Ayumi (c) Chapter Eight By Fiction Writer #13 (rom, nosex, paranormal, voy, exhib, teen, preteen) Even while hanging upside down, clinging desperately to Ayumi's sweaty body to prevent falling to my death, I couldn't remember a time in my life where I had felt so... so alive! I had dreamt of flying like this, well not exactly like this, but close enough. I'd watched the hawks as they flew in lazy circles above these very same hills, imagining what it must be like to soar and drift so high. Now here I was, Justin Taylor, a thirteen year old nobody, flying! Above us the sky flickered with colors alien to this part of the world. It was rare that the Northern Lights ever reached this far south, and they'd never been this vivid. Below us the hills and trees rushed by invisibly, cloaked in darkness. We crossed a few streams, the brilliant sky reflected on their surface, giving the appearance of rainbow colored serpents slithering through the woods. Behind us the sky flickered orange and red as the fires grew and spread to claim not just my house and the hillside, but by now most of my neighborhood. My eyes sought out Ayumi's in the silent dark. Once again she was bathed in that pale blue light that I had earlier mistaken for moonlight. There was a slight smile on her face as if she were enjoying this as much as I was, but there was something more... there was concern. Her eyes never left our destination, she was focused, determined, and straining to get us there, but I could tell that it was not going to happen. We had been steadily losing altitude ever since she began to glide. "It's... it's too far," she said through gritted teeth, the stress of holding me aloft evident in her tiny voice. I quickly looked ahead to see how far we had come. The eerie red glow still shone on the horizon, but the city was still a ways off. "I have to land, and soon." Her eyes broke from the distance and began to scan the darkness below. "There!" she exclaimed as she locked her focus on some place still hidden from my sight. Before I could make a comment we were spiraling down, fast. The wind, which had been just a gentle breeze, now roared in my ears, and my hair whipped against my face. Suddenly my flight had gone from exhilarating to horrifying! I couldn't see anything anymore, but I could feel us dropping out of the sky like a rock. If I'd been able take a breath it would have come out in a girly scream as I imagined us slamming into the ground with a splat! "Ow!" Pine boughs whipped at me from all directions. There was the sound of branches cracking as we pinballed our way through the treetops. "Ayeee!" Ayumi squealed above me, her hands and legs losing their once tight grip. My fingers slid in slow motion over her sweat slicked skin. One moment we were together, joined as one, entwined in legs and arms, the next moment I was alone; alone and falling. "Uhng!" The wind got knocked out of me as I hit the ground, not nearly as hard as I was expecting, but it still hurt. I guess we were closer to landing than I thought! "Justin?" Ayumi called from not too far away. "Justin, are you okay?" "Uh... yeah... I think so." I couldn't see shit, it was still too dark, but I could sense that Ayumi had moved closer to me. "Sorry for... for dropping you," she gasped, breathing heavily. "The trees were... were thicker than I thought. I almost broke a wing..." "But you're okay, right?" My concern for myself fled at her mention of almost breaking a wing. A wing... man does just thinking that blow my mind! "Do you need any help?" She let out a long slow breath. "Whooo... that was tiring. No... I'm okay; just exhausted. I haven't been allowed to fly since I was Jin's, and even then... I never had to carry anyone." She giggled in the darkness, the sound bringing a smile to my face. "Jeeze, what do you weigh? Like a thousand pounds?" "A thousand pounds?" My eyes began to adjust to the near pitch black, just in time to watch in fascination as her wings began to fold back in on themselves and disappear behind her back. "I'll have you know that I'm considered skinny for my age. My friend Tommy has got me beat by at least twenty pounds." "Well... in that case... I guess it's a good thing that he wasn't the one whose house I ended up at." Her white teeth glinted in the low light, but enough for me to see that she was smiling. "I'd never have made it off the ground!" We laughed for a few moments with the sounds of the forest all around. It was the first time in a long while I can remember laughing like that, and it felt good. Things had been so screwed up for the past year. Between the shit going on at school, my family, and... Well... Tommy being such a dick, I hadn't felt like laughing too much. I still call him a friend, but it's just out of habit. After that night, that night that he tried to play with me while I was sleeping, things just got bad between us, and then they just got worse as the year went on. He went from being my best friend, my only friend to be honest, to being just another jock asshole. I never told anyone about that night, never even made that much of a big deal about it with him, but looking back... that was the night our friendship ended. "Whatcha thinking about?" Ayumi whispered to me. "Nothin'," I lied, "just, just thinking about how lucky I am that you showed up at my door and not