It was warm, the air was clean and full
of fresh scents, and there was a gentle breeze blowing. At first it
was so relaxing that she didn't even want to open her eyes, but the
peace was soon disrupted by an energetic voice.
“This is it! We're here, we're here,
I can't believe it!”
The sight before her eyes was
breathtaking, a sea of bright colours surrounded her in all
directions. Apart from the thin dirt path she was standing on,
everywhere the light touched was bursting with plants of all
different sizes and colours. Some of them were as tall as she was,
and seemed almost to be leaping out towards her. Lapse was there
too, her long black hair flopping about wildly as she vibrated with
excitement.
“Where are we?” Sister asked,
marvelling at the wonder of it all.
“This is the place I always wanted to
go-” She started to say, before stopping abruptly: “Oh no,
where is he?!”
Sister wheeled around. Sure enough, it
was just the two of them standing there, with no one else in sight.
“No, no, it can't be! Don't tell me
he didn't make it! I've waited so long for this!”
“Calm down”, she tried to reassure
her. “I made it, I'm sure he's here somewhere. We just have to
find him.”
“Pack!” she called out, loudly.
“Pack, where are you?!”
“Hey!”, Sister said, cutting her
off. “You can't do that, what if a stranger hears you?”
Lapse frowned. “But this place is
huge, we might not find him in time.”
“Then we'll have to split up to look
for him.”
“Okay...” she sounded uneasy with
that suggestion.
Sister gave her a hug. “It'll be all
right. We'll all be able to look around this place together before
long.”
“Be careful,” she said, still not
convinced. “This place really is very big, if you don't watch
which way you're going you could get lost.”
“I will be”, she replied, and they
set off along the path in different directions. Sister's confidence
faltered a little and she looked back, wondering if it might have
been better to go together after all, but Lapse was already out of
sight. She took a deep breath and pressed onwards, trying to
remember each place as she passed it in case she needed to come back
this way.
Lapse's heart was a twisted mess of
conflicting emotions. She wanted to take in the sights and scents
and enjoy herself, but now being here by herself she felt far more
lonely than she ever had back when she was on her own. She was
excited at the thought of finding Pack and sharing this place with
him, but she also felt kind of anxious and uneasy. She sighed. “My
life has become complicated, hasn't it?”
Walking along the dusty trail was
really the first chance she'd had to stop and think for quite a while
now. The last few nights had been a whirlwind of pain, fear, love,
and euphoria, and through it all she had just kept pressing on, never
stopping to let it all sink in. Only now when she had a moment's
peace did the full realization of how much her life had changed start
to come over her. The first pangs of self-doubt began to claw at her
insides as she wondered if she was really ready for all of this.
Could she make him happy? Would they get sick of each other after a
while? “I can't think like this”, she said, pushing those
thoughts away. “I just have to keep going, just like I always do”.
She stopped to smell a giant yellow lily that came all the way up to
her face, and it made her feel a little better as she pressed onward.
Elsewhere, Sister wasn't having much
luck on her search. The path had split a few times now, and each
time she had tried to remember which way she had come from, but it
was tough. She tried to pick out some particular sight she had seen
each time, but the entire area was so vibrant and beautiful that
everywhere she looked something caught her eye, and it quickly became
difficult to remember them all. She came up alongside a white
building on the right, with plants growing all the way up the walls.
There were little plants hanging outside the windows and she could
even see some more inside. “I wonder if he could be in here?”,
she thought to herself, and she kept walking until she came to the
door. She tried the knob, and it slid open, but as she poked her
head in there, it suddenly became dark and very cold. She quickly
pulled her neck back out and slammed the door, her heart racing. “I
think I'll keep looking out here”, she said, taking a deep breath
and walking quickly away from that building.
She eventually came across a part where
the path widened into a square. In the middle was a structure made
of stone, with water shooting out the top of it and landing in a pool
below. She couldn't believe how high the water went into the air, it
had to be at least 3 or 4 times her height, and sometimes she could
even see some sparkling colours in the air after the water passed by.
For a moment she just stood there, transfixed, but she reminded
herself that she was looking for Pack and couldn't just stand around.
It did seem like it would be nice if they weren't in a hurry,
though, there were even some benches around where you could just sit
with someone you liked and enjoy the sights. She wondered if Corsair
would like it. “He'd probably want to keep exploring”, she
smiled. “When presented with something new he could never sit
around.” She turned to leave, but then she noticed that there was
someone else in the square, sitting on one of the benches. It wasn't
Pack or Lapse, but it was the first person she'd seen so far. She
thought for a moment about asking if they had seen Pack, but then she
remembered all the trouble that had caused when they were trying to
find Steven. “Perhaps a more subtle approach...”
“It's so quiet today”, she said
casually, walking up to the woman who was sitting there, “I wonder
where everyone is?”
She didn't say anything, she just
pointed to the pathway behind her. Sister looked down the path, it
seemed much like all of the others, except it was flanked mostly by
tall leafy bushes instead of the colourful plants from before. She
didn't have anything else to go on, so she decided to head that way.
