s*t*a*r*s (Kindred Series-2)

s*t*a*r*s 4 - pt 55

s*t*a*r*s/J*A*D*E*S

             

            Tegan sleeps.  The dream is the same, Spencer disappearing right before her eyes.  Flickering, fading, and then snapping out of existence like someone has turned the electricity off to a light bulb.  She startles awake.

            “Energy.”

            Whipping the covers from her body, she moves to the kitchen, kicks down the ladder and runs to the library window.  She wrenches it open and climbs in.  She could well have gone the normal route, since school isn’t in session but for some reason, this seems the better way to do it.  The Tegan way.  Her heart pounds in her chest so hard that she is sure her shirt flutters with each beat. 

            Tegan has never been a great student, but she does love to learn.  She never liked the structure of school.  It is why HIA was such a draw to her, other than being with Rylee Scott, the first person who she truly liked since childhood.  It was learning but unstructured.  If she doesn’t do her homework she gets a bad grade, if she does her homework she is rewarded with not only a good grade but with knowledge.  The variety of classes given had caught her eye too.  Media and Culture, Women’s Literature class, it was like college but better.

            Now she takes that natural curiosity for life and learning and pours over the books. Some she has no idea what they say because they are in languages that she has never seen.  She then delves into the back room that is Natalie’s holographic sanctuary and hauls more books by the armfuls out and strews them across the table top.  A sliver of moon glints through the high ceiling windows.  It throws tricky shadows across the books but Tegan doesn’t care.  She wants to know. 

She loses all track of time, until the sun begins to break the horizon with its welcoming light.  Books scatter everywhere, she is ravenous in her desire for knowledge.  She finds physics books and books about energy and even an odd rambling about souls in an old book whose pages are so yellowed they are almost unreadable.

            “What are you doing?” yells Natalie as she walks into the library, which is now in total disarray.  Books everywhere, a chair overturned, the book ladder is slightly askew as if someone has been kicking around on it all night and Tegan is the worst of the mess.  Her hair is tussled and in tangles, her green eyes have dark purple shadows under them, crescent moons of sleeplessness that no sixteen year old should have. 

            “She was energy!  She was never here, she never had a body, she never had a body,” rants Tegan.  She thinks that repeating it will make it real, will make them believe.

            “How long have you been up?” asks Natalie.  She is worried about Tegan and her total disregard for her health.  She seems obsessed with the fact that Spencer is alive.

            Tegan perches on the ladder to the higher stacks.  “Two AM, listen, please, listen to me.  I know this is going to sound absolutely insane, but follow me.  Spencer was conceived in another reality, but when Jo went over there, her soul, her energy, took over THAT Jo Wheaton’s body, right?”

            “We think so…” Natalie has been hard at work trying to figure out how Spencer might have gone back to the reality she was conceived in, but nothing seems to fit what she’s been looking for.  No legends, no myths, nothing at all.

            Tegan leaps from the ladder and lands on the table with a wood groaning thud.  She flips open a book, and points to the text.  “And so the soul will move onto the next plane.”