(Ophelia)
***
When I awoke, my body was still wrapped around Koharu's. I didn't want to move, fearing I would awaken her with the slightest motion. My eyes remained deliberately shut, but a quick yawn disturbed my temporary peace.
*Can't stay still forever unless I'm a corpse.*
Feeling a teasing gust of air play with the edges of my sleepwear like a younger sibling cajoling me, I was somewhat annoyed and cold but otherwise unresponsive. Like the sensation wanted to nag at me, though, another breeze shot up my shirt and flared out the legs of my pants. It ran across my skin to elicit goosebumps.
I shifted around and held Koharu closer for warmth. Then, I reached for a blanket. When I didn't grasp it immediately, I supposed one of us kicked it off the bed by accident. No big deal. Koharu always squirmed a lot before falling into a deep slumber. I flailed my arm around the air before I smacked the space near me.
My eyes shot open at the contact. Hell, they were probably bloodshot. They ached like it.
*This isn't a bed or blanket.*
My hand trailed along grass and earth, and while Koharu laid peacefully asleep in front of me, she wasn't the foreground against a floral wallpaper and dim candlelight. She was placed in front of the background of a forest: tall oaks expanding beyond her, vines coloring their bark, and birds flitting from branch to branch.
The expanse of scenery all receded into the distance. It diminished our presence, much like the mountains by Caelum.
Here, however, there were no rainbow colors on lakes. There wasn't a serene quiet permeating the air. Not even a bright moon sat upon the horizon like the mountains formed a chair.
No, only the rolling cogs droned, and the beating sun scorched my pale skin. I wasn't looking forward to having peeling sunburns that separated layers of flesh as if they were parts of a stacked cake.
This sun moved across the sky as I laid in the grass, shaded only slightly by the overgrown trees arching above my head. Over the span of an hour or so, the searing ball crossed the center line and made its descent. It wasn't the everlasting beacon of Koharu's kingdom, but it wasn't the eternal glow of the moon from the kingdom in which I lived.
I only ever recalled the sun shifting like that before the Galaxy Kingdom split in half—before the dust of war polluted the air and blocked out whatever daylight we had. It seemed like ages had passed, but the last time I saw the sun trek across the afternoon sky was probably a year ago. Nostalgia grew in me; however, I couldn't shake the peculiarity of the situation from my soul.
*I'd say it's a dream, yet the sun doesn't move there either.*
"Koko, wake up."
I shook her in front of me. She made a small noise, reaching for a blanket that didn't exist before grunting again.
"Wake up, Koharu." I was more forceful as my breathing intensified. "Please."
"Stop moving me," she mumbled with her eyes closed, gripping the fabric of her shirt.
*If you're still that grumpy, we can't have been out here that long.*
"Koharu, the sun is moving! Hasn't it been forever since we've seen it streak the sky?"
"Don't lie," she muttered. She was still unbothered by my statements. "I'll wake up soon enough."
I shouted as her adamance began to rub off on me, creating a centrifugal force between us, "I'm not messing with you. Open your eyes, please. Something happened, but I don't know what."
She huffed. "Fine. You'd better not be joking. That's *my* job."
She took a second to rub any discharge from her eyes, and they then opened.
When she shrieked louder than nails on a chalkboard, my body cringed in fear.
"Where are we? Why are we in a forest?" She placed her hands in the soil, scooping it up as earthworms poked out of the globs.
"Now you're awake, and my ears are dead," I murmured. "I don't know what's going on. Look up."
Though I was the one who commanded her to do so, we both lifted our chins. Like a turkey in the rain, Koharu's mouth shot open, speechless.
"Koko, the sun is probably forty-five degrees from us. I haven't seen that in a year."
*I'm not a human protractor, but I think she'll get the idea.*
Becoming shaky and weak, she muttered, "Me neither."
Right as she said that, there was a deep thundering noise that drowned out her voice, yet I spotted not a single cloud. It was the strangest occurrence. The sky was eerily clear as the ground shook. Was it an earthquake? A tsunami?
But this tremble was light—a dim rumble and not an assertive and invisible hand ready to fling us about. The quaking grew stronger and stronger. It was accompanied by a loud, booming sound that flirted with puncturing my eardrums.
