Chapter 67

The next few hours passed as a blip during her never-ending story, then after recounting their many adventures, the final trauma that broke Anna was the passing of David. Harry held her hands while he was retailing everything to Nathaniel.

"What? David was dead?" Nathaniel shouted. 

"Yes,"

"I'm sorry, Anna," Nathaniel replied. The heaviness was in his limbs as much as his mind. Things he used to find funny now only caused a deepening of the pain. Nathaniel doesn't like the man, but he helped save Harry and helped Anna so he counts him as a friend too.

"Let's not talk about it, please?" She begged. One day, Anna will grieve for him, but first, she would have to accept he was gone - and though she dug his grave herself, there was a fraction of her that clasps the memory back. There was a part of her that will never acknowledge he won't come bouncing around some corner to laugh at her for falling for his elaborate joke to just staring at her. He was gone forever.

"Sure, anyway Anna, what happened to you guys? You both aren't supposed to wake up yet, they need you now for the battle right?"

When the realization sank in, Anna gasped.

"Oh my God." She uttered, the fear thoughts looped around in her mind until there was no room for anything else. What if they went to the battleground without her? "...They would be slaughtered. All of them. We need to go back to then Harry. Now!" Anna vowed that she would be a powerful fighter and never play by her emotions, that she would never be so distracted as to not know where she was. "We need to go back"

"I think I know why you guys are back." Nathaniel trailed off after a minute of thinking about it, "...The weird thing about your mind time traveling or your dream consciousness was the limits. You can go forwards as far as you want, but backward only works as far as the present day, or the time you left. Traveling back from "now" was impossible as if the continuum was chopped right off - like we are sitting on a moving dot and can only "bungee jump" forwards and backward back and forth.

"What!? No, no! You mean if we travel back now there is a possibility that the battle is finished?"

"Yes, my point! You can't go back before that. Or beyond the present here." Nathaniel responded.

"Oh no! then we should go back now!" She demanded.

"I think you have spent too long in the Moonland and your body craves for a return, if you're going back now there is a possibility of you two bouncing back.

"We should wait, Anna, we are not risking our lives, I am not risking you," Harry added.

"We should at least try. Please, Harry, I will go back now. They need me." She paced the floor, busying herself. She was tired and hungry, yet she was beyond worried. Her legs keep asking her to rest, to find somewhere warm and cozy, to simply enjoy the sunshine outside the windows and stay right there. And her mind felt as if it had been on a treadmill, and it wanted so much to press stop.

"Anna, They've had a few hours, we've had a few minutes, kind of like if we travel back now the battle is done, we don't know if days passed over there, and we can't go back now, you need to rest," Harry explained.

"Harry has a point, it's risky if you go back now, you're risking your mind, and we don't want that to happen. What if you accidentally send yourself to a dangerous environment? Not everything works out alright. Of course, there are exceptions." Nathaniel uttered.

"What exceptions?" She asked. Her need to settle has been growing in her bones, and the muscles that always wanted to move are asking so compellingly not to. There was a weary feeling in her mind that cannot be stated. She knew her mind was overloaded, and she felt she needed to breathe.

"When you dream, do you realize where you are going to end up? Nathaniel asked, looking at her intently. She had an eye bag as huge as a car. Her hair was messed up.

"No, I don't know, maybe in White Mountain?"

"That is my point." Nathaniel asserted.

"But you said, White Mountain was the landing area?"

"Yes, Anna but if you ended up in White Mountain, it would take days or weeks before you reach the fairyland."

"But what about when the three of us landed upon fairyland? We didn't land in White Mountain remember?" 

"Yes, I remember that, but I don't know what happens back there. Okay? What if you won't land in White Mountain? What if you landed up somewhere? We can't risk that."

"Anna, Nathaniel has a point. You need to rest, okay? Let's have lunch first then we will talk about it. I'm starving." 

