Chapter 1

Unfamiliar Words

It was April and the year 2029, and ash was raining from the reddish cloudy sky. There was yelling, screaming and cursing all over the once spacious neighborhood, now crowded because of the giant rock of flames that passed directly above us.

I sprinted somewhere away from the chaos, looking around for my beloved. I ran down countless alleyways until I caught sight of her pink dress, swaying to the left along her long black hair; long enough to catch a glimpse of her through a narrow alley full of heat pumps. The heat pumps squeezed me as I forced my way through. I looked to the right where she went and saw her trying to squeeze through another alley.

“April!” I called her name, but I did not get any form of response.

I slid right out of the tight alley and hurried before she got out.

“April!” 

My breathing was short while reaching my way through the alley to catch up on her. The alley was long and her hands kept sliding on things she grabbed. I clutched on every steel pipe nearby, reaching the collar of her dress to turn her back in front of me and held her to the puddle on the ground. Her blue eyes were lifeless and her lungs hardly drew in any breath with her mouth ajar.

“We talked about this,”

She was not responding to anything while just staring at her rather squinted eyes.

“April..”

My body felt feverish as her heartbeat was in sync with mine aloud. Declining myself and brought my face closer to her as I felt her warm breath through my lips.

“Asher,” she said in a soft tone, “What did I even do for you to do this to me?”

“Just a little now, April. We’ll be together here until everything ends,” I said.

I had a big smile on my face, but I could see her teeth clenching while tears slid down her cheeks.

“This alley... was the alley I always take whenever we had a race of whoever gets home first together,” she said while having a hard time delivering each word, “Just a few walks, I can reach my mother’s house, with dinner prepared for us.”

“A dinner is less than enough compared to just seeing you here... with me,” I said.

“I’d rather die alone.”

She placed her feet on my chest, and lifted me, causing my head to bang into a steel support of a heat pump. My vision was spinning as I saw April already at a distance from me every time I blink, descending to the gate of our old neighborhood by the road.

I shouted her name again in a raspy voice while supporting myself in nearby walls and pillars. My head was ringing, making me feel like falling on each step I took. Then the ground shook. I looked above me and saw the giant ball of flames passed by again, presenting its heat to me and blocking my view of the sky entirely. It was eerily close, making me sprint to the descending road that leads to the neighborhood.

I kept shouting her name as I saw her running down the road to the neighborhood. Then the flaming rock surpassed her until it made its impact. It flashed my eyes as I collapsed from the quake and my ear rang from its loud bang. My vision went back and saw a giant bright fire that extended to the sky swallowing everything on its way. I called out April again as I saw her emerging to the flames. The light alone was burning my skin like touching a hot steam. That’s when the flames swallowed me next.

My eyes were closed and by the time I opened them, April’s smiling glance look greeted me. Her outfit was familiar which consisted of white turtle neck sweater and a small skirt, noticing that It was our trip to a mountainous city. I was re-experiencing the scenes from my memories but everything was in reverse. It ended with meeting April by her garden when we were six then it went pitch black.

I was freezing despite the lack of feeling, touch, or even movement. For a second of nothingness, I regained a bit of vision, but it was puzzling. The place, the faces, felt like trying to remember a long lost dream. Then it was pitch black again, but I slowly regained hearing. It slowly built its volume until everything was clear. The air, footsteps and voices, but I don’t quite understand the speech. Then I felt like my eyes were closed, so I opened them once more and saw my surroundings.

“Vi ode daecht tsitte vaon,” the woman towering over me said.

Her words are unfamiliar to me as if she was speaking german because of the accent. She was wearing a pointy hat, and I noticed her carrying and placed me somewhere soft and warm. I was amazed that she could carry a hundred and fifty pound man like me. Then a man showed up to my face. He had a red beard and spoke unfamiliar words too, but in a voice as heavy as a bear’s roar, making my hair stand up when he spoke.

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A chilling voice reached the left side of my ear, so I looked at it and saw a beauty. She was big and blonde from my perspective, wearing a white dress, and everything looked vibrant as well. Nothing seemed to add up to me until I saw my reflection in the window. It took me too long to process. I tried to do any sort of movements to see if it was me on the reflection. Then over time I came to terms with the situation. A blonde baby was on the reflection, it was me in a very unfamiliar place. I just gained consciousness, but I was now aware of everything, realizing that I had to get used to my new life for the upcoming days.

