Jade and The House of Flowing Water

  Jade and The House of Flowing Water

  By Kellie Wilding

  Copyright © 2021 by Kellie Wilding

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN:

  Table of Contents

  Jade

  School

  Mystic Planet

  Annabe’s House

  Annabe’s Story

  Tor’s House

  Tor’s Story

  Talamish

  Back to Reality

  Mirror Mirror

  Prepare to Conquer

  The Empire

  Beautiful

  Return to Nepthysia

  Training

  Castles Are Boring

  Glamour

  The Lord Returns

  War Council

  Kidnapped

  AFTERMATH

  Rain awakens

  Meanwhile… Things on Earth

  Dreams come true

  Mourning

  Bonded

  Clean

  Jade

  Struggling against the seaweed twining itself around her limbs and the relentless current, oxygen depleted, she found herself thirsting for breath in a world void of air. She had been under the surface for far too long and was desperate for escape. Anticipating the fiery burn as the seawater filled her lungs she knew this was the end. This was the part of the dream where she usually woke up screaming, but she was surprised with delight when she took in a large mouthful of briny water and could breathe freely. The incinerating pain she was expecting was instead replaced with the cool sensation of water entering and leaving her lungs, carrying oxygen to her tense muscles. Of course, if this happened in real life, she would have been struck with wonder, but this was a dream, and she had that looming sense of urgency that only seems to happen in nightmares.

  Somewhat calm, now that she wasn’t drowning, she found herself able to remove her knife from her boot. She marveled at the strange runes lacing its handle momentarily turning it over in her hand. She liked the way the moonlight shone through the water and glinted off of a metal she didn’t recognize. Caressing the hilt, she remembered there was something she should do. She then cut away the thick, brown kelp that had wound itself around her ankle, allowing her to glide through the currents. She swam on with a sense of direction one only has in the miasma between sleep and wake to a sandy beach with hazy lights in the distance. In the dark, her eyes played tricks on her and she saw flashes of a sky that was far more vast and star-filled than the one she had always known. It was like the stars were somehow closer and denser. She thought that it must be the same optical illusion that makes the moon sometimes appear larger than life. She had the same aching feeling she had sitting on the porch at Annabe’s house on a summer evening watching the moon rise when it seemed too big for the sky. She made her way toward the distant lights with caution and could see a storm looming in the distance. As she approached the cove she had a sense of urgency and hastened her pace.

  The island was secluded with one small dock. The ocean began to stir around her and she could see the dock being swallowed by the rising tides with a few scraggly boats moored carelessly. There was a strange structure on the island. It appeared cobbled together out of sea debris in some sort of a dome, but not at all structurally sound, like something a child would build. She padded quietly across the beach feeling the sand slip between her toes, noticing the guards posted by the dock entrance. She made no noise and they did not turn to look at her. They were not expecting an attack.

  She wedged her slight frame through some pieces of driftwood on the eastern wall. She heard a familiar voice screaming in terror, and losing her caution, lurched forward into the light, immediately regretting her decision, as she saw the gathering faces looming around her. It was like they were wearing masks, but not somehow. She expected them to notice her and attack at any moment, but they didn’t seem to perceive she was there. How strange she thought. She was just marveling about their indifference to her (didn’t they know she was here to destroy them?) when she looked about the room. She expected the shabby-chic, shanty theme to be perpetuated inside, but that is not what she discovered.

  An enormous room loomed before her, not at all congruent with the exterior. She was astonished that such a large structure could fit in that tiny shack. There was dais at the center of the room with a trough at the base of it, both in some sort of blue creamy stone. Marble floors and vaulted ceilings greeted her. There were large ornate columns with inlaid dark stones in swirling patterns that appeared to be some sort of words, but none she recognized. On the ceiling were terrible images of suffering and death painted with such realism that it took her breath away. It seemed to be some sort of large pavilion. There were no walls and the room just opened into the night sky, with lightning dancing around. She shrugged her shoulders. Sometimes dreams were weird like that.

  She awoke with a jolt to the chime notifying her that someone had entered her store. She pushed back an unruly curl and attempted to look as if she hadn’t just been deep asleep with drool running down her face. Damn it, she had just cleaned the display case too. She grabbed the glass cleaner, already annoyed.

  It wasn’t really her store, but she was nearly eighteen and had been working there since she was fourteen. She did the ordering, inventory, displays and most of manning the register for several years now. Although it wasn’t technically hers, it might as well have been.

  Mystic Planet was a kitschy kind of store in one of the lesser travelled alleys of The Hub. The Hub, an open air shopping and entertainment center was laid out with a fountain and a park in the center, and was the social nexus of their small town. Close to the park were eating establishments and avenues for walking traffic branched out from there like the spokes of a wheel, hence the clever name. It was bursting with high end shops, juice bars, yoga studios and the like. Mystic planet was on one of the more obscure, narrow alleyways. It was in the older section where more shops seemed to be closed than opened. A new vapor shop had gone in on the corner bringing some life back to that spoke, but this avenue also sported a bail bondsmen office, and a liquor store, so it was definitely not the nice side of The Hub.

