash upon your own head, or die!” But even despite the threat of her blade, they came nearer yet. “BE HEEL, DAMN YOU! BE BLOODY DAMNED WELL HEEL!” The shadows were nearly upon them, and she cussed profanely. Neither word nor blade could sever the hoard, they mist were without form, and the shadow thereof was void of flesh.

Aaron was lifted, and the woman threw him onto the balcony above. From there the black pit spun like the maelstrom of a drain at sea, circling the light but all that was left was the cup and an empty floor. Hissing at him from the side, Aaron found the serpent crawling up to him, out of sight from the eerie ocean of silence. He plucked it from the vine for safety, as they left back whence they came and conquer the passage’s coiling realm of terror.

They returned onto the collapsed basilica floor, where a lone spectre had stood guard at it’s departure, one that was rather large, and emboldened with a deep haze under it’s drape. The snake retracted from Aaron’s hand, and her form returned to cut the supports, for the ceiling came down with it. They climbed over top the rubble and left through the front door.

Behind them, overhead, came a fountain of dark shadows, blotting the sky overhead. It was like a pinhole of absolute void and it hurt his ears as they spewed from the basilica in such concentration. The swarm had been angered and Aaron’s legs were too worn to continue. The serpent picked him up, throwing him over her shoulder, and carried the boy past the pavilion and out the front gate, through the forest and past the bridge.

Aaron cried happily, but his tears would not be heard. The sputter of his throat could not utter any praises nor words of gratitude. In all that time, he forgot to seek out and retrieve his own, and now he wallowed as a silent saddened slave. Still, he knew where to find it, in time. He could almost hear it, and the high frequency reverberated from before him. Retracted from her mouth, dangled a glowing light. Held before him, by her hand, like a fabric of smoke that wavered, was the voice he known his entire life. She offered it to him, but then toyed it out of reach, laughing playfully. Aaron fell to her knees, begging and he heard in return “I was going to give it back to you anyways; geeze, it’s a thousand years too early without it to be groveling like I was, come on... Pick yourself up man.” Bestowing the voice back to him. “I can’t remember the last time I could joke with anyone... It’s been very lonely... Gimme a break.”

Aaron felt flavour return to his throat, like a vast meal of profanity and vulgarity. “FUCK!” Aaron shat out his mouth, groggily clearing the crud from his vocal chords.

“Good, then let’s continue before they catch up... I’d appreciate leaving this memory behind us, preferably forever if we could.” The air shifted at her words, returning into the snake from earlier, but Aaron halted it.

“I... Kind of like your appearance... As a human.”

Reverting the form back hesitantly, the beautiful woman’s skin returned pale, and the adorning ribbons followed with it. “I’d prefer my nativity, but...” Rubbing the cold exposed skin above her hip “If you prefer this form, then I may keep it around you, I suppose.” Blushing through her humiliation.

“Honestly, I kind of half expected you to abandon me... Again... What changed your mind this time?”

“I don’t know,” Turning guiltily “I guess I got a soft spot for scrawny ass kids... Seeing as you gave me back the strength to exist; I suppose I owe you a great debt. I’d be ashamed, but I seem to have lost that part of me long ago. So long as I live... Something, something, I don’t really care anymore... I’m not who I used to be after all... So, thank you for that...”

The more they walked together, however briskly, Aaron struggled in his words to converse with the fair, fit, and powerful maiden. Her fine complexion was like a light olive glaze atop a pale northerners skin, and it glistened with her light blue hair. Aaron’s mouth was tied, until the burden inside his mind left his lips. “Say... Did... Did you even know if it was possible to do that? To return our voices?”

“Perhaps... Maybe... Something had to, I guess. Glad we didn’t have to search through piles of voice excrement or something, looking for a calling. So, not really, no...”

“And I went along with it...” Shaking his head

“And we succeeded...” She smiled, “Keep your head up, I feel freaking incredible...”

“I guess...” Still taken by her beauty, Aaron’s eyes wondered as she breezed ahead past him. Skinny, built like a runner, with fine toned muscles underneath a frail feminine skin. She was the peek of physical performance, and fair like a royal daughter. His mind retraced all the doubts he had, and gratified his persistence, even at the cost of dangers that arose. She was more than he ever imagined, a snake from a pond of all places, or wherever space in time that he found her, turned into something so regal, like an angel. All he could see was the fine toned muscles intimately catch the light upon her spine and shoulder blades beneath the taught exposing clothes. She was perfect, in every way. Even the flat chest was of no bother to him; after all, who ever heard of a snake with tits anyway?

