One morning, Airya decided that she wanted to go to the place where her parents and the Yellow Eyes were from. To a place where others looked like her and could understand her better and may not fear her as others did in other worlds. She wanted to go to The Place of Yellow Dust.
She hoped that going there was the best step in becoming braver and getting used to conversing with others in other realms. Although she knew that when her parents had been there, the world had hated the Yellow Eyes, she just hoped that by now things had changed.
The question still lingered though. Why was her kind hated?
She knew her dad had told her it was because they were harder to see and because one small group of Yellow Eyes attacked another group of Green Eyes. But all Yellow Eyes weren’t like that, were they? They couldn’t be. Her people in Ausrine weren’t like that. Neither were her parents or herself.
Maybe she could prove that all Yellow Eyes weren’t like that if she went. She just had to remember that she had to be a little sneakier than she had in previous worlds. She didn’t want to be chased again or caught by people who may hurt her.
She closed her eyes to look deep into herself for the place, for the world, that should have been her home. The place filled with dust the yellow color of her eyes. The world that had crimsons like her mother loved and crillic fleeta like her dad craved. She could almost see their smiles in the false memories she formed in her head. A world hidden in a yellow cloud that they used to call home.
Hethei gave a low hoot.
When she opened her eyes, she smiled. A portal was there. She walked inside once Hethei landed on her shoulder to steady her.
The moment she passed through though, she had to clamp her nose shut. Whatever was in the air was burning her nostrils. When she opened her mouth to breathe, she tasted the bitterness of the world.
Layers and layers of yellow dust blanketed the world around her. Some dust was escaping into the sky. Where she stood was a hazy fog that did not let her see her own feet.
She could feel the powder floating in the air. It lived there, coating her skin. Hethei looked distressed as he tried to shake out his feathers and blink the dust away from his eyes.
She didn’t remember her parents telling her how bad this place was. So bad that she could not breathe.
And there was nothing, at least as far as Airya could see, which was only an arm’s length away from her. Looking down, she saw she was standing on what looked like black solid rock. She realized that she heard no sounds as if the fog muffled all there was to hear in the distance as if there was nothing to hear at all.
She looked up, taking her hand away from her nose to try to shield her eyes to no avail. That’s when she saw a twirling, winking ball of blue light high in the air above her.
She needed to get to it, she needed to find something to help her breathe if she was going to stay here.
She needed to find shelter if there was any. The only thing she could think to do was make her way toward the flashing ball of light.
Heading to it, she was shocked at how odd it felt walking. Her muscles were tensing with each step, unsettled because of the silence. The sounds that came from her struggled breathing and the slapping of her feet against the rock below her halted a few inches from her and echoed back. It was as if the fog would not allow any mention of her to pass through.
Step by step, she tried to push away caution to move faster. But as soon as she saw a giant wall of shiny dark stone that didn’t look like stone at all, she stepped back not knowing what to do. She sucked in a breathe too deeply and then coughed. Nothing stirred around her. It was too thick.
She took a few more steps toward the grey wall and then noticed what she knew was a door. She ran toward it without a second thought, looking up one last time to the twirling ball of blue light directly above her that was floating on top of the giant building.
The two doors automatically slid away when she stood in front of them. As she ran through, she found a blast of cold air pushing against her. It was possibly trying to blow away the yellow dust that coated her, but it didn’t work. She forced her way through until the wind that was tearing at her clothes disappeared and she was left staring at something that reminded her of her temple. But it was vastly different. The walls were so much taller than the temple that she could barely see the top of the ceiling. There were openings with solid see-through walls to the yellow outside. Everything was a sleek grey color with no imperfections. The walls and surfaces smooth and clean, except for the yellow-dusted footprints on the floor that led every which way.
She turned to look back toward the door and saw a drawing that was similar to what she had seen before in some of the books she had read. The drawing was also similar to what was carved on the temple walls. But this drawing was floating and solid. It was a person’s head with neon green eyes looking through something on its face. She went to touch it and then flinched when her hand went right through it. A harsh static bit her fingers. When she pulled her hand back, the picture still stood there as if she hadn’t touched it at all.
