Page 62 of The Discovered
Nothing lasts,I thought, and a lump formed in my throat. The natural state of all things was change. This was what my mothers taught me.
I buried my face in his sweater, breathing his scent in deeply to commit it to memory. He held the back of my head in one hand, his other arm holding me tight to his chest. The warmth from the fire was hot against my back.
My mind flashed to how I felt floating in the ocean, staring up at the Milky Way. I realized with a great sadness that even here in Daelon’s arms, I still couldn’t let go of that deep, pervasive sense of loneliness.
As we ate dinner, we both failed at our favorite game of pretending to be normal. The energy between us had definitely shifted. There was a desperation now, like we were running from inevitability and hiding from fate.
“You’re barely eating,” Daelon said, pulling me from my daze. He shot me a disapproving look across the dining table. We sat facing each other at the end, closest to the wall with the ocean painting.
I couldn’t stop glancing up at it, getting lost in the blue brushstrokes of the waves and the dotting of multi-colored sand. I remembered both of my mothers’ individual stories of this place—where they said magick lived and danced in the salty wind and washed away the badness in its tide. And as I envisioned these crashing waves, the loneliness began to lose its hold on my psyche.
“Sorry,” I mumbled, shifting my gaze back to him.
He cocked his head, his brows drawn together. “You don’t need to apologize. I just want to make sure you’re staying strong,” he murmured.
I actually hadn’t meant to apologize; I just wasn’t paying attention. I kept that to myself, though.
“I told you I would take you there,” he said, glancing up at the painting himself. “If you still want to go.”
“I’ve been there a million times,” I said quietly, almost to myself. I lost myself in the brushstrokes once more, feeling an unshakable calling, a pull stronger than the gravity that tethered me to the earth.
There was something there I needed to see.
Daelon frowned. “Áine, look at me,” he said.
It was nearly painful to pull my eyes from the painting back to him. I wasn’t sure what had come over me.
“Are you okay?”
I shook my head slightly, tucking my hair behind my ear. “Yeah. I just had a weird… witch feeling. I don’t know.” I felt compelled to speak again, this time more certain. “But yes, I would love to go.”
“It’s been a long few days. Well, weeks, really. You need rest,” he said, still eyeing me with concern. He muttered something lower, unintelligible, but it almost sounded likewhile you still can.
I nodded. I was still pretty tired from yesterday, and Daelon’s comment was accurate. I had a feeling there wouldn’t be much time to rest when I had evil witches to fight and whatever else I was magickally conceived to do.
“We can go in a couple days—when you’re feeling more recharged.”
“Just an energy battery to you, huh?” I asked demurely, my humor unsurprisingly lost on him.
His eyes darkened. “Only because all my power goes to protecting you.”
“Daelon, it was a joke. Trust me, I’ve seen it,” I said.
“Seen what?”
“Your magick. I saw it in the astral realm, around the property’s perimeter. It was very bright and shiny.” I smiled reassuringly. I knew how much he strained to keep me safe.
He once again looked perplexed. “Interesting. Did you see your own power?”
“Yes. It was… a lot,” I said, recalling the heavenly spotlight that shone from the roof to the stars.
Daelon steepled his fingers in front of his face. A smile played at the corners of his lips. “Yes, it is.”
“How literal is what I see in the astrals?” I asked. “Like I can obviously experience real places and see real people… but what about the more dreamlike aspects?”
I thought back to the strange scene with the altar in the forest of dead trees, and once again wondered what was being revealed to me there—and by whom?
“The astrals are easily influenced by our thoughts and emotions, much like magick, and to a lesser extent the witch realm. Not everythingthereis a direct reflection of realityhere, which can be very tricky. Here in the physical, our consciousness is separated from physical reality to a greater extent because it’s limited to our bodies—aside from magick—but in the astral realm, consciousness flows more fluidly from the perceiver to the perceived and vice versa. It’s not separate.” He tapped his fingers absently on the table, his brows drawing together as he mused. “The astral realm is a fluid, tangible representation of the collective consciousness of all of existence—human, witch, animal, and all the rest. Dreams, visions, goals, and art… it’s all there, just as real as what we call physical reality. It affects us and we affect it, like a perfect circle of balance. Just like magick.”
