Remember

Chapter Five (edited)

The next morning she didn't have work. It was her only day off during the week and it just so happened to be a weekend day. She got lucky since the weekends were the most busy at the hospital. Well as busy as a hospital in a world that didn't really need hospitals other than to take care of the old folks and the rare person who thought they were sick could get.
Nurse Garner would always explain to Colette that there was nothing at all wrong with the 'sick' people. It was just a paranoid person making up for some missing aspect of their life. For missing the occurrence of sickness that people before were so used to. Their mind played nasty tricks on them.

It never made much sense to her but, then again, nothing Nurse Garner ever said to her made sense. Nothing about that hospital made sense. It was like a sore thumb in the middle of their perfect world. If there was some secret that she was supposed to find out, the best place to start looking would be there. Hopefully, the hospital had the answers she was desperate for. Colette suspected Nurse Garner was the one who held them.

But since today was her only off day this week, it would have to wait. Instead, today's mission was to find her way to Madeline's house and see if, by any chance, she knew what the hell this 'barrier' was and how Colette was supposedly going to break it.

Madeline is smart, one of the smartest people Colette knows. She can talk about everything from why grass is green all the way to how the mind works for hours on end. She is a walking textbook of answers. Ask her anything and she will provide an answer along with the origin of the facts and who came up with them and why they exist. There was nothing Madeline didn't have the answer too.

Colette could only hope the barrier was of her friend's knowledge.

There was one thing Colette never understood about Paradisium -- actually the entirety of it confused her beyond measure but this was something that had bothered her since she was little. Paradisium was composed of seven circles, all words deriving from latin and none having any logical reasoning behind them. None that she could figure out. Not even Madie knew why they were named so.

The first circle was named Elementum meaning element, seeing as element could mean practically anything this one didn't quite faze her. The second named Numquid, latin for mental, either there was once a mental asylum here or it had something to do with the mind. Circle three was where Colette lived. Tenebris, meaning darkness, ironic since her circle was the one most vibrant and vast in its beautiful landscapes. Her whole circle was surrounded by forests and filled with luscious green grass.

Manipulare was the fourth one and the only one that seemed to make at least a tiny bit of sense. This circle got its name from the latin word manipulate and everyone Colette met from there was highly manipulative. She only knew two people from there and supposed it could simply be a coincidence but she chose to believe otherwise. Nurse Garner had been born in manipulare and with her expert secret keeping and mastery of subject avoidance it made perfect sense.

The fifth circle was called Augendae or enhancement. Unless this was referring to their enhanced society, Colette did not understand the reasoning behind it. The sixth circle was named Raritate or Rare in english. Ironically enough there was nothing special about the circle or it's people. And lastly there was Ignotis, meaning unknown. Maybe the circle was named unknown because it was unknown why it was named that.

Madeline lived in Raritate, where, in Colette's opinion, everyone pretended to be friendly and nice but actually despised one another. The people there were stuck up and snobby. For some reason they thought they were better than everyone else. Perhaps it was because they lived in the 'rare' circle and it made them think they were rare as well. It was funny how simple words could make people believe they had some sort of power over others.