In Between

Chapter Six: The Stranded Sisters

"Where d-did you say we were ag-gain?" Bri asked through a series of hiccups that violently shook her slim frame.

After the world-altering revelation, she'd fallen into a bout of hysterical sobbing that lasted for several minutes until Kieran had managed to single-handedly calm her down enough to discern intelligible speech. Draven had attempted to assist him in this only to be spurned by more of Bri's distrustful glares. She seemed to automatically favor Kieran who she appeared to feel more comfortable placing her trust in—if only because they'd already previously met and more likely because Draven simply exuded the typical bad boy persona that was so intimidating. Bri treated him wariness as though she expected him to draw a knife and go for her throat.

"We're in a world called the Inbetween. It's a dimension where all other dimensions converge. Draven and I have lived here our entire lives," Kieran explained. He moved slowly towards her and took a cautious seat on the other end of the log she'd chosen to crouch on. Apryl was still lying on the ground, her unconscious form supported by her sister's legs.

"Converging dimensions? Are you people insane? This can't be possible..." Bri said, quick to spurt every cliché characteristic to total denial. She seemed to withdraw inside of herself, slowly entering a borderline catatonic stupor; her delicate eyelids trembled over deep-brown irises that stared, glazed and unseeing, into the darkest depths of the forest. Nevertheless, her pupils were inexplicably shrunken as if they could consciously constrict and reject this world's strange, alien light.

"How else can you explain this situation? You and your sister have been transported from a beach in Florida to a dark forest in a world where there is no sun." Kieran said blatantly, afraid that she would succumb to the self-inflicted miasma of denial and eventually to full-blown delusion. He wanted to at least prevent her from entertaining the kind of delusions that ensnared lost souls and drove their hosts to wander the Dark Forest as crazed as the other nonsensical wraiths who were rumored to roam the woods. Kieran personally felt that telling the blunt, unrefined truth was the best method for convincing the sisters of the situation's harsh reality.

Although the task could potentially prove daunting, Draven was not the type of person who would pander to anyone's hysterical fantasies (even in the case of a fragile, obviously traumatized, young woman in distress at his feet), and he wasn't above being as condescending as possible while similarly dealing out cold, hard truths. "Don't forget that you're projecting all of your thoughts," he reminded her. "I'm reading your mind right now, so I know that you're desperately trying to puzzle out a logical explanation for your predicament. Let me save you the trouble—it doesn't exist. Seriously, you should just accept that this is real and move on," Draven added, prompting an even colder look from Bri.

His patronizing tone succeeded in rekindling the animation in her eyes, sparking her temper to elicit a response. Bri made herself tall, as if to challenge Draven's words, only to visibly contain her emotions a moment later when she realized the truth in them. No one could say why the portal had disappeared or even why it had even been there in the first place. Bri and Apryl—two humans from Earth—were now an undeniable part of the Inbetween both physically and mentally.

Bri took a deep breath, opting to withhold whatever comment she would have fired back at Draven in favor of a calmer, more reasonable inquiry. "I'd like some more details. What was your purpose for coming to Earth in the first place? What was that...thing that transported us," Bri asked, waving a disdainful gesture in the general direction of the vanished portal, "and what can we do to get it back?" she added in a softer tone as if she didn't dare hope.