The Hollow

Lithuania and Marco had drifted back into sleep, recovering from their journey. isa was the first to notice them. She woke early because of the dream, again. This was the third time she had the dream but she hadn’t told winfry about it yet. It was going to happen soon, now that Marco was here and she was ready for her part. Surprisingly she was ready. But she wasn’t sure about winfry.

isa leaned over and whispered winfry awake. “Look who’s arrived.”

winfry rubbed out the crusts from his eyes and squinted in the direction isa was pointing. “Oh my–”

“Shhh. Don’t wake the rest of the camp.”

“Sorry. So she did it.”

“Yes.”

For a moment they just sat with dawn cracking out of the opaque and watched the recently reunited couple wrapped up with one another. They both noticed the strange almost scars that went around the third finger on the resting couple’s hands but they didn’t say anything.

Finally, isa said, “You know where you have to take them. Don’t you winfry?”

He didn’t say anything. But isa would know that enough time would pry out a response. So she waited.

“I… I don’t think it’s time for that. They aren’t ready.”

“Yes, it is time. winfry, you are ready. Trust yourself.”

Silence sat with them for the rest of the sunrise, each absorbed by their thoughts.

Eventually someone else woke up and discovered Marco and silence fled. The camp was all sorts of commotion and reunions but isa and winfry were still too preoccupied with they own musings to get much involved. Finally the excitement burned down and Marco was given an update on the situation.

“So what are we going to do now?” Marco unwittingly pulled the ten-ton gorilla’s tale and the company’s spirits sank.

Except for isa. “Follow winfry. Do whatever he tells you. He knows what to do.”

All eyes shifted to winfry, whose eyes shifted accusatorily to isa.

“Do you know what to do, winfry,” asked Marco.

After a pause. “Yes.”

“What are we going to do?” “How do you know?” “Did you see that bird again?” The harpies were at their questions again.

winfry snuck in a quick breath like he was going to offer a series of vague justifications and some downright excuses, but he stopped himself. “You know what. I’m going to go and if you want to stay here that’s fine with me” and winfry marched off with isa right beside him towards the tunnel that led out of geyser patch.

The rest of the company was a bit stunned but they all eventually gathered their things and followed winfry. And why was Felix smirking?

For the record, winfry always knew where they were going – he had seen it and its location in the librem – but he didn’t know how to get there. He did, however, have a plan for finding it: hope. Unfortunately, as he expected hope was never very timely and after circling the hill with the geysers and briars a few times, Estonia started complaining. winfry didn’t mind so much but it was starting to get to everyone else so he turned around.

“I know exactly where we are going but the place we want to find doesn’t want to be found, which is the whole point of us finding it.” And before the barrage of questions, he added, “and that’s all I’m going to say. I’m not making anyone follow me.” This time when winfry and isa continued Felix was right in step.

Finally there she was. hope, the bird, was on a rock but then she wasn’t. If winfry hadn’t been expecting her he would have thought he was just seeing things. So he walked off towards the rock and then she fluttered back into sight in the same place she had been. A second later she disappeared again. And of course no one else saw and they wanted to know why they had stopped.

“We are here. Well not here but we are at the entrance. We just have to figure out how to get in.”

winfry began to examine the rock but it appeared just like any of the other sizable boulders around the hill. He and isa both tried divining an opening but to know avail. Finally winfry went to sit down where he had seen the bird so that he could think for a bit but he fell through.

“Found it,” winfry called out. “You all need to come down here.” Somehow, whether it was magical or just some strange natural phenomenon, the rock hid an opening into a tunnel that lead the company into the center of the hill to a hollow right bellow the geyser patch.

The hollow was absolutely unworldly. The walls and floors glowed in swirls of yellow-orange with strange purple chemosynthetic plants. Throughout the circular alcove were alcoves with beds ready set and in the center of everything was a great table that seemed to grow out of the floor. While everyone else was still trying to get a grip on their awe, winfry went into a pantry like alcove and brought out a stone water jar and glasses. He set them on the table and poured wine for everyone.

“We need to drink this if we want to stay here,” which of course brought on a series of questions and skepticism, but Felix butted in.

