Chapter Forty

I feel the world shift around me as the sounds of nature surrounds me again, but among the sounds of the wind blowing, insects buzzing, and birds chirping there is another sound that makes me slightly shiver. I hear my group calling for me.

“FALENCIA?” I hear Berik’s worried voice, it sounds so different from the sneering voice that she had back in the dungeon.

I bite the inside of my bottom lip, debating with myself on what is real and what is not. I grew up knowing what I thought was the real Berik, she was always so kind, helpful, and motherly towards me. Was what I thought was real truly wrong? I take a deep breath and center myself again as I start to stand up from my spot that I had been sitting, noticing that the bright sun had sunk behind the horizon and was now displaying bright pinks and purples in the sky as it set for the night.

“Falencia!” I hear someone say in a relieved tone, I turn to see who it is and am taken aback by Dafne. She flings herself to me engulfing me in a hug, I notice that the shivers that I had originally felt when she brushed against me are no longer there. My head is in a complete whirl, and I don’t know what to believe or to think.

“Thank God, you’re alright!” I hear Berik say as she grabs me away from Dafne and hugs me tightly. “I thought something had happened to you!”

I hug back awkwardly not knowing how to react. “I-I didn’t mean to worry everyone, how long have I been out here?”

“You came out here close to noon, it’s now almost five.” Freyja says as she joins the hug between me and Berik.

“So roughly five hours?”

“Roughly.” Freyja replies.

“Let’s get back to the RV, sun’s going to be down soon and I’m fairly certain Alaxander has food made.” Fenirick replies taking in the surrounding area.

I allow Freyja and Berik to guide me back to the RV were Alaxander, Nik, Cherie, the driver Addam, and Justin are all waiting for us. “What the hell Fal?” Nik asks as we get to the RV, he pulls me into a hug and holds tightly.

I bite my lip and shake my head “honestly, I don’t know what happened. I went out into the woods to meditate, get clarity, and everything.”

“Don’t disappear on us like that again! We were all so worried.” Addam says as Nik lets go of me and pulls me into yet another hug.

I look around at everyone and start to feel a little overwhelmed. “I appreciate that you were all worried about me, and I’m sorry for causing the worry, but I’m alright.”

Berik smiles warmly at me and I can’t help but to compare her warm motherly smile to that of the cold, calculating, malicious smile that she had given me in the middle of the dungeon where I was chained to the floor. My mind goes to the last thing she had said before she disappeared ‘Keep telling yourself that this isn’t your reality, you’ll see soon enough just how horrible your reality is’ I can’t help but wonder which reality was real and which was fantasy. My head starts to spin as different thoughts start to chase each other around my mind.

“Honey, you should probably eat something.” Berik’s warm voice penetrates through the haze of questions that are circulating throughout my mind.

“You’re probably right.” I say smiling at her, trying to figure out if what I saw while mediating was real or if someone got into my mind and twisted what I knew was real.

She hands me a heaping plate of baked chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, asparagus, and biscuits. “You’re thinking awfully hard sweetheart, what’s going on?”

A part of me is telling me that this is the real Berik, that she’s not the one that I saw while in the dungeon who told me that I was an abomination, but there’s another part telling me that she is an aspiration that I’ve dreamed up. Looking at the food my stomach turns as if I’m going to be sick, I push the food away from me and start to get up from the table. “I’m sorry, everything looks absolutely delicious, I’m just not feeling very hungry.” I start towards my room.

“Falencia?” Berik asks.

I swallow the tears that are threatening to spill over the threshold of my eyes down “I’m alright, I think I may be coming down with a stomach bug or something.” I run up to the bathroom and upheave the contents of my stomach, until there is nothing coming out but dry heaves.

“Falencia, are you sure you’re alright?” Freyja asks as she comes into the bathroom and rubs my back soothingly.

I draw in a ragged breath trying to calm my mind. “I.” I start to talk when Dafne comes in.

“Everything alright?” She asks as another wave of nausea hits me and I bend back over the toilet spewing everything that is left in my stomach.

“I think so.” Freyja replies.

“Here, I brought up some ginger ale.” Berik says. “Honey, why don’t you take a hot shower, Freyja stay in here with her. I’m going to ask Alaxander if he can make some soup.” She kisses the top of my head like she did when I was little and walks back down to the kitchen area.

