Mia's POV
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The sound of stone scraping against stone and earth fills my ears as the towering portion of the wall surrounding Bhailewood opens up, just as it did when I first came here. I was on the other side of the doors back then. I glance over at the four older elves. They all look no older than 30, but there's no way of knowing with elves. A few of them catch my gaze and give me, like everyone else has been, a reassuring nod. I give a tight smile in return.
"Good luck, be safe," Rose says to us all. The four older elves bow slightly. I nod at her.
The doors open fully, and like we're just walking off on a hike, we head out. I tell myself to calm down many times over as we leave the stone walls behind us and walk over the snow into the woods. I don't know why I'm getting so worked up over leaving. Probably because I've been in Bhailewood for the last two-ish months, this is a mission, so to speak, and we have to get the stone. We have to.
I resist the urge to look back as we enter the woods, heading to the river.
"What was it you told me this was going to be earlier?" Knox says as we walk, snow crunching underfoot. "Easy something..."
"Easy peasy," I finish, smiling and looking over at him. Knox smiles and looks at the ground.
"Right. Easy peasy."
-
Most of the walk is uneventful, and the ember stones keep us all warm even though it is pretty warm today, maybe 35 or 40? Which is warm for Earthe winter. I don't hear any birds or anything, and Knox stays quiet. When I glance at him he's staring at nothing in particular, so I decide to leave him to his thoughts and preoccupy myself by thinking about what could happen after we get the Heartstone.
If we get it easily, which we will, all that does is prevent the Cin from getting it, right? The war is going to happen because we won't tell them where the stone is. And they want to gain the power of both worlds. So once we get the stone and come back, then what? We tell the Cin we have it? That sounds dumb. Would we somehow use the stone's power to destroy the Cin? All of them? I haven't been around elves too much, but they don't strike me as the type to solve a problem by genocide. So what would we do? Force them to surrender? Even then-
Okay, stop. Preoccupy yourself with something else. That train of thoughts is starting to make my head spin.
I pucker my lips and blow out a surprised breath as a chilling breeze hits us out of nowhere. We must be closer to the river than I thought.
My last train of thought leads me to another. If the Cin want the Heartstone, and made a meeting with me just so I could tell them where the Heartstone is, wouldn't that mean the Cin don't know at all where it is? Or they were just doing that to make me feel like a traitor no matter what I chose, but that doesn't seem like their style. So that means they want the stone, but don't know where it is. So how would they get a head start on finding where it is if they're so eager to get it?
"Oh my god," I whisper, almost smacking myself in the forehead. How could I not have thought of this before? The Cin have one easy path to find the stone. To follow us.
"Knox-" I start, but I'm cut off as the world blurs and I end up on the ground, my face smacking the snow. With a groan, I quickly push myself up, my head on a swivel, my face throbbing. Four Cin, noticeable by their black hair, are around us, fighting the four older elves on our team. Knox is double teaming one of the elves, and when I look behind me I notice an arrow stuck in a tree. Knox must've pushed me down so I didn't get skewered. My heart races with adrenaline at the thought that I could have died that easily, that quickly. Quickly refocusing on the issue at hand, I see one of our elves drop to the ground, unmoving. Red leaks into the snow below him.
Swallowing the storm of fear churning in my stomach, I race to the Cin fighting Knox. Knox has his long knives in his hands, slashing at the enemies fighting him. I sneak up behind and jump, slamming into a wall of muscle, wrapping my arm around the Cin's throat and squeezing. My feet are just barely touching the ground, he's so tall, but I stay locked on, gritting my teeth. With a grunt, the man spins, trying to shake me off, even trying to stab at me with his knives- each near miss has me nearly screaming- but Knox quickly disarms him. After a painfully long but probably short time, the elf stops moving. Not dead, just knocked out. His body slumps to the ground, and I look down at him, wondering what I would be feeling if I had killed him. I gulp, not wanting to think about that right now.
Suddenly I feel a strong grip on my arm, and before I know it I'm flying back, slamming into a tree back-first. I collapse to the ground, my spine in searing pain. Gasping to try to regain my breath, I notice a second of our team is down. I don't even get time to fight the Cin who threw me, however, because one of the older elves comes and with a flash of a blade, the Cin drops to the ground. The two remaining Cin pull out bows and start firing off arrows in our direction.
"Just get to the river!" Clolas, the adult elf with brown hair yells. The blond-haired adult, Rhydell, sprints to the river that is now almost in sight, pulling out a transport stone.
