Borne

Chapter 2

Over the following weeks, Amina remained lost in thought, replaying her conversation with Mamie constantly. She helped Aunt Marie around the house as usual, but her mind was elsewhere - in the swamp with her recurring visions, puzzling over her aunt's cryptic words.

Amina started having strange episodes where time seemed to slip away unnoticed. Once she came to and realized an hour had passed while she zoned out staring at her reflection in the bayou. Another time, she found herself miles from home with no memory of the walk.

The dreams grew more vivid too, delivering fragments that made little sense but filled her with unease. Flashes of red eyes. Screams echoing in a stone corridor. A feathered serpent coiled around a crystal orb that pulsed with an inner radiance.

Amina knew she needed answers before she lost her grip on reality. So one moonlit night, she returned to Mamie's house, determined this time to accept her aunt's offer of training.

Mamie greeted her at the door without surprise, as if she'd been expecting this visit. She wordlessly ushered Amina inside where a fire crackled merrily despite the sweltering heat.

"Sit, chère. Tell me of your dreams," Mamie said, taking a seat opposite. As Amina recounted the strange visions, her aunt listened intently, occasionally posing questions that made Amina see fragments in a new light.

When she finished, Mamie nodded slowly. "Your gifts are opening like a budding flower, whether you wish it or not. We must guide their growth before shadows take root."

She went to a wall of apothecary jars and selected several, returning with an assortment of dried plants and powders. "First, a tea to clear your mind and open your inner eye. Drink deep, then we will journey within."

Amina eyed the concoction warily but obeyed, forcing down the bitter brew. Almost at once, her head grew light and the room took on a hazy, doubled quality. Voices seemed to echo from far away before merging into a low susurrus that was somehow soothing.

"Relax into it," Mamie said softly from very close or very far. "Let go of waking thoughts. Drift with the current of your soul."

Amina did as instructed, falling backwards into a twilight place between waking and sleeping. Strange vistas appeared before her inner vision - moonlit temples carved from living stone, an emerald jungle alive with bioluminescent blooms, a crone stirring viscous liquid in an obsidian bowl.

Her aunt's voice accompanied the journey. "This is the inner road, ma petite. All who walk it see fragments of past and future, truth and possibility. Do not fear what appears, simply observe."

Slowly the visions coalesced into a lucid landscape that Amina sensed she could navigate if she wished. But Mamie's presence guided her gently through shadowy glades and luminous grottos until bringing her at last to a quiet lagoon.

"Rest here a time. Let the tea's effects fade while you ponder all you've seen and felt. Then return when ready." Mamie's disembodied words drifted off on a breeze.

Amina lay beside the lagoon, gazing up at a star-flecked sky like none she knew. As the visions dimmed and normal awareness returned, she realized her cheeks were wet with tears. But the experience had left her feeling profoundly changed, as if a door within had been nudged open just a crack.

When at last she stirred, Amina found herself lying before the fireplace once more, Mamie watching patiently. "Did you see?" her aunt asked.

Amina nodded, still overwhelmed. She proceeded to recount glimpses from her journey in vivid detail, amazed by how lucid the memories remained. Mamie listened with satisfaction.

"You have a gift for journeying, which is why spirits call to you," she said. "With practice, you'll learn to navigate the inner realms at will, gleaning insight and wisdom. But that will come later."

Mamie rose and retrieved a leather pouch, withdrawing two objects that glinted dully in the firelight. "For now, I give you these to aid your visions when sleep brings them. A polished obsidian mirror to reflect glimpses back for examining. And this hematite stone to focus your inner eye and still the mind."

Amina accepted the gifts solemnly, feeling the heft of hidden power within. She knew these were no mere trinkets, but tools that could reveal as much as conceal if mishandled.

"Use them only when called by dreams or in times of need," Mamie cautioned. "The veil is thin for you, and what is glimpsed cannot easily be shut out again. Now go - your path awaits, whether you walk it or no."

Amina departed, buzzing with restless energy. She wandered the quiet streets as the moon rose, turning her aunt's gifts in her hands and replaying the strange visions. Something had shifted inside her irrevocably, yet she felt no closer to understanding her purpose.

Only that whichever road lay ahead, she must follow where it led, no matter how dark the journey or how high the cost. Amina was changing in ways she didn't fully comprehend, evolving into something...other. And there would be no turning back.

In the following weeks, Amina diligently practiced the techniques Mamie had taught - meditation, lucid dreaming, scrying with her gifted tools. Slowly, her inner sight sharpened and she gained some mastery over the trance states.

Visions came more frequently now, delivered with crystal clarity. Amina saw glimpses of lives from long ago - a Creole beauty pining by the bayou in 1890, Spanish conquistadors butchering natives in a jungle temple. Flashes of future possibilities, too, that stirred her soul - standing victorious over a fanged monster, embracing a cloaked stranger beneath a full moon.

The dreams no longer frightened but fascinated her. Amina spent hours replaying snippets, teasing out meanings from fragments. She felt certain these were pieces of a greater mosaic, clues to understanding her strange nature.

But some visions unsettled her more than others. In her trances, Amina began glimpsing robed figures moving through twisting catacombs, faces hidden within cowls as they chanted over a bound figure on an altar. No matter how she focused, the details remained obscure - but she sensed a dark purpose to their ritual that filled her with unease.

These followers of some sinister entity were familiar to her soul, though she couldn't place how. And she knew, deep down, their machinations were somehow connected to her own unfolding destiny.

The nights Amina dreamed of them, she would wake in a cold sweat, clutching her hematite for comfort against nameless fears. Something told her those robed ones were creeping ever closer, drawn to her like moths to a flame. And when the time came to face them at last, she must be prepared for whatever grim revelation awaited.