Something's Wrong With the Different Realms

Twenty-Seven: Malum

Allaira Parisseiniviani

I was still infuriated and betrayed by what Horizon did but I was really glad that I decided to talk to him. I was elated that I had my best friend back.

For the rest of that day, we chatted and caught up. I told Horizon about the track meet that I'd gotten 2nd in and about how I was going to be going to regionals soon. He told me about his photography and showed me some of the photos that he took for the yearbook. We both talked about how much we missed home and how angry we were with Cassie.

Then, we threw some pillows across the room in a rage because what Cassie did was wrong. How could some creature just think to dictate our lives? Why didn't we get a say in this? What was the point of this? Why did they have to hold this horrid experiment? I decided that if I ever encountered Cassie, I would give them a huge slap in the face, or at least yell at them for a good few hours.

At least I was glad that we decided to have this conversation before my 16th birthday. Otherwise, it'd be super awkward to celebrate my birthday without Horizon and with only Fleur and Gillian.

My birthday went quite nicely, we did a human tradition which was to blow out something called candles and cut and eat cake. The cake was super delicious, it was a circular object filled with creamy icing and dry batter and it reminded me of a sweet treat that we'd eat back in Zenobia.

What was better was that recently, Isla and Jasper seemed to have fixed whatever rift that was going on between them on the days leading up to my birthday, for the tension in our group seemed to be resolved. Maybe it was because of the upcoming deadline, but whatever the reason, I was glad that they weren't glaring at each other anymore. Besides, with the tension in our group resolved, our writing had improved and we all managed to whip out many chapters to make up for the slump that we'd put ourselves in.

Each of them had also gotten me a gift and handed it to me in class. And they both called me to wish me a happy birthday on the day of my actual birthday. It seemed that they'd had enough time to process Horizon's revelation and for that I was glad.

Finally, along with my classwork, running was going great. My performance had improved and the coach even complimented me a couple of times. True to his word, Horizon had come to a few of my practices to try to get a word out of Malum but alas, he had no success.

Today, Horizon decided to come to my track practice again. He was already sitting on the school bleachers, a set of seats that resembled metallic stairs, by the time I headed to the track. I glanced around and noticed that Malum wasn't here yet. Then, I made my way over to Horizon as he waved to me.

"I think... I came up with the idea" Horizon stated carefully, in broken, accented English, being careful.

"What is it?" I asked as I noticed Malum enter the track from my peripheral vision.

"You remember you hold out your hand. Yes? So... you run and catch Malum. If I is right... then Malum also feel pain from Cassie. That is why he is um... probably running from you. And um, if you keep running, he will start to feel the um... pain. You hold out hand and carefully use your um... thing," Horizon stuttered.

"Okay," I called just as the coach blew his whistle and signaled for all the athletes to gather around.

"Be... be careful, okay?" Horizon muttered.

"I know," I took one last look at him before I made my way over to the coach.

It was a good thing that my spells weren't visible per se. During my time on Earth, I conducted a fair bit of research on "powers" and "spells" and things like that. In the shows that I watched and articles that I briefly glanced at, you could immediately tell when someone was using their powers. There'd be some sort of bright light or element shining out of someone's palms, or their eyes would start glowing weirdly or something.