Rising Shards

We were back in the lobby-esque area of the temple with statues. Mine had changed. It didn’t look like the hollow-eyed bleeding nightmare monster anymore. It looked like me now.

Oka called her on her wristband after helping me to a spot to sit.

“You made it!” Diast said. “Zeta, you alright?”

“Y..yeah,” I said. “Could you see any of that from your…watching room?”

“I can track where you are, I could tell when you were in a more warbly, vision heavy spot.”

“It was definitely that,” Oka said. “Can we leave now?”

I was so ready to be done. All my muscles ached, and I was mentally drained.

“I just have to get a return gate thing sent into the temple. It would have been there earlier, but again, some people think they can rush ahead with void work without telling the people that’ll be affected by it. Gimme a few minutes and you’ll be out of there.”

We found a bench in the lobby area and I felt strangely cathartic. A weight had been lifted from me.

“You still good?” Oka asked.

I nodded. But then I shrugged. I felt better, but after all that it didn’t quite feel right to say I felt better. Like I didn’t deserve to feel better.

“I was so worried you’d hate me if you knew all that.” I said. “I’m sorry you had to see it, it’s so embarrassing. I don’t know why this void thing happened.”

“Maybe you really needed to tell someone,” Oka said. “And your Cani powers with the void made it happen.”

“Still, I’m sorry I put you through that,” I said. “I think…I did really need to tell someone. And I like subconsciously trusted you. And I do trust you like. In my waking self too.”

“I’m honored that both feel that way.” Oka said.

“I’ve been keeping that all bottled up,” I said. “And when I saw the movie playing again…that was a lot. That’s why I can’t fail the Benta.”

“Right,” Oka said. “You can’t go to her school.”

I nodded.

“We can definitely pass the Benta,” Oka said. “If there’s anything you need on it, we’ll get through it together!”

“Alright,” I said, glad I was all cried out because that would have made me cry.

“And now that I know about what happened to you, if you ever need to talk to me about it, I’m here.”

“Thanks,” I said. “That’s not like too heavy of a burden is it?”

Oka now had the burden of my summer on her as well. Stella knew enough about it, but Oka saw everything.

“You listen to me talk about my problems, so it’s only fair!” Oka said. “We’re friends, we help each other.”

“Like, best friends,” I said. “Is that too early to say?”

“Oh,” Oka said softly. “Like, ranked higher than Kalei?”

“It’s not a rank,” I said. “Kalei’s our best friend too.”

“Yeah, but like best best—”

“Yeah.” I said. “I think you are.”

“Cool,” Oka said. “Sorry, got off track.”

“If you do have to tell Kalei like all this, I won’t be mad,” I said.

“Well, we’re keeping my secret catch up on technology lessons from her, so in return I’ll keep the Jeans thing from her.”

“It sounds so bad to say,” I laughed. “Negotiating what to keep from our friend.”

“True, hmm.” Oka said. “How about all that, but in a way that isn’t hurtful to Kalei but more to keep the sensitive things we’ve shared with each other between us for now?”

“That’s better,” I said.

Oka’s wristband lit up.

“Alrighty, gate coming in,” Diast said. “Stay away from the red dot that’s about to show up.”

A laser array appeared in the center of the lobby. A few seconds later, the pedestal bowl thing appeared. We scraped our fangs on the void rosin in the bowl, and finally returned home.

Diast had a brief talk with me about what I’d experienced and how Memory Trials/Jump Fifteens are normal for new Cani. I thought I’d be a bit more upset about hearing all that, but I was still feeling alright. Diast hadn’t seen any of my vision, and she hadn’t heard what Oka and I talked about. She respected my privacy when I said I wasn’t ready to talk about what I saw yet. I think she could tell how shaken I was. We were gone long enough for class to be close to being done for the day, so we got to just go back to our room.

“Hey, how many Raina Starlight books do you have?” Oka asked when we were both comfortably in our beds.

“All of them?” I said.

“Are they all here?” Oka asked. “When it got to the part in the play where you were talking about Raina Starlight books, it reminded me I only had the third Raina Starlight book at my school…I’ve never read the others.”

“Wait, you’ve read Raina Starlight’s books?” I asked. “How have we not talked about that before? I talk about Raina pretty much always.”

“I’ve read a Raina Starlight book,” Oka said. “I guess I could have just asked to borrow it—”

“No, please read! I have the full 37 book set so far, so you can read all of them if you want!” I said.

Kalei opened the door once I made sure she had all the copies I had brought in their correct order.

“Hey, you’re back.” Kalei said.

“We got stuck in the void.” I said.

“So that’s what they’re calling it nowadays.” Kalei said as she returned to her bed.

“Calling what?” Oka said.

“It’s not…” I said. “Why are you like that Kalei?”

“Relax, Diast told me.” Kalei said. “Lucky you got to skip class, though. That movie suuuucked, and we didn’t even finish. I guess it’ll wrap up tomorrow but knowing Poppi’s taste it’s probably like a five-hour movie.”

“It’s like, two and a half hours I think?” I said. “But the credits are like forty minutes and I forget if that counts.”

“Wow, expert on horrendous musicals much?” Kalei asked.

“No, just this one,” I said.

Oka looked a bit concerned, and I felt it too, even if we didn’t say it for the rest of the day. I didn’t make it through more than like five minutes of it without freaking out and zipping myself to the void. Would it be different now?

The next day I was in Poppi’s class, this time knowing what movie was going to be on screen. The girls on each side of me were much less excited about another day of this movie. I felt a bit sick all day, which I assumed was partly from worrying and partly from having a giant void vision where it exposed my awful summer to my new best friend. If Oka or Kalei were sitting by me, I’d feel a lot better. I paged through my notebook as the movie picked up halfway through. I tried to just tune out the movie and focus on the lines of all the blank pages in my notebook. It seemed to kind of work.

The movie was in its home stretch. I was actually making it. I turned one more page. Instead of a blank page again, I opened to one with new writing on it.

Dear Zeta,

I hope this letter serves as an adequate distraction from this crappy movie. Let’s make new, better memories to associate with it than your bad ones. For instance, I felt very sneaky swiping your notebook from you to write this. I bet you can’t guess when I wrote this! I mean, besides it being between last night and today. I bet you can’t guess exactly when within this time frame. That’s definitely a better memory.

But, anyways. I know you said it was a heavy burden for me to take helping you, but it’s a burden I accept gladly. Anything I can do to help you put your pieces back together after your brave escape, I’m here for you. I seriously could never hate you. No matter what our future holds, we’ll move toward it together.

Your best friend,

Oka

The credits were rolling as I finished.

“Wasn’t that a beautiful movie?” Poppi said with an exaggerated sigh. “I’ve never shown this one in class and finished without anyone crying. And like clockwork, I see some of you understand how beautiful that film is. Right, Zeta?”

Normally, I’d be mad at a teacher calling out me crying in class or after a movie. I’d be especially not having good vibes about having to say that movie was beautiful after all the baggage I had about it. But I was finally moving forward.

“Yeah,” I said, wiping the tears from my eyes.