On cue, Mr. Faiz appeared from the door and brought them sustenance. The minute they slide into the chair. Anna's mouth watered the moment she spotted their lunch. He served them an enormous platter of food. Eggs, ham, piles of sauteed potatoes. A tureen of fruit sits on ice to preserve it chilled. The basket of bread Mr. Faiz set before them would keep her going for a week. And a can of orange juice. Lunch sailed in a container over Harry's head as if Mr. Faiz's hands were pure magic. Vast platters of sauteed chicken legs with savory fruit and nuts. Fried shrimp drizzled in sauces or begging to be dipped in spicy gravy. Countless cheeses, cabbage, vegetables. Harry snatched a large chicken leg and a large steak. He bathed them in the rich sauce and popped a sizable chunk of steak into his mouth. Mr. Faiz wasn't joking when he said they needed nourishment.

An hour passed, and they were all seated.

"By the way, Anna, what's with the third prophecy medallion? What does it say?" Harry asked. His curiosity was on the verge of his tongue and he couldn't wait any longer.

"Oh about that, it says..." She paused and continued.

"In the land of the sacred together,

free from thy curse.

If thy heart decides,

one shall end and one shall die."

"Something like that. I don't know much, but I think the last line was true." She continued in a melancholy voice. Anna stood before Harry, her insides trembling, but her face set hard. She had grieved her tears and suffered from her sorrow of losing David. She walked her hardest roads. Yet, there was a time, just a fraction of a second, when Harry's face showed encouragement. It was all she needed. Yet, she wandered her gaze, avoiding eye contact.

She went into the old painting, leaned against the wall, it was dirty and unappreciated. Anna runs a finger along with the silver framing, in the dust that must have reached ages to develop there was now a smear of gold. She holds it up. With the light that struggles to make it through the grime on the window, the colors were suppressed, but she could already tell it was a country landscape and thus very familiar.

Anna's thoughts, somehow there was a time she felt like the world was disappearing in presence of her. Or maybe it was just her who was vanishing away. Those times it didn't matter. Right now, her empty burning lungs and her heart hitting her rib cage was so painful she thought it would damage her ribs and burst apart her skin yet, it was the only thing she could think about. And the void. The black hole in her head, farther inside her mind, was the worst of it. It was there, trying to let her know its presence.

Her awareness of the vacuum, the nothingness, the irrationality of her existence. Her breaths came in sharp pants, and she sought to gain control, but nothing was working. She remembers this place. It was in her mind, she knew it, it was buried so deep with or without her permission. Yet, a place in time she had known long before the memories had loaded and faded. A place had waited for with doubt and worry, knowing, somehow, what she might remember.

Slowly, the confusion and panic attack swept away, and even though she was still unsettled. Her eyes closed and focused towards her clutched palms, freed from the painting. Disbelief swelled through her since she raised her eyes again to the rest of them.

"I think I recognize this painting." she felt numb as tears gathered behind her eyes. 

Anna's positive memories come as a friend with a picnic basket, they were good and healthy, supportive, and kind. And so she chooses to build herself this way, letting the terrible ones wander off on their own and encouraging the good ones to blossom and grow. This way she becomes hopeful, well balanced, and in control of herself, able to comprehend each moment as a gift and to see a favorable future. Yet, the painting gives her none of those.

"This is Dr. Simon's painting." She explained. 

The painting was just conduits to her worse memories, the ones that are not great and traumatic, it leaves a permanent mark on their own. Her recollections were quite the contrary of these celluloid stills; unless she attends them, often they would vanish; and with them, it vanishes from her mind also- as if none of it ever happened. 

"Dr. Simon? As in Dr. David Simon?" Harry asked. He doesn't want to remember his nightmare. Not now! He had that angry look young men often wear, but it was never sour. Always behind those slightly pursed lips was a sad smile just waiting to be tempted out. He never wanted to guess where it was from in case he got it wrong. He hated him, and he hated him for abandoning her mother.

"Yes. Do you know him?"

"Unfortunately yes!" Harry exclaimed, for a moment he was lost in transitory memories of his childhood. Sunday mornings - a walk to the winter park with the stale bread mother had baked all week. The gentle scent of the roses and daisies kindled memories of summers gone in her mother's garden. Under the pristine layer of his crystalline memories of his mother was the path he trod as a child, walking with her hand in hand. He wanted to turn the pages back and dwell on the fine details: the crow's feet around her eyes that deepened when her mother's smile. She may be her stepmother but she was still her mother regardless.

"Really?"

"Yes, he is my stepfather." Harry anxiously replied.