Elemental Awakened by Helen Scott
15
Tessa
What the actual fuck had just happened? Finn had somehow pulled water from the glass and let it float in the air for a minute. That had been real, hadn’t it? The wet spots on my dress, Finn’s T-shirt, and the floor certainly seemed to confirm it. People couldn’t do that kind of thing though, it just wasn’t possible. Then again, neither was seeing dragons, or demons, or men burning up, or hell, even my ring, which somewhat regularly burned my finger.
“How…?” I mumbled the single word, unable to string together a full sentence. When I managed to tear my eyes away from the water on the table and the now empty glass, I saw that Finn was almost glowing. His tawny skin had always had golden and coppery undertones to it, but now it was like the gold was shining through from beneath. In a way, the man looked like he was almost made of precious metals. In the middle of all that were his eyes. The normal rich dark brown color seemed to have deepened until it looked like I was staring into the depths of the earth where life was created.
I couldn’t even begin to understand what was happening, and when two dragons appeared in my peripheral vision, I almost lost it. Everything that was happening was too much. There was so much that wasn’t supposed to be possible, that wasn’t what the laws of nature dictated, and yet when I looked at Finn glowing like that and felt the familiar sting on my finger, I felt comforted in a weird way. I wasn’t crazy, no matter what my parents had tried to make me believe.
A bubble of laughter escaped me and I suspected that I was becoming delirious, but I wasn’t manic, just oddly calm.
“Did you see?” Finn asked, and somehow, the wording of the question set me on edge, like he was trying to trick me.
“See what?” I said, avoiding looking directly at him, like I could somehow fall into the trap that was his eyes and confess my deepest darkest secrets.
“What I did with the water? The caretakers? The purple?”
My eyes snapped to his at the last part. “What did you say?”
He quirked an eyebrow at my reaction. “What? The caretaker part or the purple part?”
“You could see it?” I whispered.
“Couldn’t you?” he asked, sounding a little exasperated with me, but he barely knew anything about me and he definitely didn’t know about my past.
“No one else has ever been able to see it,” I whispered, barely able to fathom the idea that the things I’d seen were real.
“That’s because magic isn’t common enough in your realm. In mine, it’s as natural as breathing air. If we didn’t have magic, we wouldn’t have survived. Somehow, and I have no idea how, you can see magic, you can sense it, maybe even use it, I’m not sure. I’d love to find out though.”
I sat silent for a minute, anxiety bubbling away within me like a kettle about to boil. There were so many questions, but I couldn’t even begin to process them. If I asked them, I had a feeling that the responses would be so overwhelming that my brain would shut down.
“Could you see the dragons?” I whispered, still scared that he was going to think I was completely nuts.
“We call them caretakers, but yes. They seem unusually attracted to you.”
My breath rushed out of me like I’d just been elbowed in the solar plexus. My heart was beating painfully in my chest, and I kind of just wanted to crawl into bed and pretend that this hadn’t happened. It was turning everything I’d grown used to on its head. What did this actually mean for me though? Sure, someone else could see the purple stuff and the dragons and had felt my ring burn and made me think some of the dirtiest thoughts I’d ever had, but none of that meant that it was going to change my life, did it?
“What happens next?” I asked, needing to voice a part of my thoughts.
Finn rubbed the carefully manicured five o’clock shadow on his jaw while he thought. “Well, I think you should see the other guys do magic, see if it was just me. Maybe you have some Atlantean blood or something. Either way, it would be good to see the extent of this.”
“I’m sorry, did you just say Atlantean? As in the lost kingdom of?” I had to set my cup of coffee down on the table because my hands were starting to shake so badly, I was worried I’d spill it.
Finn looked like he wanted to kick himself for a moment before he said, “Uh, yeah. I’m from Atlantis.”
“You don’t mean the resort, do you?” I asked. I wanted to be completely sure of what he was saying before I reacted.
“No, it’s not a resort.” He chuckled.
“So what, you live under the Atlantic?” I asked as I searched my brain for any nuggets of knowledge about the lost kingdom of Atlantis.
“Not so much, no, but I think we should probably stop there for the night. I promise I’ll answer all your questions, but you need to process what’s happened first.”
I nodded and watched him for a moment. He drained the last gulp of his coffee and just stared at the mug for a moment.
“I’ve been poisoned?” he asked, a tightness around the corners of his eyes that made me think he was seriously asking me. I suddenly remembered which mug I’d given him.
“No, sorry. It’s just a funny mug. I guess it’s not that funny when you don’t know my sense of humor, huh?” I nibbled my lower lip, and I saw his gaze lock onto my mouth. The same feeling as before started to build.
“I should go,” he said abruptly as he stood and took the dirty mug into the kitchen area, rinsing it and placing it in the sink.
I stood as well, finishing the last of my decaf coffee and following suit. I felt as though I was a little disconnected from myself, as though my body were going through the motions that were expected of it but my mind was elsewhere. As I walked him to the door, I asked, “Can we talk about this more tomorrow?”
“I’d like that very much, but only if you’re feeling up to it. Do you want my number again?” he asked.
I pulled out my phone and tapped the digits in, saving it for future use. He’d given it to me once before, but I’d never actually saved it. I’d typed it in, but that was as far as it had gone.
“If you need anything, if you start freaking out, whatever, anything at all, feel free to text me or give me a call, okay?”
“Thanks,” I said, and I really meant it. What he’d told me tonight and what he’d shown me probably wasn’t something for everyone, but he had no idea what it meant to me. The simple fact that I knew I wasn’t crazy anymore, that I wasn’t slowly sliding into the same madness as my mother, it all made me feel like I had a new lease on life.
