World Of Beauty (Arula: Four)

Chapter 12

Everything happened so fast at that moment, that none of the companions had much to say as they rode back to Eon's home. What the nymph had said to Karma echoed through her head. War. The word gave her a shiver. She never even been in a war, a battle, but a war was something different, something huge. Something that Karma wish to avoid at all cost. Then something else struck her. The message that she gave to Jason. She looked over at Jason, who rode silently beside her, wrapped up in a blanket trying to stay warm.

"What decision did you decide to make?" Karma asked Jason, and he jumped at the sound of her voice. He even seemed startled at the question, as if he wished that she had never even asked the it.

"Oh-oh, th-that!" He stammered, not from being nervous, but from being cold. He hated being cold. Jason took a long moment to collect his thoughts, and which made Karma even more curious to know what it was. Even Mika and Dagner was curious themselves but didn't express it. They leaned forward waiting for the answer. "It was just..." Jason started. "...That if there even a way for me to get back to Earth, or the Otherworld as you people call it, that I wouldn't take it. I would choose to stay here... to-to... help you." This time his stammering came from nervousness not from the cold, but nobody seem notice.

"You mean," Karma said, "that even if I end up finding some type of way to get you back home, you wouldn't take?" Jason shook his head.

"No." That took Karma by surprise. Everything that she put him through, stranded him in her world, nearly putting him in harm's way and keeping him way from his family and friends, he wanted to stay. Why? To help her?

"But even after when you're done helping me, what then? You would still stay?" Jason took in a deep breath and nodded.

"Yeah, I would stay."

"Why?" Jason looked at her in the eyes in said,

"Because your world is beautiful, and it's way better than going back to Earth where I would stay and study to be something that I don't even want to be." And the was part of the truth. He did like Arula and thought it was beautiful world. It not that he didn't like Earth, but the pressures that weighed on him, it was unescapable.

"And what was that?" Karma asked and Jason snorted.

"A lawyer." He said and Karma smiled.

"I feel you on that. My parents wanted me to be a doctor or nurse. So I let them think that's what I was going for. I even told that I got accepted into a college far into state," Karma took a deep breath, knowing that she telling her whole life story. "But what they didn't know is that I didn't get into any college. So, when the fall semester came rolling around and I was 'going to college', I made a plan to ditch my car somewhere and go to Arula to live."

Karma felt very vulnerable at that moment of telling Jason everything. "Arula is my escape world. And I planned on ditching my birth world and coming here to live out the rest of my life. I even left a note for my family... I don't know if they ever found it. I was in such a rush to come here to stop Termis that I didn't have the time to stop and say goodbye to them." Karma sighed.

Jason gave Karma a look that was mixture of shock and sympathy. He was told of the story about Termis and how Karma gave up her only portal that led back to the Otherworld to her brother and sister so that they wouldn't be stuck in this world, but little did she know that Jason would find his way here as well. And now, they were both stuck here. "My mom wanted me to a lawyer, to put the bad guys away and give the innocent back their rights. If you want my opinion, I think she really wanted me to lawyer because my father was criminal, and he ditched his family to go and commit more crimes."

Now it was Karma turn to give him a sympathetic look. They both lived lives being told what to do and being down casted by their peers. Outcasts is the word that rang in Karma's head. "Well then, Jason, I'm glad to have you here with me." Behind them, Mika and Dagner gave each other knowing looks. Knowing their dear friend who rarely ever tells anyone of her inner thoughts.

Looking down, Mika felt something stirred inside of her satchel. A small furry head of a saber-tooth ferret poked its way out of the flaps of the satchel. Shari has been staying his time inside the nice warm satchel taking a well-deserved nap.

The ferret wiggled it's out of the satchel and made its way over to Mika's lap, curling up in a small furry ball. "There you are," Mika said to the ferret. "I was wondering when you going to show up." Shari only answered with a yawn before settling back down for a nap.