FOR AS LONG AS I COULD remember, I had been partial to the wind—that evergreen and eerie force of nature. I did not know if it was a good thing or not, for while the wind was always there, caressing everyone's cheeks, it still had no one to return the kind gesture. It was always there, in the background, like the lame reality shows I put on TV to keep me company at midnight, knowing everyone's secrets but having no one to get to know its secrets in return.
Nevertheless, there was something deeper than serenity settling in me as I hovered by the open window of the hotel room, staring out at the forest. The zephyr blew gently, and I clung tightly to the present moment, embracing the peace that came with it.
Jasmine and I had returned to the hotel almost an hour ago. I had not been in the mood to go to the club by myself, so I had chosen six hours of undisturbed sleep over a night of mingling with strangers. Jersen had been in the bathroom, struggling to create a portal to the Gap World, his face flushed with effort and rage and despair. But no matter how hard he tried, there were no sparks flying around the room.
Traditionally, opening portals was something that only those who possessed the power of water could do. Jersen's magic was made of howling wind—the magic of the healers. He had still mastered the art of opening portals to other lands through sheer determination and practice. He had been working on it for two decades before he had actually achieved it. But the energy he needed to open a portal was now almost depleted. Not completely, though. He could still use parts of his magic to open portals to nearby destinations. Opening a portal to another universe was a completely different thing—and the only thing he wanted.
He had gone to bed shortly after the tenth failure. I had done the same.
Yet my languorous breaths turned heavy righy when I was on the brink of drifting into the mystical land of dreams. It was a vision that had me clasping the bedsheets and gasping for air. A vision of my childhood friend, Denfer, who still lived in the Gap World; a vision of him and I sitting on the front porch of his countryside home, engrossed in conversation, just like the old days. The vision vanished as quickly as it had arrived, but it left me restless nonetheless. How could I calm the wavy ocean stirring within my soul? I did not know.
I could only think of Denfer and how he had always been the one I looked up to. He was calm and strong, never begging for mercy, always trying his hardest, yet still loving so deeply, carrying around an open heart for all who needed it, even when his own bore wounds. Meanwhile, I found myself secretly judging Jasmine for being out there, partying and dancing, when her mother was buried six feet underneath the ground. How could someone thrive when they were responsible for so much pain and suffering? Had it not cost her anything?
And behind all that lay the evergreen question: had I meant nothing to my mother as well? Had that been the reason she had handed me out to a poor family with anger issues? I had never met her, never spoken to her. And that's what drove me to the edge of insanity. Had she never cared enough to want to know how I was doing? It should not have surprised me, though. Loneliness and I had become trusted friends since childhood. Thankfully, Denfer had been kind enough to introduce me to his own group of friends, making me feel like I was one of them until I had actually become one of them. He had never let me go.
Yet, despite all of this, I found myself giving up on Jasmine—on the woman who had been wild enough to help me on that rainy night in Toronto. Looking down on the woman who had rushed to my aid when I lay on the ground, choking on my own blood. She shielded my busted head with her body, held my hand, waited until the ambulance arrived, and still sometimes I thought of her as heartless.
Maybe I was the heartless one after all.
When her phone had buzzed in the hotel bar, it had captured my attention. I could not help but fixate on the lock screen, on that selfie of her and her mother being happy. Truly happy. Now, one was dead and one was barely surviving. Life was cruel, and sometimes the realization made me not want to be part of it.
What I also did not want to be part of was that group of people that loathed Jasmine for moving on after her mother's tragic murder. At first, I had mistaken her actions for emotional coldness. Looking at it now, I could only see it as an attempt to maintain a normal life, a life that would take her mind off the grief. She had not wanted to erase the past or move on. If that was what she had wanted to do, she would not have chosen that picture for her lock screen. So . . . no. She did not want to forget. She just wanted to focus on the happiness, the joy, the love she had witnessed. And how could I fault her for that?
After all, Denfer had been right. You could get through times of immense aching only by opening your heart to the world. That way the love, the light, the healing you so much needed would find enough space to grow up out of the charred ground. Yet how could I open my heart to a world that had rejected it?
