He'd been around a while, but when he fell there was, for the umpteenth time, a whole new world suddenly around him, beneath him and... no, not above him. His companions were falling with him and they weren't new at all. He'd been watching them form for weeks, months.
There was one who he'd been watching particularly, and who he wouldn't mind watching for the rest of his existence, though. There she was, over there! He strained pointlessly to move so he could fall beside her and maybe impress her with his aerodynamics, which he had been practicing for the whole journey, from the homely leaves of a gum tree in Stanthorpe, to this place.
Now that he looked below him properly, the overall colour of the ground was strange. There were not as many trees as he had seen before, and there were speeding blots of colour everywhere, mostly organised in lines and squares around huge, towering, rectangular shapes. Many of the larger shapes reflected the little light that was around, and in the nearby distance a simply huge body of water rocked and danced in a mesmerizing arrangement of green-blue and white.
As his attention shifted to where he was going to fall, he noticed that one of the dark grey lines was below him, slick with puddles of his fellow water-drops. The coloured boxes just kept coming at top speed, and he wondered how some of his fellow drops had managed to miss them. Suddenly, he noticed a chance to meet the cute and interesting looking companion nearby.
There was a red, curved-looking box coming up, and he sped his descent so that he would make the clear piece on the front.
Plop! He'd made it. Half a second later he felt the slight jolt as her thoughts mingled with his, and realized with a shock that she had been thinking about him too. Just before he said something, a long piece of black plastic wiped them to the bottom of the glass.
As he mingled with his companions, he searched for the thoughts of the cute drop. And he found them, thinking about him. He smiled inwardly before allowed his being to dissolve in the thoughts of the water dripping down the side of the box with the wind pushing them backwards.
And inside a red Toyota Corolla Seca Ascent, a young girl giggled inwardly at the two raindrops which had landed in a love-heart shape on her mother's car's windscreen.
Jessie stared at the door; it didn’t open. She took a sip from a nearby thermos. The door still didn’t open. She sighed and picked up her pen and pad.
A half-finished story fluttered on her page, as a ribbon held by one end would do in the wind. She mentally rummaged through her thoughts and memories for an ending to pin the other end of the story down on the lined paper. She then started writing. Midway through her third sentence, she heard steps outside her door. Jessie scribbled a quick note in the margin to anchor her thoughts, and then called for whoever it was outside to enter.
Jessie’s father opened the door, his large and thoughtful face peeking round the door. She gestured for him to enter. He did, and sat down on her bed after carefully covering her frail-looking feet with the end of her blanket. He didn’t speak for a minute, and then picked up her writing pad from her lap and read out loud: ‘”Anne jumped. Her assailant applauded roguishly, and then jumped onto the low wall top supposedly defending the town from invaders, beside her.” Honey, you’ve got to get this stuff published someday.’
She ignored his comment – she’d heard it so many times before. Jessie asked what the doctor’s news had been. Her father frowned and shifted his position. She later assumed it was to hide any tears he might shed.
Later that week, in a vomit-green walled hospital room, Jessie stared at her long, thin legs on the bed before her. It seemed as though the disease in them mocked her, daring her to get up and run. She lay back in bed and closed her eyes. It wasn’t fair, she reflected; she was only sixteen. There was, however, a chance this surgery would work. She concentrated on that. Half an hour later, she fell asleep.
∽
She jumped over a low attack from her adversary, delivering a punch filled with controlled power to the stomach of the attacker. It laughed: a cruel, low and guttural sound that found its way to the oldest, primeval part of her mind. Run, her instincts suggested. She did so, not sparing the time to look behind her. The hunt was on. She ran fast and freely, trying to put as much distance between her and the attacker as possible. Finally, she tripped over a tree root and spun as she fell, knowing she was going to face the creature that was her fate one more time. It swung an arm, that she now noticed was winged, and there was a flash.
Her heart beat erratically, and she sat up. There were white things covering her legs, and light green walls behind the people in white cloaks surrounding her. For a moment, she thought one of them was the horrific creature who had been chasing her.
Memory flashed through a collection of pictures and words. One of the figures said something, but it wasn’t in her language. She recognised one of the words: ‘Jessie?’
She crinkled her brow, pushed the covers back, revealing her skinny, pale and weak-looking legs. She stared at them a second, and then jumped from the bed, running from the place, and then running along the grey dirt that was too hard. When she reached a tame-looking, deteriorated forest she threw herself down under a tree and hugged her knees. People wearing weird clothing and speaking in strange languages not so different to her own, old Celtic, looked at her curiously and she blinked at them.
Who was this new visitor in her memory, this Jessie? She seemed to share the memory of this person, though the winged creature was at the forefront of her mind. And why wasn’t she in her own, normal body?
Slowly she fell asleep, dreaming of Jessie.
∽
Her legs worked! She dived at the legs of the creature in front of her, causing it to fall over, and ran. She did not look back for the creature. She ran, marvelling at the real-ness of this apparent dream. A person stood outside the open door of a hut. When Jessie reached her, the wizened old woman hugged her ferociously. That’s my Grandma! The words found their way into Jessie’s mind, and she blinked. What? She shook her head, and nodded politely at the lady before being pushed off towards where the creature had been.
That looked like a banshee. Grab it by the neck and snap the miserable thing. She nodded at the instructions, not pausing to wonder where they had come from, and prepared to do as the voice had suggested, looking around cautiously. It swooped down from above, landing her on her back. She followed the advice, and snapped its neck. There was a flash.
