by Kealohilani
Lani sighed as she sat back down. She felt like a lost cause.
“Leave my cousin to me. I’m sure he will forgive you once I explain. It isn’t fair for you to be punished for actions caused by Drakne’s spell. And Jharate is a just man.”
“Oh thank you! How can I ever repay you?”
Lani threw her arms around Arante and hugged her. Arante patted Lani’s back.
“Don’t worry, I’m sure something will come up.”
Arante flashed a girlish smile and walked off to find Jharate. Lani couldn’t help but notice that Erik had definitely had a profound effect on Arante. She had become much more warm, friendly, and feminine since they had become a couple.
Lani allowed the warming glow of hope to enter her heart. Maybe there is still a chance, she thought, as she walked back to the makeshift camp. As she rounded the corner, she saw Kendra and Justin at the very edge of the camp, away from everyone else.
Lani’s mouth fell open. Justin was apparently hurling everything he could manage at Kendra— without touching any of the objects that he threw.
Justin is telekinetic? When did that happen?
Lani decided that— for their safety, and hers— she should keep quiet. But her eyes widened in amazement as she watched, unseen in the shadows— from behind a large vertical granite rock.
Justin launched various objects with incremental increases in velocity, power, and control. Everything from pebbles to dried up logs flew through the air.
Kendra blocked them with her shield. She practiced influencing the size and shape of her shield in order to best defend against different types of threats— as well as how to direct where the things she deflected went.
Kendra could plonk the objects down where she wanted them to go nine times out of ten now. What Kendra didn’t realize, was that the one time out of the ten that she failed to deflect the object in the direction of her aim, was actually Justin’s fault. He moved whatever object she deflected off her shield with his own ability, mid-trajectory, to make her miss.
Justin yawned, as if bored with the status quo. Suddenly, a giant grin crossed his face. A boulder the size of a Volkswagen Bug began to hover above the ground, three feet in the air.
“No! Uh-uh!”
Kendra shook her head vigorously while motioning for him to put the rock down. But the grin remained on Justin’s face and he showed no signs of obedience.
“Don’t be so boring!”
“I don’t want to try that one! Justin! Justin! Don’t you dare!”
“You had to say the magic words!”
“JUSTIN!”
The rock sailed toward her at what seemed like Mach Five. She reacted defensively with the largest dome-shaped shield she had ever managed to create. It was as large as a luxury R.V.
The rock shattered upon impact. Debris sprayed everywhere, like a heavy rainstorm. Justin ducked behind another boulder in order to avoid getting hit by the sparkly grey-black-and-white rocky shrapnel— laughing his head off all the while.
Lani was barely out of range and she couldn’t help ducking behind her protective rock.
“You IDIOT!” Kendra screeched. “You could have KILLED ME!”
“Reeelax! I wouldn’t have killed you. Besides that’s what we have Raoul for, right?”
Kendra squealed angrily as her hands formed fists at her sides and she shook as she glowered at Justin.
Justin stood up and casually attempted to brush the fine layer of glittery dust off of his Tower of Terror T-shirt and cargo pants. He wasn’t even looking at Kendra. His skin sparkled like a fictional vampire. His hair was no longer black.
Oh, for the love of Edward! I need a camera! Lani thought as she covered her mouth tightly to keep from laughing out loud. Justin would hate this!
Kendra narrowed her eyes and her lips went tight. She activated her shield— this time in a flat, wall shape— and walked toward him. Justin finally noticed her and stretched out both of his hands, as if trying to calm an angry tiger.
Lani’s eyes opened a little wider.
“Now, now, Kendra… Remember we’re friends!”
“ ‘That’s what we have Raoul for, right?’ ” Kendra said darkly.
“I was just kidding! Kendra, calm down!”
“You haven’t learned much about women in all of your twenty-three years if you think that’s ever a good sentence to say to a woman.”
“Oi! Twenty-two, love.”
