Alternatively this chapter is written from the view of Nixie Blue. Please read the first chapter before you read this one because it may not make sense otherwise
Chapter 2 – Nixie Blue
We broke from the forest and the skies were laced with a suffocating grey fog, the stench of rotting leaves and debris hung, mucky in the air.
“What did Mary-Anna say this place was called?” Inquisitive Enya asked.
“Kenanpation,” Delilah, intelligently replied.
“Well Kenanpation smells like c***,” replied Enya, miserable and fiery as ever.
“This isn’t normal you know,” Delilah began.
‘What do you mean? The stench,” Soleil guessed, in a researched manor, for Soleil.
“Well yes that but, also the fact that you guys aren’t dead and you’re here. Most people with gifts for the elements of life enter Kenanpation through the obsolete grave. That’s how I entered. You die and you come here. But guys haven’t died on earth. That’s freaky. Everyone is able to pass through the portals to earth when it needs saving but I have never heard of the living passing to here. I don’t know, I don’t get it,” Delilah enlightened us.
“Well maybe we’re special,” Soleil bragged, as ever boosting her own confidence.
“Or maybe you couldn’t live with out us,” cheered Camden.
‘Or maybe you couldn’t live with out me,” Delilah’s voice stilled the convosation and silence barricaded us.
The stale smell sweated on and the dusky coal road that lead us into a small, yet crowded town.
If you’ve ever been to the shambles in York, well it looked just like that. On the other hand, if you haven’t then your stuck with my s***** explanation and your own imagination. Good luck.
The cobbled road was built upon a slant where the left side of every path was at least an inch lower than the right side. Every Tudor shop, with its huge single glaze windows, paned with chipped wood was plastered unevenly in cream, a dusty dirty cream. This was of course with the exception of the bricked shops where the jagged rusty and maroon bricks jutted from the uneven walls. The streets snaked in and out and the road followed as the buildings ranged from towering giants to minute dwarfs. Each door, heavy ebony, was chipped and hagged from its rainbow paint and only big enough for a midget like Enya or Camden to fit through with out needing to duck. Never the less it was enchanting and endearing, I was spellbound by this mystical place, though Delilah was not completely in awe of it like the rest of us.
“This is enchanting!” Soleil shouted, her usually rhythmical voice was just a breath.
“You get used to it,” Delilah grinned to her immortal opposite; she immersed each of us in her knowledge.
“Well I think we should go shopping. The school wont be open this evening for lessons; we need supplies and there’s an inn at the end of the road where we can stay, till the morning. Have a bite to eat and there’ll be plenty of rooms, and if not, well Delilah will just create some more!” Soleil planned our evening and after presenting her with a disapproving grimace Delilah agreed. Following suit so did everyone else. We hit the shops.
Soleil fluttered straight to the haberdashery shop, Delilah to the old bookshop. I glanced in the window of haberdashery shop; the owner of the shop has cast a trance on the material and the tools. Whatever Soleil wished for danced into action and began preparing it’s self for sale. Of course Soleil had no money, and I had no idea how she intended to pay of the metres of fabric, sequin’s, buttons, prints, embroideries and needles that made each decoration work. So I entered to see her plan.
“So miss, that will be 45 coins,” the shop assistant informed her casually.
“Coins?” Soleil asked flipping her radiant pink hair, “I’m sorry I’ve only just arrived here. You see my friends and me are the personification of elements of life. We only found out this morning and we need some supplies to survive. In the morning I could bring you coins.” The shop assistants widened greatly, shock harrowed her face.
“Oh. You’re the girl of day, the only girl of day,” she wisped in fear of our docile friend Soleil.
“Yeah I personify day,” she glittered in her girly.
“Well miss you get them for nothing,” she gifted Soleil and bowed majestically, “and miss take this fabric too.” The show assistant clicked her bony fingers and about 4 meters of a spine chilling material flew off one shelf. The warmest colours imaginable, yellow, orange and gold swirled continually like lava in a circle.
“Use it wisely, young one,” the shop assistant warned Soleil as she drifted meekly back into her shell. Soleil nodded dimly.
I began to leave the shop before Soleil had time acknowledge my presence and accuse me of stalking her when again I heard the shop assistant say, “Don’t use this till you know it’s essential. That do or die moment.”
