Chương 202: Act 3, Chapter 53: New, old place

Day in the story: 18th January (Sunday) Alexandra May"Your Domain changed a lot," Zoe said as we all went through the door. I closed it behind us right after Anansi made her hop. Peaches stood awestruck right next to a wall painting showing our university's grounds. Sophie briefly looked at the glassy roof before she patted me on the shoulder.

"Great place. Let's go outside, girls!" she exclaimed, throwing her hands into the air in theatrical fashion. She took a few steps toward the exit that was obvious due to the light of day coming from outside. Liora hovered nearby her, trying to get her to notice him, while she finally turned around to see that both Zoe and Peaches were busy admiring the intricate details of the columns that supported the roof of the Nest.

"Girls?" she asked, prompting them to move." Humans, am I right?" Liora hissed nearby her. She turned toward him and ran her hand through the full length of his mane up to the lower back. He purred in response.

"I get what you mean, Lio," she told him.

"Let's go outside."

"Your wish is my order, my queen!" What a fucking sellout. I waited inside for the rest to move on their own, without hastening them in any form. Zoe was the first to do so. She sent me a smile and sashayed toward Sophie outside. I took the chance to approach Peaches, who stood alone, and came closer to her.

"Is everything fine?"

"Yes! Very much so. I'm just trying to immerse myself. Is all of this done by you? You created all of this?"

"Not by hand. It kind of unfolds as my power grows, based on some representation of my soul. Can't tell you anything more detailed about it. I can consciously work around it, though—put or remove a wall, a shelf. Probably a tree or a cloud as well, if I wanted to. Some places in here have different temperature or gravity than the rest. That kind of thing. Nothing serious."

"That's nothing serious?" she asked, taking her hand back from checking the surface of the column and looking at me.

"Can't get more serious than that, in my opinion."

"Maybe," I told her, put both hands on my hips, and cocked my head to the side for emphasis.

"Are you aware what the first magical thing you remember was? I was wondering what made you an Awake person."

"Oh sure. I actually checked it not long ago, after our hospital talk. I was curious myself," she replied and started walking toward the light rectangle of the doors leading outside. I followed her.

"You checked? What do you mean by that? You have magical memory?" I asked, watching a folded spider move up the column. I just realized there were quite a lot of them here by now, and I don't remember making so many of them.

"Magical?" She laughed.

"I have a journal where I write down important things that happened, lessons about people I learned, and how I should have behaved but didn't. It helps me make progress. I just went back and read what I'd written."

"Wow. That makes a lot of sense," I replied, right as we stepped onto the plaza, where my world opened in front of us. Sunlight spilled across my skin in soft in golden, warm threads. They felt like they were meant to wake something rather than simply touch it. A slow breeze moved gently through the space, stirring everything just enough to remind it that it was alive.

It carried with it the quiet rustle of distant hills, where trees stood untouched by human hand—in this pristine manner that every day's life was lacking on the Earth's side. The buildings around us framed the place without containing it, and at the center of it all lay the black lake. It reflected everything from the architecture, to the sky and sunlight, and all of us too. It shone back the colors of Liora darting around the girls. Peaches stopped at the edge of the shallow steps leading down to it.

She extended her foot, pressing it against the surface. The lake did not react. There was no wave, not even a single small ripple. And yet, beneath that stillness, there was a certainty that it was liquid. It had depth, but it simply chose not to yield. Zoe and Sophie were already near the center, standing beneath the Weaver's Tree. Above them, shadowlight drifted through the branches in slow, luminous currents, weaving colors of the rainbow—pure white broken into all of the hues.

The trunk pulsed faintly with it, like a beating heart of this soul-realm.

"I…" Peaches began, crouching down to touch the lake with her hand, testing the impossible.

"What was I talking about?"

"The day you noticed magic," I replied, stepping onto the blackness and extending a hand toward her. She took it, stood up, and made a first deliberate but careful step. Then the next one, which she watched like a hawk, followed. She only began speaking after a while, when she realized that she would not fall into the abyss below.

"It was easy to find, as I remembered that it was around 9/11. So I read through the days around it and found it to be the 10th of September."

"Which year?" I asked, leading her slowly toward the girls.

"Last year," she replied.

"I was on an evening walk," she started recounting, when I realized that it was around the time I created all of this, on the 27th of September, "and I noticed a mural—whatever you call that graffiti up there on the buildings. It was painted on a billboard, and it depicted a giant of some kind, made of city fragments. It looked like it was waking up, and it really resonated with me, so I stopped and looked up."

"No way…" I told her.