Kendra advanced slowly and purposefully, never taking her eyes off her target. Justin scrambled until his back was against the granite surface behind him. She pressed forward until he was trapped against the canyon wall.
“This feels odd,” Justin mumbled with his lips squished sideways against the invisible force field, which kept him trapped and flattened against the rock surface.
“Have you learned your lesson yet?”
A smirk spread across Justin’s smooshed face.
“You know… I don’t think I have.”
Classic Justin, Lani thought, laughing at the two of them.
Justin concentrated with his mind and pictured her shield moving backwards. Kendra dug her feet into the ground to brace herself— but slid backwards as if trying to push a car uphill on a gravel road. He backed her up until she was against the wall on the other side of the canyon. Her own shield now held her captive like a ladybug under a jelly jar.
“Stop being so ornery all the time!” Justin demanded.
“Only if you stop being so stupid and reckless all the time!”
“Only if you stop being so stupid and reckless all the time,” Justin mimicked.
“Grow up, Justin!”
Kendra pushed her hands forward and outward— greatly expanding her force field, which was now back in its normal bubble form.
Justin had to back up twenty feet fast to avoid being knocked over. With his last step, he swiveled out onto one foot and then jumped onto the other, until he regained his balance. He turned on Kendra, puffed out his chest, flung his arms out wide, and snarked back at her.
“Is that the best you got? Huh, Kendra?”
“Not a good idea, Justin,” Lani whispered, unheard.
Kendra narrowed her eyes still further and pulled her hands back, ready to throw them forward to slam Justin against the wall.
Time to really let Justin see why we have Raoul, Kendra thought.
Before she had the chance, Raoul’s voice called out calmly to them as he walked casually toward his two friends.
“Okay, show-offs. Time to call a truce. You’re both powerful. Yay. You don’t need to prove it anymore. It’s a tie. So, shake hands and stop shoving each other around. Or you can ignore me— again— but I’m not healing you if you keep going.”
Lani giggled quietly— still hidden behind the tall rock. “Good for you, Raoul.”
Kendra looked at Raoul and back at Justin. She rolled her eyes and dropped the force field. She marched toward Justin and shook his hand roughly before shoving him one more time— hands only.
“Alright,” Justin relented, frowning at the fact that his fun had been cut off prematurely. “But I could have taken her.”
“Oh really? I have seven brothers! Seven!” She held up one hand entirely and the thumb and index finger of her other hand. “I could take you with or without my shield.”
“Keep telling yourself that, darling,” Justin said with a bow.
Kendra laughed. He put his arm around her, briefly. She side-hugged him back. Kendra let go and walked a little bit away, with Raoul and Justin following close behind. Lani watched them go but did not follow yet.
The three friends sat down on a large flat pewter grey rock in front of one of the campfires. The sun was almost down in the dark thunder grey sky and the screech of a lone smoke grey hawk rang through the stark and empty pass.
The petrichor-tinged canyon wind blew strong and the air began to cool enough that they huddled a little closer together.
They allowed several minutes
to pass silently as they watched the flickering flames and listened to the crackle of the fire. Raoul unconsciously did his customary pinky/thumb trick as thoughts he’d been avoiding raced through his mind.
“I wonder what’s happening back home in our world,” Raoul reflected, as his hands finally stilled.
The words felt strange falling out of his mouth and they felt even more foreign as they flowed into the ears of his friends. The unspoken understanding between them to never talk about home had been broken.
None of them looked at each other. They just stared at the fire. It was the first time they had really allowed themselves to think about it. Hypnotic silence fell between them again as each of them thought about the sentence that had been uttered.
“Do you think Earth time runs the same as here?” Kendra asked, the sound of her own voice feeling to her as if she had just yelled inside an empty cathedral, despite her quiet tone. “I’ve been keeping track as best I can and I think we’ve been gone for a little over two months now. So if it does run the same, I bet our families are really worried.”