Thigh muscles burning, I push myself up just as Knox runs by me, catching my sleeve and forcing me to sprint along with him. Every few seconds I duck, weave, or move my head as I hear the arrow zipping through the air towards me, and I hone into my elven peripheral vision to spot the remaining Cin following us.
The river is, surprisingly, not completely frozen over, just small chunks of ice piling up by the shore and floating lazily in the current. Snow still coats the ground, making everything white and a little too bright for my liking, with the sunlight bouncing off every inch of the ground. When we reach the river bank we are all immediately blasted with ice cold air whipping down the winding water.
I watch as a stone soars through the air and hits the river with a tiny plop, before exploding into a whirlpool of green, pale light.
Well this feels familiar. Deja-vu rolls over me like a tidal wave, of when I first jumped with Knox to get away from the Cin. Before I knew what I was.
I don't need anyone to tell me to jump this time. I'm the first in, crossing my arms over my body like I'm about to go down a water slide. I hear the others jumping behind me, and the yells of the two Cin.
When I hit the whirlpool, green light surrounds me. Then I see something fall in the whirlpool next to me.
A black stone.
The sounds overhead muffle. The black stone glows, then it explodes with light that's painful to look at.
Everything disappears.
-
The blare of a car horn hits me for the first time in two months and I startle, scrambling to my feet. Knox, Rhydell, and Clolas are lying on the pavement, slowly waking up. I look around frantically, and see no Cin.
We are in an old parking lot by the looks of it, with no snow as far as I can see. Weird. There is snow in my town in the winter. Did it all get rained out?
Every few feet a crack runs through the dry pavement, moss and dead grass poking out. Trees surround a chain link fence around the lot, and beyond the trees I can see an ordinary road with suburban houses, cloudy skies with a cool breeze. The chatter of people fills my ears, and I pick up on a few conversations of people on the sidewalks a few yards past the trees.
"I called her earlier, she said she...."
"....What I want, I don't know...."
"...We're in San Francisco, mom...."
"...It's only 2:30..."
Oh my god.
Something catches my eye. The transport stone. There are three transport stones- probably belonging to the three elves here- on the ground. Next to them is that black stone, looking normal as ever, but the green transport stone looks dull, dead almost. I walk towards it, and notice that the black stone is shaking. Me, not being an idiot, immediately step away, and find myself bumping into someone. Turning around, I see Knox, luckily still in his human attire. I also realize, with relief, that none of us are covered in blood or dirt.
"What is that? The black stone I mean," I ask. Knox opens his mouth to answer, but suddenly the black stone erupts into a mini explosion, sending grey dust and shards of stone flying. I turn my face away, shielding it with my hands.
"What the..." I hear Knox murmur in elvish. I gasp when I see that all that remains of our transport stones are tiny shards on the ground. Then, to my confusion, the shards melt away like snow in the sun, like liquid stone, seeping into the cracks in the pavement, leaving no trace of anything being there at all.
"What was that?" I ask again as I shed my winter coat. It feels about 50 or 60 degrees here, which is hotter than I've felt in months. I'm sweating with all my layers.
"I think some kind of transport stone with magic in it," Rhydell explains. "Dark magic. It sent us somewhere else."
"San Francisco," I say, swallowing the panic rising in my throat faster than high tide. "We're in San Francisco. We're four hours drive away from where I live. And it's 2:30. How? It was only 11 when we left Earthe."
"That black stone must've held us in between for a while." When Knox sees my reaction, he adds, "there is an in-between, between worlds. If something goes wrong, there is a possibility of getting stuck there. We must've gotten stuck for a few hours. Even though it only felt like a few seconds."
"Weird," I say absently, trying to remember the feeling of being in between our two worlds. It's like a dream, it is harder and harder to remember the longer you stray away from it.
"But why would they do that, why would the Cin attack us? Wouldn't they want to follow us to the stone?"
"They were probably trying to dwindle our numbers, make us easier targets," Clolas says in English, his accent heavy.
Tears of anger bite at the corners of my eyes.
They succeeded in that.
The mission had barely even started, and I already feel like I failed.
"How are we gonna get to my town?" I ask incredulously. How are we going to get there in less than a week with no cash, that is.
"Four hours isn't that bad, we can just rent a car," Knox suggests. He pulls out a wad of cash. "My mother gave me some human money."
I sigh in relief at that as Knox hands the money to me, and I shuffle through. Rhydell and Clolas watch the money as if they've never seen a dollar bill before. Well, they probably haven't, except in books.
"We only have $300, how did-" I cut myself off and shake my head before I insult Rose. It's not her fault, she probably doesn't know that money worth is different than the 1900s. She should, but I can't blame her. Time goes by fast for elves considering they live forever, and I can't imagine Rose visits Earth too often.
