Grey Wolf

Happy reunions (12)

 Happy reunions

Ann and I go back through the corridor/tunnel and back into the circular clearing with all the similar looking tunnels leading out of it. It’s a surprise how anyone knows how to get around this place.

We go through a different corridor to find a large door made of stone; she pulls a key out of a pocket on the hip of her dress and puts it in the rusty old lock. The door seems heavy and hard to open but it seems to respond positively to Ann’s touch.

“Don’t touch anything unless I say you can, okay!” Ann says rather than asks. I nod. This place is ginormous. It’s doesn’t feel like being inside, the ceiling is about a mile above us and between us and it is a large ledge, like a balcony with a telescope pointing down on this place. Enabling us to be watched. “Welcome to death!” Ann says with a small eerie smirk on her face. Oh, Great.

I try to keep my hopes down about the whole seeing my family thing. It’s not going to happen, things like that just don’t happen to people like me, I don’t get lucky breaks.

In the near distance is a whole different world, there are billions of buildings. They are clustered into hundreds of towns and villages; there were some incredibly high story buildings in what must be city centres. The land is quite flat so you can’t see too far into the distance. She whistles loudly and a large black thing on four wheels comes speeding towards us from the right, it reminds me of a car but it looks nothing like the cars we have. It’s almost like a seed, but larger obviously. It is about the size of a large car but it is streamlined and rain drop shaped like a sunflower seed with a rough exterior and groves going all the way down the sides. Ann places her hand on the side of it and a rectangle of the thing moves to the side like a secret panel revealing some rather comfy looking red seats and another seat in front that is occupied by a man, I can’t see his face for a black cap is pulled down shadowing his face, the colour matches his black and gold uniform. He is holding a steering wheel which is another indication that this is some sort of car.

Ann gets in and I follow cautiously, the black panel-slash-door slides shuts speedily and it sends a rush of cold whipping up my hair a little. I smooth it down and put my hands in my lap, looking at my knees and trying to keep to my own little bubble. Thankfully Ann doesn’t seem to want me to open up or invade my personal space. She has one arm lying just under her ribs and the other clutching loosely onto a strap on the roof inside the vehicle. Before I question this we speed off towards the strange civilisation. The ride is rickety (well that is a little bit of an understatement) and I am literally thrown about the place, it’s more than a little embarrassing. I remember the small wheels on the large seed like exterior, I feel sick again but it’s motion sickness now. Ann seems almost unaffected, just jiggling up and down like we’re just going along a mildly uneven road. Everything that has happened has made it clear that I don’t belong here, well not yet, because I’m not dead… yet.

Thankfully it’s not long before we get to a grinding halt; I manage to stop myself from being hurled forward into the one-way view screen at the front and taking a lying down seat unconscious next to the driver.

“Thank you Garelien.” Ann said to the Driver as she touched the part of the vehicle that acted as the door. Garelien is a very old name; I don’t even think it’s from Bakhnica, It sounds more Nabinan.

“You’re welcome,” Says a rough voice, it’s croaky and sounds like he’s talking with sand paper in his windpipe. When he turns around I see his face. His eyes are sunken, the skin around them is grey and dark, the rest of his skin is an unearthly pale. His lips are thin and wrinkled, he looks like a dead man; a dead man walking (well driving in this case).

“Thank you.” I manage to choke out. We leave the seed like vehicle and step onto the red and dusty soil that the whole of these weird cities are made of. I look back and see the twisting dirt roads that lead all over the place, roads that overlap, mud bridges; I can see clearly another reason why the ride was as bumpy as it was.

We are outside a house; well it looks like a house. It is a literal cube shape and it is made out of the red dirt and some largish rocks. The door is a dark brown wood; Ann knocks with the rusty iron ring near the top of the door.

An old woman with shoulder length grey hair with strips of white opens the door. She reminds me of myself, with brown eyes and a very similar face but she’s taller than me. It’s my grandmother from my father’s side.

“Mrs Grey, you and your husband can go now.”  My grandmother and father died many years back, I missed them of course but not dearly. They were my family; they are my family still I guess. But as long as I knew them they never liked me, or my mother. They thought she was alright, she won them over with her beautiful smile, gentile voice and kind words; but they were bitter people and no one was good enough for my father especially not someone lacking in their side of the families extensive knowledge in particle physics. That’s why they disliked me, I am stupid (for a Damintionist anyways) and I have no redeeming qualities, I am stubborn like the old woman before me, unsociable, unfriendly, definitely not pretty enough to bat my eyelids into anyone’s good books and although I have very good manners my shyness and unease with people mean I didn’t instinctively do everything for the couple unless I was prompted. I was not upset that they were not the people I was meeting. Deep down I feel so elated though, are my parents inside? They have to be, they can’t be. All the clues say yes but my head, it won’t agree with the joy, I don’t trust my own instincts although they’re not usually wrong I don’t want to disappoint myself. They’re not there, get a grip they’re not in the house, THEY ARE NOT IN THE HOUSE LINDS…

“Lindsey.” It is a man’s voice, so familiar so heart wrenchingly warm to hear. The old couple hobble off to another mud house, I felt them brush past me and glare at me as I tried so hard not to get my hopes up.

I look up, I see a tall man with short black hair and rectangular framed spectacles. His face similar to mine, I have his nose and his posture. My face shape is more like my grandmother, the dead one that was just in the house, the man before me is almost a spitting image of my granddad (also the dead one I have just seen) but he’s far less aged and kinder, he is so much kinder. He is wearing a smile on his face; I’m wearing tears on mine.

“Dad!” I manage to say even though I have a lump in my throat.

Authers note: I hope you like it :D I know the title only really aplies to the last paragraph or so but oh well :). Please comment, vote and fan!