The All-seeing Eye

Just like the last time, Nefaaya can't help but to have that look of bewilderment on his face as a ball of water appeared before her palms. Her mother had always found this reaction amusing. It had already been a week since she had first seen it, but still she can't get away from the feeling of awe every time she saw Nefri doing it. Because how could she, when what her mother did was something that defies all the rules of physics that she had studied!

Nefaaya sat close to the window, wondering how summoning water with the use of one's will is possible in this world. For now, she refers to it as Magical Ability. But she can't say the word, she didn't want to admit that magic is a possibility.

Sun drifted back towards the western horizon, hiding behind the shadows of the great mountain ranges from afar. The blue sky turned bloodied red while the sky in the east slowly turned in the shade of blackish-violet. From it, stars appeared like diamonds thrown in a black cloth.

A cold wind blows her white hair, and Nefaaya hugged herself and head inside the comfort of their house.

Later that evening, she woke up to the call of nature. As she was heading to the bathroom she found her mother looking at a book. She peeked from the corner of the wooden wall. The book was thick and leather-bound, with a lock-strap attached on it. The pages were also thick, she wondered if this was parchment.

"Mother," she said and stood before her.

She looked at her with wide eyes, before she gestured for her to come. And when she finally sat on her lap, she saw it. Written in a language that she wasn't familiar with. Its letters are waving and with lots of curls almost similar to the lapsing waves of an ocean.

"What is it?"

"This is called a Grimoire," she said. "This is where I learned what I am doing in the garden."

And Nafaaya was overcome by her curiosity. She touched the book. A sense of shock moves around her body.

"Could I also learn it?"

She smiled at her, "yes, you could."

They spend the next hours talking about what her mother knew. She believed that the book had a lot of information that teaches how to cast a spell. According to her, the secret of casting waterballs was by visualizing it as you recite a chant, or the words that would conjure what you're thinking.

"If the words and visualization is correct, you would be able to summon anything that you want," she explained when she asked.

According to her, she received the book when she was young from a man that she had helped.. It was sometime before she met Nefaaya's father. But that time no one in their tribe could read the High Li'lian Letters, which was used in the neighboring Empire of Nortic.

She worked hard to study the language, and even paid for it. And she had gone successful, but despite it the waterball and some other spells with Water Affinity was the limit of her ability.

She listened to her tell stories about what she knew about the book. And Nefaaya sat beside her, like an eager child who's thirsty for knowledge.

"When I was young, I was really working hard to create those powerful spells that the book was talking about, lifting a stone and summoning a rain. But when I tried summoning fire one time. I got myself sick for almost three days," she yawned. It was already passed three in the morning. Nefaaya felt the sleepiness in her.

"Mother, could I have this book," Nefaaya said. Her mother looked at her with curiosity and looked at the opened window.

"Okay, just don't stay too late."

She nodded politely and said goodnight before she headed to her own room. Nefaaya immediately jumped on her bed and opened the book. Don't stay too late? Who she was talking to, Nefaaya had stayed all late throughout the course of her previous life.

Nefaaya opened the book and immediately sighed in frustration when she remembered that she can't read this language! Instead of trying to read it, Nefaaya just ran through the pictures in the book. It shows different abilities that could be altered. Water, Earth, Air, Fire, Light and Dark which includes the Mass, Weight, Energy.

She looked at the first picture of the book showing a fore appearing in the air, beneath it were words written like stanzas of a poem. She tried visualizing it, her mother told that in order to cast a waterball one must imagine the sound of waves and of the ball gatyering around you.

Nefaaya sighed and raised her hand, she tried visualizing the sound of sea based on how she remembered it on her past life. A minute had passed and still she couldn't feel anything. But suddenly something inside her break, Nefaaya pulled back her hand in shock. She can't explain what just happen, but she's sure that it was something that wasn't supposed to happen.

*What was that?* She stared at her hand in shock. Despite her on doubt to what just happened, Nefaaya continue on what she was doing.

