ADRIA’S POV.
Hope flooded my heart like never before, and we began to make our way, towards the shore. Lucien still couldn’t move his arm, so I had to take him all the way out of the water.
Finally, I got out of the water, and pulled him out too.
We panted hard, and looked at each other, with sparkling eyes.
It had been done. We had survived it. At least that was if there were no more obstacles for us, on the way to Athena’s house.
“I think we made it. Athena will grant us a safe path home, after she answers our questions. Lucien! We actually made it!” I squealed, and threw my arms around him.
“It’s still too early to celebrate. Let’s get there first.” He replied, stiffly, and I immediately withdrew from him.
His shoulder was swollen.
“Lucien, did you…?” I was asking, and he began to walk away.
“It’s not my first time having a dislocated shoulder. It’s fine. I’ll set it straight.” He replied, dragging himself, tiredly.
“Hey. You… you shouldn’t have… you shouldn’t have covered for me that way.” I said, running towards him.
“Then you’d have hit your head, and I’d have lost you. That would have been my greatest regret.” He replied, rolling his eyes.
“What if your shoulder never…?” I was asking, but he laughed.
“My shoulder stays dislocated, and eventually, displaced? It’s fine. I would get back my healing abilities, and I’ll heal. I’ll set it straight.” He replied, touching my arm, with his slightly better arm. Even to touch me like that, made him wince, and I hated it.
We were both covered in injuries, but it seemed to me like he was the only one suffering. My head was throbbing, and so was my belly, where he had struck me the previous day. My legs also hurt, and so did my arm.
To be frank. Everything in me hurt.
We wanted to walk as fast as we could, but our injuries restricted us from walking as fast, as we wanted to.
We didn’t even talk. The both of us walked in silence. Too exhausted to talk, and on the path to the hag’s house, which was luckily free of dangerous creatures, night fell on us.
Thinking back on it, we had tried a lot. I could imagine people dying from being covered in those scorpions. They wouldn’t even have had a chance. If they had survived the scorpions, their souls could have been ripped apart from their bodies, by those jealous corpses, or they could have fought among themselves, and killed each other under the illusion Lucien and I were put under.
If they happened to be alone, then the corpses could have gotten them because the fear alone would not allow them to think of anyone else. It would finish them.
And if they happened to survive yet again, those eagles could have torn them apart. One eagle was strong, without many supernatural abilities of ours, except to strike, and to bite, but it wasn’t just one eagle, they were lots.
How Lucien and I managed to survive those eagles was beyond me. The memory was already starting to fade in my mind already, even though it was earlier that day it had happened.
Let’s say those people survived the eagles, there was the octopus. That alone was tough, as water wasn’t meant for humans, and was harder to navigate than the land was. The octopus was in its territory, but the people weren’t.
It would have been able to crush most of them in its mouth. Then there was the waterfall, and the dangerous rocks Lucien and I managed to somehow miss.
Honestly, it was a suicide mission, but then, my mother had said it was different every time. What had those people faced?
Snakes? Tornados? Avalanches? Tsunamis? Hail? Extinct animals like dragons?
There were various monsters, and natural disaster that I could whip up, but somehow I couldn’t imagine any of them being harder than what Lucien and I had faced.
Late at night, we got to Athena’s cottage after a long, and tiring walk.
I had not had a single thing to eat in two days, and the lovely aroma coming from her cottage made my stomach churn, and grumble.
Lucien heard it, and smiled at me, making me flush in embarrassment.
He raised his slightly good hand to knock; however, the door swung open before he could even attempt knocking.
We looked inside, and I was shocked that the interior was actually decorated like a house.
Of course, what we saw when we stepped in, was the normal design of hags’ cottages that we saw in movies, but beyond it, was a living room.
A living room with clean shelves, books, a little TV, a wooden center table, with flowers on it, and tidy marble floors, with the walls bathed in a light cream color.
There was a big fire, the flames of which, were licking the bottom of a large, black pot, and I could smell beef broth boiling. Potatoes were also peeling themselves, and the green light on the ceiling was flickering on, and off.
“Do we… do we just walk in?” Lucien asked, turning to me, and I almost laughed.
“You’re asking me now?” I returned, in a whisper, and then, an old lady appeared at the door.
Our eyes widened because she wasn’t the kind of old lady we expected. Yes, she was old, but we expected someone much older.
Like short, bent, long gray hair, wrinkled up skin, yellowed teeth, sunken eyes, long withered fingers, and dark nails, but she was the opposite.
She stood tall and graceful, looking like a woman in her late fifties. She was slender, and had silky straight ash-colored hair, falling to her waist. Her deep blue eyes seemed to look straight into our minds, and her graceful fingers tangled around themselves in front of her.
She had a few wrinkles, but no one would believe she had spent years longer on the earth, than grannies who had died two hundred years ago.
She was putting on a gray dress that looked a little old-fashioned, and fell to the floor, covering her feet.
Then, she smiled at us. A beautiful, and graceful smile.
“You have come a long way. Come in, children.” She said to us in a soft, and husky voice, the vibration of which seemed to soothe my troubled soul.
If she ever sang for me, I didn’t doubt falling asleep in seconds.
We walked into her cottage, then into the living room, which smelled like flowers.
“Sit, and make yourselves comfortable.” She said, walking through another door, and when we were seated on soft sofas, she came out seconds later, with a wooden, brown box.
“Long the years have been, since I last saw people. People come in here, with determination stronger than steel, but that steel is immediately bent under the heat. Some have tried to flee, some died fighting with their steely determination intact, but none have I seen, who had reached here with their determination broken.
“The both of you lost hope already, but something else brought you this far. This young lady could have drowned; however, I wonder what that last straw that kept her swimming was. Was it possibly… love?” She began, as she opened the box and took out leaves, black bottles, and cotton.
She began to tend softly to Lucien’s wounds, and I watched her.
“What kept you going?” She asked, still tending to Lucien, but I knew she was talking to me.
“Honestly, I don’t know. I didn’t really think of my mother, but… maybe that part of me that was ready to go on this journey wasn’t dead yet.” I replied, watching her wipe the wound on Lucien’s head.
Then she sat straight, and turned to the both of us.
“Why…? I see a bright future ahead of the both of you, but…” She began, looking like she was seeing past my face, and a sad look crossed her eyes.
“But what?” I asked, impatiently.
“Thick darkness is fast covering your bright light, and the light to chase the darkness away, seems impossibly hard to find…” She completed, and I had never heard worse news.
What more darkness could there be, after we had crossed a universe of troubles to make it all better?
What in the world was tearing Lucien and I apart?