When Finn was gone and the door was shut, the exhaustion set in. Not only had I been amped most of the day because I was excited and nervous about my date with Dres, but then it had gone badly and my anger had spiked, then everything with Finn. It was a lot to deal with in a twelve-hour period. So without wasting any time, I changed into an oversized T-shirt and went to bed.
It was the early hours of the morning when something jolted me awake. My bedroom was still pitch black, and there was nothing going on that I could see, but then I heard it.
The door handle of my apartment was jiggling. There was only one way to get it open, and it was holding the handle in a specific position. I’d complained to the super about it, but nothing had ever been done. When the noise stopped, I slowly exhaled. One of my neighbors must have been drunk and mistaking my apartment for theirs. It wouldn’t be the first time that something like that had happened.
When the noise came again, I swung the sheets back and prepared to shove a stumbling, drunk neighbor to the right apartment door. My heart was pounding in my chest though, and I grabbed my phone just in case and crept toward the door.
I tried to keep my breathing silent, but as my heart thundered in my chest, it was becoming harder to breathe, let alone keep it quiet. I eased up to the peephole, and when I looked through, I saw a trio of men that were decidedly not drunk, or at least didn’t look it. They’d stopped fiddling with the door handle because one of my neighbors was walking down the hallway.
She was a nice woman, very friendly, and always baked and cooked, making the hallway not smell like piss for a few hours, which I was grateful for. I backed away from the door before she got her own open, and I hustled into my bedroom.
I didn’t know what to do. It wasn’t like I had many places to hide, especially not if they saw my bed was empty. Quickly, not really understanding why I was doing what I was doing, I shoved some clothes and pillows under my comforter in a person-like shape. The only place I could think of to hide was in the shower. If I made myself small enough, I could use the curtain to shield my presence without looking like there was someone hiding there. Maybe I’d just seen too many horror movies, but there was something about a shower curtain drawn across the tub that compelled me to look behind it.
My hand shook as I clutched my phone and texted the only person I could think of who was close enough to do anything. As a bonus, I was pretty sure he wouldn’t put me on a psych lockdown if there was no one here when he arrived.
Finn.
The message was short and to the point. I called the phone number as well for good measure, just to make sure he woke the hell up. As soon as he answered, I whispered into the speaker to check his messages and hung up. The last thing I wanted was the noise of the phone or conversation to give away my position.
I silenced my phone and froze in place as the door handle jiggled with more force this time. When a sharp crack sounded, I knew they’d broken in. The reason I lived on the second floor was to avoid this exact thing. I’d thought that if I had a first-floor apartment with the sliding glass door, then I’d be inviting people to break in. Turned out, they didn’t care one way or another. If they were determined to break in, then they would.
My ring warmed on my finger as they moved through the apartment, their footsteps sounded across the hardwood floor where the rug had been until I threw it out. I couldn’t look at it without thinking about Brok burning up. They were quiet, almost silent and catlike with their careful steps and movements. They passed the bathroom area and headed straight for the bedroom. As the moved past my hiding spot, I had to fight not to shout out from the heat of my ring.
I bit my lips as I removed it as silently as possible before setting it down equally quietly next to my shampoo bottle. Once it was off, I could focus on calming my racing heart. The skin on my finger was red and angry from the heat, and I had to fight not to get pulled into the memory of my mom burning me.
Instead of falling into the past, I focused on the present, my ears straining to catch every minute sound. I could practically picture them surrounding the bed, one on each side, looking down at my pillows and the clothes that they thought was my sleeping form. A slight whistle sounded, which was followed closely by a thud.
“She’s not here!” one of them hissed, rage coating his voice.
“Did you see her leave?” another male voice asked calmly.
“N-n-no,” the third responded.
“Could you have missed it?” the angry one demanded.
“I mean, maybe. I had to take a piss at one point, but I was still there, just in the bushes. She could have slipped by—” His words cut off, and I heard a gurgling noise.
“Put him down. Let’s search the place and get out of here. We’ll need to wait for her to come back,” the calm one said.
My stomach clenched at the command. I risked looking at my phone and saw a message from Finn had popped up at some point that read, “On my way.”
I hoped that he got there before they found me in the bathroom, because I had the distinct impression that they weren’t looking for me because they wanted to give me a surprise birthday present.
Footsteps came into the bathroom, and I held my breath, not trusting myself to be quiet enough when I was drawing air into my lungs. When a dragon, or caretaker, or whatever they were called, appeared less than a foot away from me, I felt an odd calmness surround me. It was one of the most beautiful ones I’d ever seen. The scales that ran down the center of its back were blues and greens, while yellows and browns ran down its sides and over its rump. The thing reminded me of a peacock more than anything else. It had a tail as well, so part of me expected it to fan it somehow and show me that peacocks and dragons were related. It didn’t.
I could see the shadow of a male form cast over the shower and waited for him to come closer, to look for me in the only obvious hiding space in the bathroom, but he didn’t, he turned away instead. My eyes locked onto the dragon in front of me, no longer interested in the men in my apartment. Not that I wasn’t aware of every move that they made, but I had never been this close to one of the dragons before, not even on the porch at the guys’ house, and it made me both scared and excited. The creature had spread its wings at some point, and the telltale eye of a peacock feather was visible on the leathery skin. It looked like it had two extra eyes on each side, as well as the ones on its head. I was fascinated and knew I would have to draw it as soon as I got to a notebook, provided I made it through the night first.
