Acceptance of the Self

Book 1: Attunement of the Hearts

Chapter 5.a - Across the Bridge

___________________ ღ♥ღ ___________________

 Anne

¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ •.¸ ¸.• ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯

[ - Friday Sept. 06 ????, 3:45pm, Amaranth - ]

 

 

I sit with my legs crossed on a bare wood floor, my armor still on from the dawn patrol I’ve just completed. I’m exhausted, and more than a little afraid. 

 

I’m scared because my mind has been changing in ways I have no control over, and there is no one in my life that I can turn to for assistance or advice. My own perception of reality is suspect, after all the flickers of phantom sensations I’d experienced over the past few days. And maybe I could handle the otherworldly visions, if it hadn’t been for the fear of what they mean for my future.

 

I do my best to breathe deeply and slow the panic that such thoughts stir. Gently, I imagine a wave of deep blue calm washing over the rest of my mind, soothing the fears and worries of the others sharing my soul. I feel a few apologies drift to me from the corners of our brain, as they drift off towards sleep. We had already agreed that I should be the only one awake for what’s to come.

 

On the curved wooden wall before me is a large mosaic grown from various colorful mosses. It depicts Artya, the Goddess of the wilds, running through the trees beside her deer and wolf companions with a delighted grin on her face. I smile softly as I stare up at her dark-as-night moss-skin, and let the tension coiled up in my body and mind begin to ease. I say a silent, loving prayer of thanks to the goddess. Throughout my mind’s entire twenty seven years of existence, she has been our most trusted and faithful friend. We owe her our life.

 

Years ago, Artya had sent a sickletooth lion to save us from a miserable death. I know she did, because I eventually gained her trust enough that she admitted to helping us. "I" came into being on that fateful night, a part of my mind-family firmly devoted to understanding the forces that had allowed us to escape our doom. I'd eventually decided to take the name Anne, and officially became a part of the body that is Anialah Tahana. I have defined myself in part through my worship of Artya, but I am also the primary magic user of my head family, and the one who's generally quick-witted enough to hold my own in arguments or important conversations with our friends and family. The other parts of my soul, like the fierce Amira, my sister, and the caring Ania, our older mentor, are more than happy to leave communication with most beings - divine and mundane - to me. They have other skills, passions, and desires that require their full attention. 

 

Thankfully all of us are currently content to live our life in service to the goddess of the wilds. And a good thing too, for it had been Artya who’d kept us from panicking when these strange visions began earlier this week. She'd suggested that this connection growing within us might not be the terrible burden we feared, but instead an opportunity for immense growth and learning. Not all of us are convinced of course - after all, no other guardian figure has ever done right by us thus far - but I’ve been doing my best to spread her reassurances. 

 

I stretch out my right leg and begin massaging it methodically. Amira had fought off a manticore that’d gotten over the wall today, and my legs are sure feeling that fight now. At least kneading my sore muscles is something to distract me from the nerves, allowing me refocus on the task at hand.

 

There are many stories throughout history of people being visited by beings from other worlds. They are generally viewed as heroes who’d been blessed by powerful spirits, though the details of said blessings are often unclear. In some tales, for instance, it is said the chosen are connected to the souls of great warriors and sages, who personally choose who to share their techniques and power with. In other books, a partnership between two equal and like-minded souls is depicted, two mortals who find each other in their dreams and rise to prominence through cooperation. And still other stories talk of a great god who slumbers somewhere deep beneath the surface of the eastern ocean, its dreams like tendrils that reach out and link mortals of various planes purely by chance.

 

Whatever the origin of their strange bond, the details of how these people describe their otherworldly counterpart match up well enough to what my mind is going through that we have begun to suspect this is our fate. We are used to having others in our thoughts of course, our wariness comes from the fact that, no matter their origin, the stories always portray the ‘connected’ as great saviors destined to change the world: a fate we will do most anything to avoid.