"Okay, we can rent one- wait, no we can't. None of us have drivers licenses, and I don't have a credit card. I don't know how to do any of that, it's too complicated. Let's..." I run a hand over my face in frustration. "Let's just take a bus. We need to find a map, or some place that can tell us bus routes."
With that I start walking to the gate of the fence surrounding the parking lot, the rest of the group behind me. This is a whole new world for them, so I definitely have to take the lead on this one. Elves are smart and adaptable, but for now I need to steer us all in the right directions.
When we come out onto the sidewalk, we find ourselves in a park filled with midday travelers, homeless people sitting on benches, people walking and running, birds flying around, and trash strewn occasionally the ground.
"Just follow me," I mutter as I walk down the path through the small park, hoping to look confident, like I've lived here my whole life. With all of the elven training under my belt, I feel pretty powerful back on Earth. I walk with my shoulders back and purpose in my strides.
It's a miracle that at the other end of the park is a little old shack labeled 'visitors center.' And by little, I mean little.
I push open the old wooden door and a tiny, dingy bell gives a ring. The four of us take up almost the whole place. Every wall is filled with pamphlets, papers, books, key chains, souvenirs, anything you could imagine as a tiny, stupid trinket to take home with the words 'San Francisco' on it. The paint on the walls is clearly old, and the ceilings remind me of the cheap ones at every school ever. The smell of cleaning supplies and stale cigarettes fill my nose. I can practically feel the elves behind me cringing.
"Ew," Rhydell whispers as he turns in a full circle to look around. I chuckle, nodding.
"Can I help you folks?" A voice peeps. An old woman shuffles out of a back door to behind the cash register, her face crinkling in a smile and her necklaces jingling with every move. My eyes flick over to a laminated map pinned to a tack-board by the door. We're almost right on the center of San Francisco on the map.
I smile and ask the old lady if there are any public transportation buses going to my hometown. The lady nods and taps at her IPad a few times with her finger.
"Yes, there are a few. The quickest is four hours, it leaves in... One hour at a stop by here..." She points to a spot on the map she pulled up on her IPad. I laugh to myself. Of course it's by an In N Out burger.
"Thank you," I respond sweetly, buying a few chip bags and water bottles before exiting the store, giving our food and water to the three elves.
"Okay..." I say, pulling out my phone from my pocket, which I remembered to bring. It's fully charged, and when I type in my password is actually opens. I almost scream in excitement, and then I'm frozen. For a minute, all I can do is stare at my apps, my notifications- Snapchat, Instagram, Imessage, all with a million notifications. My old life is all here. My friends have probably been texting me. My eyes move to the Imessage button, and I know my mom has texted me in there somewhere. My face feels hot, but I push the tears away, like I'm used to doing, and scroll through my pages, finding maps and plugging in the route from here to the In-N-Out where the bus stop is. I clench the screen to keep my hand from shaking.
It takes quite literally everything in me to press 'go,' shut off my phone, and let it talk to me. Everything in me not to go open Snapchat and see what I missed. I close my eyes for a second, letting all the of Earth's noises seep into my pores, letting Siri's toneless voice tell me to turn left. I wince as a car horn blares, and for a second all of the overlapping noises- the cars, music, the wind, people walking, dogs barking, and new sounds I can now hear with my sharpened senses- individual conversations, radio stations, the sizzling of a pizza baking in an oven somewhere- it's almost too much. My stomach rolls at all the sensations being shoved into my head. I can't imagine the others, who have never been here before.
In Earthe everything was quieter, there wasn't all this crazy commotion everywhere. My eyes snap open as I let out a sharp breath, trying to temporarily shut down my elf senses, or at least dilute them. It works, thank god. I feel normal again.
Well. 'Normal' is a relative term.
My phone shines in my hand, sunlight glaring off of the lit screen.
It's a lot harder than I thought it would be to ignore my life now that I'm here. I want nothing more than to collapse on a bench and scroll through social media for hours, to bury my head in the sand and forget all about Earthe. But I can't do that.
I feel a hand on my shoulder, and my eyes nearly well up with tears again.
Pull yourself together.
Knox must know how I'm feeling, because when I open my eyes he gives me an understanding look, not one of pity, which I'm endlessly grateful for.
I nod to him and we all head left.
Thanks siri. I also don't promise that I won't stop at that In-N-Out and get some food. I haven't had french fries in too long.
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Back in Earthe!! Anyone reading this from San Francisco? I've never been, the closest I've gone is to LA, which was pretty fun.
-Ave<3