  Mystic Planet was a store for all things “spiritual”. The reek of patchouli filled the air as crystals glimmered behind racks of filmy scarves. Her boss was an aging hippie named Clara who was obsessed with the “transcendental plane”. She rattled on about it endlessly and Jade pretended to listen to what she was saying mostly thinking it was all bullshit. Jade didn’t really buy any of that crap. But she humored Clara and her waist –long wavy, graying hair. Sometimes it would be tinged with lavender or a bluish hue. Clara danced about in a film of gauzy dresses and scarfs. She was flaky and charming and seemed to dote on Jade as if she were a long lost child and would talk about the day when Jade would take over the store, ignoring the reality that the store would likely go under soon. Oddly, for someone who seemed completely oblivious, Jade often found Clara had some bizarrely acute insights. Also, she paid relatively well for a job that Jade had come to love, and she needed the money, and Jade was practical if nothing else. Also, she kind of loved the strangely charming woman.

  Her thoughts went back to the dream that kept interrupting her sleep. It was like having a piece of popcorn stuck in her teeth. Her brain kept tonguing the dream to no avail. It was always the same dream. She wished she could see who the voice was that was screaming, but she always woke before then, and she never could remember some of the important parts, like the faces. Sometimes it seemed like they were kids from school. She guessed it was her brain’s way of working out some of her teenage angst of which she had a lot.

  She glanced up and saw some
middle schoolers browse around the cheap scarves and necklaces briefly before giggling and bustling their way out. She was envious for more than a moment of their casual ease. They all seemed so care free and so unlike Jade at that age. She felt her resentment rise like bile in the back of her throat.

  Having been raised in a series of foster homes, Jade did not make or keep friends easily. When she was younger, it was one after another in a whirlwind of abuse and neglect. At nine, she was finally had a good placement. It was with a kindly elderly woman named Annabe, and she thought of her like a grandmother. Then they moved her again when she was thirteen, and she had been moved seven times since then. The series of moves made the stability of Mystic Planet seem even more like a home to her.

  She was lucky enough she mused to currently be in a home that was merely benignly neglectful and not overtly harmful. Some of her placements throughout the years had not been so fortunate. Her current “family” were long haul truckers and almost always gone. In fact it had been around a months since she had last seen them. They clearly had gone into the fostering gig to get the extra monthly check. They had a tacit agreement that as long as she didn’t cause any trouble, that she was free to do as she pleased. It was an arrangement Jade was more than comfortable with, having done more than just fend for herself in the past.

  Some nights, she still ended up sleeping at Annabe’s if things got tough, although the elderly woman told her carefully never to let anyone know because it violated any number of government policies. She was cautious about it, not wanting to get her friend in trouble.

  She did have a couple of friends her own age. They had bonded through their own personal hardships. The town of Montmercy sat on the ocean side, and reeked of old money and new. Sadly Jade was privy to neither. She wasn’t sure she would have survived Montmercy without her friends. She had met Selena on the first day of Kindergarten when they caught the bus together. Selena was nothing like Jade with her sparkly personality, perfect bouncy hair, and bright green eyes. Selena was one of what seemed like an endless stream of children which stretched their already limited resources thin in the small trailer her family shared on the outskirts of town. She was stunningly beautiful which did nothing to help her popularity with the rich kids at school and brought her all sorts of unwanted attention. The friends played a game as two which of their houses was the safe one to stay at depending on which guardian was intoxicated.

  Then, there was Ariana, who she had known even longer. Ariana was also in the foster care system and they had been placed at homes together in the past. Ari once had foster parents that included Jade almost like a member of the family. They got to have sleep overs and even invite Selena. Steve and Beverly were their names and Jade still remembered them with fondness. She wondered what had happened to them. Jade thought they would adopt Ari, and she knew that her friend was disappointed. Once they disappeared, Ariana had gone from one terrible placement to the next. Then she started having trouble in school. She became more unstable, to the point it was even hard for Jade to interact with her. Jade thought of what had happened to Ari with bitterness. When she saw those girls in her store oblivious to the pain of the world around them, she wanted to grab them by their pretty little pony tails and sit them down to tell them a thing or two.

  Even though their lives were shit, for some reason, Ari always seemed so optimistic. She had all these crazy dreams, but Jade knew better. Jade knew her life wouldn’t turn out to be anything special. It hadn’t so far and she, being a pragmatist didn’t think things would turn around anytime soon. Jade and Arianna had grown apart over the last year with Jade’s future looming before her, and Ari acting so strangely. But now, she felt a wellspring of guilt for what happened to her friend. Ari had now been admitted to a psychiatric facility for an indefinite period. No one would say what had happened. She tried to visit her once, but because they weren’t family, they wouldn’t let her see her friend.