She scared the life out of me, that creepy hagged lady; she was so solemn with spritly Soleil. I headed to find Camden and Soleil shivered away from the Haberdashery shop, arms laden with goods.
It was then I passed an aquarium, the windows filled with the most amazing fish and although I was usually petrified of fish but it lured me in.
Tiny dolphins, no bigger then clown fish swam energetically in the turquoise water. Schools of bright crimson lights zapped from one side of colossal tank to the other, with out even me finishing my breath. Unicorns, as mad as it may seam, galloped on the shore of the tank. They sparkled like diamonds. There was fish made from gold, silver and bronze and their volatile and almost racist nature meant they fought in army’s against one another. I didn’t really like those fish. The tank arched above my head as I walked into the seemingly small and quaint shop. There were prowling tigers, humongous spiders that did breast strokes through the water (this was a gift I would to surprise Soleil with). Song fish bleated their demonic tones through the water, and the bubbles that left their lips were vivid colours. The ocean that surrounded me was alive. It danced and sang.
It was ice.
Against my back
I leapt into the air.
A dark laughter filled the space.
He was gorgeous.
“You scared me,” I started to explain my pathetic behaviour. His eyes were a cool oceanic blue; they bathed me in his presence. His skin was golden and his long jet-black hair was drenched.
“ I know. I just thought I should wake you up,” He chuckled his voice harmonious and in every way as enchanting as this mythical place. He left.
Though our paths had only crossed for a matter of minutes the image of his face was printed on my mind. On earth I did have a boyfriend. His name was Tab, he was in my year and was amazing and physic’s and drumming.
I knew at some point I would need to go back earth and tell him what had happened. The fact of the matter was, we were all dead, on basic terms. Although five of us had never actually died, we were basically dead. We could re-enter the human world as ghosts but that was all. As for Delilah, she too had never really died, she had just entered this place differently to we had. She had the same memory as the rest of did. She’d been telling us on the way down the coal road.
“I just tripped,” She wove her story, “I found myself flat in the grey mud, outside the obsolete grave. The way you guys fell from the tree, it’s the same. I’m not sure whether your bodies will be a corpse on earth like mine was, or whether you guys will still be alive. But it is rare that people who haven’t really had a deadly experience to come here, or to come through the grabbing tree. I don’t get it. But in conclusion we are all dead!” Delilah resolved the situation, her true intelligent way, “but you know, your not the only one’s who can pass back to earth. I can do it too, there fore I’m just as alive as you guys,” She smiled gleefully at this knowledge. Soleil had of course disagreed and again posed the idea that this was all a dream; by now we all knew she was wrong. If only she did.
Still revelling in his mind-blowing beauty, I headed for the door of the aquarium to leave.
I didn’t want a fish; I was merely lured into looking around. That strange urge, that unexplainable fizz that drew me into the shop, it was fate. Something about that striking young boy that I needed to see. Fate demanded us to united under an ocean sky. I don’t know why but it had to be on this dank, dour evening. Maybe it was to testify him as pure, or for him to be seemingly more beautiful then he really was against the forbidding backdrop.
My friends and I met up outside the aquarium.
“Where on earth have you been?” Enya frenzied, her amber eyes buttered with wrath.
“Me… I, I was just in the aquarium,” I sounded simple and doll like, just like Soleil.
“Nixie darling,” diplomatically Avani began, “This town isn’t safe. All the towns folk are warning us against being here,”
“Especially me!” Soleil blundered into Avani’s explanation.
“This place isn’t right!” Enya roared once more.
“Well, you can’t get out,” Delilah’s voice had a darker taste that lingered in the tension between us. Eye’s sprinted on to her enigmatic stance.
“Well you can’t stay in the real forever you will end up back here anyway. It drags you in.”
“Well if we are going to have to stay here we need supplies,” Camden level headedly replied. She was unfortunately correct. So we carried along the street.
The flame bitten candles trembled in the now blusty winds that flurried. Night threw its curtain upon the small, ancient town, and as the stars started to show their kindly faces something very weird began to happen to Delilah. A godly silver shiver peppered her body, a halo of silver streamed from every pour. Her hair began to glow too and her eyes, her eyes morphed into a violet hue, as though she were mad.
