MARINA of the tale -
I often heard people say that when you die, you get to leave the earth and have your peaceful rest in a place called heaven. Most of their stories were like that, believing in some kind of divine being that would rule the above as much as an evil entity that lurked below.
Of course, there were other stories. One particular thing that people speculated to be true was reincarnation. The process of being born again—reborn into a different life. You would have no recollection of your past lives and live your current one in a peaceful restart that held no burdens of those that laid behind it.
If only that was the case with me.
I knew I died. Or at least, I knew I was supposed to be. I remembered it clearly. I had the bottle of pills in my hand. I was sure I drank them. Reluctantly, sure, but still I did drknk them. My vision blurred out until it turned jet black and before I knew it, I died.
But then I woke up here in a place I would never dare to imagine I would be able to be. A place I could only vaguely had in memory, past the pages of a notebook that I knew as a kid.
How could this be?! I just can't believe it! One moment you're preparing for your death. Then the other, you're here in some magical land named Aquaris while assuming the role of a mage! How did things escalate so quickly?
The start of everything happened after I drank the pills. I felt my inside burning, my throat lurching to vomit only that I held it in. I figured it would be quicker that way. The chemicals on a frenzy in my system unable to escape because I forbid them to.
I left no note to tell anyone I was going to leave and never return. I was fairly sure that no one would even care to read it. So I gave up without even trying.
I laughed in my head as my consciousness slowly left me.
'It's nearing,' I thought. 'Death.'
It was dark for awhile. I was convinced and relieved that the burning feeling was now gone. It was replaced by something numb and cold.
Cold.
Why can I feel the cold?
That's when I thought something was wrong.
It was cold, like I was freezing and the pain rushed in once again.
Frostbite.
I was dying the second time around. But that also meant one thing. I was alive again.
"No..." I whimpered. "No... no!"
I kept on whimpering both in pain and in defiance. I can't be alive. I shouldn't be alive. I was supposed to be dead.
Why can't I just die?
I heard people rushing over to and fro within my presence. They were in a panic, thumping loudly and yelling for everyone else to be quick on their feet.
"Hurry. Hurry! Gather more firewood and warm water. Hurry! Do not delay your strides and lose any more time as we already have!" someone shouted, a voice stern and commanding.
Another one cried and the rest ushered themselves in a cry of obedience.
It was like that till I finally calmed down. The warmth of something embracing me thawing away the frost that gnawed at my skin. And then I fell asleep. It was the most peaceful sleep I had in months. I enjoyed it that I wished I would've never woken up.
But I eventually did.
An image of a woman with a knife in her hands following me as I ran in a black room dawned in my dreams. She had the darkest ebony hair I had ever seen. Dark heavy bags sagged under her eyes and a sinister smile crossed her lips.
She was calling out to me.
"Marina..." she said as she inched closer and closer.
"Marina..."
"Marina!!!"
I gasped, my heart thumping and throbbing against my chest.
I was awake, shock running through me as I broke in cold sweat. The face of the woman was still carved into me. She was scary and the thought of her chasing me, glinting knife with a hint of blood in hand made me tremble and curl up in a ball on the bed.
I was too busy thinking about who that creepy lady was that I had no time to react when a girl dressed in a plain black dress worn under a white-laced apron walked in with a knock into the room. Her peculiar gray hair was pinned neatly behind her in a bun.
She was carrying a basin filled with what I believe to be water and a cotton fabric was draped over her arm.
I was too focused on studying her that I hadn't noticed she was staring back at me, her eyes widening and her mouth gaping in disbelief. As if the shock wasn't conveyed enough with the look on her face, she dropped the basin full of hot water soaking the floor in a steaming air as she rushed back outside calling for someone.
"Master, Mistress, please look. Miss Marina has woken up!" the voice of the girl echoed.
She came back beaming, forgetting about the spilled catastrophe she has left.
This time as she entered, she wasn't alone. A man in a purple robe reaching over at the ankles came in, his bespectacled eyes a color of ocean blue frayed with worry, along with a wrinkled yet elegant looking lady in a simple dignified dress a shade darker than the robe of the man.
"Marina my dear," the royal looking lady exclaimed, pulling me into a hug. "I thought we lost you this time!"
The expressions of everyone else eased as they looked at me in the embrace of the woman I don't even recognize.
Who are this people?
I was stoned in my placed unable to ask as the lady hugged me tighter. It was in a longing kind that I had never known and so it felt strange.
Why am I here? Who are they? Who—Who am I?
My name is Marina. But aside from that, what do I know about myself?
"I'm just glad you're okay now," she said. Her voice thinned out as I asked myself questions that sounded crazier and crazier by the minute. I didn't know what she saying before that.
She broke away from the hug and instead looked at me with happiness displayed evidently on her face, a few tears brimming at the side of her eyes. Her chocolate brown eyes looked warm and kind and caring.
But still, I didn't know them. They were a stranger to me.
"Who are you?" I finally asked.
She stopped short and retrieved her hands from caressing my hair.
"Marina darling, what do you mean?" She choked with her words.
"Who are you?" I repeated. "And who are they?"
I pointed at both the man and the girl with gray hair.
I thought there was nothing wrong with what I said. But I was somehow mistaken. The woman who was just overflowing with joy awhile ago broke in tears and rushed to the door in sobs, leaving wet footprints behind her from the puddle from before.
The man also in shock surprisingly didn't go after her and left the girl to do the task. He only stared at me. Then, finding his voice against the silence that I created, he asked me his own question.
"Do you really not know who we are, Marina?" he asked. "We're you're—"
I cut him off. "No. I don't know you."
Taken aback, he didn't say anything more. Looking pained, he left closing the door as he did, leaving me all alone in a strange room with no answers to my questions.
I only had more and more questions, growing.
Strange as it was, I felt guilty having them cry and hurt because of what I said. But I only told them the truth. I wasn't lying.
Still, I didn't know who I was. I only had my name. They called me by it, Marina, but I don't know how they knew it to be mine. How? When even I myself can't even remember.
There's one way to test my memory. Perhaps I was still disoriented. Perhaps I'm even dreaming.
I stood up and looked for a mirror. Searching the room, I found a vanity by the other side at the right of an opened window.
I stared at my reflection and marveled in it with awe. Is this really me?
I had flowing blue hair and a set of twinkling sapphire eyes. My skin glowed like porcelain, frail and fragile.
"I look like a doll!"
Right then, a thought struck in my head. It was a first after my name which I heard in my dreams.
'Her hair was a flowing blue like the ocean waves in the summer. Her eyes twinkled like sapphire stars in the sky in a fair glittering night. She looked like a porcelain doll, fragile and precious. Marina, the young mage of Aquaris.'
The words tumbled in my head like dominos falling one after the other.
"If I remember correctly," I said to myself. "This excerpt... It's from a..." I stopped short.
"OH MY GOD, I'M IN A BOOK!"
—
[ FINISHING THE STORY - blue ]