“Yeah,” Justin shrugged. “I can just picture the employees at Disney World showing the police the photo of the Tower of Terror and wondering where the three people in the front disappeared to.”
This time Justin’s eyes did not light up the way they normally did when he joked.
“Honestly, I think Lani knows— but I’ve been afraid to ask her outright,” Justin added after a few more moments. “I think the fact that she hasn’t already told us means that it does flow the same. She’s probably trying to protect us from that knowledge for as long as she can.”
“Plus if everything happening here causes something to happen there, then time sort of has to flow the same…” Raoul thought aloud as his voice trailed off.
“I miss my family,” Kendra admitted, her voice cracking a little. “Do you think any of us will ever see our families again?”
“I don’t know,” Justin replied calmly. “I never see my dad anyways so I don’t really care much about him. But I do miss my mom… and maybe even Jezzy.”
“You know, it’s kind of funny. I always thought I wanted to get away from home and have an adventure— like I did for my study abroad trip— but now I miss my brothers and my parents way more than I ever thought I would.”
“I really miss my family too, but I don’t see how we can ever get home,” added Raoul. “I mean, we don’t even know how we got here— and neither does anyone else with us. We might have to just accept the fact that we’re stuck here for good.”
“I guess,” Kendra conceded— her voice breaking and getting a little higher in pitch as her eyes struggled to hold back the tears welling up inside them. “But I don’t like it.”
“Don’t worry,” Justin assured genuinely. “We’re here for you. We got your back. We’ll just be a new family.”
Justin threw his arms around his friend and gave her a really warm hug. Raoul leaned in as well, rubbing her back compassionately as Justin let go.
“Thanks,” Kendra said, sniffing, with a tentative smile. “So this is really it, huh?”
“What do you mean?” Raoul asked.
“I mean, we’re staying now… We’re really giving up on all of our hopes and dreams back home?”
“Maybe we have to…” Justin answered. “I was hoping to become the next John Williams or Hans Zimmer. I don’t even know if they have composers out here.”
“I was going to produce movies someday,” Raoul thought aloud, rather sadly. “I was on my way, too. I had an internship lined up with Walden Media as an office assistant for this fall. Not sure exactly what month we are in— I guess September if you’re right, Kendra. So I would have been starting around now-ish.”
“Walden Media?! That’s big time!”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Kendra queried.
“I was going to tell everyone when we got back from Disney World. And then we didn’t come back… and we had bigger problems…”
“Man, that stinks,” Justin condoled, aimlessly looking up at the cloudy night sky. “I’m sorry.”
“Thanks… Bigger problems, right?”
“That doesn’t mean you don’t have to feel anything, bro.”
“At least you two knew what you were going to do with your lives,” Kendra sighed. “I was still trying to find that one thing that I loved doing above all other things.”
“Look at the bright side,” Justin began. “That makes you better off here. I mean, since you didn’t have your plans set yet, you should be able to adapt the best of all of us.”
“But I’m sick of running for my life! I may have not known what I wanted to do, but war and danger was never on the list— that’s for dang sure! If I wanted this kind of life I could have joined the military!”
“I think we’re all sick of that,” Raoul commiserated gently.
“Again, looking at the bright side— maybe the Half-Heart legend is true. Maybe two people will find each other and get married and then this world won’t be so bad,” Justin suggested.
“That’s wishful thinking,” Kendra blurted, sounding more frustrated than she meant to. “You heard Arante back on the boat. No one knows who they are but their ‘Great-Evil’ guy. So that’s not really good odds. Plus there are only twenty-four, so that’s even worse.”
“Maybe we are Half-Hearts and that’s why we got zapped over here. Lani was wondering if one of us could be,” Justin pressed, trying to keep his own spirits up as much as he was trying to lift everyone else’s. “If I am— where’s my other Half-Heart?”
