Chapter – 119 - Returning Back to the Outside World

When man goes to sleep

The spirit awakens.

In the utter silence of the night

My footsteps seem so loud and lonely.

I stop and look back

At the mirage of a life

Gone by and disappeared.

Myriad colors ever beckoning me -

The places, the people,

The sights, sounds, thoughts and beliefs.

Of words spoken and unspoken,

Some reached their destination,

Some left hanging in the blankness of space.

I turn back to look forward.

A new path untrodden

Opens wide its arms to embrace me.

Unknown yet inviting.

My past merges with

The aura of my being,

Becoming the present me,

As I walk unsteadily,

Tripping and stumbling,

But never hesitating,

To merge once more

With the me that is slowly becoming.

___________________________________

Rihanna felt she was stuck in a strange dream. She was walking on and on and on. For hours....or maybe days. She couldn't tell. The ground below was soaked in blood. And there was no sign of any humans or beasts or even plants. In fact....there was no sign of life all around her. The blood soaked grounds spread on till infinity.

And the horizon was a dark crimson red. Like someone had splashed blood over the edges of the world. And the red gradually spread upwards, merging in with the deep blue of the sky.

The more she looked at the horizon, an ominous feeling rose from within her being. So she pretended to be ignorant, looking down at the ground, trudging on and on relentlessly.

The foot she had just raised to move forward another step, halted in mid air. Then she pulled it back, softly placing it back in its previous place. Eyelids shielding her half closed eyes fluttered in the windless air, as slowly she turned her head upwards.

Was that music? Soft, gentle rhythm, floating in the space around her seemed to be beckoning her. The familiarity of the notes made her yearn. Yearning for someone or something she could hold onto amidst the vast and bloody nothingness. Someone who could return her the sense of being alive.

Rihanna frowned, the creases on her forehead deepening with every passing moment as her pupils moved from side to side under the tightly shut eyelids. Artreya had jumped up from the chair, where he had been sitting, keeping an eye on her. Fluffy and Phantasm had already pounced onto the bed, sitting on full alert near her head.

"She seems to be waking up. Good for her. She has slept enough already!"

The three human and beasts turned to glare reproachfully at the laid back figure currently leaning against the doorframe of the wide open door. Bright light poured in from the outside, creating shadows over the figure which was facing the darkness of the room.

Wenzhaobei heaved a deep sigh. These three had been keeping a tight watch over this little girl ever since they woke up from their coma. It was almost three weeks since he had found this group of people thrown into the depths of the Ice Fire Desert. Thankfully he was fast enough. Or the group of unconscious humans and beasts would have ended up as meal in some beasts stomach!

Not that he cared much. Probably he would be a bit sad to lose his source of entertainment. But....he couldn't really tell what his Master would do if he really dared to lose them. He would probably be frozen to an ice cube before being shattered to pieces!

Even inside her dream, Rihanna could vaguely make out the conversation going on. Which made her dream even more surreal. The conversation did not really match with a blood soaked land and crimson sky...right?

Just as she thought of this, she felt the grounds crumbling to dust and the sky shattered into a zillion pieces. Finally only and empty darkness was left behind, and she floating in it. The sounds and smells of the world outside poured inside her mind.

Feeling the sensations of her fingers, limbs and the rest of the body, she tried to slowly flex her joints. The fingers moved....at first it was almost negligible....but soon she could somewhat open and close her finger and palms to form loose fists.

The sounds stopped. But she could instead feel intense gazes coming at her from all directions. Who or what was around her?! Was she about to be attacked?

The eyelids opened a crack, and immediately something wet and warm brushed all over her face. It was sticky....and very familiar.

"Unghh!.....Fluffy! Stop it! You are soaking my face with your saliva!"

She stretched out her hands to feel what she was lying on, and pulled at a handful of cloth near her grasp. Without any hesitation, she bunched the cloth tightly and pulled it over, vigorously wiping her face with it.

Finally having wiped it clean enough, she opened her eyes, and found Artreya staring at her, his eyes wide in protest, his face sulking. Rihanna blinked, then suddenly looked down. Her hands were still clutching on to the frills of his cloak. Ahem...no wonder he looked like someone had just kicked his butt....

her mind suddenly returned to the music she had heard in her dreams as she quickly let go of Artreya's cloak and sat up. Looking around, she saw no one else other than Wenzhaobei. He was still leaning against the doorframe, smirking as usual.

Wenzhaobei pushed himself off from his static position, dusting off the backside of his clothes.

"Well.....good that you are finally awake. Saves me a lot of trouble. I'll take my leave since it is already time for my mid-day meal. If someone is hungry, surely that someone does not require my invitation to join in."

Even as he swaggered out of the room, he didn't forget to throw out his words into the air. He had been searching for this girl for more than a year, and without rest. Now that she had returned safe and sound, he couldn't really care if she was going to have a meal or not. He sure was starving!

Rihanna watched him leaving, her lips twitching hard. Was it good to see that nothing on the outside had changed? She could only say that she still felt weirded out...she had been living an entirely different life for the past almost six years...yet....she was only a year older now. She had almost been 12 when she entered the dimension....which meant she was not even thirteen almost six years later!

Rihanna closed her eyes tightly and shook her head hard. There was a lot of things rather vague and hazy in her memories...especially the last part of it.

"Where is Nana...oh...sorry! I mean...where is Ye Luo?"

Artreya scratched the back of his head subconsciously. He understood. Even now he was having difficulty in remembering the correct names, and kept switching back and forth. Most importantly, he felt a deep attachment with Blacky and Pinky, having spent so much time with them in the dimension. But now they were Fluffy and Phantasm, and suddenly they were giving him the silent treatment! They just cared about Rihanna, and he felt utterly ignored.

"Ye Luo went back to his Sect. Oh!.....Menji and Tontsei were also sent out with us. For some reason, Lunaeria felt that it would be good for them and us if they followed us to the outside world. And also that little boy who had followed you from the layer of the Dorminions. I had completely forgotten about him inside the dimension!"

Rihanna slowly got off the bed, testing her limbs and joints. Once she made sure that her body was completely fine, she twisted and turned her body in weird directions, trying to remove the stiffness due to being in bed for a long time.

"Did they go with Ye Luo?"

"Hmmm. Come to think of it, he seemed to be behaving in a very strange manner ever since we woke up and remembered who were really were! I felt he was trying to escape!"

Rihanna paused. She pursed her lips. How could she have forgotten. Ye Luo was Rihanna's benefactor. As such she had always felt that she owed him and sort of looked up to him.

But Nanate and Beibei had always been on the same footing right from the start. Beibei had even saved him a few times. There was nothing strange if Nanate felt something more than friendship for Beibei.

However.....Beibei was Rihanna....and Nanate was Ye Luo.....and the two relations were on completely different trajectories!

Suddenly Rihanna felt an oncoming headache.