 

With a long sigh, I do my best to acknowledge the anxieties these facts bring up and move past them. Alas, I'm only slightly successful. 

 

In the present day, heroes are heralded as legends to be celebrated throughout the land, especially in my city: Amaranth. This metropolitan melting pot of cultures and races is one of the many powerful city-states in the area; it had been founded by a team of five such bonded people a century ago, or so the stories go. Due to that history, the Amaranthian people are particularly passionate about their love for the connected. If the governing council gets word of our strange new mental bond, we’ll almost certainly be forced once more to live our life in the city’s spotlight, our every action picked apart by politicians and nobles with their heads so far up their asses they're digesting themselves.

 

I don’t want that. We don’t want that. Not again. Our mind is already fragmented enough from all the traumas life has thrown at us. We’ve had more than enough trouble just trying to live a happy life, away from the chaos of our youth. I share these fears with the rest of my head family. But still, I'm doing my best to trust in Artya’s guidance. The goddess has asked me to give our new head-mate a chance, and so here I am: sitting in a quiet prayer room struggling to control my breathing and reel in my ricocheting thoughts. I close my eyes and bow my head, striving to prepare myself for the ritual to come. 

 

Artya’s soothing presence is strong in my mind, as it always is when I connect to her from within her great temple. She gently nudges me away from the anxiety, and guides me towards happy memories of my time in this place. Her presence helps harden my resolve, and I decide to begin with the task at hand. 

 

Slowly, reverently, I lean forward to pick up a small glass-blown pipe from the floor in front of me. With a spark of crimson light and whisper of will, a little flame flickers to life on my right forefinger. I bring one end of the pipe up to my lips as I light the hyadia buds in the little bowl at the other end of the piece. I inhale as much of the soothing smoke as I can handle, then close my eyes for a moment, savoring the feeling of warmth in my chest. 

 

I exhale slowly, and watch the pale grey trail of smoke drift away from me, twisting and coiling with the ambient air currents of the room. I feel a thrill of trepidation in my heart, uncertainty at what might happen once I connect to the stranger on the other side of my visions.  

 

The book I’d ‘borrowed’ from my sister had said that some plants, like hyadia, are ideal for opening one’s mind to new ways of thinking. Apparently the heroes of Amaranth accidentally popularized mind-altering drugs by using them when they needed to think and plan their defense against the enemy armies at their gates. That had been a surprise, since I’d been using hyadia for the past five years to aid in my efforts to commune with the goddess. I’d had no idea that such drugs were a relatively recent addition to the societies around Amaranth, and I certainly wasn’t complaining about additional reasons to sit, meditate and smoke. 

 

I let my eyes drift close, relishing the feeling of lightness spreading slowly throughout my limbs as I continue to take hits from the pipe. 

 

The mental part of the high is very subtle at first. I feel it beginning as a slight tingle at the base of my neck, and then, slowly, my thoughts begin to gather momentum. I don’t fight it. Instead, I find feelings of gratitude welling up inside me, towards Artya, for helping us so many times throughout our life. She whispers to me in the quiet air currents of the room, soothing my fears, strengthening my resolve. And my thoughts drift into reminiscing about the building I’m now inside: her house of worship.

 

The Temple of Artya is an oasis of greenery nestled deep in the heart of the city of Amaranth, and it’s been my home for just over a decade now. In the center of the temple grounds rises the largest and tallest landmark: an ancient tree with a massive trunk and vast half-spherical canopy. At nearly five stories tall, this black-barked tree’s thick branches cover nearly half the temple grounds with bright-orange leaves. It’s the actual ‘Temple’ dedicated to Artya; the rest of the buildings around it are either devoted to related gods or serving as living spaces for all the faithful who wish to live as close as they can get to the wilds while still being inside Amaranth’s protective walls. The small, quiet room I’m in is about halfway up this central tree, and it's one of many on this floor of the temple. 

