"Hot! Hot! Hot! Maaaster~!" A cat screeched next to my feet, it kept jumping until it finally chooses to climb its way up to my neck, wrapping its body and tail around the back of my neck. "Auuu... I hate here."
I gently pet Tsuki's head to ease her out. Then glance to the extrely beautiful woman on my right.
"A desert? Most importantly, why does everything looks so..." I wander my squinting eyes above . "Am I seeing things... The sky is so pale, yet it's so bright. Are we inside of Rosalyn's... The phoenix?"
"It seems so... The sll feels nostalgic," Diana said as she lifts her nose up, slling the dry dustiness of the air.
Deserts may look like a place mostly composed of sand but this is far from what I rember. There is dust, but anything other than there's nothing in here. Any sign of living beings was nowhere to be found such as plants or animals. The relentless sun desiccates the dread, pitful arid of a land.
"Hold on, there's no sun?" I look at the sky bewildernt while searching for the source of light. "Wow... Wait, we also don't have one. This place must be inside of the phoenix's artificial space. Let's explore it."
"You're quite excited, darling."
"Excited? Really? I'm in a turmoil of emotions between anger and sorrow."
My feet led forward to this adrift sand, not knowing where I'm heading or what's ahead of us. We just wander forward. Diana behind followed along Tsuki in my neck.
"Can I have an explanation as to why we suddenly put in this place? If I'm not wrong... This is the phoenix's...?"
"Indeed it is. When that woman got in contact with you, I infiltrated her soul and ended up in this place. I'm actually intrigued and curious about what lies behind the soul of this spirit. There are wonders in the cosmos that I wanted answers and this is among them. But at the cost of our escape..."
"Yeah, I noticed that too since the beginning... We got trapped inside"
The wind was forgiving as its gentle breeze helped us go through without any problem. At the top of the sandhill, our eyes caught the sight of sand brick houses, along with the tiny blurry images of people walking around.
"Are those people...?"
"Yes, it is... Weird... They're all alive. How...? Hahaha, fascinating." Diana had a big grin plastered on her face.
"Souls... Hundreds or even thousands of them." Tsuki added which answers my questions.
"Thousand of souls residing inside? This is not normal." I said in bewildernt.
"It's abnormal. I understand now why they needed two souls. A habitat of souls was hiding beneath them in one soul. The capability of keeping this amount of souls inside one would require a trendous amount of understanding of the astral space." A roar of laughter escaped Diana's mouth.
"Containing this absurd quantity also cos with complication in Rosalyn's soul... That ans... There must be so sort of bridge in between Rosalyn and Albert's souls since they are twins? According to old books, twins are considered the representation of good and evil or even life and death, or so say they share the sa soul. Does this an, they're souls are connected since birth?"
"It should be. However, there's sothing odd... Everything in here feels perfect, my novice knowledge of souls is not even comparable. The space..."
We descend from the hill and stroll on the houses with people in them. Upon reaching our destination, people are not noticing our presence nor care about us, as if we don't exist in their eyes. I can't fathom how amazing and weird it is.
The people in here are all humans, wearing loose clothing or even barely anything. n and won only have their bottoms covered as for their upper body they don't have one which ans won in here are fully exposed. Children are happily playing on the sand while the adults are chattering to each other with smiles on their faces. There's one thing that I noticed, everyone had the sa smile.
"Devoided of emotions. So, they are beings that are alive while also dead. I don't like this feeling." Diana said with a frown.
"Huh?"
"From looking at these people, they're nothing but re images of the original appearance of the deceased. With all of these existing here, the phoenix is trying to create a world. A brand new world where all these pitiful souls can live again. Because everyone in here has a sign marking embedded within their souls, that's probably correlated to the spirit."
Then suddenly, Tsuki spoke. "Underneath their smiles, they are happy nor sad. Weird people. They don't even know what they want to do. Hmph, I already said I can help them across, but they want and don't want it at the sa ti. They reached out to , yet don't want my help? They're confusing . Grrr..."
"Wait, you're communicating them?"
"Of course!"
"What a good cat. Go tell them where we can find the phoenix, okay?" Diana steps in and brushes Tsuki's body with her hand softly.
'They're asking Tsuki for help?' I thought as I observe them.
"Okay!" Tsuki replied.
After a few seconds of waiting, Tsuki's face blossoms with joy. "Oh, okay, okay! They said it's at the peak of everything!"
"That's... That's... That still didn't answer our question. Peak? A mountain? Perhaps the tallest building or house? That could be anything." I said.
"But they said it..."
"It's fine, I'm not blaming you. I'm blaming them, okay? They're different." I caress Tsuki's soft lower jaw. "Peak... Probably the center of this town? From the geographical standpoint of this town, it should be it."
Our feet led us to the steep stairs that lead to the top before we could even climb these stairs we got ourselves wandering around in a circle. The unforgiving heat of the non-existence sun was slowly evaporating the sweat in my body. Despite being a projection of my own soul in another's soul, I can feel everything—The sa also applies to Tsuki and Diana who were struggling.
People or souls were constantly being a bother to as I can't comprehend how everything felt so surreal. Until now, I'm thinking of the phoenix's reasoning of its actions for doing this. Everything that I ca up with is either too narrow or illogical. Yet, there's still a chance of it coming true.
We finally arrived at our destination. It's a gigantic cubic designed temple made from sandstone and listone. At the entrance, there's a statue of the phoenix made from the sa materials and beneath it was the entrance. The entrance was dark and narrow, giving a strange and dangerous vibe.
That didn't bother us by one bit and enters the place without any hesitation as if we're walking in a park. Inside the temple, unknown letters and drawings are all engraved on the stones. And those writings and drawings caught my attention, as every character of it and drawings are all similar to what I've seen back on where I found Tsuki.
I glance to Diana to see her initial reaction, but to my dismay, she's just looking at it with srization. While Tsuki on the other hand, she's staring at the wall like nothing. In my bafflent, I asked her a question. "Do you not recognize those?"
"??" Tsuki tilts her head in confusion.
I sighed and pinches the bridge of my nose. "Nevermind."
I got closer to the wall and touches it. "It's all the sa... The characters and the drawings."
"Do you know it, Claude?!" Diana looks at like an excited child.
"I recognize the letters or the symbols of it."
"Where?"
"In Tsuki's place."
"There? But I didn't see any of this there."
"Of course, you wouldn't. You're too occupied with following the voice and even left behind."
"Ah."
"It's all the sa... But different... The phoenix in the drawing gives light or hope? Most of these drawings are just worshipping the phoenix... The phoenix cutting its wings for its people? It's so hard to understand these drawings without any context. Curse you so foreign old language of the past."
"Wooow! I can't wait to decipher all of these when we return. I'll rember every single of them. Perhaps this could be a clue to Tsuki's heritage of old spirits. And perhaps, she's also related to the phoenix spirit."
We continue walking and kept passing by these drawings. I can't leave my eyes out of it, as I'm still trying to understand the aning behind those drawings. From what I can say, Tsuki or the phoenix is so sort of old gods of the past, like the people from Avalon.
Walking for a while, we found ourselves in a weird room. At the center of it, there's an egg at the top of a weird-looking altar with the statue of the phoenix holding the egg in its feet. Any person can easily discern that the egg was the phoenix.
"Not even sleeping... The phoenix hasn't even been born yet. What the heck? We ca here for nothing. I wonder if I can steal that?"
Reviews
All reviews (0)