It was the dream again. The same dream she had since she was 10. The same dream she just had yesterday. She was so determined to know who that boy was that she refused to budge as the usual strong wind threatened to blew her away from the scene. She closed her eyes tightly and let the wind raged passed her.
Then, almost abruptly, the wind stopped. She opened her eyes. She was not in the meadow anymore. The boy and the girl had vanished from the completely different scene. But she knew the place in front her very well.
It was the elementary school she went to when she was nine. There were kids running here and there and she caught sight of a car which just pulled over along the driveway not far from the school compound. Maria came out from the car and went to open the passengers’ door.
A little girl hopped out jovially, swinging Maria’s hand. Maria walked her to the school’s entrance before kissing her forehead and waved her goodbye as the little girl entered the building.
As she walked towards the girl, the scene dissolved and was replaced with another scene. She stopped dead. The familiar looking house loomed over her. She was in the living room. Bright sunshine lit the house.
The house was still quite empty but she could hear laughter coming from the kitchen. She followed the noise.
There they were, around the dining table. The 16 years old Lilian sat down at the dining table while Maria and Jeremy were standing behind her facing a medium chocolate cake lit with sixteen tiny candles. As she looked Maria and Jeremy kissed the two years younger Lilian, she touched her own cheeks as if she could feel their kisses.
Then, without warning, tears streaked down her cheeks. She felt into the darkness, falling further down but she did not care. If even the darkness wanted to devour her, she would be ready. She just did not care anymore. She closed her eyes again.
Suddenly, she sensed bright light penetrating her eyelids. She opened her eyes slowly. She was lying on the bed, the thick cosy blanket pulled up to her chest. The striking afternoon sun ray pierced through the small opening between the curtains. Lilian stayed motionless, blinking with an empty mind. She felt a bit light-headed.
“You cried in your sleep,” prompted a familiar voice.
Lilian jerked awake. She turned to look at Zephyr who was sitting on the couch not far from the bed. Senses flooded into her mind.
Lilian touched her face. It was wet with tears. She wiped it dry with her sleeves. She realised that she was in a small single room. She felt perspiration forming down her neck, so she pushed the blanket away. She was still fully-clothed, saved the sneakers which were placed neatly at the side of the bed.
Zephyr got up from the couch and went to the wardrobe at one corner of the room. There was a pillow and a piece of thin blanket on the couch. He must have been sleeping there over the night.
Lilian stole a glance at Zephyr. This was the first time she had the chance to properly look at him since that their first face to face encounter was in the darkness of her living room.
Zephyr looked quite young. He must be in his early twenties. His hair was dark brown, slightly wavy and was parted in the middle. He had lost his hat and jacket. He was now wearing a simple dark blue t-shirt and a pair of faded jeans. He definitely looked much younger than he did last night. His skin was nicely tanned and his eyes were blue like the sapphire.
And she noticed a necklace, probably handmade, dangling around his neck as he bowed.
“Checking me out?” teased Zephyr, turning away from the wardrobe to stare at Lilian.
Lilian froze for a second. “Am not,” Lilian denied. “I just want to make sure that I know my kidnapper well!”
Zephyr snorted without looking at Lilian. “Good luck with that,” he was completely cynical.
When he managed to find what he was looking in the wardrobe, he walked back to Lilian with some clothes and a weird-looking bottle in his hand. He sat at the edge of Lilian’s bed. Mechanically, Lilian edged away from him.
“How did I end up here? Did you make me fainted?” Lilian braved up to ask the question.
“No. I just put you into a trance. Do you expect me to carry you all the way up here?” The question was more like a taunt for her. “You went to sleep just after I gave you the antidote,”
“My parents?” asked Lilian hesitantly. She did not know why she was having this kind of conversation with her kidnapper but she felt like she needed someone to talk to badly to keep her sanity after her dark ordeal last night and Zephyr was the only one there for her to talk to.
“Take your shower first,” said Zephyr quietly, handing over the clothes he had in his hands just now which turned out to be a purple short-sleeve blouse and a pair of light brown Capri-pants. “And you will need to dye your hair. The colour of your hair is too obvious,”
Lilian sprung from the bed and looked into the mirror. Zephyr was right. The flaming red colour of her hair was so obvious it even overshadowed the original black colour of her hair.