“Delilah!” Camden’s panicking breath smoked. Mist swarmed around her ever wan and shimmering figure. She did not speak, she simply didn’t move, as though this frightful happening was digesting her. Though fear was nibbling at us, we couldn’t just leave or beloved friend in this trance. We had lost her once already in our lives, and that unquestionable pain was not happening again.
A force of haunting purple encased her. Her body remained static but the force ejected us will the force of a wild burly creature. It drummed us into the uneven floors of stone, as Soleil was flung further. It was a through of great detest. Her blood dripped from the jagged edge of the smashed window that Soleil’s body had been hurled through.
Flames of black coal reigned alight around her as silver smoky stars were realized from their burning demonic light. The clouds from above shoved apart and the moon lined up with our friend and the madness calmed.
From the violet fog immerged what pert of me instinctively knew was my friend… and they other half prayed it wasn’t. Chocolate hung her fiendish hair, and her once bronzed eyes were cased in a violet film. Loosely she looked us.
“What’s happened here?” Her growling voice was a weave of harmonies.
“Something came over you,” I replied not intimidated by her.
“Nixie, That was the night. Soleil will be weak, sleepy and drained by life now,” Delilah rasped her voice venomous and I was beginning to prefer the element of day then the element of night. There was something in her voice, as though she was speaking at two completely different but congruent pitches.
“Where is Soleil?” Delilah splinted my thoughts. Avani’s eyes lashed wide and she raced into the bookshop to trial Soleil’s body.
Her battered head lay against the floating autumnal rug that had caught her. A young man was leaning over her cold body and her pink hair was splashed out against the dark contrasting carpet.
“What’s happened?” Avani blundered, her maternal instinct roaring.
“She flew though the window and sliced her arms and back open, she didn’t hit head though, the carpet caught her,” The adolescent explained.
“What happened, with you, Delilah?” Soleil begged her answer wimpy.
“Day is over Soleil, that was the coming of night,” Delilah reasoned with her.
“So I will get smashed into to something every night, and feel like death every night? And what about when day comes?” Soleil’s drained voice hummed.
“I think at about 6pm each evening you should keep your distance from me, or yes, that will happen,” Delilah educated her.
“Can no-one help the bleeding?” Begged the man once again.
“Avani! Your gift is to heal! Can you not help?” I shouted enthusiastically, using my knowledge.
“I don’t know how,” moaned Avani a little confused.
“Your in a bookshop. What type of book do you need?” The man asked his customer services exemplary.
“One about the healing powers of earth,” Avani asked, and after a few minuets has ticked by after his departure he returned with a thick woody green book and caramel pages and gifted it to Avani. A quick lick of her fine fingers and she started flicking through the book until she found a page she wished.
“Gaia, to thee I pray,
The Mother Nature,
Save your daughter of the day.
Her scars so deep,
Her back of blood,
Away the pain sweep.
Seal all open wounds,
Feast! Tell the great hounds,” Her delicate voice recited the poem angelically.
From the open window was a strange occurrence; the jagged door way was the entrance for a pack of green translucent dogs. They shimmered with fierce leafy green sparks flowing through it like blood. The dogs licked the deep cuts of Soleil’s. Their green tongues stitched the bloody wounds of her’s back to normal. It was as though she had not been harmed. Majestically the dogs ran slowly back through the smashed windows. The smashed glass danced behind them and slotted, like a jigsaw puzzle, it’s self back together. To an on looker nothing had happened.
“I know who you are!” cried the young man in amazement, “You are the six immortals to become. You the girl who just cast the spell, your earth, right? And you, miss with the pink hair, you personify day. Between the other four of you there must be fire, air, water and night, yes?” We nodded to him in response, “ I can’t believe it is true, I thought it was only a myth! Girls please take these books for free, No charge. Never a charge.”
“Sir, I already have some books,” Delilah’s two-tone voice responded.
“Then double for you miss…”
“Nyx. Immortal of night,” Delilah responded to his difficulty.
“What did you buy?” Camden pressed for an answer.
“Ellis Myths,” Delilah’s response was blunt, “traditional Kenanpation fairy tales.” We just nodded in agreement, though truly none of us really understood what Delilah was talking about.
The young man returned and gave each of us a mountain of books specific to our gift. Delilah was thrilled, in her studious merry manor, and read the blurb of each book in away that was lethargic to reality.
“And take this too,” He hollered as we left the shop and galloped toward us with the carpet, “You may be needing this, Miss day.”
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