{-Ω-}

Time passed as I have now grown a few inches of height and have explored almost the entire house. They have electricity that is powered by the water wheel from the nearby river. The house has light bulbs that use a pull switch in order to turn it on. Despite my discoveries, I am aware that I'm no longer in my world anymore. My memory of the asteroid was crystal clear. My world met its end, or just us. At first, I thought it didn’t destroy the entire surface and has continents left unharmed. That logic broke when I investigated further about this place; When my mom first took me outside the house, it was a fresh morning and that was when I saw the sky.

There were two moons, a smooth small one just about the size of our moon and beside it is an even larger one about three times its size. The larger moon is full of craters just like our moon, but this one has an even larger crater in the middle that resembles a diamond star. Our place is also full of grassy plains, and we do not have a single neighbor; Other than that, our house is beautiful. It is a rustic brick cottage with three floors counting the attic. It stands on top of a sloping hill surrounded by a temperate forest, where one can see a nearby lake on the east side, along with mountains and a river that stretches to the west.

Despite being the only residents in this place, there is still a nearby train station for a one-way train line just a kilometer from the west side of our house that is only a platform and two long benches above. The trains passing through are most of the time rail buses that look like British ones. I guess designs are also a universal language by reference to everything in this world that resembles a bit more from mine.

There was a train that caught my eye which passed by last time. It was so big that it almost touched the benches. First time I saw it from the window, it was dark at night and the trees that resembled an evergreen were limiting my view; Yet its huge bright headlight gave me a bit of a glimpse of its look. It was monstrous with its loud horn. It looked similar to the double-deck London Buses but black, and way larger from its size like two to four times larger, but even longer.

Whenever my imar or mom takes me outside, the fresh cool wind passes by my nose and skin. I could hear the flow of the nearby river and the creaking sound of our wood wheel. The pile of golden leaves on the ground makes a crunching sound with each step of Imar as she’s about to sing a song that enters my comfort space.

My apar or dad spends his time cutting trees while topless to either use it for renovation or to put food on our table. He stacks like about a hundred lumber every day, and a group of people would collect and carry them into a cargo train once a week. Apar’s magnificent physique and height as tall as a shed make me appreciate the reason he’s my father.

Mostly in the evening, Imar carries home a whole dead animal that resembles the body of a kangaroo and a head of a rabbit with long ears and deer antlers. They preserve the meat by wrapping it with a cloth with herbs and storing it inside a larder that is located beside our kitchen. It is a week and a half supply of meat due to it being twice as much size as a dining table and my parents are the only ones eating it while I only get its broth. My apar also often takes a larger portion of the meat, since he is built like a mountain.

Imar never held a bow and arrow around me, but the wounds of the animals are holes that pierced through their bodies. Which was a very unusual occurrence for a regular arrow. I hinted at the existence of a gun but became false later on since she wasn't around with one either. My answer remains lost and a mystery for now.

{-Ω-}

Today Imar is carrying me to go outside again, but the sun is setting instead, because she did not take me earlier in the morning. Imar opens the door wide and the chilly wind greets me. The trees are golden and red, but some stay green while the sky is pink. Imar wraps me with her scarf and it warms me. She’s about to sing the same song again, so I close my eyes to skip the time.

*Clickikik* *Clickikik*

I open my eyes after hearing an unsettling sound. Such a continuous rhythm of clicks that sounds like a call of an animal. The source of the sound is not present around me, so I close my eyes again.

*Clickikik* *Clickikik*

Hearing it again, then I see it from the bushes towards us, peeking out from far away. A long hair of a human hanging down, blocking its face. It takes out its left hand and takes a step. Its hand is very skinny, pale white and resembles a human. It takes out its another arm and takes another step closer. My body can’t stop shaking itself while clenching my hand onto Imar's white dress as she keeps singing her song while swaying.

It takes another step closer until it’s about to crawl fast towards us. It has multiple arms and its spine is poking on its back. Imar keeps singing while it keeps getting closer. I feel dead as random thoughts of it fill my mind. The creature jumps and clicks as it opens its jaw wide open. I close my eyes again and wish for it to go away.

“No-ir A-ulum,” I heard Imar’s soft low volume voice along with the sudden gust of wind and crunches of leaves.

Imar's song stops, but my body feels empty and still quivering. I open my eyes to see what’s wrong. Taking a glimpse of imar, I can see her straight, serious face. Her arm extends straight ahead as my sight follows her arm. I see her palm facing outward. I look around to where it was aiming, then I saw mushed flesh on the ground. The woods from where the creature came out are raining leaves, making the bushes and trees almost bald.

My eyes are wide and place all the pieces bit by bit to understand. Imar doesn’t have a bow or a gun. This world has something more than what I can imagine or more than what I can believe. Something which my world believed as a myth, this world has an unbelievable thing as pure arcane. While my mind is still processing from what just happened, imar resumes her song.