The darkness became even darker still as I strained my eyes searching for my mother. It was a darkness so black; it was light. Or, rather, the blackness was made of light.
I suddenly realized it was a light made up of every colour on the visible light spectrum. It was as if I viewed a painting where the entire canvas surface wrapped around me in every direction.
On the surface of that canvas was spots of colour, each the size of a pinprick, that when viewed all at once made up the light.
'What in the world?' I thought to myself.
Then the scene before my eyes changed.
Somehow, I knew, even though I had never previously viewed the place, that I was seeing my home planet. It was a terrible, nightmarish scene. Everything about it was wrong.
It was as if the very planet had decided to cannibalize itself. The ground was broken and uneven, as if earthquakes recently occurred.
Insects, in large swarms, were fleeing from herds of vegetarian creatures who tried to angerly consume them as they fled. A group of men ran by, wielding large wooden pikes with heads on them.
A few Cheshire cats turned and rebelled against those with whom they had contracts and disembowelled them, before turning on any moving thing within sight. Flocks of birds teamed up to kill large birds of prey.
'Something is deeply and disturbingly wrong with natures balance.', I shuddered at my own thought.
I closed my eyes, even though I knew that would not block out the sounds of the screams or fighting. Struggling against the urge to vomit, I opened my eyes again.
This time, I was back in that unknown meadow, on that unknown (to me) planet.
'This is where I spoke to The Great Goddess once.'
Compared to what I just witnessed beforehand; this peaceful meadow felt like the afterlife itself! The light breeze plucking at my hair the way a careful hand plucks at the strings of a harp, soothed my nerves. I breathed deeply, noticing that every detail seemed twice as beautiful as it had the first time.
"Sinead? My Sinead!", a female voice, full many emotions, exclaimed.
The voice came from behind me. I tried to place the voice. I knew I recognized it, somewhere in the past…
"Sinead! Turn around.", she called me.
I tried to turn my head but found I couldn't. My body wouldn't move either. It was as if I was made of stone.
"Sinead, please!", she was desperate now.
But the more I resisted, the less I found I could move.
I then heard another voice, that of The Great Goddess of All. "Relax, Sinead."
It was only when I did as instructed, that I finally moved. I moved so suddenly that I fell.
I fell for so long, I thought I would never stop falling. Then I hit something below me.
I sat up with a start, gasping for breath. I was not falling, but the feeling of falling was still fresh in my brain. My heart raced with the fight-or-flight hormone.
When I tried to make sense of anything that just occurred, the only word that popped into my brain was 'Great-Aunt'.
'Great-Aunt?'
But then it made sense. The voice I couldn't place was that of my deceased Great-Aunt, the last woman to officially hold the title of High Priestess.
'What was the previous High Priestess trying to tell me? What did all those dreams mean? Were they sent to me from the Great Goddess only? Or did my Great-Aunt have some sort of afterlife freewill? What did my mother have to do will all this?'
I reached both hands up and held onto my skull. I felt like I had shaken it up with a paint shaker.
The poppy syrup was still not out of my system. I lay back again. Without intention, my eyes closed, as if they had a will of their own.
For many hours, I slept, replaying in my dreams everything I remembered of my childhood.
When I opened my eyes once again, it was late the next day. I slept through my whole morning routine, the run, exercise, everything.
No alarm awoke me, as I failed to set one the day before. And, interestingly enough, neither did The Great Goddess.
It was now 11:00am, according to my dying phone. The battery was now at 10%. I signed and groaned at the same time. I was not yet ready to face this day.
As I began to unwrap the blanket that was tangled like a cocoon around my body, I realized that I was on the floor, not the couch.
'Ah! That explains some of the feeling of falling.', I thought, 'I rolled right off the couch!'
I folded the blanket to the best of my still-slightly-impaired ability. I still sported a wicked headache. Other than that, my eyes were tired, and my mind felt in a brain fog.
"Saoirse sure put enough in that draft!", I muttered darkly, "What was she trying to do, tranquilize an elephant?"
In reality, Saoirse probably had no idea what dosage to give me. But she did know that my system was sturdier and more resistant to medicine, poison, and infection than any human immune system.
Had I been a human, given my size, the dose she gave me would have killed me three times over. But being what I was, it merely gave me a strong hangover feeling.
I picked the couch pillows off the floor and put them in their proper places. That is when I noticed the glass of water.
I picked it up, noting that it looked fine. I smelt it and there was no odour. I dipped the tip of my pinkie finger into the liquid, before touching it to my tongue. It tasted normal.
I hesitated, giving the glass a quizzical look before using some magic on it. After a minute or two, it didn't change colour, but stayed clear.
'Just water then.', I thought.
As desperate for water as a desert, I tipped the glass back, chugging the entire glass before I needed air again in my lungs.