Everything was utter black, and my very soul felt no pain, yet there was the sensation of being pulled and ripped apart, as if I were taffy being stretched by a curious child, only to be pushed back together again. My entire being was swirling in the winds of a hurricane, pushing and shoving all around in a blank nothingness, and in the back of my throat a scream held, but it never emerged as I had no body, no voice.
But then I felt formed and rebuilt, arms and legs and head and neck and torso and everything else coming into shape, feeling returning and soft caress of water brushing up against my flesh. Wet hair tickled at the sides of my face, and I felt the call for air echo in my throat begging to breath, and I burst forward, desperate to find a surface and to find air.
I gasped open, taking in the air of a room around me, and with my gasp, I opened my eyes, only to find that I was not in the sea, nor was my body crushed and broken to bits and pieces inside of a prison of flesh like I would have believed. My body fell atop rocks. I heard myself died, yet here I was, breathing in a place I had no memory of.
I was in a room, one that was in no way my own home, and in fact, the world around me felt too real to be an sort of afterlife, almost like the touch of my strange dream, and that sense of wrongness returned to me, but this time, it was faint, and instead of wrongness, it felt like disarray- as if the world was bleeding.
My body was naked and submerged in a glistening, wide white tub of clear, lukewarm water, my hair completely soaked from being fully underneath, and standing over it were two women, their hair tied back and their bodies clothed with plain brown dresses adorned with white robes. They were dressed oddly, and their eyes were as wide as coin, staring blankly at me with agape mouths and trembling fingers.
They offered no explanation, and I felt out of it still, glancing around the room for some semblance of the world I knew, but I saw none. The walls were an off-white, a cream sort of color, and the corners where the ceiling and floor met it were covered with redwood siding. I stared around, noticing the soft red tile of the floor and the beautiful shimmering sinks of pristine silver, mirrors resting atop them, reflecting a geometrical pattern of triangles painted over a canvas that hung on the wall.
Across from the tub was a door with a rack hanging on its back, clothing hanging beside a silk, red robe. One of the women- a girl with pale skin and brown hair and matching brown eyes- rushed towards it and grabbed the silver knob, thrusting it open and bursting through to the hall. From what I could see, the hall was just as similarly colored and designed as the bathroom I seemed to be in, except it had more windows which weren’t covered by curtains, forcing the room to be lit with the dim glow of numerous candles along shelves.
My eyes darted back to the woman standing before the tub, her feet shuffling slowly behind her. Two small, brown hands covered her lips, and her green eyes just stared at me, awe and shock alight within them, her brows raised to her blonde hairline, and all I could do was stare back, drawing my brows together.
I had jumped off a cliff, only to wake up in a bathtub, naked and being scrubbed by a pair of what looked like maids to some sort of rich woman. I was only ever middle class in the United States, so what the hell was this?
It felt familiar- this world- and I wondered if perhaps it was the afterlife or maybe a dream, but what sort of person had dreams after they died? Did I die? Was my other life the actual dream and this my real? No, none of that made sense, and the world around me seemed too real to be a hallucination and too real to be dream.
Well, too real to be a dream described by all others who normally had dreams. The only two dreams I had felt just as real as this, but I started to wonder if they were even dreams at all. They felt like real life, and so did this. Maybe I died in my sleep twice and entered the afterlife, or maybe they were dreams. God, there was no telling what was going on, and my mind was swirling with all the endless possibilities.
I must have been clearly confused, just as much as the woman staring back at me, because she lowered her hands and started to speak, but before any proper explanation came my way, the sound of a crowd stampeding in a sprint through the hall outside reverberated through the air, and she paused, staring at the doorway, glancing at me, and turning back to the doorway.
She grabbed the red robe hanging on the door and gestured for me to hurry out of the tub, I gazed at her for a minute more, but glancing down at my exposed body, I decided to accept the gesture and climbed out, stepping forward with unsteady movements, lacking all grace, and took it from her delicate hands, wrapping it over myself and encompassing my exposed flesh in a red robe of smooth silk. God did it feel nice.
A group rushed through the doorway, spilling through to stand at the edge of the room, and once they all entered, none moved. Each and every one of them stared at me with the same look of amusement: raised brows, wide eyes, and mouths open like a fish. I glanced over them all, taking in the appearance and number of each.
There were the original two servants standing across the room from me now, and adding to them was an older couple- man and woman- dressed in lavish clothing, made of silk, satin, and everything expensive under the sun, all adorned by jewels and crowns on their heads, and standing next to them was a beautiful boy with an olive skin tone and black hair that brushed to the right across his forehead, right above his brows and his peculiar eyes.
He was the strangest of all. He wore what seemed to be a button up shirt, a few buttons left open, and it was tucked into a strange pair of pants- definitely not modern- and his eyes. Oh God, his eyes. The right was the wildest blue that I’d ever seen, round and smooth with a bright shade of a deep blue, and the left was completely different, a round shape of green, the color of forest leaves in the middle of spring and summer, and together, they reminded me of the sea and nature, and everything I held dear.