Tommy's." That part was true at least. Sure, my life had been turned upside down, my house blown up, and demons were hunting us, but... I don't know... somehow... this... this all seemed like it was... I don't know. Right? No, that's not the right word. It was like everything led to meeting Ayumi... going to school, growing up in my family, going camping in the summers, frosty Christmas mornings, playing games in the woods, eating, sleeping, swimming, running, breathing... that was the dream, and now, now I was finally awake. Awake for the first time in my entire life. "We should keep moving," she said, taking my hand, "they won't give up." "Okay, but you'll have to lead us, I can't see anything." It was at that moment I realized that I could. At least I could see better than I had just a few seconds before. I looked up through the trees and could see that the night sky was still filled with the ribbons of light, but the stars had begun to fade. "It'll be daylight soon." "That won't stop them." She tugged on my hand to get me to start moving. "Not anymore." The ground was slippery with pine needles, but I managed to keep up with her quick pace. "What do you mean, not anymore?" She pointed to the sky. "Because of that; they don't have to hide anymore." My sneaker skidded over a sandy patch and I had to grab a branch to stay on my feet. "What does... what does that have to do with them?" She moved slower, waiting for me to re-find my footing as we began to pick our way down a gentle slope. "I didn't know why you could see me earlier. You shouldn't have been able to. Otho put a spell on me that should have made me all see- through, so you shouldn't have seen me, but you could, so I thought you were a wizard, but you're not so... so it didn't make any sense. Until I saw that!" she pointed skyward again. "That's why you can see me. That's why Otho's spell went Pr-b-b-b-b-r-t!" She ended with a loud fart sound and a giggle over her own rude sound effect. "I... I still don't get it?" A sticker branch slapped against my chest and I stopped to delicately remove it so that I could avoid further puncturing from those damned thorns. "What do the northern lights have to do with spells and demons?" "It's not the northern lights, silly!" She turned to see why I had stopped, then helped me pull away a second vine of little needles from my right sock. "It's the Veil!" "The what?" Now freed from the evil vegetation, we were able to start moving again, though at a slower pace. The way down was choked by bushes, vines, tall grass, and nasty plants with tiny thorns. I was betting on having a bad case of poison ivy, oak, or sumac by the time we made it to the city. "The Veil! Gosh, don't you know anything?" She enjoyed being the one with all of the answers this time. "A long, long, long, loooooonnnng time ago, back way before you were made, even before Otho and Jin were made, back when the special ones first came here, a spell was cast over the world called the Veil. It was cast so that the special ones could hide away from humans forever, but it didn't work for all of them, just some. The ones who couldn't hide behind the Veil tried to be friends with the humans, but most humans are mean, and they like to hurt special ones. So they ran far away and hid in different places." "So..." we were only a few minutes on foot and already I was sweating, "... so you were hiding behind this Veil thing?" "Yup." "And now... now something's gone wrong with it?" "Yup. Otho said that something like this was going to happen. He said that was the reason he needed to get me to that house on the hill in a hurry. I was going to be a gift for the one who... how did he say it? Oh yeah, I was a gift for the one who would pull aside the Veil, the one who would begin the Long Night, and esher... ishher..." she stumbled on the word. "Usher?" I offered. "Uh huh, Usher in the time of the Dark Lord. He said she was to become his human bride once he got out of prison." "Wait, so a woman is supposed to do all this? A regular old human woman?" "Nope, not a woman. A young girl, like me, only human." "How?" I was lost in our conversation, but talking took my mind off of the scrapes, scratches, and stinging sweat I was acquiring. "Don't know. Otho never said. Just that she lived on the top of that hill all the way down the road from your house." The hill she was talking about had a number of houses on it, but they were all pretty spread out. People with money lived up there, but it wasn't as ritzy as the Highland Hills, which overlooked the city. I knew a couple of people who lived up there, but doubted that any of them could have been involved in something as crazy as all this. "Did Otho ever mention her name?" "Yeah, uh... I think he said her name was Bethany." I managed to take two more steps before what she said finally clicked in my brain. The ground suddenly seemed to lurch under my feet, like God had literally tried to pull the rug out from under me. The back of my head struck the ground, sending white stars dancing in my eyes. She couldn't have said what I thought she said. She didn't say that name. It had to be some mistake, some mispronounced syllable. Maybe I had heard her wrong or was distracted. There was just no way... no way she'd said what I thought she said. "Did you say... Bethany?" Ayumi had stopped