Daeva: Black Diamond Chrysalis - Danielle Bolger (essential reading txt) 📗

woman on the line assured me that they had landmarked my GPS and were sending out an emergency crew right away. She spoke fast so I didn't pick up every word but I knew enough of what she was saying, it was that we were very far from the city so arrival will take a few minutes but that if I knew any CPR that I should begin it immediately.

"CPR?" I repeated as I stared at my arthritic hands.

"Whatever you can do, try to, but don't exert yourself too much. In the very least get him to lie down. Try to calm him and take deep breaths. Obviously, if you have a defibrillator installed in your home use that first thing."

"Defibrill-a-bor-whats? Are they those machines they have in shopping centres to save people's lives?"

"That's okay, ma'am, it appears you don't have one. We have your location now so I'll forward you to first aid support. Now, head back to your husband and simply place the phone on speaker and follow the prompts. And ma'am, be brave, you can get through this."

I nodded forgetting that she couldn't see me. Then I ran back out by the pool where the old man had slinked off his chair and laid on his back motionless. I rounded the chair quickly, ignoring the pain in my knees before slamming awkwardly on the hard tiles. There I wept, broken ceramic from the fallen teacup cutting my hand as tears fell atop his stiff skin. All the while his eyes kept staring, deep brown eyes staring outward as if seeing some far off scene.

Never once did they focus, never once did they blink.

"No!" I screamed as I placed my feeble distorted hands on top of his chest and began to thump, but my effort may as well have been useless for the force they erected only served to tear into my over-sized knuckles.

"My love!" I screamed again. "Don't leave me! Eric!"

As I heard my old self cry the scene shattered and suddenly I was in a plain of blackness beneath a sky absent of light.

"Wow!" A voice called out behind me. "You were really synchronising with your other self there. I guess that's not so surprising, it was a wonderful life, or is... Depending from which point you look at it."

I turned around behind me and perceived Dorothy standing twenty metres away on top of the same nothingness, but she wasn't entirely her there, she was different. It was her hair, it was brown, so too were her eyes, but that wasn't all, I was sure of it but I didn't know how to pin-point anything else. But for the time being those two stark contrasts were enough to satisfy my curiously amidst my hatred.

"What did you!? What was that? Eric, he... he...!" I stammered remembering the old man's deep brown eyes staring into an empty sky.

Dorothy raised her eyebrows as if bewildered. "You serious? You're upset with me? After what I showed you!?"

With a tremble I brought my hand up to block out the mental images but all I saw there was blood on a wrinkled arthritic hand.

"You killed him... You killed Eric!"

Dorothy turned her head to the side as if to give an invisible companion a can-you-get-a-load-this look. "No..." She explained as if it was obvious. "I showed you your perfect life with that kid. I think you should be thanking me right about now, I kind of did you an act of kindness there."

"What!?" My voice, my whole body shook. "Act of kindness!? But you showed me his death!"

Dorothy with brown hair scoffed. "I showed you the happy ending you two could have had, you ungrateful little twat! I showed you how long you could have lived together, the home you retired into, that darling white picket fence. A bloody waterfront view and you're complaining to me how it ended?" Anger flashed and her eyes returned to silver. "Don't you know how many people wish they could just witness a better outcome? Don't you understand the gift I gave you? You got to see your future with him before it became impossible! Before your witnessing his death closed all doors to a life in which he still exists in!"

"A future where he dies..." I was still quivering. "Is no future I ever want to see!"

"No future, not even one where you can hold his hand for the last time? Not even one where you get to tell him that you love him? So ungrateful. You're still capable of witnessing the man you love in future universes because your consciousness allows him to be alive anywhere. I gave you a precious gift, you know, a look into a life you two could have shared together, but you not only reject it you're actually angry at me for it!" As she roared brown and silver melded in her hair. "Do you know how many I would kill for a chance like that!?"

On black floor I took a step back. "A boy, you were in love... What are you complaining to me for? If you miss him so much can't you just create a weird illusion for yourself and see him!?"

"You don't think I've done that, a thousand times over already?" Her voice was so different to how I ever heard it. Usually it was erratic, crazily happy, scarily so, but here it worse for in nothingness it seemed to be in its purest form - absolute rage. "I've seen our past together countless times and I've seen his death more than I've lived days on this earth. But always he is fated to die because I learnt one unyielding fact - the observer can never witness anything it knows to be false. That's why I hate you, Abigail, and that's why I take pity on you, because I can see all the possible futures that span from this time line."

