Aura Asunder | Volume One | Chapter Six
the first volume of Aura Asunder
Aura Asunder | Volume One
Chapter Six
By Ophelia Everfall
| ONE | TWO | THREE | FOUR | FIVE |
Content Warning
Breakfast would be served in the dining hall an hour after dawn each morning by Ms. Underwerth herself. Newcomers were meant to be arriving throughout the day and Janet could wait. She’d not met one girl who didn’t seem some part of herself by spirit, and already there were many left unacknowledged.
Letty appeared beaming, sat beside Janet at the single, longest table which seemed like nothing but a solitary cut from some giant tree. Leticia was right across shortly thereafter, and Janet’s breathing cut short.
It would be little pulls of oxygen which saw her through.
When Janet traipsed in, dragging her feet more emphatically than usual, joyful reverence of living expanded, indulging fully in her freshest surroundings, gratitude striking, stowed heart sporting a golden sheen, absorbed in exploiting lackadaisical expectations towards formality, crafting her bliss, still cheesing within spirit from that view of the river, unfazed by the nearly sleepless night proceeding, coagulations of feeling overtaking the girl, she noticed the table hadn’t been set.
It was only she and Ms. Underwerth for a time, apart from Caroline and Evelyn, and when Janet suggested herself for table-setting duties the headmistress simply laughed.
Such pretense was clearly discouraged. Plates and silverware were an easiest thing to grab from their neatly ordained stacks. They were available for everyone to source their own at one end of a countertop with meal platters adjacent the kitchenette. Each varied and playful plethora would prove provided by Ms. Underwerth’s bare hands, herself later espousing belief to Janet for reasoning therein; conveyed had been that importance believed of placing her intentional, human energy of sharing love into meals.
Caroline and Evelyn appeared quite intimate and had Janet tinging with jealousy.
They were playing a game of hearts together.
Underwerth’s grounds were of romantic, of musical intonation. Even moreso in the daylight, and especially with a record player at one far end of the dining table singing Rachmaninoff that morning. The kitchenette opposite was an extension of another, far grander space Ms. Underwerth had clearly been preparing the meal in beforehand.
Incense burned heavy at Underwerth School of Mystery Teachings. Yet the dining hall was a sacred space. It would be preserved for breaths of nature’s grace. Its floor-to-ceiling, arched-top, white-framed windows were cracked open and permitting Earth’s soulful spirit for entry. Each was a speaker of scent their own.
Just outside were petunias, roses, and late-blooming lilacs.
Light shone through those dining hall’s windows by the sun’s rising, from across the river’s gulch, above the mountainside’s breadth so covered by a thickest forest of hickory, oak, and touches of unique pine. It played across the table, birthing shadows from those highest-backed chairs, reproducing by polished reflection into a plethora of golden, amber, and silver specked light beams upon the smoothest wood-panel-wall opposite.
Janet’s meal of fresh fruit was accompanied by a surprisingly delectable combination of oats, blueberries, fresh local honey, and crushed walnuts. She’d been scarfing them until that moment she’d realized Letty sitting beside her.
“Morning.” Janet managed, mumbled, mid-mouthful.
Breakfast was henceforth abandoned, except a few stolen grapes here and there, and Janet’s aim became recruiting her friends for game of rivalry.
Janet Meadows hadn’t been aware of her spiteful drive, nor would she care how the suggestion might be received, needing only for some proving of point through action towards Evelyn and Caroline. Those girls still playing hearts near that farthest-end of the table would need a reflection by her own estimation.
Once Leticia and Letty were onboard, they’d recruited Ms. Underwerth for a proper challenge of magical wits.
Spades with four was Janet’s favorite.
She enjoyed-most that feeling found, nestled into the secretive game of unspoken connection, sharing such bounty between herself and a partner who’d lay waste to people far less intuitive. It had been the one addition Janet made to her community of Carlton which was well received. Her youthful peers took it in stride.
Tournaments were held once Janet sold her former group of friends on the matter, and for years after brow beating them into a single game, simplifying its scoring system for their squirrel minds — which she’d forgotten with good reason — taking nothing away in retrospect, improving it outright by her astute estimation.