and come over to help me the moment I made contact with the ground. She hovered above me in the steadily growing gray light of pre-dawn with concern on her face, "Yeah, why? Do you know her?" Of all the names in the world to say, she had to say that one. Sure, there were a number of people living up on that hill, but to my knowledge, there was only one little girl named Bethany, and it couldn't have been her. "You're positive? One-hundred percent positive, that Otho said Bethany?" She made a silly face as she reached down to help me back to my feet. "Yeah, I remembered it because I thought it was a pretty name. You do know her, don't you?" I brushed the dirt and dried leaves out of my hair. "Yeah... I know her. She's my friend Tommy's ten year old little sister; adopted little sister." I shook my head, still not believing. "She became a part of their family two years ago. They moved to a house on that hill just last year. This is nuts. Just fucking nuts! There's no way that that little girl is who you think she is." "Wow!" Ayumi looked at me as if seeing me for the first time. "You've met her? You know the family that I was supposed to be with? For reals? That's sooo neat!" "No," I barked at her, "it's not neat! It's fucked up is what it is!" She backed away from me, the anger in my voice scaring her, but I couldn't help it. "Why are you so mad all the time?" she asked from a distance. "I'm not mad!" I snapped. "Yes you are." She cowered as she spoke, as if waiting for me to strike her. "You get mad real fast, and you yell all the time. Why?" "Mind your fucking business" How could Tommy hide something like this from me? Why didn't he say something? Sure, it explained his sudden change in attitude, but come on! I didn't flip out over the gay shit when that happened, he could have said something. No, he was just an asshole; this shit with Bethany had nothing to do with how he acted. "Maybe she did have something to do with the way Tommy treated you, she's under the Dark One's command, and Tommy might be too." Ayumi spoke in a whisper to me, still keeping her distance. "What? Now you can read my fucking mind too?!" She gave a little shrug. "No, but... I can see some things, but only when you feel really strongly about them. Like, like your friend." "He's not my friend." I spat it out before thinking. "He... he's a fuck head." Ayumi stepped closer and put one of her tiny hands on my chest. "You don't really hate him." "Yes I do." I pulled away from her. "He dropped me like a sack of shit once he got a girlfriend. Then he treated me like, like I was the one who was fucked up in the head. He turned the whole damned school against me! After all the times I stood up for him, all the times I jumped into fights to save his sorry ass. He pushed me away; laughed at me... he ruined everything." "The Dark One is very powerful, even in his prison." Ayumi, her eyes filled with tears once again, took my hand and wouldn't let me pull away. "You hate your friend because of what he did to you, but maybe he did it to protect you. Maybe he didn't want you to get hurt." Could that have been it? Did he try to tell me but I wasn't listening? Maybe he pushed me away... because, because he couldn't tell me. He really was hiding something all that time, but it wasn't that he was in the closet, it was his little sister! It all started making sense now! She had never liked me, she was jealous of all the time Tommy and I spent together, that was obvious. She was always a little weird. Cute girl and all, but Tommy had told me about her screaming nightmares, and even told me when he had caught her talking to herself late one night. Everything started changing when she arrived, but even still, she was just a little nine-year-old redheaded girl, how could she be causing all of this? Was she really that powerful? Could she have been planning on hurting me out of jealousy? Is that why Tommy did what he did? To protect me? I can't say for sure exactly how I knew this was true, but it was; I've never been surer of something in my life. My eyes misted up and a lump grew in my throat. "Are you reading my mind again?" She smiled. "No..." but I could tell she still was in there. I pulled her into my arms and gave her a big hug. "Thank you." "For what?" she asked as I held her close. She wheezed in an over-dramatic fashion as I crushed her to me. "For fixing my head," and it was my turn to sob on her shoulder. You know... for a seven-year-old girl... "Eight," she whispered softly in my ear. Shit... for anyone of any age... Ayumi knew exactly what to say. Maybe it was magic, or maybe it was mind reading, but that didn't matter. I had been holding all of this inside for so long, not knowing who I could talk to about it, struggling with my anger at being betrayed by my best friend, and now it was gone. The walls I had built up, the anger I felt towards everyone and everything. All of that pain, all of my angst. It was just gone... melting away like an ice-cube in a glass. Hooooowwwwwwlll! The unnatural howl cut through the trees and echoed in the valley that we were climbing down into. It was far off, but close enough to stop my heart for a few seconds. "We should get moving again." Ayumi kissed my cheek before pulling away. "I'm not the one who stopped to cry," she snickered. As we started off again on