  Jade counted herself lucky, by comparison. Unfortunately, her current, situation was about to come to a halt. She was turning eighteen in just a few days. After that, the state would give her a grace period of unspecified duration, and then she was considered an adult. At that point, she doubted that the couple she barely laid eyes on would allow her to stay with them, but she might be able to eke out a little more time without them noticing. She had certainly got away with a lot without them noticing. She had already begun to calculate how long they usually stayed on the road verses when she would have to find her own place.

  She startled at the sound of the chime again, still disoriented from her nap, she paused from arranging a display and turned to find Tor grinning a million dollar smile.

  “I thought I might find you here.”

  Tor had been in the system himself, so he understood Jade like no one else. Tor, nee Alistor joined her life when she was placed at Annabe’s. He was already at that home when she arrived. It had been the closest thing Jade had ever experienced to having a real family of her own. He was already out on his own being a year older than her. He had been working odd jobs in construction since he was about fifteen and just picked full time work building houses. He still spent an inordinate amount of his free time annoying Jade by interjecting himself in her affairs.

  He irritated the crap out of her and the only reason Jade tolerated it as well as she did was that Tor was so pretty to look at. His dark hair set off his sun-burnished skin well and the flecks of gold in his green eyes lit up the smirk he constantly had on his face. Construction work only enhanced his physique in all the right places. It was honestly distracting how good looking he was. When she was with him, she felt totally invisible. Sometimes when they were together, girls would just walk up and completely ignore her while slipping numbers in his pocket. It was like she didn’t even exist. It made her grit her teeth. She wanted to punch them in their pretty, perfect faces, but luckily he didn’t seem to notice. In fact, he always treated her with the amicable condescension that only a big brother type can. At some point, Jade had stopped seeing him as a big brother and desperately wished he would do the same though she was loathe to admit it.”

  “Yeah, Tor, that was a real stretch considering I work here,” she rolled her eyes, nervously fingering the coil of curls that had slipped from the scarf she wore as a headband.

  “Worrying about your release date?” he leaned over the counter and stuck his finger squarely on the classified listings she had been perusing.

  “Yeah, but I’m never going to be able to afford my own place. Maybe I can move in with you,” she teased.

  “I think you might cramp my style,” he raised an eyebrow and crushed her dreams, “So how are you celebrating your birthday? You planning on getting in some sort of trouble with Selena?”

  Jade was annoyed again by the thought of her upcoming birthday and Tor’s distractingly attractive grin taunting her did nothing to improve the situation. She wished that he didn’t treat her with the ease of a sibling. Never once had he hinted at anything resembling attraction to her. Well that wasn’t exactly true. They had one awkward moment while wrestling last year, but it could have been in her head. He had her pinned and she could still remember the way the firmness of his body felt against hers. He stared at her like he wanted to kiss her but then jumped off of her like she the plague.

  Jade didn’t think she was completely unattractive. In fact she was very pretty, but forgettable. She had one of those symmetrical but ordinary faces. She would often meet people numerous times before they remembered her name and then it was with much coaxing. It really pissed her off because she knew he had hooked up with some girls who were not nearly as pretty as she. He didn’t talk about it much, but she knew.

  She sometimes wondered about her background. Not so much who her parents were, because she honestly didn’t care since they seemed completely unconcerned with her, but more so her ethnicity. When she saw herself in the mirror, she thought she looked interesting. She had creamy dark skin and long wavy dark hair
with slightly upturned grey eyes. Sometimes people would be rude inquiring “what she was” and it would have been nice to be able to reply more than an awkward “I don’t know.” She also wondered what it would feel like to belong to a group, any group.

  “Yeah, you know that isn’t really my scene,” Jade sighed, “I am hoping I can talk Selena into a good old-fashioned sleep over.”

  “You mean at her house?” Tor scoffed with disdain, “with her bazillion siblings in that little trailer? That sounds terrible.”

  Jade flipped through the classified again as if something magically would appear, “You know my foster parents are never home.”

  “How can you be sure they aren’t planning something?”

  Jade stared at him with her pretty grey eyes, “Do you have a concussion? You cannot be serious. First of all, I am pretty sure they have no idea when my birthday is. Second of all, I am certainly not going to tell them so that they can kick me out.”

  “Don’t be so dramatical, Princess”

  “That’s easy for you to say.” She hated when he called her that old nickname.

  “Hey, I was in your situation just last year,” Tor replied, hands up.

  “I know, but it isn’t like people are handing out jobs that pay well and don’t suck and besides you had graduated,” she was annoyed, and although he was gorgeous, she was ready for him to go.

  “Have you ever worked construction? I think you need to examine your definition of jobs that don’t suck. Besides, you have a job here,” he pointed out.

  “But for how much longer?” Jade gestured around at the empty store, “There is no way that this place is staying afloat legally. I do not want to know what Clara has going on the side to support this place, and in a few days I can be tried as an adult.”

  “I thought you liked Clara,” he observed.

  “I love Clara, but not enough to go to jail for her flaky ass,” Jade responded.