Then, something unusual appeared in my sight.
It wasn't a simple glimpse of it; it emerged in the dead center of my vision instead of the periphery.
I would have described the thing as a fish. It had fins and a tail, and it paddled across the sky effortlessly. From my view, I couldn't determine whether it had gills or was just decorated to appear that way. The figure was silhouetted against the sun, but I saw faint reds, blues, and yellows across its gigantic stomach. As soon as it swam out of my view, the ground's shaking came to a halt while Koharu made a croaking noise.
*If fish don't breathe air, what the fuck is that?*
"Ophelia." Koharu went limp, fingers too weak to even tremble. I knew she was completely serious to forgo a nickname. "I-It's one of those things."
"What things?" I snapped.
Ignoring my outburst, her voice was thin and awe-stricken as if she had no words with which to describe the phenomenon we just witnessed, but she made an attempt.
"It's one of those sky fish I told you about. They call it an airplane in other kingdoms."
All her rambling added to my suspicions, and her mention of "other kingdoms" contributed to one big list of evidence that our situation was entirely out of the ordinary.
"Koharu, listen to what you're saying." I grabbed one of her hands desperately to halt her. "We don't have those in the Galaxy Kingdom. We don't have a moving sun either."
She chewed on her lip and said, "Let me summon a map. We might just be lost."
*You'd try to get me to ignore a volcano erupting, even if the lava was inches away from my feet.*
But when she waved her hand like she usually did to conjure up objects, nothing appeared except bits of dust from her fingertips. The faint yellow glow seen with all her magic didn't even show up.
"Lia,"—a distraught expression wrought her face as her breath was stolen from her—"Lia, oh my gosh."
And then, she cried, a sudden flicker of emotions spiralling out of control. The temptation to do the same came over me, but I held it back like a dam in a river.
"I have no magic."
It was hard to believe her. "How the hell?"
She slammed her hands on her face, moving them to mess up her hair worse than her current bedhead.
"This is all my fault! I kept this from you."
I slid my hand up her shirt and rubbed her back. In an attempt to temper my emotions, I exhaled heavily.
"What are you—"
"I lied!" she screamed. "I'll admit it again! I knew exactly what would happen! I heard it once. I just didn't tell you. We've been exiled!"
My face became pale, and I tensed my muscles.
*Do you think I'm some kind of idiotic pushover then?*
I spoke breathlessly, "What the fuck are you talking about? Where are we?"
"It's… the Terrestrial Kingdom, but,"—she gulped—"this isn't what it's supposed to look like. Not at all. This is my fault, Lia."
My blood ran cold after the initial shock. If I had the oxygen to huff at her, I would have done so.
"Koharu! Why would you do this?"
The hand on her back balled up into a fist as nails sliced the epidermis.
"Did you fail to think about anything? You made it seem like there wouldn't be an issue. But now… we're some immeasurable distance away from home, and you were acting like everything's fine! Did you never think to tell me any of this, Koko? Did you?"
She bawled by the end of that statement, hardly able to halt her physical reactions.
"I didn't want you to worry! I didn't want to confine you to the castle all your life! For heaven's sake, I didn't *mean* to put you in danger. I didn't think I would, and you know I would never hurt you on purpose."
I sat up, furious. Stomping on the ground, I glared down at her with a distorted expression.
She rushed to grab my arm. "Don't leave. Please. There's nobody here we know."
*You should have thought about that before acting out.*
What I did next wasn't what I meant. It wasn't something I should have done, and I always regretted it in a small part of my heart.
However, she deserved some kind of consequence for her negligence. Perhaps she never had bad intentions (I knew she didn't), but it was hard to discern the intent from the effect despite the distinction typically being clear.
I ripped my arm from her grasp, watery eyes becoming evident, and I stood up before I let the liquid—let the bones, brain, and intestines—tumble in front of her.
"Koharu, you're right." I smiled in the grimmest way. "This is all your fault."
And then, I meandered off, her arm twitching in the air but not a sound or tear emerging from her face—all frozen like an ancient statue.