Dominions

Chapter 9: Elle

Something was off.

Maybe not wrong, but Elle felt in her stomach that something was going to happen tonight that would change everything. She knew from the moment Selena walked away that somehow, someway, they were connected. As if something was reaching out from the ground to grab a hold of them, their futures were intertwined.

"Would it kill you to smile?" her mother said, with a fake smile on her face. Heaven forbid the future voters see her frown. "You're drawing attention. You're staring into the fire like some sort of pyromaniac."

Elle couldn't help it. She was lost in thought about the mysterious pressure in her head and what could have caused it. What was that voice? It sounded so familiar, and yet, she couldn't place where it was from. "Sorry," said Ellen glancing at her mom and cracking a smile. "I have a lot on my mind."

"Not an excuse during election season, Elouise," her mother said through gritted teeth.

"I need a minute to get myself together," said Elle as she got up from her spot around the bonfire and walked to the water. She kicked off her flip flops and let the cold water run over her toes. She dug her feet into the cold wet sand and took a deep breath. She sat down, and for reasons she didn't know, began to cry.

Elle, you were always so in touch with your emotions.

The pressure returned upon Elle hearing the voice, and if her head hadn't felt like it would be split open she would have sat up alert. Instead, she hunched over and placed her face into her knees. She let out a groan and gasped as the world around her started to spin. The bonfire behind her dulled as a darkness crept out from the ground and engulfed her. She screamed, and just as soon as it came, the pressure was gone.

"Where am I?" Elle called out into the darkness. "Why am I here?"

A light clicked on and Elle was suddenly surrounded by Selena, Judah, and two other boys from her class. She scrunched her eyebrows and stood up. "What the hell is going on?" she asked. 

"Elle?" asked Selena. "What are you doing here?"

"I'll let you know when I find out," said Elle.

Like curtains being drawn, the darkness faded away. Suddenly, the five teenagers were standing in a cobblestoned room. There was a glass free window in the left corner, and a small bed in the other one. A small ceramic pot sat in the center of the room.

"What the hell?" asked Asher Kidd as he walked over to the bed. He lifted the mattress and Elle's heart dropped as she realized it was almost as flat as a board. Was this to be their new prison? And how did they just appear here?

"We had to be drugged," whispered Elle to herself, but caught the attention of the others. She looked at them and shrugged. "It's the only explanation. I got a major headache, and then the world started spinning. I'm suddenly in this tiny room with no memory of how I got here?"

But why?

She looked at the group surrounding her. They had to be the most random assortment of people you could get at J.P Adams High School. She walked over to the window and looked out and gasped.

They certainly weren't in Saffron anymore.

As she looked through the window she saw trees. So many that she couldn't remember a time when she saw so much green. Elle saw pockets of houses that stuck together and people walked around tending to animals and doing chores.

"What is this place?" asked Judah with his jaw dropped.

A strong stone wall surrounded the nearby area. Men, fat and sweaty, can be seen running around the grounds drinking and singing. The men were dressed in fine leather and each carried a dagger on their hip.

"It's like a movie," said Jayden.

A creak filled the room and the five teenagers turned around. A woman standing in a tattered ball gown had appeared. The gown was a faded lavender color, and her blonde hair was tied tightly in a bun. Her face was sweet, but worn, and her eyes were the color of the sky on a perfect day.

The woman's jaw dropped when she walked in and saw the five teenagers. She fell to her knees and began to weep. She stuck out her arm and pinched herself, and then looked back up at them. Elle instinctively grabbed ahold of Asher. Her heart quickened when she watched the woman crawl up from the ground and run over to them. She reached out and touched Judah's face.

"Oh my god, I did it," she said as her hand drifted from face to face. "I can't believe I did it. The guardian said be patient, but I was starting to lose hope!" she turned to Selena and kissed her on the forehead. "Then fate brought you back. Everything is going to change. You can use the Dominions and take back over Glorianna!"

The kids sat quietly as the woman's face began to fall. She squinted her eyes and grabbed Elle's hand, and Elle instantly pulled back. The woman's eyes bulged from her head and she stumbled to the bed and sat down.

"Okay," said Asher, breaking the silence that seemed to go on forever. "I'll ask the question we're all wondering.. What the fuck is going on, Lady?"

The woman, whose gleeful demeanor had faded, stood up from the bed. "You don't remember me, do you?"

Elle looked at the woman apologetically. It was obvious that she was very mentally ill. She couldn't possibly know who they were, and what were the Dominions? Elle cleared her throat, unwilling to allow the silence to continue. Maybe this woman knew more about the people that took them from the beach.

"How did we get here?" asked Elle.

The woman crossed over to the window, and for a moment, Elle thought she might jump. The woman leaned out the window, and looked at both sides of the ground. She brought her body back in and closed the curtains, and a red velvet fabric fell across the window.

"I brought you here," she said walking over to the door. She drug her bed over to the door and placed it in front of it. "I brought you here with magic."

It was then that Elle had to laugh. She knew this woman was crazy, but this level of crazy gets people institutionalized. She hunched over, laughing harder with each passing moment, and the group looked at her confused. "Come on," said Elle in between her deep laughs. "She's obviously crazy! Magic? What kind of explanation is that? What's next, are you going to pull a rabbit out of a hat for us?"

"Magic," uttered Judah, ignoring Elle's outburst. He gave Elle a side-eye look of disapproval and glanced back at the woman. A gasp escaped him and he covered his mouth in shock. He looked at the woman, saw the tattered dress that she wore, and walked forward. The line that they formed broke, Judah touched the woman's arm and then looked at the rest of the kids. Elle felt a shudder.

"You're the woman from my dream."

The woman smiled, and Elle looked at Judah confused. Surely this was all a mistake. Maybe she was still drugged and this is all one big hallucination. That was it. She walked over to Judah and grabbed him on the shoulder. She slung him around and glared.

"Explain."

He shrugged his shoulders. "You know as much as I do, Elle," said Judah. "This is one big cluster of confusion."

The woman cleared her throat and took a deep breath. "We don't have much time. I will explain, but you need to be open to the idea of what it is I'm about to say. This is going to require open-mindedness."

One by one the kids took a seat on the floor and the woman smiled. "It's been so long since you guys have been here. I knew that your memories were most likely wiped when you were born into the new world, but I always thought that coming here would reawaken your memories."

Elle's sinking feeling of knowing that something was going to change returned. She sat with her knees curled up to her chest and waited for the news that would change all of their lives. She could no longer hide from her thoughts. She couldn't justify what was happening in her head.

She wasn't ready to hear what the woman had to say.