“Exactly. Even if one of us is a Half-Heart, it’s still just that— one. You need two,” Kendra answered. “And Kara got ‘zapped over here’ too but she wasn’t a Half-Heart.”
“I think we should just make the best of things and have hope,” Raoul determined.
“No other choice, dude. No other choice,” Justin agreed.
“True. And don’t worry about me,” Kendra reassured. “I intend to make the best of it too… It’s just… It’s just hard sometimes.”
“We know,” Raoul soothed. “But we will all be here to help each other through it. That’s what friends do.”
“Thanks,” Kendra said again, with a slight smile as her two friends squeezed her between them in a group hug.
Lani had been careful to remain in the shadows where she wouldn’t be seen. She knew she had to go over there. They had been waiting patiently for answers for days.
Plus, she figured that while she was waiting to see what Jharate would do— once he found out what had actually happened— was as good a time as any. The hope Arante had given her would be enough to help sustain her through the questions they were bound to ask. She took a deep breath, stood up straight, and walked over to sit next to them.
They stared at her in surprise and kept quiet as they waited for her to say something.
“I saw your stunt show,” Lani remarked with a smile.
Tonight was the first time she had truly smiled or laughed in days. It felt nice. It felt normal. It felt right.
“Awesome, wasn’t it?” Justin stated more than asked.
“Yes. It was way cool.”
“I noticed Arante pulling you aside earlier. So what did she want?” Kendra inquired.
Raoul shot Kendra a look, to which she mouthed a silent “What?!” before they both returned their attention to Lani.
“Oh… She just wanted to know what happened between me and Jharate.”
“We’d kind of like to know… you know. If you’re ready, that is—” Raoul started but it was Justin who finished the thought by saying, “Tell us what happened too, please.”
“Alright.”
Lani inhaled deeply. She backed up all the way to what had happened on the battlefield with Drakne and proceeded to tell them what she and Arante had discovered about the spell Lani had been under— and the damage that the spell had caused— as quickly as she could.
Her frie
nds remained perfectly quiet— with only their faces showing the thoughts on their minds— until she finished the entire story and exhaled, dropping her shoulders slightly as she did.
“You poor thing!” Kendra exclaimed sympathetically.
“Why would Drakne do something like that?” Raoul asked.
“Because he’s a jealous idiot!”
Drakne turned and shot a dirty look at Justin. Had he not been determined to remain undetected, he would have killed him where he stood for such a comment.
To think that he, Drakne, could have a weakness so frail as jealousy! It was insulting to a man with his almost limitless power.
“I highly doubt that! Not everybody falls in love with Lani— present company excluded,” Kendra mocked, ignoring the looks from Justin, Lani, and Raoul as she continued. “A man of his obvious power doesn’t have time for crushes on passing strangers. I mean, he did try to kill her before out on the battlefield. That’s not exactly a love note.”
Drakne smiled. At least Kendra knew what she was talking about.
“Sounds like you might be crushing on Drakne,” Justin scoffed.
“Oh grow up, Justin!” Kendra retorted.
“Ha, ha! That’s funny!” Raoul exclaimed.
“You’re probably totes attracted to his long black hair and guyliner!” Justin goaded.
“Is he hot? Yes! Am I attracted to him? More than I should be. But he’s trying to kill us all and I’m not stupid!”
“I can’t believe you just admitted it!” Justin snorted, howling with laughter.
Guyliner? wondered Drakne. He waved his curiosity off with his hand and returned his attention to the conversation.
“Be nice,” Lani reminded. “Kendra can’t help it if she finds him attractive. At least she’s smart enough not to want to act on it.”
Drakne narrowed his eyes slightly, but let the insult pass.
“Thank you,” Kendra replied, shooting a defensive look at Justin and Raoul.
“It’s not like he made you an offer,” Justin retorted.
“So if we’re ruling out his having a crush on Lani, why didn’t he kill her then?” Kendra asked the group, ignoring Justin and trying to get back on subject.