Multiplications were still a factor for scoring in Janet’s supreme version of spades. The numbers were simply far smaller. Arguments were therefore borne less often. Everyone’s brain hurt less by the end.
A single game in the dining hall was played upon its magical surface. Janet was seated crisscrossed from her partner, directly beside an opponent outwitted ostensibly, proving enough to planting seeds for an upspring of competitions towards blossoming. For an identical happenstance would come to pass at Underwerth’s School of Mystery Teachings in times to come.
Letty and Leticia were made to crave revenge.
Deep inside Janet Meadows, as was the case throughout that morning, yet enhanced in specificity of her blatant machinations, forging the annual tourney to-be, presiding, an unquenchable driving force to connect again with desire, seeing through into her eyes, and everything, everywhere, stowed a grant of will for what she’d wished to know about Daphne Underwerth seated across the table.
They’d slaughtered those girls by Janet’s rightful, metaphorical estimation.
It was a beat-down of the highest order. Both Janet and Daphne were taking turns shooting the moon, winning in boldest style, proving connection between them in how they’d lay cards for each other.
Janet Meadows affirmed herself in some secondary way, for beating Letty and Leticia that hardily was wholesomely pleasant, yet mostly by seeing those near imperceptible and devil-womanish grins eking from her teammate.
It had been a very good start to the day.
Choices were abundant for how Janet’s might spend her time. Methods of making towards learning would be forgiving to the students of Underwerth, and always.
Janet’s arrival had been among the earliest. Freedom earned was a gift she abused immediately.
Leaving behind those ideas grafted upon, ignoring an invitation from her friends, believing the wisest choice untaken, passing opportunities to exhume scholarship available, leaving behind a plethora of volumes yet unexplored in that library spoken of by Ms. Underwerth, had Janet taking to the forest.
She wanted to see where the river led, what could be found on its other side, how it was she might cross proving key in her mind. Runnings were stronger passed the levied container of still-water where she’d witnessed Ms. Underwerth bathing in moonlight’s glow.
Janet found a spot to stop, only just beyond, beneath and around the river’s hanging branches of close-cropping canopy, and out passed the riverside grove they formed. She’d been lost to vision from the overseeing school building’s backline, and it was of undeniable splendor to her spirits.
That viewpoint-unique, gleaming greatest glimpses of gracious glory gone green, was provided as the river took to coursing down a deeply carved hillside. A most pleasing vantage had been discovered. The sea of treetops blended in their gradient of slightest emerald variation towards the horizon, shone upon by the bleeding light of late-morning sun only just peeking through a layer of thinnest cloud.
She’d gone down, and in, to find, for seeking, before catching wind of that smell. Something was cooking, smoking, grilling, meat. Janet’s stomach grumbled.
Downhill footsteps were haphazard with the looseness of her shoelaces. Yet Janet would not be slowed, exercising disadvantage for the leveraging of focus upon her footsteps bracing the earth, sliding ever-slightly atop those worn-rubber soles of her sneakers. Each placement, squelch, and contact with earth-wearing foliage was taking more of their whiteness.
Janet had been losing herself to a hope of the journey, unrealizing conflations of desire, taking that trek one longest exhalation at a time, fighting off an urge to worry about her distance from school as the sun reached a precipice over his treetops.
That smell turned to sound of song, drums and flute, lustful carols, words she’d not understand, some language wielded beyond her understanding. It wasn’t English. It didn’t even sound human to Janet.
There wasn’t a doubt any longer.
It was coming from the other side of the river.
She’d paddled with arms cutting stokes for balance, leaving shoes behind while recognizing strangeness in her conceptions of choice. Janet wouldn’t be able to make much ground in the woods without her sneakers. Still, that wasn’t what she felt coming.
Energy slowed within her, currents surrounding took to twirl about each bobbing bit of body. She’d been on heights of toes while holding her neck up for breath, right at that center of the river, as time itself shattered to sound.
Thunder cracked in the hazing sky of cloudless mists above. Shattered had been that girl to remember an August it happened the same at her home upon a spoken word, that prayer to God felt answered. To feel again her spinning of spirit’s change, so alike those many nights in Carlton she’d attempted to forget — friends taken to that cemetery and held too closely, her transgression with a boy still indebted an apology to come — yet reversed, transfixing honor of the change happening in future’s stead.