Felix raised his glass, “We’ve been through a hell of a lot of trouble and now we are finally, finally having a bit of good luck. So how about we just enjoy it for now and just leave all the questions for later? To Lithuania and Marco, reunited at last!”

And so a celebration of sorts began.

When the wine had taken its effect and everyone was thinking about the alcove beds, Latvia asked winfry, “What is this place?”

“This is our home.”

The Delivery

The mnd (micro neural device) buzzed with infantile insistence like a gnat the snuck all the way in to right above his ear drum. It would be Jessica. But he couldn’t answer; the guards would hear and that would be devastating. No one, not Jessica, not anyone could know where he was. She wouldn’t approve. None of the others would approve.

Like always, this place was dark. He was hiding in a janitor’s closet waiting for the guards to finish their patrol but the corridor outside was dark too. The footsteps decrescendoed into nothing and martin counted to ten. Then he slipped down the hallway to another closet before yet another guard rounded by. Security measures in this section had tripled. Clearly the magistrate knew where it was going to happen. But the magistrate didn’t know everything. That’s why martin was there. He had something to deliver. But the others wouldn’t approve – not even Timoteo and especially not Jagesic.

While hiding in the second closet, martin probably thought about how Jessica was worrying unnecessarily about him. She was calling him again. All the disruption in his inner ear were making him nauseous and he wished he could answer but the guards were pacing by and he only had to leap frog two more closets. He would call her once he was done. Besides he was ready to step out. He could do it as soon as he finished. Timoteo was who she should be worried about. Timoteo told him how he had successfully infiltrated the mist lady’s troop but as a prisoner he didn’t have much mobility. Even with all of the information martin had gathered from the magistrate, Timoteo would have to pull out all of the stops to make it out.

Finally jacob reached the room. The table was right where it should be. martin bent down peering up at the underside of the metallic table. He pulled out a small thin box and stuck it to the bottom of the table. After checking its stability he attached a note. In just ten hours it would be waiting there for elizabeth. It was done.

martin easily reached the nearby back exit and slipped out. No one, no one at all, had noticed his presence. As he walked away from 257 e. mahogany, he rang for Jessica Bangs. He would see her on the other side.

Delilah

Turbulence.

She felt pressure on her face. Wind. Violent wind. Pellets of hail.

She couldn’t see.

She was grasping for the controls. “Marco!” she screamed.

Her world was spinning wildly. The swooshing sound of the helicopter blades mixed with the roar of thunder and raging wind rendered her screams inaudible. The aircraft had lost all power. They were going down.

“Mayday! Mayday!” she screamed. The sound of shattering glass was louder. Blocks of hail pounding against the windows, against the sides, against the blades.

She stretched her hand out next to her. She found him. She found Marco’s hand. She seized it, hoping to communicate in one final, desperate squeeze of the hand everything she had never had the courage to communicate aloud. She loved him.

Marco squeezed back, and she knew he loved her too.

An explosion. A surge of panic. A wave of fear. A sudden blast of blue, sparkling light.

And then blood. Blood everywhere. And the smell of burning flesh.

“MARCO!” Lithuania screamed, waking with a start. She was bathed in sweat, her chest heaving up and down as if she had actually just run a marathon for her life. She looked around, disoriented. It was a dream. It was just a dream. Oh thank God, it was just a dream.

But then… Lithuania noticed a faint, bluish glow emanating from her skin. Magical blue specks, rising off her like insects in the wind. Had she just…?

She rose to her feet. She was exactly where they had set up camp, within a small patch that had at some point in the past been cleared within the briar bush—but she was alone.

“Latvia?” Lithuania called into the darkness. “Estonia?” All was silent. She could hear her own breathing, slowing from the panic in which she had awoken to the tense anxiety she was in now. “Felix? Winfry, Isa any of you there?”

She reached for her flashlight, which she had left right next to her before going to sleep. It was gone. 

“Something interesting is happening,” came a voice. Lithuania whirled around, reaching instinctively for her gun holster. “Don’t be startled,” said the smoke woman, emerging slowly from the darkness of the briar bush. “I mean you no harm.”

“Where’s Timoteo?” Lithuania barked, whipping out her pistol and pointing it fixedly at the smoke woman’s face.