"Wait!" My voice trembled but this time it had lost its volume. With a swallow I continued. "I don't really understand what you're saying but... I think it's bad. I... Are..." Frowning and taking a deep breath I hurried it out. "Nothing bad's about to happen, is it!?"

A smile that seemed familiar to Dorothy re-etched itself on her features. "Of course it is, you're the perfect little girl that has friends and a boyfriend that loves her so much. Sure, you have a better family than I had, but my dad was pretty special all on his own. Then when the Hunter family took me in I felt like I had another whole family! You're life is more perfect than mine, I'll give you that, but mine was perfect for me. I had my music, I was the lead singer in a band! A boyfriend, good grades, yeah, I rocked Golden Heights in a number of ways, not that you'd remember. Then friends that told me they would fight to the ends of the Earth with me betrayed me when I needed them most. Sunshine turned to shit in a minute."

"You had a terrible past happen to you, I know! Pearl told me, before..." My voice trailed off before I assumed my stance. "She told me about your tragedy but also told me that she never really gave up on you, she always wanted to keep being your friend, no matter what you became!"

Dorothy leered at me before throwing her head back in laughter. When she finally pulled it back it was with platinum strands framing her face. "That's hilarious! She pretended to care about me? Despite what I became? What a golden backstabber!"

I stepped back some more when I recognised the crazed eye look. "It's not too late, Dorothy! We can all still be friends! If we work together then I just know that we can stop this darkness invading our world and stop the chrysalis!"

"NO!" Her voice boomed so loud and deep it seemed to originate from all points around me. Then blue ice spread over the unseen ground beneath her feet. Over it she smiled. "I saw her many fates before it was finally decided in this world. So, although I wanted to kill her myself I became satisfied with seeing her die many times by my hand. More times she was killed by those other daevas," she rolled her eyes, "then it turned out she died in one of the heroic ways, how boring. But, at least she died, I was glad to see the universe where she still lived didn't come to pass."

"Whoa... What? What are you saying?" I narrowed my eyes as I struggled with the weight of her words. "Not only can you create illusions to see the past but you can create many into the future?"

Dorothy cracked up with laughter. "Really? Is that all you've learnt by now? That's pathetic!"

"When you showed me my life with Eric, where he died as an old man, that was an illusion, right?" A quiver slipped into my voice.

"I'm sure my old gal-pals would have told you by now, Pearl, before she carked it, or Lara because she's a control freak. But you still seem very confused so I'll indulge your small mind." She narrowed her eyes. "I thought I saw myself in you, which was why I pitied you but that's so off the mark when I realise how stupid you are!"

"I'm not stupid." I stated resolutely. "But I don't give up on people. That's something we obviously don't share in common!"

Silver eyes flashed in amusement. "That's it, that's why I hate you. You remind me of my naivety - damn it!" Suddenly blue ice spires erected all through the black floor, a few so close I could feel the coolness from their proximity, but none obscured the common paths our eyes laid towards one-another.

"That's why I frickin' pity you. That's why... I don't want to kill you..."

I breathed for a few seconds as I understood her words. "Hang on! If you don't mean to kill me then what's this all about? Why have you locked me up in your weird world? Why did you show me such a painful illusion!?"

The girl's smile fell to disdain. "Because, I wanted you to have a chance of witnessing what could have been before it was too late. Before you lost the ability to see futures of him like me."

"Futures?" I repeated with dread. "Okay, so there's many possible outcomes and so many possible futures, right?" I swallowed again. "So, since there's many possibilities then why did you show me just one? I mean, they're all just as likely to happen!"

The silver haired girl smiled widely. "Because, don't you get it, Abigail? Worlds spring off from worlds. Timelines if you will, all stretching into endless possibilities. Some have life, some have emptiness, some have the endearing romance between Abigail Darling and Eric Rhodes, numerous possibilities branching off single moments of chance. There are many in which we exist but within each there are differences. Like, for example, Noein never came to our world and daevas were never created. That led to a very different outcome of circumstances! Not saying it's better, some were, some weren't. But there were also many worlds that branched off as existence was struggling to form recognition! Many and most failed to produce anything that even resembled life, but one that came close was the brother world, Noein. It struggled against its fate for billions of years. It wants nothing more than to recognise reality, to be established within an existence. It wants what we all do, it wants to become part of a perfect world."

"The world of darkness, the world of... Noein, is just a... possible future?" I repeated, my head spinning through the illuminated blue and dense black.

"I guess I was like that..." Dorothy muttered with aversion. "I fought reality..." She laughed. "Until I realised it was futile. Until I realised my power only allowed me to witness, never change and I could never know which future was going