She did not know how she led herself to this. For all that mattered right now, her heart was racing and her lungs were shriveling. Within the depth of Neha’s mind, there seemed to be no destination for herself. It drove her to worry about whether she would get out of this or not.
The air frosted her skin, and the winds swirled along the gaps between her arms and sides. Being in a blank, colorless world, all alone, Neha held onto herself. The cold winds bit her skin, deep enough to create goosebumps along her bones. What was this place she was in? It seemed so sudden that Neha wanted to run to the end of the world if she realized what was going on.
Walking a couple of inches forward, the whiteness of the area melted. The surface crumbled into shards, strings of cracks and faults connected each other like a puzzle. Neha rushed in circles, she then hopped away from the cracks and tried to preserve her momentum. She couldn’t have known that this would happen; in the wake of the world around her falling apart, she had no choice but to panic.
After wearing herself out from her constant hopping, Neha stood firm on the surface. The shards throughout the world dissipated, the ground then transformed in a flash. Neha closed her eyes and gurgled her voice. She looked below her feet. Out of her expectations, she was above a mountain.
“What is this?!” Clouds surrounded the mountain from top to bottom, masking everything below the girl. A white cloth cloaked the elevation, and it glued onto Neha’s feet. The cloth somewhat resembled a spider’s web, with spirals and ripples defining the fabric. Neha shrieked. If she had the willpower, then she might jump, but she had no knowledge of what lingered beneath the clouds. Possibly, it could be her village or a dragon’s lair; the latter consideration unnerved her.
As seconds clocked in, her skin paled and became transparent. She could blend into the clouds at this point. A sharp pain cut her ear lobes, and she heard pops and crackles. The growling of the gales blew her body, and she tipped on her feet and leaned back, almost plunging herself from the peak. She muscled against such a force, though it left her in such a struggle. The gales subsided, and she glanced at the distant sky; there, birds and dragonflies flew alongside each other, and they took their flights to wherever they wished to go. The sight of them excited Neha. She closed her eyes and imagined that she was a part of their flocks, free and boundless from the confines of the mountain.
When she returned to being, she saw something coming among the animals. That something, a person in fact, surged onward and split the clouds into shreds. Neha yelped, she blinked twenty times in one second. Right as it seemed that he/she was gone, the person showed up before the child.
“Huh? It’s you!” Neha said, she examined the individual. In a black robe, the woman was flying with a broom as her vehicle, it was unbelievable to see that. Her hands latched onto the wood, and her pointed hat rustled against the gales. At once did she hold a recognizable face that Neha could not mistake her for anybody else.
“Neha! What are you doing here?”
Neha giggled for a bit. “I should be asking you that too, Usheniko. And I don’t know why I am here, but I need to get out of the mountain fast!”
“Have you sought out for help?”
“No... but you can be the one to help me.”
Usheniko sucked on her own lips, and she glowered at the clouds below the summit. “I can help you, if only my broom can support two people. If you sit on my broom, then both of us would fall down. Not to worry my little sparrow, for I have a solution.” She grabbed a sack from one of her pockets. She opened it and ejected a bundle of sparkles onto Neha’s head. “There you go! Now you can fly!”
“F-fly?! But I don’t know how to!”
“Not to worry! You just have to follow my path, and you won’t get lost! So if you want to come with me, now it’s the time to do it.” Usheniko waved her hand and stowed herself away from the mountain. “Hurry up. I can’t hold myself in one place for long, I have to keep on moving—and so do you.”
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Neha, rocking her body back and forth, couldn’t shimmy her feet out of the cloth. With her hands, she ripped the fabric; but it cemented onto her. At a loss of what to do, she sighed. Usheniko was going further and further into the horizon.
“No! I cannot give up.”
Albeit her limbs beginning to sore, Neha crouched and tried to pull her hands off the sticky fabric. The glue was so hot that she sweated; then it was that the perspiration instantly liberated her hands from the cloth. She thrust her body back, and in an instant did she plunge away. She fell deep in the clouds, the winds lashed her back and filled her body with imaginary splinters.
Upon reaching the end of the clouds, and without her control, Neha floated. Sparkles glittered the bottom of her feet, her weight had evaporated. “Whoa!” She twirled her body and exhaled a sigh of relief. As soon as she returned her sight to the horizon and realized that Usheniko was not there, Neha spurred herself. She opened her arms and locked her knees as if she had become a bird. All sudden to her, she accelerated and soared through the sky, and she could barely comprehend this as something real, or rather, something fantastic.
Neha took a breath of fresh air, and it tickled her lungs. When the birds and dragonflies came near, she joined in. They chirped and buzzed around her, and it got her into a bit of laughter. After a brief period, the animals flew off. Then in a snap of a finger, the woman appeared.
“Usheniko! It’s me! Where are we going by the way?”
Usheniko snickered as she looked at the girl from behind. “I am not going anywhere but the moon—I will fade away from this world. As for you, my darling, you shall wait for the truth to come to you. The truth to all things, you will probably feel more depressed than shocked.”
“Truth? What are you referring to? I don’t have a clue.”
“You must be patient, or else the truth will never occur. You are a strong girl Neha, and I can say the same to Sachen—I believe in you guys. No matter what, don’t let them get in your way.”
Just as Neha was about to ask more questions about it, Usheniko strayed off from her side. The girl laced her fingers around the fibers of Usheniko’s broom, wanting to come with her as soon as she could. But no more than a second later that Usheniko gave her farewell. She smiled and winked at Neha, and tears streamed through the child’s cheeks. Stars then appeared out of thin air and engulfed Usheniko as a whole; she dissolved into nothingness. As it happened, an influx of pain jolted Neha, she gnashed her teeth against each other and shook her body. Then with a depletion of all her energy, Neha collapsed. She fell from the sky like a fallen angel.
Opening her eyes and mouth, Neha wheezed. She touched her chest, feeling nothing but the heaviness of it. She was still in her mother’s bedroom. Beads of her sweat soaked the pillow and blanket, her hands and legs ached. From the side, the flame on the candle had vanished.
“How long have I been sleeping?” She gazed at the window. The moon shimmered, its light glinted the glass pane. The stars painting the darkness with its twinkles, they brightened the night sky. Midnight came forth.
The aroma of the peppermint still lingered. Neha got out of bed and stretched her body. She looked at the wreath upon the drawer; she said to herself that she might return it to her friend if she had time. Suddenly, rings and clicks overwhelmed her eardrums, and she thought that a phantom was here with her. She paced and counted her steps, only for her to retreat back to bed. As the moonlight bathed her, she opened her ears; besides the short-lived tinnitus, she heard nothing else. Something became odd at this moment. What had transpired when she fell asleep?
The dream she had and the lullaby from her parent were the only things came to mind. She initially thought of nothing else. But the airlessness and the silence that lasted longer than usual, it bothered the girl. Then it came to her that her mother was not present in the bedroom—Neha grew goosebumps. She hopped off the bed.