 

Outside these walls, three other huge trees are arranged in a triangle centered on this temple; each one different in species, diverse in color, and at least tripled in size compared to their wild sisters. Numerous smaller stone-and-dirt dwellings are scattered over the two-city-blocks wide field of prairie grasses, shrubs, and fallen leaves. All of the temple’s buildings had been grown and shaped through powerful nature magic into homes, prayer rooms, eating halls, and all manner of other functional spaces to better support the worshippers who dedicate themselves to the Goddess(es) of the Wilds.

 

I take my fifth deep inhale from the pipe, sighing out the spicy smoke with contentment. Here, I feel closer to Artya than anywhere else in the city. Her magic and presence bathes the entire temple grounds of course, but it’s especially potent within her temple's walls. 

 

This entire tree is a work of magical engineering that dates back over two centuries to a coven of druids who had strengthened and shaped an already-giant Artyal tree into the massive living building still thriving today. Carvings of runes and complex sigils had been etched in evenly spaced rings up and down the trunk and all along the interior walls of the tree, and the magic bound in place by these permanent enchantments continues to imbue the organism with powerful effects even to this day. I’m pretty sure somewhere in all those enchantments is something that allows Artya to affect reality far more easily inside her temple than she can out in the broader world. I’m also pretty sure that some of the spells at work in the living floor beneath me had been woven by Artya’s own hand. At least, I’ve caught the smell of her musk-and-pine scented magic every now and then throughout my time living here, at times when she was far from my thoughts. 

 

I suddenly realize my eyes feel tense, and that I’ve been staring unblinkingly at a knot in the wood on the floor to the left of my legs for several minutes. I fight to turn my gaze downward, and blink a few times. Black hair falls in front of my face as I do, and I grimace as I reach up to tuck it back behind my ear. And at that moment, I feel an alien twinge somewhere deep in the depths of my brain.

 

I’m careful to suppress the surge of excitement that bubbles up, allowing myself instead to relax, to stay in the moment and let the odd sensations of unfurling, of blooming, continue. I let my eyes close again, taking a deep breath. My thoughts have more room to breathe, more space to take up, and I reach out, imagining myself expanding, floating upwards and outwards, away from the body sitting in the temple. Away from the other voices sharing my head.

 

And when I open my eyes again, I’m no longer in the temple.

 

The world immediately around me is bathed in darkness. I’m seated in an uncomfortably hard chair, and far ahead of and below where I sit, a woman stands on a stage bathed in bright white light. She looks to be talking loudly, but I have trouble making any sense of the muffled sounds coming out of her mouth. There are people hidden in the darkness throughout the room, seated in chairs identical to my own. I see enough to understand that this place is like one of the Amaranth Academy’s lecture halls, and as I focus on her, I find I know the woman on the stage’s name: Professor Sycamore.

 

I feel a... presence, to my right, drawing my attention like a moth to a flame. I turn awkwardly in my chair, and behold the source of this feeling: a humanoid person who appears to be collapsed on the desk before them, gently snoring. They’re wearing a bulky orange hooded shirt, and appear to have bizarre blue pants on.

 

I stare at the brown-haired student, a thousand questions flooding my mind. Why are they so young? Where is their powerful magic, or gigantic battleax? Perhaps I’m misreading the situation. Perhaps this is a test, or the spirit is letting their apprentice connect to me?

 

I realize too late that I’ve returned to my seated body in the temple. Bearshit, I mutter to myself. I take a deep breath and focus on exhaling out all the needless anxiety in my chest. 

 

A corner of my mind still tingles from the connection, and I latch on to that feeling. Carefully, I focus on letting myself drift towards it again. Soon enough, I feel the alien sensations of the ‘plastic’ chair return to my butt. 