A transgression reborn to correction had seen her eyes towards opening anew. Forests weren’t of trees at all it seemed. They were a soul.
Janet Meadows was not the first to find his home.
Intermittent longing subsided constantly, reemerging, blooming to be snipped, then was left to rot in a glass of water kept far away from Deandra Felltrap.
Virginia wasn’t a place she’d find welcoming, by and large.
Its men would welcome her plenty, in their ways, with less than a hope to speak from their still-frozen frames, mouths hanging agape, left broiling with a sense of undoubtable regret. That much was felt clearly, always, through their women’s near-immediate shouting of nonsense alone. Those girl squirrels would seek to steal attention back, never realizing the act a pathetic stab at holding onto some man they hated with every fiber of their being, blatant masochism, banal blowhards blowing bold-bellied blusters by begging, “Baby!”
That one in the pick-up truck’s passenger side, lobbing counterattack against her husband’s wandering eye, had been similar to most, if a bit sadder.
“Darlin! I need something for my tummy!”
Deandra was intuitive. She’d seen it all playing out.
That man would be standing behind her in line. There wouldn’t be a more uncomfortable place. She’d just turned around and gone back to her car.
Inside, gripping the wheel until her knuckles were blue, shame would strike first. Then anger, and finally acceptance of what was denied. Her immediate needs for comfort in presence of racist, slobbering, drooling, snot dribbling, mouth-breathing, shower desperate men of the south were often forsaken. Those children of girth never believed a beautiful African American woman could take their lost hearts for a ride by rite of one overlong staring fit.
Plumpest white boys would only see women of her perceived otherness as objects, most often, but her smile was too pretty, and its sheen broke them into regurgitations of long held emotion, some puppy-dog love reborn in Deandra’s grace. It would break her in return, and again, always.
Once he’d left the market with his woman’s Sprite and beef stick, she decided it wise to suffer a hit of pride, taking the elaborate elements elating elasticity within her resistance to self-betrayal for what they were. Then another shot at finding a purchased window where no one could grumble at her rear.
Deandra Felltrap was almost back to that place she’d remember as an oddly misplaced home, forever left unexplainable, breathless for her part in the changing of tides to come.
Chesapeake County’s Mega Mini-Mart would be blessed with sights of a goddess that early-afternoon.
She wanted her Sprite too.
Nightscapes were a thing of great variation in Carlton. Waiting it out had been the choice. Deandra didn’t want to see anyone else.
She found a church that was memorable, yet not in any way she’d known how to speak of. Waiting there through the afternoon hours gave Deandra an opportunity to kick back.
There was shaded grass, place to sit, presumed her own by all, providing cover from the lurking eyes of fat white squirrels.
One headstone passed without glance had marked a boy’s grave. His name would be avoided by the eye, an inscription upon it most of all. She’d made a point to walk close-by all the same. Her life was entwined with another, and Deandra had been most aware since she was only a girl. It was strangest to feel connection towards a life known separate from her own.
She brought a favorite book of poems, all about a strongest heart, her life of purpose proving connections to many through time, and especially that man who would seem a prophet so needed from another world.
Deandra thought the words in that big red book before her were too absent on The Earth of Man.
With fading of a sun, she’d made it back to her Accord and found less challenge in conceptions of approaching the suburbs.
She knew the time to meet.
That wasn’t easy to keep hidden, but for an entire length of lifetime Deandra found herself writing it over and again. The name of the town, Carlton, Carlton, Carlton, and some specific night in that future now upon her. She remembered it from her youth. She’d written it into plays and performed for her puppet theater, and Muppet audience, in tales told for keeping details proved necessary quite fresh of mind.
They’d led Deandra here, her stories, and for the delivery of a letter to one Janet Meadows. That girl she’d remembered dearly, in strangest ways, seemed ever calling, and since her own youth long passed. Lydia Eck would be the name she’d taken in her great ploy of farce. She’d become a con-woman of sorts. She was taking a job and changing Janet’s fate by playing into hands of truth which would always have remained spoken to the wheel.
Their backdoor was unlocked, just as she’d known it would be.
