Her Samsara

Chapter Eighteen

Tonya hadn't spoken to Vish for over two weeks now. She desperately missed him, but she knew she couldn't do what he wanted.

She didn't even know how to do what Rupa asked her, and if she did... Well, that would be accepting that the Samsara were real.

With millions of babies across the world born with the virus, her school - like all the schools in the country- remained shut, hospitals were overrun, flights were cancelled, and a lockdown was declared in most countries across the world.

Tonya's grandad was buried in the same wooded forest that Tonya has first heard Tamashi's voice.

As always, the weather was unrelenting. Winds howled and rain loudly beat against his coffin as his body was lowered into the ground.

Tonya tried to block them out, but the Samsara were all around her at the funeral. The graveyard was alive with voices in the wind.

Tamashi's was the loudest, begging her to listen, begging her to help, begging her to at least try. It was as if she was constantly surrounded by a crowd, a gang of voices that were overwhelmingly trying to make her do something, never leaving her alone, not even at her grandad's funeral.

After the funeral Tonya went to bed early. She drifted off to sleep to the sound of her mum's TV show in the background. Yet it was a strange type of sleep, for as she began to drift off she felt the oddest tingling through her body.

She became aware quite quickly that she was somewhere between being awake and asleep, lingering in that middle ground.

Her mind was floating with the idea of sleep but she could still sense the pillow under her head and the duvet wrapped around her body. It was in this moment that she began sinking through the softness.

She was so startled by the sensation that she instinctively clasped the sheets tightly in her hands, fighting her brain, trying to gain some sort of control. She fought the feeling, telling herself she wasn't falling, that it was just a dream.

She looked down at her arms and legs and noticed she was covered in some sort of rising clear fluid. It was thicker than water, like a solution.

Suddenly she was sinking further into it, drowning in it. She had a terrifying thought that she was dyeing. She gasped for breath, relieved to feel air in her lungs.

She tried to think about something that connected her back to Earth. She thought of the time she first met Vish in the caf' by the seaside.

She thought of their first ever conversation and imagined Vish spinning his helmet proudly on the table with the words "Three wings, three claws" scratched into the paintwork. They both knew the song from a film they had both watched as children. She recalled a memory from her childhood, snuggled on the sofa with her dad watching the movie.

It was about a little bird who was born shaped like a triangle. He was ashamed of being different, but throughout the film he learnt all the things that triangle birds could do that others couldn't, things that made him special. She sang the lyrics out loud. "I am a triangle bird, three wings, three claws, strange they say, yet I'm sure I could scratch my name into the sky, if only I knew how to try."

Her mind conjured a silver thread hanging above her. She grabbed hold of it and a warm flow of relief seeped through her as she returned to her body and fell into a deep sleep.

When she woke up she knew what had happened and she knew she could do it again, that she couldn't ignore how it had felt, the feeling of her mind separating from her body. It had felt real, she couldn't deny it. All of this felt real. So, for the first time in weeks she got out her phone and text Vish.