 

I keep myself here in this in-between state for a few moments, feeling both sensations from my world and the new one. Then I let myself slide all the way over to the lecture hall, and am again sitting beside the sleeping youth. I begin to familiarize myself with this state of consciousness, of being here on this side of our connection. When I feel myself sliding back, I let it happen, and focus on memorizing how that feels, too. 

 

Seated in the temple, I take the pad of paper on the floor beside me and begin writing down notes to myself. I imagine a great sea stretching out beyond the edge of my mind, and visualize the feeling of the connection as a flat, smooth wooden bridge attached to my side of the shore and stretching out across the calm sea into the distant mists. I can’t see the other shore from my side, and I watch the bridge dip below the waves as the connection fades. With a bit of effort on my part, I slide back towards the connection, and watch the bridge rise back up to the surface.  I feel a pull from somewhere beyond the horizon, and I step out onto the bridge. 

 

The imagery of the bridge helps me conceptualize what I want to do with the connection: in this case, I want to keep the bridge above the waves, so I can navigate through the mist and across to whatever’s on the other side of my connection. I’m able to maintain my focus after a bit of practice, and I make my way into the white mist beyond my soul. A few moments of walking and pushing forward later, and I slip into a far less defined mental space. It feels relatively stable though, and I set about imagining the vast sea at the edge of this mind, with the other end of my bridge anchored to its shore.

 

Okay, I think to myself, Now we’re getting somewhere!

 

---

 

[ - Thirty minutes later - ]

 

The urge to get up and pace is nearly overwhelming, but I firmly stand my ground against it.

 

Amira, please, I need to talk to them! I plead internally.

 

I feel a disgruntled huff come from my co-host’s distant sanctuary in our mind. We need a plan, Amira replies irately. 

 

She’s anxious, we all are. I had spent half an hour in this room alternating between smoking and mapping out the inner pathway stretching from my mind to the other world, but I hadn’t really learned anything new. Then a few minutes ago the connection bridge had sunken suddenly amidst a flurry of sharp sensations from the other side. There had been a bell ringing, and a tinge of fierce panic before we lost contact.

 

The plan is I go back to the other world and figure out who we’re connected to, I snap impatiently. I want to raise the bridge again, but our protector is doing her best to stop me.

 

I imagine myself tapping my foot irritatedly, shooting my withering gaze at her across the neutral space between us, and she retaliates by setting my imaginary body ablaze with crimson flame. A moment later the both of us are swept up in a wave of calm that surges through our thoughts, wiping away the fire and anger. It’s like being submerged in warm soothing bath water, easing tensions and soothing anxieties.

 

Girls, Ania, the responsible member of our body, says gently, You’ve got to get it together. 

 

Her calming presence manifests in our imagined mind-space as a slightly older, more feminine version of our physical body. Amira, she continues, Anne could detect no threat to herself from crossing the connection while the other was asleep. She’s the expert here, and any information she can get us now will help us make a better plan going forward.

 

A light twinge of grumbling assent comes from Amira, and I feel a twinge of shame for my behavior. I let a trail of thought drift to her, letting her know that I know what she's feeling. I know she's right to be concerned, alerting the spirit connected to us that we’re now able to talk face-to-face with them might lead to them invading our mind more frequently, and I should have led with that instead of arguing with her pointlessly. Amira relaxes slightly, seemingly placated by the both of us acknowledging that her caution isn’t misplaced. 

 

I take full responsibility if this doesn’t go well, I say, my forest-green aura surging as I reaffirm my faith in myself. I’ll be back soon.

 

Then I return my attention to our body, and kneel down to pick up the pipe again. I’ve refilled it with more of the hyadia already, and a soft glow of crimson light shimmers around my right forefinger again as I bring the small flame back to life. I breathe in the smoke, and sit myself down with my back to the smooth wooden wall across from the moss mosaic of Artya. Ania and Amira slowly fade to the background of our mind, and I’m left alone at the front once more.