I stared at him the longest, and he seemed to notice, knitting his brows with a slight tilt of his head, an act so subtle and soft that it felt too precise and intricate of an act, and I forced myself to look away from him and his chiseled jaw.
Turning to the rich couple in the middle, I realized that they looked like Kings and Queens, middle aged, that is, and their faces were a bit unlike the others, more relieved and happy as if my being there were something special, and I realized that I truly was no longer in my world because I glanced down at my body to see if I were even the same person I had been, and I saw my familiar ginger locks, but brushing up the sleeve of the ruby robe, I noticed there was no scar on the pale flesh of my arm.
This body was not my own. It couldn’t have been. But when I felt for my face, brushing the softness of strange hands over the form and shape of it, it felt the same as it had before I let myself get thinner, and the widow’s peak at the top was just the same. The only thing different was the lack of marks and scars on my body from times past, and my hair was about twice as long, reaching my hips and dripping to the floor, creating a puddle at my feet.
My brows started to feel uncomfortable from how much I’d smushed them together, a perplexed frown framing my lips, as I stared at the confusing bunch of people standing before me. I stared back at each of time, begging silently for an explanation.
“My daughter,” the woman cried, taking a soft step forward, her arm outstretched as if to reach for me. I backed up a step, and she stopped, pinching her lips together before glancing back at the man- likely a King. Was I trapped in some weird renaissance fair setup? A roleplay? If so, holy shit these people were good at acting.
No, it seemed too real. Nobody could display that look of surprise, and nobody could afford expensive shit that looked too real. I mean, it shimmered and glowed with the flicker of candles, and the silk that I wore were just as real. Silk wasn’t five dollars at Joanne’s, after all.
“After nineteen years, you- you’ve finally awakened,” the woman said, her voice a soft and rich sound, lined with an accent I’d never heard. It was a pleasant sound, like singing at the edge of her words, even with a golden lining to it.
I blinked hollow at her, watching her thin lips move with each word, the wrinkles lining the edges of her soft, relieved smile. She had hair of rich auburn, and her eyes were a soothing brown, speckled with slight green in the midst. Whoever she was, I’d never seen her before in my life, yet she called me her daughter.
My mother was a grocery store manager with flaming hair just as mine, and she was short yet fierce, a woman who would joke around about beating up my bullies and fighting her co-workers for failing to clean up properly, but this woman? She didn’t look at all like me.
After nineteen years, you finally awake? I died at nineteen years and about seven months old, but she claimed that I slept for that long and just now woke up? Something felt off about this all. Nothing made sense, and it was ridiculous- preposterous and unbelievable.
My mouth moved none, and I elected to say nothing until I was sure of what was going on. Whether it was some strange experiment in a lab or the afterlife, I had no idea, but unless I knew, my mouth wouldn’t move a muscle.
So, I stared blankly at them all, and in the seconds that followed her words, an awkwardness built.
It was the beautiful boy that spoke. “Your Majesties, considering your daughter just woke up, I think it would be best to let her adjust. After all, she likely doesn’t understand just what it is that is currently occurring,” he said, his heterochromatic eyes directed to the royal-looking middle aged man and woman. The boy looked older than I, and his voice had the same accent, edged with song and lined with gold, and he spoke with average depth sound, rich and elegant with a small touch of playfulness that I almost let go undetected.
“Of course, Wren,” the woman nodded. “Juliana, escort her to her room. Be calm about it.”
The maid appearing girl who had handed me the silk robe nodded at her and cautiously stepped closer to me, and when I didn’t step back from her, the queen-like woman winced, brows knitting at the sight as if it were most troubling. She did think of me as her daughter, after all, and I was quite obvious when I stepped away from her that I did not think of her as my mother, and now, it appeared I was more comfortable with “Juliana.”
She gestured with a wave of her hand to follow, and with one last glance at the others in the crowd, I did, letting her escort me from the strange bathroom, leaving behind the strange audience of my “awakening.”
If I wanted to understand my current predicament, I had to keep quiet and investigate, so I willingly followed her through the halls of whatever building I was in, and after looking out of the windows, I nearly froze, but my body certainly went cold and became a little stiff.
I wasn’t in a skyscraper or a house. No, I wasn’t even in a mansion. I was in a damned castle, one lined with outside walls of stone, the inside as elegant as could be, walls painted smooth and decorated with art of all sorts- paintings, sculptures, glittering candle holders, etc.
She led me down a red carpet, my body falling in step behind her. It felt the same walking as it did in my own body, and in the reflection of mirrors and shining sculptures, I saw my own face- my familiar rounded, button nose and heart shaped face, adorned with round blue eyes and cupid’s bow lips. It was all the same, widow’s peak and all, yet I knew it was not my own, just as I knew this world was somehow real and not the same as the one I’d come from.
What the hell is happening?
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