"Yes, really. I stopped, and for some reason I was the only one who looked. I know because I turned around to check whether I was imagining things, but it was shining with light. It was colorful, like the one inside this crystal tree. And it somehow changed me. I felt like it spoke to me on some deep level, asked me to wake up. I noted it down in my journal and looked for similar cases on the internet, but kept it mostly to myself. It did not seem wise to share something like this with others."

"No way…" I repeated, caught in the loop of my thoughts.

"Why is it so hard to believe? You can do magic yourself," she answered, unaware.

"Exactly. That's why there is no way."

"What?" she asked bluntly, as I wasn't making enough sense for her.

"That billboard," I started, trying to amend that blunder of a talk.

"I painted over it, even before I consciously awoke my Domain. I remember how shadowlight danced around me during its creation, and I sure as hell remember thinking that it would be great if it helped the people of the city wake the fuck up a bit. Guess it worked…"

"So you are the one that showed me the magic after all?" This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"Pretty much. Funny, right?"

"What's funny?" Sophie asked, turning to me from the tree, and I briefly noticed that there was a bulge under her T-shirt that flattened itself when she did so—around her upper chest.

"Alexa's been telling me—""Soph, can you show me your necklace?" I interrupted Peaches.

"What? Why?" she asked, but reached under her clothes anyway and pulled it out. The other girls were looking at her the entire time.

"Of course," she added, looking at a fragment of the core in her hand.

"It grew bigger?" she asked, while the crystal shone with a very bright light.

"I don't remember. You're the one wearing it all the time. Did it?" I asked, right as Liora decided to drop down to us along with Maya, whom he played tag with, in the air.

"I think it did," Maya said, attracting Zoe's attention toward herself.

"Is that a seer?" she asked.

"Not that. I am a she. And yes, I am a seer. Thank you for noticing. My name is Maya." Her voice was high-pitched, and still, somehow, anything she said made me nervous in her presence.

"I will explain in a second, girls. Can we focus on the necklace first?" I asked, moving closer to Sophie.

"I am pretty sure it was attracted toward the core when you stood looking at it."

"I can try it right now," she answered and turned around again. The fragment of the soul core jolted away from her hand, and only the chain held it still around Sophie's neck. She took a few steps back until the pull eased and it dropped again onto her chest.

"Any idea why it does that?"

"No," Maya replied.

"Anansi is unaware."

"I will have to ask your in-laws, Soph," I told her. She made a sour face in response.

"They are not them yet."

"Would you like them to be?" Peaches asked.

"Maybe, but please no men talk today, okay?" Sophie answered, clearly hung up on something between her and Nickolas.

"Well, I promised you guys a form of safari, so if you'd like to do that, we can."

"What about me?" Maya asked.

"You can come too, for all I care."

"Not that, Alexa. You were supposed to tell them who I am."

"True. This is Maya. Maya, those are people you know. She is a version of me that is also a seer. Made from a 3D-printed model of me and painted by me. I also gave her personality and all the Authority necessary to be alive—well, and her own person, while still being me."

"What?" Peaches asked.

"That's awesome!" she added.

"So it's a copy-paste with a few modifications? And she is running on your operating system?"

"I guess?" I answered, tapping my chin.

"Seems pretty close to what I understand of your powers," Zoe added.

"Can we not talk about me in that manner?" Maya squeaked, while Zoe extended her hand toward her.

"Do you feel desecrated or something? For me copying your powers?" I asked her.

"No, of course not," she replied as Maya tried to push against her fingers and her little hands fell through Zee's hand.

"She is curious how it feels to touch someone like her," Maya replied, and Zoe smiled in response.

"True." She pulled her hand back and turned toward the path leading outside right to the woods.

"Can we go see those wondrous animals you mentioned?"

"Of course! Follow—""—me, my queen," Liora interrupted me and darted in front of Zoe, all of his scales either black, silver, or gold in hue, as he tried to look absolutely regal.

"Yeah, go after him." I motioned, waving them off. Peaches grabbed me, linking her arm with mine.

"May I?" she asked. I responded by lowering my chin slowly. Both of us started walking after our draconic guide and the two women who followed him. Somehow, as soon as we stepped off the lake, a beaten path made of soft soil and small rocks replaced it. I did not remember it being here before, but I'd most likely have to get used to the fact that this place's one constant would be that it would change a lot—and that I would never truly know it all, just like I would never understand every part of my own self.

Figuring oneself out was a process that never ended. After just a minute, Lio was the first one to wander into the forest. He hopped happily like a weasel, stopping every few steps to make sure that Sophie was following him. She must have been his human crush. The sound of fresh, green leaves moved by the wind was soon joined by the melodic singing of my songbirds.

"Is this—?" Zoe was the first to notice.

