57: Turning Point
“You don’t drink coffee,” he stated, “You’re trying to stay awake,”
She winced, blood flushing her cheeks as she struggled to think of another excuse, even though it was too late. Dante’s dark eyes were fixed on her, waiting for the truth, and she knew she couldn’t leave until he had it – and that he knew she wouldn’t leave until she’d told it.
“I-I’m scared…” she said, “I’m scared to go to sleep,”
“Join the club,” he said with a half-smile.
“Some of the things I’ve seen…and…”
He didn’t say a word. He was waiting. Maybe it was a bad idea, and maybe she was just hoping she finally understood the burden he’d been carrying for most of the year, but Katrina reached into her satchel and pulled out the clearest auragraph she’d taken of the mural. The one that looked as if it were alive. The moment Dante laid eyes on it he shivered and goose pimples flushed across his skin.
“It’s an auragraph I took inside the World’s End…” she explained, thinking a moment later that Dante already knew that.
Without a word he stood up, handed back the image and walked over to his bedroom door. Was he just going to shut himself away again?
“Come in here,” he said, holding the door open, and the seriousness of the situation began to dawn on her: Dante never let people in his room. Katrina soon understood why.
They covered the walls, even the ceiling. Sketches and paintings, some on paper or canvas, others on the walls directly, all depicting the same recurring images: a dead landscape of rotting trees and cold stone, a silhouette standing against the bright light of a full moon, and the same reaching wings and infinite shadow of the mural.
“This is why I’m scared to go to sleep,” said Dante, “Sometimes it’s not so bad. Usually when I’m struggling to remember things, but when my memories start to come back…”
Katrina wasn’t sure what to say and just placed a comforting hand on his arm, which he quickly withdrew. Now she had seen underground horrors and the darkness contained within the mural, she too found herself in Dante’s position.
“Do you ever sleep?” she asked, worried now she would never be able to again.
“Eventually, for a couple of hours. But I…” he paused, took a deep breath and let his gaze wander along thin rays of moonlight towards the cracks between his dark curtains, “I hate being alone…”
“What if I stayed the night?” Katrina found herself blurting out, “I can make a bed on the floor. Neither of us will be alone then. Maybe we’ll both be able to sleep?”
“I don’t know…” Dante turned away from her, “I don’t want you to wake up and see me… See me freaking out… And… It might affect you…”
“I think it’s going to affect me no matter what happens,” Kat said with a sigh, “At least this way we won’t be alone!”
“Well, just…don’t tell anyone. Especially Phoenie,”
“I think we could both do without the gossip and drama,”
Dante glanced back, a slight smile creeping across his face. A sign that perhaps this crazy idea was for the best after all. Katrina took another quick glance at the shadow-images surrounding her, resolved to stand tall against whatever darkness confronted her, then busied herself making a bed from sofa cushions. Dante disappeared for a moment, returning with clean bed sheets.
“I’m sleeping on the floor,” he said, tearing the sheets off his bed and wrapping up in them as he settled down on the makeshift mattress of cushions. Katrina didn’t have the energy – or room – to put up a fight and collapsed into the clean sheets.
“We haven’t done this since we were kids,” she said, “Remember?”
“Vaguely,”
“You, me, Deneb, Byron, Vincent, even Lyra sometimes…”
“Things change,”
“Yeah…”
Before she could say another word, the sleep that had been fighting to claim her for the past few hours finally overwhelmed Katrina’s defences, and she slipped off into the unknown darkness…
Chapter 57
Previous / Continue
(page 1; 2; 3; 4; 5; 6; 7; 8; 9; 10; 11; 12; 13; 14)
So yeah, the second half of this chapter is postponed until next week for various reasons I’ve gone into already. You’ve still had plenty to read :p
No, I didn’t cover everyone who was involved in recent events. Reasons? There was already too much content… or maybe I didn’t want to give away what they were doing… or maybe they just weren’t doing anything worth writing about… I’ll leave it up in the air for you to mull over.
There’s an awful lot of content in this chapter, both reflecting on what has happened, and hinting at what is to come. Too much to analyse in ten minutes!
The biggest thing for me is that Titania’s masquerade is almost wrapped up. There’s a little bit more to go with its consequences, but the most troublesome part – the constant memory loss – is history. In many ways the next arc (the second half of this one) is all about consequences.
Other things coming up over the next couple of months:
~ A new teacher
~ Details on Malkuth and its tiered society
~ Why Chris and Lysander have such a rivalry
~ Repercussions for Veritas
~ An alchemist battle!
~ Country Dancing!
~ What the renegade faeries are up to
~ Lysander and Angelo!
~ The fate of Alastor
~ Dante!
~ What Phantasia’s powers are capable of
~ Someone in armour
~ Fire
NO! NO! THE HINTS, THEY BURN!!!
Really, Dary! You’re giving too much away!
Nah, just the proverbial tip of the iceberg.
ten mins! this takes me 40 to read
looking forward to the next lot.
Yay for Kat/Dante scenes! If anyone can help him deal with his darkness, it would be her.
“Maybe it was different for faeries, but humans didn’t want to understand one another. They didn’t want to hold hands and stand against the Darkness. Humans wanted power.”
WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! Human ADULTS want power. Human children LEARN to want power. Humans can be better than that-many of the students are trying to be. Theseus is the best example, he doesn’t want to deal with all this crap, he wants a simple life where he can live in peace with his neighbors. Of course there are exceptions, but if children are actually taught love without that lust for power, then that’s all they’ll be-exceptions.
On another note-how long until Faye digs into Dante’s memory and finds out what he knows? It might be sooner now, especially since I imagine Katrina will very much want someone to help, want the world to help. And no matter how much she tries to keep it buried because that’s what Dante wants- what we want the world to know…
Since Titania is voluntarily removing the illusion, I do wonder what will happen with the power (magical tattoo?) that Thetis gave Faye to dispel it by force if necessary.
With the illusion gone will Phoenie remember her fear in Godhand’s Manor and her thought that she wasn’t as good a leader as she kept telling herself, and that she had no business leading her friends into these things? What repercussion would that have I wonder.
What happened to the auragraphs of the Patriarch that got killed at the manor? What would happen if they were shown to the Godhand group that Amanda, Astrid and Co. are with.
Well, that’s all the miscellaneous thoughts I feel like revealing for now.
To be fair to Natalie, she didn’t really have much of a childhood so her views are pretty skewed. During her infancy there wasn’t much hope for peace or understanding (she would have been 12 when the last war ended, and by that point her innocence was gone and she spent her teenage years flirting from one bad influence to another, such as Alexis).
I thought about responding to the other comments, but I don’t want to give much more away than I already have!