“Timo who?” said the woman, looking pleasantly confused. She chuckled. “I’m afraid we’ve never met before,” she said, perfectly oblivious of the gun pointed at her face. “What with our grand revelation and now the war, I’ve been having a slightly more difficult time keeping track of everyone who comes in and out of these parts…”

“Where are my friends?” Lithuania said angrily.

“So you brought more along with you, did you?” The woman looked surprised. “All I had any luck finding were corpses. Quite charred, at that.” Lithuania cocked her gun. She wasn’t going to tolerate any games. The smoke-woman laughed, heartily this time. “Clearly… Clearly you’re not from around here. Pointing a gun at me…. HA!” She outstretched her arm, and the pistol wrenched itself swiftly from Lithuania’s grasp and flew straight into hers.

Lithuania’s heart skipped a beat. “Who the hell are you?” she asked, her confidence faltering.

“They call me Delilah. Pleasure,” the smoke-woman said with false sweetness. “Now… you wouldn’t happen to be LithAnne Starr, would you?”

“Lithuania. Lithuania Starr. Officer of th—”

“Ah, Lithuania, is it? How amusing, the small differences… I see your name hasn’t significantly affected any path you’ve chosen to take in life…” Lithuania felt thoroughly confused. “But anyway… So, Lithuania. I believe you’ve come here to fetch something you lost, am I right?”

Lithuania only stared at Delilah, waiting for a clarification that was not coming. “I haven’t… lost…”

“Look around you Lithuania!” said Delilah, apparently relishing Lithuania’s ignorance. “This is not your world. Didn’t you see your skin—” Delilah shot a burst of black smoke from her fingertips at Lithuania, but the smoke just bounced off Lithuania’s skin, releasing the familiar burst of magical blue specks.

Lithuania rubbed her arm, startled by its sudden blue glow. “What the—”

Delilah burst into hysterical laughter. “This really is too much! You’re not going to tell me you don’t even have control over your—” She pursed her lips suddenly, aware that she must watch her words. “Well then, let me just tell you this. You know how you have this little… ability? Well you’ve just used it, and you’re not in your world. However, I think I know what’s brought you here.” Delilah clapped her hands just once, and in a burst of smoke, a man appeared on the floor, unconscious, wearing the uniform of the Foggistani Helo-Fleet.

 “Marco!” Lithuania cried, forgetting the world around her and rushing to his side. “Marco, wake up! It’s me…” She held his face in her hands and patted his cheeks gently. “Marco…”

He came to, slowly. Groggily. “Lith—Lithuania?” he mumbled. “Izzat you…?”

A wave of warmth, of stirred emotions, of relief mixed with happiness mixed with hope mixed with love—Lithuania felt like static was rushing up and down her bloodstream. It was him. It was really him. He was here. She wasn’t crazy. She had found him after all. “Lithuania…” said Marco, trying to focus on her face through the darkness. “Izzat really you…” he stroked her cheek, tenderly, squinting. “I thought you were… Oh God, I thought I’d lost you…”

Lithuania squeezed Marco’s hand, tenderly. She looked up, suddenly overcome with the urge to thank the smoke woman even though she believed her to be a villain. “Don’t thank me,” Delilah anticipated. “I know how these things work… and let’s just say… it’s uncomfortable for my world to house someone from your world for very long.” She winked. “Now, you both best be on your way, yes? Let me give you a hand.” She clapped her hands together, and a burst of black smoke suddenly enveloped Lithuania. Immediately, almost like an allergic reaction, Lithuania’s skin became bright blue—glowed brighter, brighter, brighter—an explosion of blue light and sparks—

And they were home.

Back in their proper world. Marco and Lithuania found themselves in the small clearing within the briar bush, with everyone else around them. Latvia, Estonia, Felix, Winfry and Isa, all there, all sound asleep. As if nothing had happened.

“Marco…” Lithuania whispered, tenderly. She held his head close to her chest as he finished coming to.

“What—Where are we?” he asked, dazed.

Lithuania smiled, giving his hand a warm squeeze. “Exactly where we’re supposed to be…” she said softly. She knew he knew what she meant. Or at least she knew he’d know, as soon as he woke up properly.

They were together.

And for the moment, that was all that mattered.