As the night progressed, Nefaaya still tried. But as hard as she tried, nothing happened. Tired and with a broken pride she fell asleep with a dream of being able to summon a storm. She was surrounded by darkness, no stars from above and not a single light from afar— nothing but the gusting winds surrounded her like walls. Then the wall banished, she found herself standing in the darkness.

Nefaaya was afraid, even when she was in her previous life she always thought the darkness as unsettling. For that reason, she never sleeps with her lights off. She walked slowly at first, trying in futility to find a way out of this darkness. She outstretched her hands, reaching for what she could reach. What she was reaching, she didn't know. But what made her more afraid was to reach something that was beyond her reason. As she walked aimlessly in the darkness that seemed to never end, she realized that it was just a dream. In her world, when she realized that a dream was a dream she would immediately be pulled back to being awake. But it seems like in this world, the rule doesn't apply.

She turned, from the corners of her eyes she saw a glinting blue light. Nefaaya wondered for a second if this was the way to go back to her world. She moved towards the light, slowly at first until she found herself running, half-worried it would banish and half-excited in the thought of home. Nefaaya shouted, but this place is a vacuum where no sound travels. She finds herself falling in a drop surrounded by millions of stars. Then as if willed by someone she stop, suspended in the air. Facing the eye of a writhing monster. In its back, she saw many glowing pulsating veins like small rivers each heading to a different direction.

"Who are you?" A voice echoed.

The monster was the most bizarre thing she had seen in this world. All the fear, all the emotions enveloped her as she stared at it. The monster's remarkable feature was a huge eye with a moving eye socket. Upon further inspection she realized that it wasn't a normal eye socket, something similar to a shiny tentacle of octopus was continuously writing as if trying to cover the eyes whole. It was making a sickening sound as if mushing something soft with force. She felt she had already heard it.

The accident flashed in her mind. She saw the man standing on the sidewalk. The bus losing its control as it rolled pass on the body of the man. When she realized that the two have similar sounds, Nefaaya felt an urge to vomit.

The eye eyed her. "What are you, child?" The monster said.

She realized that she was facing something she can't understand. In that moment, she was finally convinced that in this world, the impossible can happen.

"I am nothing but a child," she said, trying to calm herself. "What are you?"

"I am? I am what they called the All-seeing Eye," the monster said. "A being that oversaw the Flow."

Nefaaya looked around uneasily, "why am I here?"

The monster hummed, "earlier, you were trying to summon something from the Creation. And something about you... is not right."

"Not right?" She tilted her head.

The eye bobbed up and down, "yes, you're an Anomaly to the Singularity. I was thinking of destroying you right now. But the Flow... don't reject you."

"I don't know what you're saying... Anomaly?" Her eyes widened and shivered on the seriousness of the monster's voice, "why? What wrong had I done."

"Your very existence was wrong. You would destroy the Singularity created for this universe," he reasoned.

And Nefaaya, surprisingly agreed to the monster. Because if she was facing the same problem, the most right thing to do was to destroy its root for it to never grow.

"But the Flow doesn't reject you... yet." The pupil of the monster dilated. Nefaaya froze, it was all Nefaaya could do to stop herself from shouting. "But I am also seeing something, something much more powerful that would shake the roots of the Creation. A power that hadn't been seen since the Release Of Madness," it said. "And I was thinking of pulling the strings from behind... to protect the course or do what the Flow sees necessary."

"Pulling the strings from behind?"

For some unknown reason, she felt the monster nodded, "I would let you live. For now Nefaaya. Woke up and trained. There would be a time that the two of us would meet again, and whether you like it or not, you would do my bidding." He promised.

The voice echoed, Nefaaya was pulled back towards the darkness where she had come. The light stretches on all sides of her. She turned and found herself falling to the floor, book still in her hands. From the windows of her room, light drifted. It was a warm morning, but she was sweating cold.