I groan as I stand up from my hunched over position. “I don’t know what the hell is going on.”

“Don’t you remember what happened last time you meditated?” Freyja asks.

I shake my head only to instantly regret the movement, my head spins and I take a seat on the closed toilet seat putting my head between my knees and taking deep breaths. “I shouldn’t have shaken my head.”

“You don’t remember what happened last time?” She asks again.

“Unfortunately, no I don’t. I’m guessing it wasn’t something good?”

She takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly “It was just after you had come to live with us, your therapist had suggested meditating, so you decided to try it one day. We found you in the middle of your room, we thought you had fallen asleep, but when we checked on you after another few minutes, we realized that you weren’t, you had gone comatose. The doctors had no other way of explaining the state that you were in. When you woke up a week later, you were screaming as if you were being tortured, you were covered in bruises and cuts, no one could explain where you got them from, you said that the bad lady hurt you.”

I let out a shaky breath and start to get my shower started. “I’ll be alright Frey, you don’t have to sit in here with me while I undress.”

“I’m not letting you out of my sight, we’ve got the same goods, you can get your shower and everything independently, but I will be staying right here and making sure that you don’t keel over or something.”

I laugh at her and shake my head “Fine.” I undress and she nearly screams making me jump out of fright. “What?”

“What the hell were you doing in those woods?”

“Other than meditating and scaring the hell out of all of you earlier, nothing, why?”

She turns me to where my back is facing the mirror and has me look back. “This is why.”

I gasp “What the hell?” I ask as I go to touch the red, angry, whip marks that are splayed across my back.

“Absolutely NO more meditating for you. Did you figure out who the ‘bad lady’ was?”

I take another deep breath that comes out shakily debating on whether I should let everyone in on what I found out while my meditation. One part of my brain reminds me that they’re my family, that they care and want to know what is going on so that they can protect me, but the other side of my brain is telling me that I am in some kind of sick fantasy that I have cooked up to protect myself from the reality that ‘Berik’ all but stated that I lived in. The part of the brain telling me that they are my family and want to protect me wins. “I think we need to have a family meeting after I’m done with my shower.”

She gives me a comforting smile and nods as I step into the shower, washing the dirt, grime, and sick that I had gotten on me throughout my time that I was out in the woods and heaving.

Once I am out of the shower and dressed in comfy clothes, Freyja and I make our way to the gaming lounge, where everyone is sitting and chatting.

“Guys, Falencia has something she needs to talk to us about.” Freyja says, getting everyone’s attention.

I start to feel a little self-conscious when everyone quiets down and stares at me, I start to fidget with my fingers, a habit that I tend to do when my anxiety picks up. “So, as you all know I went into the woods to meditate, something that I haven’t done since I was roughly ten years old. I didn’t remember what happened the last time that I had done so. I don’t know how to explain what happened, it’s like I went from this reality into a different one.”

“What do you mean?” Fenirick asks.

I take a deep breath to calm myself and sit on one of the bean bag chairs that is sitting near me. “When I meditated today, I went from being in the woods to being chained to a dungeon floor.”

There is a collective gasp that sounds through the space. “When I opened my eyes, I was no longer in the woods, instead I was sitting on a hard, cold stone floor that was surrounded by gray cement or brick walls, instead of the clothes that I was wearing, I was in what looked and felt like a potato sack from back in the day.”

Berik stands and walks over to me, I feel myself flinch involuntarily. “What’s wrong honey?” She asks noticing my flinch.

I bite my lip trying to keep the tears at bay. “Freyja told me that I had this happen once before when I was younger. She told me that I had talked about a ‘bad lady’ and had bruises and cuts on my body.”

Berik nods “Yes, you were so scared of me that you couldn’t even stand to be in the same room as me.”

I look at her, remembering every detail of her face, but there was one key difference between the woman that was in that dungeon with me and the woman that I have standing before me now. The woman who was in the dungeon, although she looked almost exactly like Berik, she had the same hair, the same eyes, but the one difference between the two was that the ‘bad Berik’ had a small mole on the left side of her nose, where the ‘good Berik’ had a small mole on the right side. It was like someone was trying to mirror her looks. I take a deep breath to center myself and realize that this is the reality, that someone was trying to make me feel crazy.