 

I take deep breaths in between drags from the pipe, working to calm myself. My thoughts begin to gather that pondering weight of the high again, making it more difficult to direct my stream of consciousness. I find myself thinking about how strange it is, that connecting to someone in another world is such a big, important thing in Amaranthian society. I connect to the other fragments of myself on a daily basis, yet that’s seen as completely normal by the general population. This feeling of crossing over to the other world really isn’t that different from trying to peek into Amira or Ania’s private spaces in our thoughts. Even the fear we feel about this cross-world connection is similar to the distrust new parts of our mind sometimes feel when they first come into their identities and don’t know what’s happening. I guess the only difference will be the ‘power’ this supposed spirit or warrior or whatever can grant us.

 

I picture myself settling down to wait on the shore of the sea at the edge of our mind. Thoughts of Amira and Ania spiral out to thoughts of my identity alongside theirs. Both of them were ‘hosts’ in my head, people who controlled the body frequently, and they had both come before me. They don’t like to talk about the past before I came into being, and I’m content with that. I’m in charge of all things Goddess-related, and that’s plenty for me. Our bond with the deity Artya has sustained us through many very difficult periods in our life thus far after all. I’m happy to let Amira handle our position as a guard working for the city, patrolling the neighborhoods with sword and medical kit and always available in case anyone needs assistance or any monsters sneak in from beyond the walls. She's the one who keeps us moving forward, and the one who usually confronts danger for us. And then there’s Ania, who watches over Amira and I, as well as everyone else in our little soul-cluster. She acts a bit like our big sister sometimes, and she handles talking to any other parts of our mind that find their way to the ‘front’ of our thoughts without understanding how they got there. 

 

tw: mention of traumatic childhood, mention of traumatized alters / dissociative identities

 

Many other identities exist in our mind of course, some of them still stuck in perpetual youth - or worse, frozen in a single moment of time - from the trauma they experienced while being stuck in the physical body during a time when the rest of us had to detach from it. That usually happened only in times of great pain, anxiety, or depression, and whoever was left stuck in the body while the rest of us shut down tended to be severely scarred by the experience. We all do our utmost to comfort those little ones when they wake up enough to talk to us, and at the moment everyone in our soul loved each other as deeply as any blood family. 

 

end tw

 

All of the other parts of our mind usually retreat to their own inner world after a while of fronting with us, though. Amira, Ania and I are the only three who consistently engage with and live out our body's life from day to day.

 

In my mind’s eye, I sit on a rocky outcropping a few feet above the waterline, watching the sea ebb and flow with my emotions. When it happens, I catch the slight shudder that goes through our mind. It appears as a ripple that spreads out across the ocean before me. Slowly, the bridge I’d built representing the connection rises up from the waves with no help from me. It’s sturdier now, more tangible. I hear a flurry of sounds drift faintly across the waves to me, shouts of excitement, giggles of laughter. I stand, and step out onto the bridge, towards these aberrations of perception.

 

I begin to walk with my hands facing forward, fingers spread, my mind open to the whisper of wind blowing against my skin from the other end of the sea. I breathe deeply, and the smell of freshly cut vegetation fills my nose. It feels sort of like I'm sliding into sleep, into dream; I feel the six senses I'm used to having fill me with sensory feedback, only instead of my physical body, the sensations I’m processing are coming from somewhere on the other side of the sea.

 

A blink later, and I open my eyes to find that I'm no longer on the bridge. A deep green grass spreads out beneath my seated form. It ends a few meters ahead at a smooth flat stone path. And on that path there are people, so many people, right in front of me. I have to stop myself from shouting in alarm. But none of them seem to notice me as I leap to my feet and put my hand on the sword sheathed at my hip. 

 

I stare at these strangers, noting the vibrant colors of their clothing and some of their hair. Most are carrying bags on their back or books in their arms, and I decide I’m still likely somewhere on the sleeping spirit’s school grounds. Perhaps my true bondmate is somewhere in this chaos?

