Guardian

Prologue - Worlds Crashing

 Rain beat down on the roof and Dylan sat there, staring at his hands, listening to Rose groan in pain beside him. Summer, and she was about to give birth. 

Birth to his child. 

He should have been happy. Somehow though, since Amelia had died, he couldn't remember how that felt. He remembered regret, self-loathing, he blamed himself competely for her suicide. The few times he'd tried to sleep with Rose he couldn't do it. He tried hard but ...

Amelia had done it because of him.

He'd thought that if he stayed friends, he was doing it for her. He was protecting her from herself. Dylan knew he'd been kidding himself now. Truth was, he was doing it for himself. He still loved her. She'd clung too hard and he'd gotten scared. Then when she backed off he'd missed her.

All he could think, as Rose struggled with another contraction, that if he hadn't ... if he'd accepted it, the night he'd slept with her at the engagement celebration, she might have been here. Accepted that it was Amelia he'd cared for. This would be her giving birth. 

"Why aren't you looking at me?"

Dylan glanced up at Rose, smiling a weak smile, trying to be strong for her. He'd already made up his mind that this was over. That was how she'd gone into labor. He'd told her and ...well, stress. Bad timing. He was never good with timing.

"I'm not sure how to help." He admitted. Again, Amelia sprung to mind, not Rose. What he'd do if it was Amelia.

Dylan stood up and went to stand at the window. The thunder was unusually strong. He'd never seen so many flashes, so many strikes on the towers around the city, and he flinched as one came far too close. His hair stood up on the back of his arms as he watched it go on, and on, and on, this 'crack, crack, crack, crack'...

 A sudden burst of thunder woke Amelia from the dream about Dylan, hitting the ruins, and while it did no damage the sound of it echoed around the landscape around her and scared her silly. She stood up fast and stared outside the window down at the thunderstorm. It'd been coming for some time, for several weeks now, and apparently now it finally found her.

So had an island.

She stared at the island in the middle of her ocean. Had she created this island? When? Amelia knew things happened here that she might have subconciously created but this felt different. It felt like someone else was floating in through her world. Large pine trees covered it. Or were they red ...what did Americans call them? Red trees. Red something.  Red wood? It didn't seem right. She could picture the trees, these giant majestic trees, and somehow 'Red wood' didn't fit.

Amelia wasn't sure what that meant. Someone elses island floating in the middle of her ocean. It was floating too, she saw, it was only half a kilometre from her and it was bobbing up and down gently with the waves. She wondered if it'd crash into her beach. Amelia hoped not. She was half tempted to secure it there with stones.

"Apollo?"

He must have been busy. Or he was cranky again, Amelia wasn't sure, she'd spent the past few weeks flirting, and teasing, and using her 'past life' knowedge of him to screw with his head. Maybe that was petty and childish but ... but now that Amelia knew about it, it was clear why it'd been so obvious to everyone around who she'd been.

Amelia heard something and went to one of the other windows, pushing the bed up into the folded position, and gawked as a forest literally bled across her desert. Shoving it back, dirt and sand and grass being scooped up like that world was a bulldozer scraping it back. What the hell? This wasn't the same one as the 'floating island'. This was competely different. This was a second person's world.

Now she'd had enough. As fast as she could, she 'willed' walls to grow, and they grew fast. Amelia's instruments still had yet to repair- they were regrowing slowly, the harp had two strings finished, the violin one- but she found she could get the world to grow things for her when she was here.

The wall did manage to keep the 'forest' from spreading too close, and giant ancient volcanoic rocks shot up around the island as it threatened to bob closer, pinning it in position. It was narrow but long. Really long. The two rocks at the front actually made the floating island turn, as if it was spinning around, and Amelia saw that it went on for miles and miles into the horizon. She stuck rocks on either side of it, into the dirt of it, making sure it wasn't able to float any closer to her beach. 

The sound of horses came from the other side of the wall, a high pitched whinny, the wheels of a chariot. 

Amelia watched susiciopsuly, protective over her growing stomach as she saw something happen to her wall, an arch cut through it. Charged through it? The horses pulling a chariot ltierally just charged through the stone and cut a arch through it.

It was Artemis. Amelia couldn't see her expression of her face, but she knew that woman anywhere. Artemis's world and her forest. Amelia had never seen it before. 

Artemis must have caught sight of Amelia's giant mushroom because the chariot turned and headed in Amelia's direction. As she rode, a path sprung up under her, a smooth cobblestone road that cut through grass and bush.

Artemis looked about as shocked as Amelia felt.

"Amelia, this is your world?" She called as she pulled the horses up. "How did we do this?"

"I was going to ask you." Amelia jumped down the stairs and hurried down off the pier onto the land. "That island appeared too."

"Is that yours?"

"No." 

The two of them stared around as the thunderstorm raged over their heads, lighting bolts striking almost everything that wasn't them. Amelia saw several deer run through the archway Artemis had created, other animals, vanishing into Amelia's clearer fields and land. Something surfaced near the island, a puff of vaopr, and she saw the back of a massive whale go past. Not one she'd seen before.

"That's Apollo's island."

"He lives on an island?"

"Yes." Artemis nodded. "Not that you'd know from the middle. Look, there's your fig tree." She pointed at it, way off in the distance, this giant tree that Amelia could still see from miles away. "We're merging. How in Hades did we manage this?"

"What's Sol's world like?"

"I've never seen it. Why?"

"I'm just worried we'll crash into that too." Amelia was heading up into the ruins, Artemis close behind, and she stared out at the lands. The ruins were elevated enough above everything for her to see miles over them. 

"Crash? That's the perfect way to put it. We've crashed into each other. We better go into the City to speak to the ancients." Artemis inhaled sharply. Her eyes had noticed it before Amelia did, set out against a distant fog, and she pointed. "Or we could walk."

"Walk?" Amelia tried to see what Artemis was pointing at.

Pyramids. A skyscraper. Temples. Miles and miles away, yes, but there it all was. Beyond great lands of ice, of snow, lakes, oceans, dozens upon dozens of other worlds crashed into each other between Amelia's world and the City. Mountians, valleys, towns, even a land that looked like it was lava and brimstone. The two of them turned around, jumping as the island crashed into the beach, the rocks having apparently just been brushed aside. It crashed so hard, that water flew up, trees got knocked down, Amelia and Artemis getting thrown to the ground.

Pain coursed through Amelia, real geninue pain, and she stared in shock at the cut down one hand where it had gotten cut on a sharp rock in her ruins. 

"I'm bleeding, Artemis." Amelia stood up again, slowly, legs shaking. Everything hurt. She hurried to the edge where Apollo's island had crashed into her beach. Now there was two beaches side by side and the sand was pushed up between them. Trees had fallen in his world. Amelia even saw the remains of her old home, regrowing slowly, tipped to the side now.  "Why am I bleeding? I thought there's no pain here."

"Everyone's collided." Artemis breathed out slowly. "Amelia, we've all crashed. I don't know what's happened."