Elsewhere, Lapse had yet to come across
anyone, either. Although she was pretty sure she had been here once
before, she really couldn't remember much of it, and she was starting
to worry that it might be so big that she would never find either of
them again. As she walked along she started to hear the faint sound
of voices, and then she saw a display of flowers that she was pretty
sure she remembered from last time. Anxiously, she hurried along and
finally started running down the path as the voices became louder and
louder. There were lots of people gathered ahead, and maybe Pack was
there as well.
Her face lit up as she reached the
clearing. Dozens of people were seated on rows of benches among the
grass, all facing a large stage where a small party of well-dressed
individuals were gathered. The men were dressed all in black and
white, and the women wore long white dresses with tall white shoes.
The entire area was lavishly decorated, with roses and lilies of all
different colours adorning every isle, and the centerpiece of it all
was and a giant white rosebush wound all the way up the arch at the
top of the stage, practically bursting out the top with at least a
hundred blossoms.
“I have to find Pack”, she thought,
happily, “he needs to see this.”. Everyone was still milling
around, so she quickly scanned the crowd to see if he was here. Her
heart sank a little as she failed to find him among the benches.
“Maybe he's not here after all.”
“Please be seated”, someone called
from the stage, startling her. Obediently, she sat down at a nearby
bench, still searching around for him.
“We are gathered here today to
witness the union of these two fine people”, spoke the same loud,
clear voice, but Lapse wasn't really paying much attention to him.
“I will now read the vows”, he continued.
“He's not here”, she sighed.
“I take thee to be my lawfully-wedded
wife...”
Her heart stopped. She hadn't
recognized him at first, but the voice was unmistakable. “It can't
be”, she squeaked, in a voice scarcely above a whisper.
“...to love and to cherish, in
sickness and in health, until death do us part.”
“This must be some mistake” she
thought, bewildered. “He mustn't know where he is.”
“And I take thee to be my
lawfully-wedded husband...”
Suddenly she felt very sick. Tears
streamed down her face as she recognized the soft, kind voice that
she had thought was her best friend.
“Why?” She thought, heartbroken,
as she listened to the rest of the vow. Had they become close while
she was away? Or did Pack want someone more stable than her? More
normal? She tried to stifle her sobbing, but no one was paying any
attention to her anyway. She was just an outsider, destined to watch
others' happiness from afar.
“If anyone knows any reason why these
two should not be wed, let them speak now, or forever hold their
peace”, said the man on the stage.
She knew she had to say something, but
when she opened her mouth, no sound came out. She was too choked up
with fear and self-doubt. All she could do was sit and watch as her
dream shattered into a million pieces.
---
“Lapse!” Pack exclaimed as he
finally caught sight of her. “There you are, I've been looking
everywhere for you!”
She didn't reply. She didn't even look
up at him.
“Come on, let's hurry, we've should
go find Sister”. Her lip trembled. “Hey, are you okay?” he
asked, softly.
“How could you?” She squeaked,
barely audible.
“What?” He asked, not sure he'd
heard her. “Lapse, what's wrong?”
He put his hand on her shoulder, but
she moved away. She looked up at him, and he could see that her eyes
were full of tears. “Do you know where this is?” she asked, in a
terrible, pained voice that cut into his heart, “Do you know what
this meant to me?”
“Lapse, please!” he pleaded,
frantically. “I know things haven't gone well so far, but we'll
find Sister and then-”
“I trusted you”, she said, sadly,
stepping back from him. “I shared everything with you, even the
things that hurt and frightened me. I gave you everything I had to
give, knowing that it couldn't be taken back. I thought it mattered
to you, but it could never be enough.”
“Lapse, what are you saying? I love
you!”
But she was already walking away.
“Lapse, please! Don't go! I can't
lose you again!”
Despite his protests, she didn't turn
around, and in another moment, she was gone from sight, and from his
world.
“What did I do?” he asked, falling
to his knees with his face in his hands. “Lapse...”
---
“Maybe I shouldn't have come this
way”, Sister lamented as she stared at the path ahead, which had
split again with no sign of anyone on either path. Her feet were
starting to hurt from walking so much, too. She decided to take just
a tiny break, and sat down on the ground at the side of the path.
“It's like this place goes on forever.” She leaned back to
stretch her legs and almost fell back onto the ground.
The sun was starting to go down in the
sky.
“Oh no”, she thought, frantically,
“it's been too long. I've gone too far away. Lapse probably found
him by now, and I bet they can't find me. What do I do?”
She quickly got up and looked around
herself. There were high, leafy plants on both sides, which
prevented her from seeing what lay beyond them. “This is a bad
place to be”, she thought, “I'm completely hidden here. We could
be right beside each other and not know it.”
Her heart was racing, but she tried to
calm down and come up with a plan. Suddenly, it came to her. The
water spout! It was out in the open, easy to spot, and four paths
joined each other there, if they were looking it would be a good
place to find each other. Ignoring her tired feet, she started
running back the way she had came.
The tall plants whizzed by her on
either side as she sprinted back towards the giant water spout, and
towards her friends. She ran so fast that she reached the end of the
path long before she expected to
But the water spout wasn't there. The
square wasn't there. Her friends weren't there. All there was were
some tall trees and a path that split off in two directions.
And the sun, setting in the sky.
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