There were hooks right next to the drawing with five things hanging on them that matched what was on the face. But the items hanging were covered in dust. She wondered if the picture was telling her how to wear it.
When she went to grab one. A brush of cold air erupted from the floor making her snatch her hand back. The dust didn’t budge from the item it was trying to clean off.
She tried again, braver this time, and grasped one. She unhooked it and pulled it away and then up to her face. She looked at the drawing again to try to match what it showed her.
When she put it on, she rubbed the clear hard reflection that was like a mirror. It then let her look out of it after it had been cleared of the yellow. She realized when she took a breath in, the air she took in through the mouth part of the device didn’t taste rancid.
She kept it on as she went to look around.
Over to the side were steps of the same smooth cold stone leading up into the temple-like structure with yellow footprints. There were also yellow handprints where someone could grab and balance themselves.
As she ascended, she found herself listening for any type of noise that wasn’t her own. Why was no one here? Why was it so quiet and empty?
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She stepped off the steps. It took her to another solid floor. She went down its hall with many empty rooms. There was nothing inside each one.
Curious, she found more steps and made her way up those to find the same thing, and then another set of steps where she found something entirely different.
A display.
Pictures and explanations were all over the walls in the same kind of symbols that her mother taught her most of the time. The symbols of her people’s home.
The first thing she noticed was a giant map plastered to the wall behind something to keep it protected. She recognized the ball of spinning light on top of a giant tall mass she knew she was in. There were more buildings like it that were smaller all around it on the map. And then further to the left, it looked like there were even smaller homes. To the right, there was a giant wall. It was close enough to the giant building that Airya was shocked she hadn’t seen it outside. It was not as tall as the building, but menacing and thick, made of the same color and denseness that the building seemed to be made of. On the other side of the wall was a symbol that Airya recognized meant rejected.
She tore her eyes away from the map and continued down the hall to things that made her quiver in disgust and that she knew had to be lies.
It was about the Yellow Eyes. Her people.
There were displays encased with a clear cold wall she could put her hand on to keep her from touching the display, unlike how she could touch the picture downstairs. The first display had yellow fog and green glowing eyes seen within. The words Look Closely were written on the top in silver letters, so Airya peered in. The longer she stared, she noticed what they wanted her to see. There were yellow eyes hidden in the fog. She knew the point it was trying to make. The thing that her dad had told her about.
That the Yellow Eyes could hide in the yellow haze.
She moved away from it, wanting nothing to do with it anymore, but it only brought her deeper into the story.
A story from an opposite view.
A story on how the Yellow Eyes were menaces, how they had attacked people out in the streets, and how in schools the yellow-eyed children had brought weapons and tried to kill them all.
And how the Green Eyes had to stop them.
She stared at the moving and realistic pictures without color except for the colors of the people’s eyes. There were Yellow Eyes striking and beating the Green Eyes down, and then the Green Eyes pulling them off and apprehending them. The Green Eyes were taking the Yellow Eyes into the buildings that highlighted the word change.
Airya watched as a figure with yellow eyes went into a building and then came out with his eyes green and a smile stretched across his face.
Trembling, she found her hands reaching up to her own eyes as she backed away from the picture into the wall behind her. When she turned to look at that display, she saw that it was a moving picture of one of the buildings blowing up before being put back together. Small symbols below the display read the date and time that Yellow Eyes blew up one of the Eysology camps. It also said that they could find no bodies. Neither Yellow Eyes or Green.
There was a flat sheet behind a clear wall next to that asking if the Yellow Eyes were secretly some kind of magickal beings.
She knew they weren’t. Her parents definitely were not. Her dad had said that they had gone into one of the camps to rescue the Yellow Eyes and that there was a big explosion. A hole in this world had opened up. They had no choice but to escape inside.
She knew her parents did not have powers. Not like hers. She had spent too much time with them. She would have noticed. And she knew from what her dad had said that if he could go to other worlds like Airya could, he would.
She found herself unable to resist going the rest of the way down the hall. More disasters and more questions about the Yellow Eyes brought fear into Airya’s own heart. She was sure that the questions had brought terror to many others also about her kind.