My phone buzzed, setting the darkened room on neon fire. Jersen stirred in his sleep. Pacing across the wooden floor, I tried to find where I had left my phone.
"It's on the nightstand," Jersen huffed from underneath the bedsheets.
He was right.
"Thanks," I whispered and tried my best to be silent as I snuck out of the room to the small balcony.
I did not know why I had not come here from the very beginning. The darkness was soothing, the nightingales hiding in the large oak trees were the sweetest lullaby and the mountains looming overhead reminded me of my homeland. It was in moments like these that I missed the Gap World the most. It was in these frail moments of stillness, when I did not have anything to do that my mind found the freedom to travel back in time. Not that it did me any good . . .
I opened the phone.
Messenger: User Jasmine has sent you a video.
It was panic, the feeling that rushed in my body as I realized what had just happened. I had not received a message from anyone—except work—in over a month, so that was unexpected. And I did not know how to react, what to do, how to allow myself to taste the sweet flavor of joy when it would soon end, when I would do something wrong, make a mistake and ruin everything. I knew exactly how it would go. The fireworks would light up the sky. Then, they would burn the whole forest to ashes.
I was overthinking it.
I clicked on the notification. And there it was, staring back at me, the first message ever exchanged between Jasmine and me. It was that video she had taken of me dancing on the street like some drugged idiot. It had happened before we encountered those girls, before we decided to return to the hotel. It had happened when everything was chill, the sound of her laughter in the background testifying to that.
I typed a quick reply.
ABEL: I know what your next threat is going to sound like.
Her response appeared immediately. I did not even have time to exit the chat.
JASMINE: Do tell!
ABEL: You do one of your idiotic shit again and this video goes viral.
JASMINE: Thanks for the inspiration (I needed it for my prank).
She said nothing more. I waited and waited, then waited some more. I should have come up with something interesting to reply, but there was that emptiness in my head that rendered me unable to think of anything else but my homeland. Not that I had missed being there. It was not like that at all. It was more like fear. Fear that Earth would turn out to be the same as the Gap World; fear that if I loved it here, I would soon be presented with all the reasons I should not.
My phone chimed again.
JASMINE: Goodnight xx.
My chest tightened. What the hell was wrong with me?
I did not reply. I was not ready to leave my cave. Not yet. Not when what awaited outside could be worse than what lay within.
Could a flower wilt and bloom at the same time? Because I certainly felt like it.
🪁
The next day I woke up two hours after dawn and found Austin in the corridor outside his hotel room, yawning. He was heading to get himself a cup of iced coffee, and since I was about to do the same, we drove to the closest coffee shop together. He was kind enough to buy coffees for the others, but not so kind as to pay for mine. It did not matter.
Afterward, all of us made our way to the airport, bound for New York. After waiting a few miserable hours in the airport bar and then aimlessly wandering around the few shops there, the time had come for us to board the flight. Jersen had not join us. Well, he was not a legal citizen, so he could not come with us. He would open a portal and come to New York on his own. A reckless magician operating with secrecy in a world that denied magic's existence.
"I wouldn't guess you were the type to get all anxious when it comes to flying," I said when I noticed Austin next to me taking deep breaths. In and out. Out and in.
"We barely know each other," he replied, closing his eyes to focus on his breathing.
I nudged him in the shoulder, not falling for the annoyed look on his face. "Nothing bad will happen if you relax, I promise."
"And what if it does?"
"We'll think about it when it happens, if it happens, which won't happen."
He laughed, and after that we did not exchange a word. That was okay with me. There was that burgeoning elation taking hold of me that made everything else seem of little importance. It was as if I could slide smoothly from the harbor, without worrying about going missing at the sea. It was as if a new world of possibilities had unveiled itself to me—and all that just because of last night's events.
Could a lone wolf find a pack? Was I allowed to be excited about something that I knew was going to end badly? I did not know. But it tasted good. It tasted so damn good.
🪁🪁