∽
Keeley hurriedly pushed the body of the banshee off her, and ran towards her home. She didn’t understand what had happened, but didn’t care much.
∽
Jessie scribbled frantically on her pad two hours later. After finding herself back in her own body, though in the park a couple of doors away, she had found her way home, her gait slightly clumsy. She’d taken her time to feel the concrete with her toes, reveling in the new found feeling. When she had got home, her father had told her Doctor Keeley and the rest of the team were worried. Jessie had laughed, given her father a hug and walked up to her bedroom.
The old-looking Naian stared upwards, aware of the impatient looks on the young human faces surrounding him. Finally, he spoke, "Sometimes, when you look up, into the sky on a clear night, you see something which you know you cannot tell anybody about." At this the teens nodded wearily; it was obviously an old story.
A human, a boy who was probably around 16 Earth years, frowned. "Jilk, we've heard this one so many times."
The old one grinned, his cat-like whiskers rearranging themselves as he did so. "No you haven't. This one's old, very old. None of you would know it unless Eliza told you, and she couldn't remember half the details by the time she..." A high-pitched cry broke out from the long tent behind Jilk, and he tiredly looked over his shoulder and murmured, "Another to be read to tonight."
The teenagers shifted uneasily, and the boy from before - let's call him Johane- spoke quietly yet fiercely. "Jilk, you - or anyone else for that matter - haven't told us where you come from. You don't look like one of us, not even our parents. You've been around since living memory, and you are pretty much the only adult like you, cause Andrew there doesn't count."
Andrew looked up from his drawing in the sand. "What?" He was a young-looking boy sitting in front of Jilk's roughly made oak chair, and who probably didn't belong with this group of teenagers. He had fur on the tips of his ears, and eyes like a cat's.
Johane glanced at Andrew and continued, "This Eliza you talk about. She was old in the stories my father passed down from his grandfather. She couldn't have told us. And you're -"
Here Jilk interrupted. "My good friend. Can you not leave these questions for when you are older?" he looked around. "It seems like none of you can, tonight. All of you, look upwards. Do you see anything?"
"Trees."
"Clouds."
"Stars."
"You." The last comment was from Andrew.
Jilk laughed, but said nothing.
Johane rolled his eyes. "Jilk, that's old. I've looked at that sky many times, and only seen the lights put there by the ones from the last era." Jilk nodded, refraining to mention that he had been in that era too, and the stars weren't put there then. Johane continued, "So there's nothing else, you see?" The boy gestured so as to include their planet, Enterprise, in his wave. "According to all I've been taught, we're only a small part of a small planet in a small system. But it's very possible that we're the only forms of life in the universe."
At this Jilk shook his head sadly, but refrained from saying anymore that night. Andrew took over stories instead. He was pretty good, but nervous, and so he stuttered. The next day, Jilk was nowhere to be found, and a piece of waxed paper, very old and creased, was next to Andrew's head in the sleeping tent. He read to the young ones of the tribes for many years to come, and Johane grew old and died under his constantly amused smile. A legend grew about Andrew; that he was son of Jilk and Eliza, for he had been young many years longer than others born at the same time as he. And so life passed, until one night Andrew sighed, and looked starwards. This group of teens reminded him very much of his father, and his son was the same age as he had been when Jilk had left.
The girl’s power was incredible; Jealy didn’t know how she had survived doing everyday normal chores. Clearly these humans had a determination she had never thought about. But there was a reason for investigating this child of the earth, this Caylin.
Jealy’s homeland was dying. Her own home had always been in the field out the back of the inn, sleeping with the cattle and sharing what little warmth she could take and give with the sheep’s wool, and so she knew the land like it was her mother. But it was rumbling now, making the innkeepers’ wives tremble with fear as she shared the meal and gossip in the kitchen.
All this had led to being found in the kitchen one day by the baron of that area, and taken to the front of the inn to converse, over a cup of tea in her case (two sugars, milk), and a tankard of ale in the Baron’s son’s (the usual, thanks). He talked to her of the earth prophecy; of a heroine who would come at the time of trouble. He talked to her of how he knew she knew the earth well enough to pass as the Earth Mother. Jealy had known what he was hinting at, and had shaken her head. He’d stopped.
She’d told him what she knew of the prophecy; how the heroine would come from Dernley, a village nearby. Jealy had been born in another world, so it could not be her. She refrained from telling Aaron this. Humans didn’t like Otherworlders, that much she knew from past experiences. It messed their whole system up.
Aaron understood this, and asked her to find the heroine in her travels, to train her and to train her in the ways of the earth. Jealy had been travelling to Dernley next anyway, and agreed. She wished she could have gone back to Ohnea to tell them her tale, but she was forbidden from the other world.
But brooding on the past wasn’t good for her task, so Jealy glanced out the window the girl’s confused family had given her. The stone had spoken to her, and it was a fairly cheerful family she had come to. They worked the earth with steadfastness and a need to survive, but were kind, and did not overwork the land or the creatures. Caylin was not beautiful, but had a kind of air about her that made her pretty. And she smiled a lot.
As far as Jealy had discerned, a lad from the village was courting her. A nice lad, but an orphan. The Journeyer reckoned he was an Otherworlder, like her, but kept quite about this. The magic he could possess might be dangerous… or helpful.
Caylin was most definitely the figure in the prophecy. Her hands were capable of more than she used them for, but she was content farming the land.