 

I get to my feet, frowning as I search the area for anyone who looks powerful enough that they could initiate a bond with someone in another world. Or, at the very least, for the person I’d seen sleeping in the classroom. 

 

I’m in a wide open rectangular field which is surrounded on all sides by large, opulent-looking buildings. Directly ahead of me, rising over the heads of the stream of students, stands a large black pyramidal structure. It's reflecting the strangely golden light of the sun brightly, almost as if the entire building were made of darkened glass. Which, I realize with a start, is exactly the case.

 

I frown thoughtfully, as more knowledge of this structure wells up to the forefront of my mind. It’s called the ‘Mac’, or the ‘Multipurpose Art Center’, in the alien language that I’d encountered earlier this morning while switching between working on my teleportation sigil and working on the other’s ‘math’ test.

 

As I look around at all the people rushing along the various paths surrounding me, I feel the same magnetic pull I’d felt earlier today, only it’s much stronger this time. 

 

I turn to my left, feeling my gaze drawn irrevocably to a thin, brown-haired student with a blank expression on their face. As soon as our eyes meet, I feel a flash of recognition shoot through my mind, telling me that this is the person I am bonded to. I feel the wind in their hair, the sun on their skin.

 

They stop walking abruptly, nearly getting knocked over by the person behind them. They stare at me in bewilderment, I stare back.

 

My eyes narrow, scanning their bright orange clothing and complete lack of weaponry. No, no this isn’t right. They can’t be the only one here, they look nothing like a helpful spirit or a legendary warrior! Why in all the stars would I be bonded with someone if neither of us knows the reason? 

 

I feel a mental shout blast through my mind: What the FUCK. A moment later, the thin human stumbles off the pathway into the grass, looking shaken.

 

I blink, startled by the pain in their words. Somehow they seem to have known exactly what I'd been thinking. The meaning of their shouted phrase translates across pretty well, and I find my thoughts stalling out. They can hear me? The idea sends a thrill of fear through me as I realize I’m finally here, I’m finally talking to them. To this person who might very well ruin my entire life.

 

Fuck, indeed.

 

Oh, shit, they think, seeming to come to the same realization that I must be able to hear them. Uhhh, sorry? they say uncertainly. They look down and to the side, staring intently at the grass between us. I feel it as their attention turns inwards, their thoughts growing a little more distant, and a lot faster as their anxiety heightens. And then, in a blink, I’m suddenly looking at the opposite side of the field, staring at my own armored body from their lower vantage point.

 

The alien’s thoughts drown out my own: ...torn. Part of me wants to ignore her and go scream into the sky, they’re saying, I mean, come on, even my delusions are disappointed in me! Am I literally incapable of even imagining myself being worth something?

 

I pull back from their stream of consciousness, and feel myself slip back towards my dream-like body still standing across from them. I feel confused, but there’s no denying the intense anxiety spiralling through their mind. All thoughts of my distrust for them are quieted. I reach out on instinct, sending a soft pulse of calming energy towards them, the way that Ania has done for me so many times before.

 

That’s not what I meant, I say to them soothingly. I try for a smile, or at least a less-upset frown, but they’re not even looking at me. My ‘spoken’ thought startles them badly, they jump back a bit and look around with wild confusion. It would be comical if it weren’t for the fact that several people on the path give them judging looks.

 

I sigh inwardly, but push forward anyway, again broadcasting my voice the same way I do to ‘talk’ with Amira, Ania, and all the other beings who inhabit my mind. You are no doubt worth many things, I say softly, I am only disappointed because this meeting has brought me no closer to understanding the nature of our connection.

 

That seems to calm them down a bit, and I feel them start to fixate on a distraction: namely the strange way our thoughts seem to be translating clearly between our languages to each other. I pick up that their language is called ‘english’, and when I feel them question what my tongue is, I respond, It’s Amaranthine.

 

Great, cool, the orange-clad human thinks irately, Are any of my thoughts private now? 