"I know this melody… Are those birds?"

"Yes," Maya replied, flying closer to them.

"Ever since Alexa realized that she can use music, those colorful birds that look like corvids with rainbow-colored long feathers started singing melodies of the songs she likes. We call them Songbirds for now. Look." She explained and pointed with her arm, leaving a trail of silver light afterimages after her quick motion. Nested on the branch of a big, wide canopy of an oak-like tree was a pair of the avians my Seer-self had just described.

The male one, which was more colorful and had longer feathers that ended in peacock-like eyes, sang some variation of a John Legend love song's melody.

"Incredible," Peaches whispered.

"Are you creating them by hand too?"

"No, just like my Domain, they are an unconscious change," I replied, but then began thinking about the other me that became the soul core.

"Or something my crystal tree had designed," I added.

"Can't really tell for sure yet." Zoe extended her open palm toward the pair, who had already taken notice of us. The male tilted his head once toward his partner, as if asking for silent permission, then unfolded his wings. Each feather caught the light differently, shifting between teal, green, purple, and pink. They weren't a simple colors laid upon them, but ones that seemed to exist within, sliding across their surface as he moved.

He pushed off the nest with a single, decisive beat, glided toward Zoe and landed on her hand with impossible precision, claws barely touching her skin. For a moment he was still and then he bowed. His beak dipped low, and his wings stretched wide in a slow, deliberate display. The feathers fanned out to their full extent, shimmering with some bioluminescence he produced. After that his tail rose and spread behind him.

It was tall and proud, revealing the pattern hidden within—dozen of eyes set into the ends of the feathers. They begun blinking slowly and out of sync. Zoe flinched, her hand shifting ever so slightly, while I felt a quiet smile pull at my lips. The bird did not react to Zee's sudden movement, but simply watched. Its two true eyes blinked once, as she focused onto them.

They were deep black at first glance, but when the light caught them just right, they opened into something that looked like distant nebulas at the very end of a night's sky.

"You are beautiful," Peaches said, unlatching herself from me and stepping closer to the creature. It lingered a moment longer, studying each of us in turn, before lifting off with a few strong, measured beats of its wings and returning to the nest.

"They do not taste very good, though, human," my cloud serpent added. I pinched the bridge of my nose.

"No one asked, Lio. Weren't you interested in a hunt? Should I send you right now?" He glanced at me, then at Sophie. His scales shifted, bleeding into a deep, bloody red.

"Then lead the way," I said.

"And keep the eating comments to yourself."

"I don't mind, Liora," Sophie said, spoiling him again by scratching under his chin. He leaned into it. Of course he did. If I tried that, I'd get hissed at.

"Eh…" I exhaled.

"Hmm?" Pam asked.

"Nothing. Let's get going." Liora moved ahead, guiding us between the trees. The forest breathed around us. Thick canopies of deep green filtered the sky, but here and there, sunlight broke through in both thin blades and wide pools of gold that lit the grass and leaves in vivid shades of pastel and neon. We noticed the spainter on one of the trunks—a small creature, no bigger than a rat. Part spider, part artist.

It resembled a black widow in shape, bulbous abdomen and long legs, but its body was almost entirely white.

"It has tufts on its front limbs?" Sophie asked, as Zoe and Peaches moved closer.

"Brushes," Maya corrected, hovering near them.

"They produce silk that turns into paint. That's how they create."

"Woah," Zoe whispered.

"If you want to see it, look left," I said. They turned. On another tree, two spainters were finishing a piece—a rabbit mid-jump, diving into a black void. Not perfect, but convincing enough to fool the eye." Spiders and bunnies. I should have known," Sophie muttered.

"Speaking of the latter," I continued, stepping through tall ferns blooming with impossible flowers.

"They were the first creatures I noticed here. Looked normal at first." We entered a clearing. At its center was a mound, and within it a hole. Too black and way too flat to look convincing.

"Is that painted?" Peaches asked, stepping closer.

"It's just not real."

"It isn't," I said.

"Those rabbits I mentioned—" She didn't get to hear the rest. One of them burst out of the hole, knocking her onto her back before hopping off her knees and onto the grass. It chewed calmly on a carrot, oversized front teeth working steadily. It looked almost normal, but it had longer slightly taller body—something like a mix between hare and bunny. Its front paws were more different too, more like human hands than those of an animal, and they were entirely black.

"They're a bit different from the usual grey jumpers," Maya added, darting forward and startling it. The creature bolted. A few long jumps carried it to a nearby tree. It leapt again with its front paws first. They flashed with purplish shadowlight, and a black, painted hole opened on the trunk. It slipped inside and vanished.

"They can cast their own magic."