Stepping in the quiet of that kitchen so mottled with overwrought decorations, each clashing with another, made for styling which couldn’t be understood as anything but the homiest of sorts — no matter who purchased their terrible grotesquery of design, or further equipped those choice few, then settled them about into such dreadful choices of seating — Deandre felt welcome there somehow.
Considering feelings oddly retained of the family who presided over her mark, that Janet, some details remembered from depths below their surface, along with a pinging of intuition which surged while her eyes drew towards a hand-crafted kitty cat mug with oddly set eyes, had Deandra seeking her detour by instinct alone. Inside that unusable cup of sculpted disaster-work was the device which Deandra would know immediately as a hidden camera. She’d take it with her.
Covering her tracks was important.
Linoleum transitioned to a smooth wooden-slatted flooring, polished, destitute, grafting a palace of hall most basic, and sporting home for one oft drawn pizza box left-open.
She’d come at the perfect time, and only just after Janet, who was snoring as Deandra laid the letter flat. The youngster’s head was tilted back, and so exposed had been her throat, as if resting catatonically in her expertly wrapped blanket before falling asleep, eyes appearing partly opened and flickering, little twitches of her body teaching towards needs that Lydia Eck would seek to fill with supportive love.
Deandra had only taken a single peek at the girl. It felt strange to see her near after what felt like an entire lifetime of preparation. Feeling them in such presence was changing enough.
She’d finally begun playing her part as written.
Northbound on Highway 81 was where she’d felt it come back, where Deandra would remember exactly who she was, and how she’d been born, thrown back into the world as an echo of a girl who lived on ahead.
Those instructions coded into her were of latency, until another moment made by The Man of the Woods himself had sprung them forth.
His lion’s heart held a bravest spirit. The Gentle Hero had granted her wish.
That man of soulful embodiment was guardian of Underwerth and the world, a righteous protector of all things green and true. He was the one to send Deandra back for beginning her cycle anew, and within ever-streaming currents of blue, for grafting passions of hopes to renew.
Pulling into the drive after those weeks spent waiting, finding place to park at last, without worry in the slightest, and most eager to see that one their heart had called them forward through time to realize as some purpose, Deandra was only thinking of her chance to see Ms. Underwerth again.
Passing the fountain hadn’t been possible. She was stopped by forces of The Unknown, and pressures placed upon her for a rite she’d be meant to take.
Nothing was more correct to the woman’s mind. Despite how little she’d spoken with her newest employer, Deandra’s actions couldn’t be felt as anything but justified in her blooming chest of joyful surrender. Taking towards clearing those leaves too early fallen about the truest visage of their homestead’s guardian was knowing peace to a woman.
His woods were weeping and no mortal-human soul but Deandra’s would graft people who might fully understand. There wouldn’t be an insecurity spared to make it better, for shining him brightly into the world, The Knight of Hearts to be seen truly, at last, for all to know his hero’s courage had been shrouded right before them.
She’d removed the last shreds of water-worn, fallen foliage-fingers forsaken, a fewest found fatefully frozen, for freedom’s ferociously fearless furor, Deandra’s found family.
“What are you doing! Stop that! You need to get out of there!”
Deandra’s heart was screaming. It was happening.
It was finally happening. She’d waited her whole life to see them once more, and Deandra chose to do it right then. Stillness struck Daphne, and some change was forged the upon contact of their eyes.
She’d questioned from beyond herself, “Who are you?”
Ms. Underwerth was the most beautiful woman Deandra had ever seen.
Crying into that hug of her Daphne, well before finding means to speak it, the headmistress was perturbed into a stillness of consummated abstinence.
Grasping her tightly for a first, that gorgeous women abandoned to such lengths of forward flung time, Deandra’s lifetime once seeming entirely passed was refound, and she’d melted long before her words would have Ms. Underwerth doing the same.
“I’m here to help. I’m Lydia”
I’m dedicating this book to a lion-hearted man who is now inspiring it. Fantasy needs a lesson, and I can’t imagine fighting so hard for your art against an industry that shows its prejudicial hand in most over ways constantly. That has provided a best, if hopeful motivation to make this truly screen adaptable, and to do something really cool that’s centered around people who go unseen most.