Then she saw a clearer picture of what she had seen on the map on the first floor. It highlighted the wall that was in the city. As indicated in the picture, on the other side of the wall, there were Yellow Eyes. And on that other side, there was more yellow dust than this side and that was all. There were no houses pictured, no buildings, nothing but Yellow Eyes, and a yellow spray of dust spreading all over until nothing could be seen at all.
That was the side she needed to go on. Hopefully, her people were there.
But looking at that picture of the wall, she could not find any openings to the other side.
Hethei started choking and coughing on her shoulder until his breaths turned heavy with pain. He looked sick and was still trying to blink away the dust from his poor black eyes.
Airya opened a portal and took him in with her back to Ausrine. If she was going to get to the other side, she would portal there with the desperate need to go to the more dangerous side where her people were.
The fresh, dust-free air of Ausrine welcomed her. They were outside of the temple in the grass between the temple and the lake by the river. Carefully and slowly, Airya plucked Hethei off her shoulder and got to her knees to dunk Hethei in.
But Hethei started screeching uncontrollably.
“Hethei!” Airya hushed, “Please. Trust me. I want to clean you off. We need to get this dust off of you.” She knew there was no point in getting the dust off herself since she was returning to where she would be covered again.
He didn’t stop squirming, but he did stop shrieking as she held him above the water and then quickly dunked him in. She waited for only a second, holding him in the moving current, before she pulled him out.
She could see the grey of Hethei’s feathers and the clearness of his black eyes now. She could also see the skin on her hands. She set him down in the grass.
Her arms started to itch now that her hands were clean as if they were desperate to get the dust off of them too, “Now listen,” Airya demanded of Hethei. She went to brush her hair back, but touched the contraption that she hadn’t realized was still on her face. She took it off and rubbed the clear eye protectors over the wet grass near Hethei’s feet to clear them a bit more. “I need you to stay here. I’ll be fine. I promise. If there is any trouble, I’ll portal back home right away.”
Hethei didn’t say a thing, only looked to her in distress before puffing out his feathers and flying away. The weight of the water on his wings disrupted his flight a little. She took a deep breath of fresh air hoping that she would get to breathe the freshness of home again soon. She put the contraption back on her face and called up a portal desperate to go to the same place, but to the other side.
Without another thought, she got up and walked right into the black-blue hole and out of it as if she herself had stepped through a wall. There was a domineering presence behind her. She turned to see that it was the wall with the same flashes of twirling threaded balls of light spread over the top of it. She was so close to the dense solid structure that she could touch it.
One of the lights lit up brighter when Airya reached out her hand. The one that Airya was standing directly under. Then the wall started to move.
There was barely any time for Airya to realize what was happening or for her to jump away. She had always thought that walls didn’t move, but this one did.
The top of the wall extended out flat into one long rectangle as if it were forming a giant foot before it stomped down.
The light right above the area where she had dove started brightening again, signaling for Airya to run as another rectangle shot out faster than the last.
She stumbled as she ran forward out of its way. She fell, then scooted away from the wall, crawling on her hands and knees, her heart beating in her chest. She needed to make sure she was far enough away from the monster. She was convinced that the wall itself was alive. It knew she was here.
As she stirred up dust from the hot ground, more dust covered the contraption on her face, making it harder to see. She was starting to taste the beginning of the dust layering on her tongue even though the thing she wore promised her fresh air.
“Hey!” she heard someone yell. But after a moment she figured she imagined it. There was no way that anyone could or should be out here with her. She needed to find another building, somewhere away from the dust that was starting to burn her skin.
But then there was a pull of her shoulder that flipped her over.
She was disorientated when she saw a thick thumb rubbing over the thing on her face.
It was someone with a giant black contraption over their own face and a clear glistening black stone over their eyes that seemed to heat away the dust whenever any touched it. That someone bent closer to her, tilting their head to take in her face.
Then she felt herself being picked up off the ground. Arms trying to cradle her. She struggled, rolling away out of their grasp, willing and ready to fight until a dusty hand clenched into a fist and shot down toward her head turning the yellow dust around her to black.