 

My eyebrows rise slightly. I get that this child is unfamiliar with sharing their mind, let alone having as strange a connection as ours, but I still feel a slight irritation at them for yelling at me when they’re the one who doesn’t know how to control the volume of their thoughts. They remind me of Amira, honestly, who could be just as boneheaded.

 

Outwardly I just end up shrugging at them. I assume you will learn to shield yourself from me in time, I say.

 

That makes their eyes narrow, and their anger sparks back to life. And just who the hell are you? they ask loudly.

 

I find myself smiling slightly, letting my arms cross as my bondmate stares angrily up at me. It’s not so different from trying to talk to Amira when she sequesters herself in her grove. Both she and this person have an adorable pout when they’re angry.

 

In answer to the question, I decide to give our official name, and on a whim I experiment with saying it aloud. 

 

“I am called Aniahla Tahana,” I announce with a flourish, “but you may call me Anne, spirited one. I like your fire.”

 

I feel a flash of joy shoot through the child, before quickly being suppressed. It’s clear that my new headmate has no idea what’s going on here, and that they’re very uncomfortable with my presence. I try to think of a way to set them at ease, and find myself piecing together how to ask the question on the tip of my tongue in their ‘english’.

 

Thanks, Anne, they think back at me, but they’ve only barely finished before I speak again.

 

Who, are you? I respond carefully. I see their confusion as they realize I’ve said it in their tongue, as well as the slight blush that rises to their cheeks when they realize why. It seems I’m not the only one with difficulty accepting others’ kindness.

 

My name is, uh, Erick, they say hurriedly, but with the admission comes a flood of uncertainty and fear. My eyebrows shoot up. I barely know this person, but it’s clear as Luya’s moonlight that there’s a serious identity crisis going on within them. I decide to stick with using neutral-gender pronouns for them. I've seen Ania handle this sort of situation more than a few times with other parts of our soul, and I do my best to follow her lead.

 

Hello, uh, Erick, I say as calmly as I can, smiling at them. Their eyes narrow slightly in suspicion that I’m making fun of them, but I hurriedly add: It is, truly, a pleasure to meet you. 

 

Out of habit, I send a pulse of sincerity with the message, which causes them to blink in surprise.

 

Great, I hear them grumble, now my hallucination is taking pity on me.

 

I roll my eyes and laugh quietly to myself. And I find myself thinking that maybe, just maybe, this whole thing won’t be so bad after all.

 

As soon as I finish the thought, however, I feel a twinge of alarm shoot through me. Distantly, I hear Amira calling out to me, tugging on the emergency line connecting her to me. A more physical voice rises above her pleas, echoing across to Erick and I from across the boundless sea and calling out our name angrily.

 

Artya’s tits, I mutter to myself. I hurriedly turn my attention back to my bondmate, I have to go Erick, I will contact you again soon, I say quickly.

 

They begin to protest, but I pay them no heed. I close my eyes, shutting out as much as I can of this strange world. I go through the motions of waking up back into my normal mind the same way I would from a lucid dream. I imagine myself back on the sandy beach of the vast ocean stretching out from the edge of Erick’s mind. The bridge is already raised, and I let my stream of consciousness flow across it, gaining speed.

 

And then, with a shiver, I slip back to my side of the mists. I snap our body’s eyes open at the same moment that Amira yells out, It’s Leahna!

 

I’m back in the temple, back in my body. I’m home. And home is filled with the sound of someone hammering on the locked door to the prayer room.

 

“Anialah!” our sister shouts, “You better give me back that blasted book this instant!”

 

Good news at least, I tell the rest of my sisters in thought as I get the body to its feet, they’re probably not going to hurt us. 

 

Bad news, Amira shoots back, Leah most definitely is.

 

I sigh, and spin on a heel to face the shaking door. 

 

Fuck.

End of 

Chapter 5.a - Across the Bridge