foot, I had to laugh too. It'd been less than twenty-four hours since I met her, and I'd already changed. I would never have cried in front of someone before, especially not a girl, but here I was... wiping away salty tears. What the hell was happening to me? The light filtering through the treetops took on a new brilliance as the sun finally crested the hills in the east. All of the stars had faded into a hazy blue sky, the wispy lights dissolving with them. The heat under the trees, which had been heavy and harsh to begin with, now began to bake us. "It's hard to breathe it's so damned hot," I huffed along behind her. "I'd kill for a swimming pool right now." She didn't respond, but I could tell the heat was taking its toll on her as well. Sweat glistened on her tanned skin. It ran down her exposed back in little rivers, slipping under the black leather bands that were pulled tightly against her. My gaze fixed on her cute little bum as she made her way through the brush, nearly mesmerizing me with the way her muscles flexed and relaxed with each step. "You never did tell me where you got that outfit," I broke the silence after taking note that she was wearing far less clothing than I was, but had not even scratched her skin during our trek. "You didn't find that in my sister's room, did you?" "Nope," She stopped to take a deep breath and wipe some sweat out of her eyes. "This is what I was wearing when I was made." "It's..." I searched for the right words to describe the thin straps that did nothing to hide her private parts, "... interesting." She smiled. "Most humans think so. Jin especially seemed to like it." "Jin was a human?" I asked as I pulled my soaked T-shirt over my head and wrung it out. I half expected to hear a sizzling sound as the sweat dripped onto the dry ground. "Yeah," She leaned forward and supported herself by placing her hands on her knees. "She found me and took me in. She said she had been expecting me." I didn't feel like walking just yet, so I decided to keep up the conversation. "Could she do magic, or was she normal like me?" Ayumi gave a little laugh, "What makes you think you're normal, huh?" She raised her head up, letting her hair fall away from her face to reveal a mischievous grin as her eyes studied me without my shirt. She had already seen me naked, so I don't know why her looking at me now made me feel a little uncomfortable. "Yeah, she could do magic stuff. She was the one who taught me how to do stuff, too. Jin was nice." I reluctantly pulled my shirt back on, and though it did feel cooler, it stuck uncomfortably to my skin. "Did she know who made you?" "Nope, she just found me and took care of me." She slipped one of her fingers under the leather strap that wound around her waist and tugged it away from her skin. "She taught me lots of stuff. She even showed me how to fly." A big smile broke on her face and her eyes beamed. "I like flying; I like it more than anything else, even more than icy-cream!" "I can see why," I beamed back at her as the memory of my brief flight soared in my mind. "I know I liked flying with you more than ice-cream!" Our pause in movement was a short one, and our progress through the dense brush was slow at best. Still the sun rose, higher and higher, the heat becoming unbearable. It took forever to get to the bottom of that first hill, but it was worth it. Through the still leaves and branches of the trees my eyes caught something that didn't fit in with the rest of the scenery. Four thin, straight, black lines ran horizontal to the ground below. "Do you see that?" I asked with a dry cracked voice. Ayumi looked in the direction I pointed and scrunched up her face. "What is that?" "Don't know... let's check it out." It took us another five minutes of hard trudging, but finally the trees began to thin out. One minute we were in deep forest, the next we were standing at the edge of a clear-cut tree line. A wide path had been cut through the forest that stretched off to the east and west as far as we could see. Standing before us was a huge electrical tower, its crisscross of gray steel beams looking very out of place. More towers followed the path in either direction, between them hung the black lines that we had spotted earlier. "I know where we are!" My heart thumped as the realization came over me. "Where?" Ayumi stared at the imposing structures. "What are these things?" "My dad took me out here once. We used to go on hikes and stuff when I was little, but never this far out. He told me all about this stuff. They're power relays. They start at the Highland Dam," I pointed off to the east, "and run all the way down to..." I pointed, smiling, to the west, "... the city! My Dad said if I ever got lost out here, but found the towers, I could follow them to safety." Now it was Ayumi's turn to smile. "No more spiky bushes?" "No more spiky bushes!" I smiled back at her. Continued in Chapter Nine.... You can find more of my stories at: https://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/Moments_In_My_Mind/www/Index.html Join my forum and I'll send you an email notification of when I update my stories: http://fw13.suddenlaunch3.com/index.cgi Read what I've been up to on my Blog: http://fictionwriter13.blogspot.com Feedback, Questions or Comments can be sent here: FictionWriter13@msn.comAyumi8