Stumbling in out of the forest, the two came onto the overlook. At it’s top, paced a very distraught young man, who’s eyes had not met the return of his friend. In hesitation, the snake curled up around Aaron’s shoulders, out of sight from the rest and hid a little deeper when Zack finally noticed them. “Hey now...” Aaron chuckled, to his scaly scarf “Are you actually getting warm for once?” But it tightened about his neck “Alright, you’re totally not shy for no reason...”

Looking relived, Zack ran up to Aaron, gripping Aaron’s shirt collar and shook him furiously with his weak trembling hands. “You’re just trying to prove a point, aren’t you!?”

Covering the hissing snake who was caught during the man handling, Aaron relieved. “You can put this whole thing down all you want, until it turns out true.”

Pushing Aaron back, Zack snuffed his runny nose. “Can’t fix crazy, can ya...” Feeling defeated, “Well? You win this war, or what?” Looking back drearily. “You look like you took the best shit of your life...

Aaron nodded happily. “The snake showed me the way... She’s beautiful too... Show them...” Silently standing for the snake to do it’s party trick, “Um...” Aaron looked to his shoulder. It sighed, shamefully fusing it’s form to marvel and astonish Zack. Half covering her already clothed body, the snake lady turned towards Aaron, vex and uncomfortable. “She’s got a sword and everything, AND guess what! She says she’s even got a soft spot fo...”

“ENOUGH ALREADY!” The woman blushed, furiously. “I... I refuse to show this twet my sword!”

“It’s twit...” Zack corrected, in his honour.

“No,” The old man assured, “it’s twet...” taking a good while to admire the new attraction walking up to his house.

“So what’s it’s name?” Zack asked, inspecting the gorgeous addition to their party. “She’s got one, don’t she?”

“What is your name anyway?” Aaron asked.

“Nothing you’d pronounce...” The woman defended, before uttering a strange and slithering sequence of syllables. “See, you can’t even recognize it...”

“Seeing as you seem to have brought it to life...” Zack mentioned. “You could call it Mary Shelly.” While poking Aaron’s side.

Scowling, she reprimanded, “I don’t need to know who that is to know that’s an insult!” The woman sneered.

“Well, you put her together, Aaron, maybe that’s your nickname from now on... What about Karloff? Nah, too masculine... This would be so much easier if we had a girl here...”

“What about you?” Aaron asked, “What do you want to be called?”

Shrugging, “I don’t know,” their new member remarked,“Siiri?... Its short for what I just said... But I still solidly doubt you’ll pronounce it properly...”

“Well, no ones’ known your name here, maybe this is a good opportunity to pick your own... Something you want to be called” But the woman shrugged again at Aaron’s suggestion.

“Snake... Snake...” Zack pondered aloud “Jörmungandr?... Nah, that’s not any better... Miia!... Hmm... What does that even have to do with a snake anyway...”

“She’d be better off with Felicity...” Aaron implored. And yes, he does know what both those word means.

“That’s kinda girly...”

“I kinda like it...” The woman butted in

“Tammy!” Zack announced.

Aaron shook his head “And you complained about girly? What about Amaryllis?”

“Clara”

Aaron scowled, “I don’t like Clara...”

“No need to get hostile my guy...” Zack defended, feeling a weight fall off of him as Aaron settled.

Softly speaking underneath the heated discussion, their unnamed friend voted: “Felicity sounds nice...”

“Serena...” Aaron returned.

“Lina” Zack shout over.

“Cassandra... No, Madison!”

As the evening set, everyone returned onto their homes. Aaron waved Felicity off at the pool where they had began to separate and he climbed out of the waters at the other end. As he left, he thought to himself how nice it would be to have a dry set of clothes waiting on the other side and Aaron planned to pack one for his next journey. After all, summer approaching or not, the wet walk up hill was wearing thin on him, especially with the overcast sky. Like the night before, he got the odd looks and questions to why he was all damp. Very quickly, he prepared for tomorrow in advance, stuffing his bag with return clothes. At last, he had someone who could keep him safe. He should have felt safe but his sleep was without rest and again he awoke wondering if any of it had even happened.

The mysterious anomaly, Felicity, was the most important dream to ever come true.