“I don’t know what colour girls like you would prefer but I think auburn will look good on you,” said Zephyr, musing the white crystalline bottle he was still holding.
“I don’t think dyes would work. No dye sticks on my hair more than an hour and I’ve tried every dye I could laid my hands on since I was 10,” said Lilian, still looking into the mirror. Zephyr’s reflection appeared behind hers.
“But you never try this one. This hair dye is from Pleidus, exclusively for the use to cover up the changing colour of the hair caused by serious mind activities,” he said, swinging the crystalline bottle slowly behind Lilian. Lilian spun around. She took the bottle from Zephyr’s hand.
“Pleidus? What is that?”
“Pleidus is your homeland. Our homeland,”
“Where is that place? I never remember any Pleidus when studying Geography in school,”
“Of course you never remember it. Pleidus is in another dimension different from this world,”
The crystalline bottle slipped from Lilian’s hand. Zephyr caught it midway before it reached the floor.
“Different world?”
“Yes. I know this is too much too swallow. So, let’s take this one step at a time. First, we have to make you less recognizable so that we can move around a bit freely,” said Zephyr, taking Lilian’s right hand and placed the crystalline bottle carefully into her hand back.
****
Lilian just stared at her sandwich. Her stomach seemed to oppose any food now. She sighed. They were sitting at a small square dining table in the room of an inn.
“The sandwich won’t turn into beef steak even if you stare at it for hours,” prompted Zephyr.
“So, you do have some sense of humour,”
“And you don’t,” he replied.
“Do I look like I’m in the mood for jokes?” said Lilian, annoyed.
“You look like you don’t have the mood for anything,” replied Zephyr simply.
“Of course I don’t. Tell me why should I even smile when I’m with my parents’ murderer? I feel like I’m fraternising with the enemy,”
“I did them a favour,” he replied earnestly.
“How?” she felt her anger burning when she heard Zephyr’s thoughtless reply. “By killing them? That’s what you call a favour?” said Lilian angrily, her hand now clutching Zephyr’s t-shirt collar. She was standing now, looking down to Zephyr.
“I don’t expect you to understand,” he said idly not bothering to remove Lilian’s hands. “Killing them at the moment is the best thing I could do for them. Or do you prefer them to suffer for almost an hour and died because of agony? Do you know what they were feeling? They felt like their bodies were torn apart and burnt from the inside. They begged me to end their suffering, so that you would not need to see them agonizing till death,”
Lilian let go of her clutch slowly. She slumped to the floor. No, she doesn’t want to cry. She promised Maria she would try not to cry. But she knew all along that it was hard to keep the promise. She sobbed lightly, burying her face in her hands.
Zephyr went to kneel beside Lilian.
“For someone who is holding a grudge against me, you are incredibly cooperative,” said Zephyr frankly.
“I’m physically worn out and mentally distressed. What do you expect?”
“Hmm...Let’s see. I expect to see some determination from you to know what’s going on and why are you with me now,”
“I do want to know, but I’m afraid that I’m not ready for the answers, not after what I had seen last night,”
Even hearing about the ‘other world’ brought shivers down her spine, Lilian thought. She inhaled and exhaled as calmly as possible before gazing into Zephyr’s eyes.
“What do they (whoever they are), want with me? If they want me, why kill my parents? Why not just take me away?”
“It’s more complicated than you think. To us, if we encounter people like you, we have to kill them right away, if they proved to be no use to us,”
“People like me? What do you mean?”
“You are one of the Gifted Ones, or the Cursed Ones according to us. Your people are considered as abomination, signs of revulsion towards the Mother Nature.
“The Gifted Ones,” she quoted Zephyr under her breath. “Who are we actually?” she asked, confused.
“Each of you has the so-called great power which is related to your mind ability. Your guardian-,”
“Parents,” Lilian corrected.
“Jeremy and Maria as you knew them; they were both The Readers, the most common ability among the Gifted Ones,”
Lilian looked clueless. Zephyr grunted in exasperation.
“They could read mind,” said Zephyr curtly.
Lilian eyes widened. “So, they could read my mind?”
“Well, apparently, you have been trained to shield your mind since you were born. So, they could not read your mind,”
“What about me? Can I read mind?” asked Lilian, showing grim interest.
“No. You are not the Reader. You are The Manipulator, a rare gift among your kind. There are only three living Manipulators currently in Pleidus, including you,”
-End of Chapter 5-
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