SPLASH!
Thomas found himself soaked in rain.
"Wait Rain?"
Cough! Cough!
He saw Ray sitting on the floor coughing up the water he somehow managed to choke on.
'What happened?'
Looking around, we were back in the cave.
Trying to recall how we got here, I remembered it was right after our big old friend Jerry started camping outside our little manhole. We noticed that parts of the cave looked unnatural and man-made, so we went deeper to see if there were any other exits.
Crouching beneath the uneven ceiling of the cave, we carefully moved forward. Until we came across a large opening, it was a room filled with massive cylindrical tubes.
There were dozens of them, but they were all empty. With quite a few broken.
"At least they're empty" Ray said.
"Uhuh, doesn't that mean they could be outside here with us right now?" I quipped.
Moving on to the next room after searching the mad scientists' laboratory.
It was a smaller room, the only thing inside the room was the tall pillars supporting it
There didn't seem to be any—
I froze, instinctively stepping back. Ray paused beside me, eyes wide.
A faint movement caught my eye. A figure, small, not much bigger than themselves, standing silently further in the cave.
Ray drew in a quiet, slow inhale. I felt it too, a mirror in his chest. It wasn't fear exactly. It was something older, something that felt like recognition.
'That's the girl I bumped into.'
From behind, she looked small, barely taller than us. Her skin was fair, almost pale in the dim light of the cave, and her black hair, cut short and uneven at the edges, caught the faint shimmer of the wet stone. Even so, there was something about her presence—quiet, precise, unnervingly still—that made it impossible to look away.
"That's Lila! How lucky are we to see her twice in one day?!" Ray tapped my shoulder.
"Okay. Okay!" I brushed him off, "who's she?"
Ray gave me a dumbfounded look. "How do you not know who she is?"
"Well I don't"
Ray replied, shaking his head, "She's the youngest daughter of the Starling family, the owners of Twilight."
"That's fine and all but… what's she doing here?" I asked, peeking from behind the pillar at the figure standing eerily still while staring at the ceiling.
"Hmm, that's true, what's she doing standing there all creepily like that?" Ray bent over to take a peek as well.
Following her line of sight, we looked up to see a large golden sphere of light which was the only source of light for the room.
We kept staring at the sphere wondering if there was anything special about it,
It was bright.
Its light was very soothing and calm too.
Like millions or tiny sparks swirling and dancing around inside in a hypnotic rhythm…
The golden sphere bathed the room in soft warmth. I felt my heartbeat slow, my chest lift slightly, and even my shadow seemed to lean toward it. It was hypnotic, and I could have stood there for an eternity.
I blinked—and the cave went black.
…
…
The faint light from the wet stone caught on Thomas's eyes. Navy, deep, and quiet—like embers resisting the dark.
Ray glanced at him, and for a heartbeat, it was as if those eyes had swallowed the shadows around them holding them still. And inside, dozens of tiny sparks flickered, dying out and igniting each other. They danced around but never separated, connected in a silent rhythm only Thomas could feel.
"Ugh! I remember what happened now" Thomas massaged the side of his head.
'It's like I can feel everything all at once'
Then, a warning blared inside his head, sudden and all-consuming.
"Argh!"
It feels like it's coming from,
Everywhere?
Suddenly gravity doubled.
Thump! Thump!
We hit the ground hard. Ray smashed face-first into the cave floor; I rolled onto my side, shielding my head. And just as suddenly as it had come, the weight vanished.
"Nnghh! I—I think something broke!" Ray rolled around the floor in agony.
On the floor, I glimpsed the girl walking toward a wall at the far end of the room—and she passed right through it.
'There's our ticket home!' My eyes lit up.
"Come on, Ray. Let's go home" I helped him up while he still nursed his nose.
"There's a way home?" He says with tears in his eyes.
"yeah" I said as we approached the wall.
There was really nothing of note about it.
Something in me flared faintly as we approached the invisible wall. Ray hesitated. The air thickened, vibrating with tension. Without another word, I stepped forward—and the world fell away.
…
…
After going through the same unnerving experience of losing sense of all your senses we found ourselves exiting an alley into a bustling night city.
It was quite late in the night but all the neon lights on the buildings made for a novel experience, it seemed we were in the main commercial district of the city.
After asking around while having a little sightseeing to admire the beauty of life we now saw in new lights, we finally took a bus heading towards the estate.
Thankfully, not all the money we had on hand had holes in them.
By the time we got home, it was nearly midnight.
On getting back, we got a long lecture from Mrs. Brown. She warned us about dangers like organ selling and using our wombs to incubate newborns and how lucky we are that we're not strung up like pieces of meat in a cold room.
Yeah… wombs. Because now, apparently men can be used as incubation tanks for childbirth as well, because some people decided it was a good idea to swap out organs between genders… 3000 years ago.
After two hours of lecture and cleaning duty for three months as punishment, we were finally told to get cleaned up and head to bed.
…
…
Entering my room, the motion sensor lights switch on, to see my Noah fast asleep on his bed.
Closing the door behind me.
"Sigh"
I can never get a moment of peace, even in the afterlife huh.
I plopped down on my bed and laid on my back as I stared at the ceiling.
But my mind wasn't on the stars.
'Now, what exactly happened to my body in that cave?'